Five Hearts Under One Roof Season 2 Review

Once again, you take the role of Yuman, who gets hit by a car in the prologue. He has been in a coma for months and wakes up to almost immediately meet three newcomers to the series. The lovely nurse, Gyu-ri, takes care of you. A shy cleaner, Yu-Jeong, initially gets scared off by you. And the rich heiress, Yu-na, takes responsibility for you, for reasons she only explains in a dead-end branching path.

Three characters from the first game return. Childhood friend, Mal-sook, still acts like a tsundere and stays in your guesthouse. Pop idol Min-jung comes to stay after an incident at her concert. And lastly, Gran lives there too, but, oddly, she doesn’t enter the story until chapter 4.

The six main love interests are good enough. Two of the new ones, Gyu-ri and Yu-Jeong, are the best because they’re the most normal and easy-going. Yu-na looks amazing in a swimsuit but is airheaded and only finds her groove near the end. Mal-sook is fine but can be abrasive. Gran merely shows off her assets as fan-service. And Min-jung is unfortunately hollow this time. The cast is elevated by Doctor Suji, who only has a handful of scenes but leaves a big impact.

There is not much story, aside from Yuman healing. The flow is like a series of skits. It is consistently amusing but lacks the contrasting sincerity. It needed more slice-of-life content, or tangible story arcs for each character. There is a bit of that, like with Min-jung’s controversy and Mal-sook’s secret, but it is scattered and surface-level. It is hard to decipher why it does not quite work as well as it should. Don’t Fool Me Beauties was more sincere, in comparison.

It takes 3.2 hours to finish and about 9 to see everything. Endings are decent, branching, and 10-15 minutes long for each of the six. Hidden endings and epilogue scenes add chunkiness to the story. But, as the most expensive FMV romance game, this amount of content raises eyebrows when games at half the price offer much more. Disregarding value, squeezing in the six love interests (+ Doctor) could explain why it lacks depth and feeling.

Like all other Storytaco games, the game uses ADR, although it’s a respectable implementation. Translation is okay but with way more pronoun issues than expected. If you liked the first game, then Season 2 is for you. But, if you thought the original was okay, then this is just a fraction better. It’s still good! And it is worth making that Doctor’s appointment to get a second opinion.