H-Scene Count- 18
Created by Leaf, translated by Dakkodango
Length- 25-35 hours
Tearts to Tiara is a strange game where most of the plot is told in flashbacks and you spend a lot of the game faffing about before things get serious. You play as the all important demon king, Arawn.
Story
One day an army goes to a small village to take a prophet girl. She sent every else in the village away to protect them and intends to die against the army. The army shows up with two kids from the village and threatens to torture them if she does not reveal her true name to the bad guy in charge, which would kill her free will. She does so and the army takes her. She is to be a sacrifice to rewaken the demon king and gain his favor for the corrupt priest/governor. This fails horribly when it turns out Arawn is actually not a horrible person, and after dealing with the girl’s headstrong brother, he marries the prophet(who is no longer a prophet), and gains their entire village as an army of sorts. They eventually go to a castle where they live and Arawn ends up marrying about 7-8 girls total. Oh and evil from the past that they must deal with. It is also a story of heroes and friendship.
The whole marriage thing is almost a joke, as nearly every girl he meets he accidently enters a marriage contract with. Arawn is a few thousand years old, has never had a wife and suddenly he marries everything near him. Arthur, the other male lead gets zero girls. Though I’m complaining, the whole marriage and the girls themselves have very little to do with the main plot, as Arthur and Arawn are actually the stars in this linear game.
Arawn as a character is snarky. He for the most part is the standard good guy but with life experience and more meaning to the plot then the standard good guy protagonist. He is lazy, but active when things need to be done for the good of people. He also makes fun of Arthur a lot. He does get bossed around by the girls pretty often even though you would think he would have more resistance to that, being snarky.
Gameplay
Tears to Tiara has an action strategy combat system. The characters move according to their speeds to where you tell them to and just swing there weapons until what you told them to kill is dead. There is no grid and everything happens in real time. You can either manually tell everyone what to do or give them general tactics and watch them win/lose.
The games difficulty is very variable depending on who you use, equipment and level(there are free zones where you can farm xp and money). The devs even added a postgame dungeon called the Tower of Leaf to test your skills. To beat this place you will almost need to hit max level, 99. Every floor beaten gets you a unique weapon for each main character that you can use on a new game that will one shot everything. They are very overpowered, but you will have horrible accuracy with them and cannot wield them past level 50.
While the game does have enough main characters to fill your entire party, you can also hire/create mercenaries who are whatever gender or class you want them to be. These can actually end up stronger then the main party as every time they class change their stat growths all go up, and they keep their old skills. You unlock more classes by reaching certain levels in old ones. It would not be that strange to end up using only 2-3 main characters and 4-5 mercs just because most of the mercs will end up better then the mains if you spend the time on them, and leveling them up is not hard since they can just cast a buff on a high level character and gain an instant 20 levels. Not to mention about 4-5 of the mains are just mercs with a few extra skills and unique sprites and maybe but not always better stat growths.
Compared to Utaware or Castle Fantasia 2, this is more of a complete game. You have shops, character classes, equipment with weight(even gear that changes stat growths), different weapon ranges, varied buffs and debuffs, ultimate skills, and big spells(with friendly fire). Tears to Tiara is a much more complicated game then the other two and yet is never gets confusing. There is just enough to keep you excited for what you might get next without overloading the player with stuff.
H-Scenes and other things
The h in Tears to Tiara is decent, except the first scene which is bad. The first scene just kinda happens with no lead up and ends as abruptly. It gives the completely wrong idea about the h in general, since every other scene is a few leagues better then the first. I would not be surprised if there were a few people who dropped the game after the first scene based on how bland it was.
The others are good, though not extremely varied. Art is extremely bright, the music is okay and the voice acting is decent. Most scenes are vanilla, but the game has a tentacle scene, and one of the heroines has only light S&M scenes. All girls get at least two scenes save for one. For some reason there is only one scene with multiple girls(threesome). All the girls know that you are married to at least more then one of them and yet there is no big harem scene or anything. While I personally don’t care for h scenes with a lot of characters(the writing gets a scattered and bad usually), if feels like a missed opportunity.
Personally, I don’t like Tears to Tiara as much as Utawarerumono. Utaware is a much more focused experience with a bit of faffing and a better twist while Tears is a lot of faffing and then plot and twist and serious things happen. You also can spend a lot of time farming in Tears, which does not lend itself to a better story experience. Tears is a mechanically better game though, and the plot’s not bad I just don’t care for how much of it is told in flashback. Only like 10% of the important plot points are in the present, everything else is set in the past.
Tears to Tiara is a good game to play. It’s not super long and can be funny once in a while, and has a cool castle siege section that feels cool. It’s gameplay is solid, and unlike most hrpg’s its not turn based which some people might be very happy about. Is it a great game? No, but it is fun and can be a real challenge sometimes. I just don’t have much affection for the game compared to Utaware and I can’t help compare them due to being from the same company.
Save contains all cgs/scenes/music in galleries plus the Tower of Leaf weapons available upon new game.
Tears to Tiara