Would If My Heart Had Wings fit my taste?

[Endless Nine]

I was browsing VNs on Steam with black friday sales, and since I'm currently broke I wanted to ask some details about the game:

are the characters generic dating sim stereotypes? Does it actually try to tell a story or is it just mindless comedy with terrible forced romance? I'm stuck between this and some other VNs like Planetarian, but I wanted to buy something that would be longer than 10 hours and that would hook me, also I want to buy something I haven't played yet. By the way, I'm aware of the censorship in it, but I'm going to ask this anyway: is the fanservice mild? I don't mind if it is, but if I had to read a borderline-hentai VN I'd rather watch good porn instead. In the end, if what I listed above is only shown to an acceptable extent, I'm willing to spend my money to buy it, plus, if there are any nice reasons I should play this, I'd like to know them.

[Nosebleed]

I think the characters are decently fleshed out and they all have fun stories to tell. You'd probably enjoy it in that regard. 

However the moenovel release really butchers one of the routes and it ruins a lot of the humor in the story. The current restoration patch only restores the h-scenes, it doesn't fix the writing, so you'll still encounter issues while reading. 

Regarding the fanservice outside of the sex scenes, there actually isn't much to see to be quite honest, outside of one or two scenes, so the bulk of the VN is storytelling. There is a lot of slice of life sprinkled in it though, which may or may not be up your alley. 

I'd say it's a worthy VN to be played for its story and fun characters, the only major drawback is really the moenovel release of the game. 

[Shota_Victory]

It has a good story, but it's not worth playing through the translation. I'd wait until the full retranslation patch is released.

[Okarin]

I guess the future full restoration patch (releasing early 2017, hopefully) can be used with your Steam installation. So if you wanna get the game legit and clean, you could get it, and in the future this retranslation project will bring out its full colours, as the great novel it originally was (this can already be glimpsed, but not fully experienced due to the bad translation and cut material).

Also it's set in summer, if you're tired of novels set in summer, or prefer another season.

Note we're placing our hopes on this retranslation project, I sure hope it turns out well!

Edited November 24, 2016 by Okarin

[Nandemonai]

I was under the impression the full restoration patch was only going to work on Japanese copies?

[Zenophilious]

1 hour ago, Nandemonai said:

I was under the impression the full restoration patch was only going to work on Japanese copies?

Correctamundo.  pabloc has said multiple times that his patch will not support the Steam version, as he doesn't want to fix their mistakes for them.  The only version that the patch will work with is the original Japanese release.  Don't buy the Steam release if you plan to read the re-translation, as you'll be wasting your money.