Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak - Gameplay

Gameplay

The goals in Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak are to defeat Spat once and for all and to repair all the destroyed relations. A third quest, that supports those two, is to obtain all the "Ham-Chats". Ham-Chats are words, but also much more than that. At the start of the game, Hamtaro accidentally causes almost all the Ham-Chats in his Ham-Ham Dictionary to vanish, starting the hunt to fill the dictionary. Each Ham-Chat represents both a word (for communicating) and an action and/or motion. For instance, Lookie means to look. It is one of the most common Ham-Chats in the game, and solely has an action function. In that sense, action Ham-Chats often come with the necessary item (which is part of the Ham-Chat motion and doesn't show up in the inventory) and therefore, go another way than other adventure games in which the player already has all the actions available, but still has to get the required items. The other kind of Ham-Chat can only be used in conversations. A Ham-Chat like Perskie (Listen) for instance, only has value for conversations. New Ham-Chats are necessary to gain access to new parts of a conversation and get another Ham-Ham to do or give something.

Apart from Ham-Chats, the player also is required to obtain items (like a more conventional adventure game), though most of them are merely needed to complete minigames/side-quest. They are divided in inventory items, songs, currency and gems. Inventory items function like they do in any other adventure game and need to be combined with the Ham-Chats in order to proceed.

As in its prequel, Ham-Hams Unite, this game allows you to put together the actions for Ham-Chat words to create dances, with a room just for this purpose in the Clubhouse. In Ham-Ham Heartbreak, however, there is an additional feature relating to "Ham-Jams."

You can pick up a variety of items such as sunflower seeds on the ground by selecting hif-hif or digging for them with digdig. Rocks can also be found in this game, but they serve a different purpose in Heartbreak. You can take the rocks and polish them in the RubRub Room in order to uncover gems.