Heartbeat in Thailand Review

You travel to Thailand to stay in a lavish house your Uncle owns, but he goes missing and you try to help your cousin find him. After visiting a local bar, you are mistaken for a criminal and must assume the role of a gang leader’s husband. Also, bad news, the house is haunted by the ghost of a young woman. Oh, and a mysterious female performer keeps popping up, getting into trouble.

While most of the narrative pieces link together, the story is average. It comes across as messy and shallow, and only takes 2 hours to finish. There are not enough meaningful branching paths, outside chapter four where you join one of the four love interests. It has no favorability system, so all endings can be easily accessed. It only takes 5 hours to 100% all chapters.

At least the story has many hilarious moments, with a mix of slapstick and witty dialogue. It is also far more suggestive than other Chinese dating sims, with several obscured sexual acts, partly because it leans into the culture of Thailand.

The setting of Thailand is refreshing; much like Norway in Love Begins with Goodbye. There are early shots of tourist attractions and several wonderful old houses used for many scenes. Three of the four love interests speak Chinese, and the fourth speaks Thai, along with many side characters. Special glasses auto-dub all Thai voices into Chinese, but it can be distracting given the incongruent lip movements. Thankfully you can turn this off (bottom left on pause screen) and hear the natural voices, which is recommended. Either way, all character audio is ADR and inconsistent.

Video quality is good, even at 1080p, and the interface is the best in the genre. Translation is above average, although some text choices overlap. The real standout feature are all the extras that will take about 2 hours to browse through. There are approximately 20 epilogue videos per love interest, and some have story tidbits. The main characters also have outfits, video backgrounds, and 10 megapixel photos.

All can be downloaded and viewed out of the game, which is awesome. This is not the first game to do this, but the first to implement it so well. Future games should look at Heartbeat in Thailand as a template for bonus content, much like they should emulate the finales in Hello Love: 18 Again.

While the mainline story could be stronger, it is almost impossible to be disappointed with Heartbeat in Thailand. It is so well put together, and it will be interesting to see what the team gives us next.