Tears of Themis -- No Spoiler Review
Tears of Themis
System: Phone
Price: Freemium (Free to play with in-app purchases available, but not required)
Voice Acting: Partial (Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean)
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) - Note: Rating planned to be changed to T (13+) after review
Overall Rating: Stole 8/10 ♥s
Pre-Game Perception: Phoenix Wright the otome. But really, it has VAing and it’s free, so I’m down. miHoYo makes male characters I’m thirsty for.
Morning-After Reflection: A game chock full of content that easily lulls you into spending on gacha or monthly memberships. Incredibly engaging, but too intensive for me and my casual phone gaming.
Story: “What seemed to be independent cases slowly begins to link together and form a larger picture. The hand behind it all has no regard for social order and aims only to destroy all that is decent and good. As the truth becomes more obscure and shrouded in mystery, the lines between good and evil blurs. With the world against you and the words of reason falling on deaf ears.... Will you still be determined to stand by your choices and beliefs?”
Interest Rating: 10/10. I heard about this game months and months before it came out, and since it had voice acting from some of my favorite seiyuus I needed to get my hands on it as soon as possible. I didn’t care what it was about, the 2D men looked gorgeous and miHoYo had earned a spot as “worth it” due to their successful Genshin Impact release the previous year.
MC: This is an interesting turn of events for a phone game, the MC is well fleshed out as her personality and background have a lot to do with the story. It is clearly not a self-inserting role. Not that you can’t, because I think you can self-insert anything if you try hard enough, but they give you a lot more to work with than the usual mobage blank MC. Rosa is the standard name, and I don’t know if it is ever voiced, as I changed it right away since I haven’t had a phone game where the MC’s name was voiced yet; so basically I screwed the pooch and jumped the gun by naming my MC.
Rosa is roughly 22-years old, I’m sure there’s an exact age but I can’t remember. She’s averagely short as far as most MCs go since they tend to stand around 5’0”-5’2” at most. She does have the iconic brown hair and green eyes of most otome MCs, but that’s fine with me. She appears by the text box whenever speaking, and also gets full sized screen time during events. Plus, she’s a kickass lawyer! No, for real real. There’s nothing wrong with hospitality jobs, or assistant jobs, or any other types of jobs out there, but otome MCs tend to fall into hospitality a lot so I just get tired of it. It’s very coded as “women’s work”, and I want to see more women in more relatable fields like a junior partner at a law firm. Cue Rosa.
At 22 she is arguing her own cases, and doing investigative work that doesn’t usually get done by the presenting lawyer, but whatevs. She holds down her own apartment in a busy city, and doesn’t ever seem to be strapped for cash, so that’s cool. And she gets to interact with some hot, hot, hot guys. Her parents are dead, a semi-recent event but still a few years ago. And she doesn’t seem to have any close friends outside of work, but she does know people in the community and establishes relationships during the game, so that’s also pretty cool. She’s smart, sarcastic, quick-witted, cool-headed, and just an overall really good MC.
Likability Rating: Shu. I get a very strong “working woman” vibe from Rosa because she’s successful in her field as a lawyer at 22. She’s the type of strong female protagonist I long for in games. The fact that we get to argue for half the game makes playing her even better, imo.
Plot: So, the story snippet we get sounds super interesting, but I didn’t get far enough in the game to link it all together. There are hints, and with the game only being about 5.5 months from initial release, I doubt it has been revealed what is really going on yet. There’s a lot of filler in this game to keep people playing. And there’s a lot in this game to play. I’ll get into the mechanics in the UI/Mechanic section, but there is A LOT to this game, so much that it wasn’t for me and I had to put it down because it didn’t work well with my playstyle. Which is fine! Not every game that is well made will be for me, or for you, but that’s why we talk about it.
As it stands currently (January 2022) there are five chapters out. There is a linear storyline with only minor changes depending on how you proceed with the last portion of a chapter, but it comes back around to start linear again in the next chapter. The love interests are all part of the main story, and their “routes” are largely restricted to card stories. This is quite normal for a linear story game. The plot is to be a great lawyer! Or something. Eventually the cases are going to start feeling linked, and I’m sure something sinister is waiting for us, but I never made it there if it is even there yet. With five chapters, I highly doubt it.
