Dual Hearts, a forgotten PS2 game that is starting to fetch a pretty penny nowadays on the used market. It was developed by Matrix Software who is known for the Alundra games.
You play as Rumble, a cold-hearted, skilled treasure hunter. He travels to Sonno Island in search of the Dream stone, the most valuable and sought after treasure in the world. Meanwhile, Tumble, a dream creature known as a Baku, is tasked with finding the legendary weapons in the Temple of Dreams before the Nightmare breaks free from its seal. Tumble, being a big goof, accidentally drops the keys to the temple and they scatter into the dreams of the island residents. The unlikely pair decide to team up for their own reasons to find the keys and open the doors within the Temple of Dreams.
The story here is pretty basic. It is your standard heroes vs ancient evil tale, but with a few small twists. Rumble actually had some character development along with a few of the minor characters which was nice to see.
Overall, there is enough here to connect the gameplay sections together, but nothing to write home about. The cutscenes also flash the “press start to skip” button constantly so its like the developers wanted us to skip the story.
Dual Hearts is an action adventure platformer where you traverse 3 types of areas: the hub world of Sonno Island, the various dreams of its residents, and the puzzle rooms within the Temple of Dreams.
Sonno Island is part of the real world. You explore the town until you find a person who’s dream you can enter. By doing this, you can help them resolve a problem in their life and find a temple key. If you ever need a clue as to where you should go, you can ask Tumble for hints like, “Today is a nice day to go to the beach.”
The dream worlds are varied with many having rather unique themes. A child’s story book, the looping sequence of a tragic event, and an abstract painter’s dream. These are just a few of the types of worlds you can explore. Every world has its own objectives and a different balance of combat, platforming, and puzzles. Each main world has a boss with “figure out the gimmick” Zelda-style puzzle fights and a good chunk of health.
Optional worlds have mini-games like races, combat challenges, and…quietly collecting meat for a dog. Yup. I had fun with the different challenges and never felt the difficulty was unfair. The races gave me the most trouble since you need to nail tight turns with the dash controls or get lucky and win because your opponent got stuck on something.
Rumble can dual-wield a few types of weapons. Some weapons offer combo effects when wielded together, like elemental effects. Weapons can be upgraded by killing a specific number of enemies. Levels grant an additional attack to your combo and the last upgrade doubles its damage (which I’d heavily recommend). The combat was average with a bit of a floaty feel and only basic combos.
By pressing R2, you can summon and hop on Tumble as a mount. In the dream world, he moves fast and can jump much higher than Rumble. He can also slowly hover down which was really nice for tricky platforming sections. Rumble has an awkward front flip jump so unless I was in combat, I was bouncing around on Tumble.
Tumble unlocks abilities as you progress, such as a dash move that has a neat rhythm control scheme to it. These abilities require Esamons, little fairy fuzz balls hiding in nearby grass. When you uncover some, Tumble prances on over and sucks them up like a living vacuum. As Tumble fills his tummy, his mood gets happier and he gets different idle animations. The game actually has enough animations for him that you can add them to a collection book. Neat!
Dual Hearts is a breath of fresh air with just how colorful it is. The concept of dream worlds allowed worlds to have their own distinct appearances and layouts. The most visually distinct being the storybook level which looked like it was made of cardboard and crayons.
Sadly, this game is hindered by its interlaced resolution. At 480i, everything has a fuzziness to it which is only worsened by the extra blur and bloom effects in some areas. The bloom did make it hard to see collectibles that were in sky areas since they are bright colors on bright backgrounds.
Dual Hearts is chock full of collectibles, but not overbearingly so. There are a set number of collectible types in each dream world which are shown in a handy collectible checklist. I looked at a guide since sometimes these items blended into the background or have unclear unlock requirements.
Gold rings and Gold esamons unlock special rewards later on, but most of the powerful or interesting rewards are at or around 100% completion. This makes them neat, but useless rewards since you must do everything in the game first to acquire them. I personally don’t try to 100% most games I play, but I found this game to be just so enjoyable that I actually collected everything!
Rumble (the controller kind) is actually used in an interesting way. As you gallop around on Tumble, you can feel the galloping as vibrations through the controller. It is a minor feature, but I felt like it added a lot to the experience.
Dual Hearts has an Expert mode, but it only gives bosses more health. Seeing as bosses are already pretty HP spongy, I would recommend passing on Expert and just play on Normal.
Tumble was fun to listen to as he ate and dashed his way around the landscape. He did have a few lines that seemed to have been redone in English that sounded a bit more compressed in comparison to his normal sounds.
All of the music tracks fit their world’s theme and helped build a good atmosphere. The big highlight was this absolutely catchy Christmas tune that I will now be blaring every holiday season. Yes, Dual Hearts is a Christmas game. What more do you need?
Score: Great
There is just something about this game that really grabbed me. I had a ton of fun and decided to collect everything since I could not put it down. The writing was not memorable and the combat a bit wonky, but the platforming just excelled in areas that made it incredibly fun.
I should note that is not an easy game to acquire. Physical copies are rising in price in the collector’s market and the only “modern” port is on the Japanese PS3 store (this version is in Japanese too). If you can get your hands on this overlooked gem, you won’t regret it.
The Cozy Cottage 