Romance items purpose?

[Saberris]

Has anyone noticed a difference or a purpose to the necklace and keepsake that say they give +1 romance and whatnot? I had them on and didn't notice a difference when gifting or talking to people. Are they meant to give +1 heart to relationship increase events or what?

[Jarlim]

Testing with the items on and off make a TINY difference of adding more hearts with 'good' answers and gifts.

[Owl->208]

All the keepsakes give you a small boost to your game stats in some fashion and like you mentioned, the romance keepsake improves the results of your gifting and the heart boost you get from positive conversations and reduces the effects of negative conversations, I think.

It's hard to test this because each relationship impact is different because each character favors different things. A good way to check this is by your conversations with Lynn on the Train at the start of the game. There is a difference when you choose the romance charm vs the other choices and you can see that reflected in the hearts you can get with her before reaching Sun Haven.

The value to getting heart values higher depends on how you play the game and the skill choices you make. A number of skills benefit directly from the number of hearts you have with the game's romanceable characters. You also get gifts from romanceable characters at certain heart levels and some can be helpful to you, like Lucia giving you 5 small mana tomes which you can consume for permanent mana increases or give as gifts or sell. The romance keepsake allows you to be more effective getting more hearts sooner.