A bit of an odd thing has been happening ever since I bought the love bangle. When I first speak to the bachelorette's for DS the affection level is displayed. The level is accurate to the amount of gifts I've given them. However, when I speak to them AFTER the first time with the love bangle, the affection level is completely gone. It's blanked out like it would be with any other character.
However, for Leia and Witch Princess, the affection level stays. I'm assuming this is something leftover from DS they forgot to remove in Cute for the special girls?
However, not sure if my game is just being weird with the non special girls. It's not a huge deal because it's not like I can marry them, but I'd still like to see the heart events and new dialogue that changes with the affection level!!
Sort've just curious if this is something thats supposed to happen lol
Yes, the original bachelorettes from HMDS (Muffy, Cecilia, Lumina, and Nami) are not intended to have visible love points or heart markers in DS Cute. The love bangle may simply displaying that value in error.
The special girls (Leia, Witch, Goddess, and Keria) actually do have affection levels in DS Cute. They are special bachelorettes left over from the boy version because, generally, the bachelor options in DS Cute are less interesting than the bachelorette options from DS. In the Japan version of DS Cute, players can go through the same romantic events as the boy version and "marry" the special girls, but it was treated as a bit of a joke; for example, I married Leia in the JP game, and Thomas called the ceremony a "wedding ???", as it was labeled as a "best friend ceremony" by MMV at the time. After the ceremony, it was the same post-marriage dialog as the boy version of the game.
When the game was localized into English for the North America market, the final "best friend ceremony" became unavailable in the game. All of the romantic events for the special girls remained (as you noted that their affection points are visible), but the final ceremony would never happen. I am guessing this may have had to do with Natsume insisting that their ESRB-rating being "E" instead of "E 10+" from the mid-2000s ESRB, which was an available rating at the time of DS Cute.
Funny thing, once XSeed took over localization of the Bokumono series, both SoS and SoS: Trio of Towns were rated "E 10+" by the ESRB. Natsume continued to play it safe with the E-rated 3DS games Lost Valley and Skytree Village.
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