Tears to Tiara II Review

Role –playing games have been taking a more strategic approach along the years, turning from old-fashioned JRPGs to a turn based action adventure game. There still are great Japanese RPGs, with Final Fantasy taking its spot a long shot above all others, but the section concerning turn-based games is becoming more rich as time passes by, providing some neat games every now and then.

Tears to Tiara II is a turn based RPG developed by Atlus exclusively for the PlayStation 3. The game is situated in a fantasy world, in the realms of the Divine Empire. The story focuses on a particular province in this Empire, particularly Hispania, and stars a young man called Hamil. Hamil was a descendant of the powerful royal family who used to rule over the province, but is now reduced to a slave and must work for the Empire, and in the opening of the game is seen aiding construction work, showing how his heritage is really dust now. Hamil then encounters a girl, called Tarte, who proclaims to be a goddess but fails to cast magic and thus Hamil does not believe her, but still sticks around since the two become friends quickly. The story then kicks off with battles and very long cutscenes, which cannot be cut by the way, capturing players in a blend of emotions which will keep you to the edge of the seat.

The game is a mix of story and gameplay, with no platforming or roaming between cutscenes and battles. In fact, battles start just after a cutscene ends, putting you right in the action. Tears to Tiara II features very long cutscenes, as mentioned earlier, with Japanese audio and English subtitles. These cannot be changed ingame, which give it a very anime feel due to the nature of dialogue. Even though the clips are quite lengthy, the story becomes absorbing and will not bore players ready to embrace the adventures of our heroes. Character depth was one of the most developed areas in the game, shown through the various emotions conveyed from the voice acting, which although in Japanese still delivers the right feelings while following the story on text.

The battles, on the other hand, are standard turn-based action with a lot of cool mechanics which are not put in just for show. Fights carry on as one would expect hearing the term turn-based, having each character in the party making his move one by one. There is no specific order for the party members, and thus a character moving last on this turn may move first on the next. There are various actions one may do during his turn, like move, attack, use magic and items. One action may not exclude another action to happen, for example moving and then attacking is permitted but attacking does not let moving happen afterwards. There are also specific actions which cannot be performed after moving, so one must plan ahead of moving. One of the mechanics of the game is rewind, where can take back actions done as if they never happened. There is a maximum limit of 20 rewinds, beyond which one can not rewind further. Performing the same action before and after a rewind will yield the same results, and thus players are alerted to switch tactics upon rewinding. Another mechanic of the game is the element cycle, which is shown through a wheel in the bottom right corner of the screen and which changes each turn. Basically, the element cycle features four elements, namely earth, wind, fire and water, and all characters have an element attributed to them. There are also three sub elements, being astral, dark and holy, which also switch each turn. As the game explains, each element is favoured against another element but is vulnerable to another attribute. Each turn, the element cycle spins each turn and an element is put in a favoured state. Characters sharing the same element as the one being in the favoured state will have his parameters buffed until the end of the turn, when the wheel will spin again and a new element is put in a favoured state. This is another aspect which makes Tears to Tiara II much deeper tactically than it appears at first, since planning attacks with characters sharing upcoming elements will require more thought. Chain Stock is another great feature of the game, and works as following: for attacking the enemy or receiving damage a character builds a chain stock, which permits an additional strike when attacking an enemy normally, or boosting magic properties for magical attacks. Upon building one or more chain stocks, these can be spent to add additional attacks and thus deal more damage. These features and more help Tears to Tiara II get to the next level from a strategic point of view, while keeping the fidelity of a classic turn based battle intact.

The one thing which did not make any sense personally during the game was the fact that during cutscenes in portraits, the characters appear to be young adults, to be more precise something over twenty. In battle and during animated cutscenes, the characters appear almost like children due to their small size. It is not clear why of this design decision but it certainly is a weird one. Graphics wise the game is not a standout, and environments are a bit poor. While recounting the story a graphic novel template is used and it suits the game perfectly due to its rather slow paced rhythm, and characters are designed beautifully in the portrait bits, while not so much in animated cutscenes. Nonetheless this does not detract from the effectiveness of the story.

Tears to Tiara II is a beautiful game, which although has long moments of you just reading the story, takes you on a ride you will not want to go down from. Its neat and effective combat sequences coupled with a compelling story are a killer combination which, although will not attract most players due to its slow pace and turn based mechanics, will make those who do play it enjoy it thoroughly, falling in love with a tale rich of emotions and full of character.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.