Replayability Rating: ★★☆☆☆ There is a large amount of daily content to log in for, but not a lot of replayability when it comes to the main story. No need to repeat any chapters, as the game is fairly forgiving for choices made. Each card story is long and in-depth, though, and that’s cool.
Love Interests: I know I say this almost every time, but this is really my favorite part. It’s why I play these games, tbh. I want to fall in love with hot men. And sometimes hot women. In this game you get both! But you don’t actually get to date the women, so sorry to raise your hopes like that if that’s your thing. We have four bachelors here that are all too good to be true. I’m serious, there’s gotta be some reason every single one of these guys are single. Maybe you’ll find out in the story I didn’t finish. Or the story that’s not finished. Or maybe you’ll just never know!
There isn’t an ending to Tears of Themis yet, and there aren’t routes that you can actually take. All romance is mainly locked behind card stories that you unlock after first obtaining the card, then leveling it up and skilling it up and such. This is getting a little too far in mechanics for my liking. Point is, you can date them all at the same time. And if you don’t date any of them, or date all of them, you still get some sweet moments in the main game where it treats you like you’re not dating– but still dating– but not… all of them. It’s a phone game, this is the way it works. So, date who you want, be sweet to who you want, I think they’re all worth the time and effort put into any of them. They be the sweetest, yo.
Since there is no order to worry about, I’m going to just throw the men at you the way the game does. First up is Artem Wing. Do you like older men? Do you like fantasizing about your boss? What if he looks like Artem Wing? You’d fantasize about him now, right? I’m all for the taboo and power dynamics, and getting the chance to date my older boss was exactly what I wanted from Tears of Themis. Artem is hot-tot-tot. I like a man in a suit, and he suits the suit well. Artem is clearly married to his work, and since you work there he could be married to you too! He’s the youngest senior lawyer in like… the country or something. I don’t know. He’s smart and driven. But don’t think that makes him cold and a raging asshole, because this boy man is also extraordinarily sweet and considerate. He’s a bit kuudere, and very law abiding, and he also tends to be the most reasonable and cautious of the suitors. Not to mention that he drinks up that respect women juice on the daily. Damn straight, Artem is a rare catch that you’re not going to want to miss. That sexy, sexy man…
How do you feel about the childhood friend trope? The genki friend that has loved you for years and only recently do you guys reconnect and possibly develop feelings for each other is alive and maybe not well in Tears of Themis. That’s really not a spoiler seeing as how the reason you guys stopped communicating for eight years is because Luke Pearce suddenly “disappeared” after being accepted into some top secret program, which is revealed in the first conversation you two hold. That can’t be normal. That’s not normal, right? I’ll be honest, I don’t talk to any childhood friends save one, and none that went to university at 16, so maybe that’s just a thing that happens to geniuses that people just accept as normal. Or maybe it’s a future thing, since Tears of Themis is in our future with cool future things. I don’t know. But the point is Luke is now here and you can get back to that childhood crush if you want to. He’s incredibly cute, and so smiley, and willing to help you in anything you could ever need help with. He probably follows you around too, but that’s just speculation from me. Don’t worry, there aren’t any surprise yanderes yet. And unfortunately I wouldn’t tell you if there were… but I just told you there weren’t. Hmmm, what a conundrum. Pick up Luke if you want a sweetheart that you can reminisce with and will always look at you the way someone who loves you looks at you.
Next up we get to visit Vyn Richter. Do you like shady, super intelligent, white-haired men? Sounds like my Grandpa… Ahem. I said that is the type of guy Vyn Richter is. He’s a criminal psychologist with 2 doctorates to Artem’s single degree (lol. No really, this was a reason in one of the past events for why Vyn should have been chosen over Artem), and his creep-factor is turned up to 12 even though he does nothing at all to earn it. Besides, ya know, be himself. Really, I find him charming, as he aims to be. I think he’s just very intelligent and always plotting something 32 moves ahead, but not plotting in the bad way, if you get my drift. I got a thing for the smart, socially awkward characters. Usually they end up being comedic because we all like to laugh at how awkward they are; but Vyn isn’t comedic unless you get the joke, and the joke isn’t that he doesn’t understand social cues, it’s that he understands all the social cues. It’s that he always has an idea of what’s going on. And that’s incredibly sexy to me. Probably because having someone that can see who you really are and understand the reasoning without having to say anything would be a relief to me. Anyways, Vyn’s smart and a gentleman. I’d do him.
Finally we get to meet sexy incarnate Marius Von Hagen. I’m not going to say he’s my favorite because they’re all my favorite in this game, but I will say that he was the easiest to fall in love with when I met him. Marius is the youngest of the group (surprisingly), and he has a thing for being a confident, sometimes conceited flirt. But besides being a shameless flirt, he doesn’t come off like the typical rich guy jerk. Sorry if you like that kind of thing, you’re not going to find it here. Marius is part of the PAX corporation, which owns practically everything in the city. And by “part of” I mean he’s the heir to the corporation. He’s brilliant (so far every guy here is) and enjoys things outside of making money and flirting, like making art and music even if he sucks at it. He’s a fashionable dresser, knows the right things to say because of his upbringing, and says the sweetest things because he genuinely likes the MC who doesn’t instantly fall for his charms. But really, it’s because Rosa (MC) is amazing and all these guys know that, so they all love her just like I do.
Boy Crazy Rating: 98%. No really, these guys are so perfect. They live in my head despite me not keeping up with the game. They’re genuine and sweet and all respect the MC. They all have awesome draws and are flawed people as well. I’m going to simp over them for some time to come.
Romance: I’m sorry to say that the romance in this game is severely lacking. It is way more a mystery and friendship game than it is about dates and affection. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t get very far, but the main story doesn’t cover romance at all. And the card stories that you have access to can get date-like and very cute, but relegating romance to cards (although a common thing in gacha games) has grown to annoy me. Yes, I’m collecting all the cards I can manage, but then the main story doesn’t reflect the relationship the cards have established. And I get that, because the player base is so large so it’s not likely everyon is romancing the same people, but I want some romance in my romance stories, ya’ know? Fast romance, slow romance, whatever romance, as long as I can get some lovin’ I don’t care. You don’t get that from Tears of Themis. RIP love.
Heart Palpitation Rating: F. It’s not that there is no romance, it’s that there isn’t any in the main game so far and it is kept to the side stories. I suppose a D would be more fair despite there being no D in this game, but I’m tired of being lured into mobile games with the promise of romance and it being stuck behind a paywall.
Spice: If you count the ability to skinship during your visits with your chosen LI, then there still isn’t any spice to this game. :crying laughing face emoji: I didn’t want that to come out too harsh, because although the game itself doesn’t hold much spice, I don’t think it’s a bad game. It’s very interesting and fun and full of things to do, but everything that makes it hot is all in my head. There’s some sexually charged moments, but nothing that holds a candle to other mobile games, and I blame the rating for that. It is still a game marked E for everyone. Some day in the future things might get steamy, as it is moving to a T rating sometime this coming year (2022), but for now it is as cold as ice cubes in the freezer. Nothing’s going to make you feel the heat.
Cold Shower Rating: Fail. The rating makes this game more about the friendship between MC and LIs rather than the physical spice they could share. At least you can lift two LI’s shirts if you level up your affection high enough. Please heat yourself with a blanket and some cocoa.
Angst: I suppose one thing that Tears of Themis has in spades is angst. Now, we’re not talking like the angstiest of angst where you’re bawling your eyes out because everyone ends up dead, because this is a game made for everyone, remember? But if they don’t have a whole lot of dating guys, and they don’t have a whole lot of making out with guys, then what do you think they do have a whole lot of? That’s right, drama. The game starts out mysterious, with a big case that ends up right in the MC’s lap, and sure enough you get to investigate and lawyer it up. There is always plenty o’ drama to be had when you’re fighting for justice! It’s a great drama game, imo. Each chapter and case has plenty of mystique to keep you interested. Each card story has plenty of conflict. Overall, this is a pretty well crafted story with angst but not too much angst.
Drama Llama Rating: 6/10. You get a healthy dose of drama with Tears of Themis, but nothing that’s terribly tugging on the heart strings. The drama llama is questionable in demeanor today, beware of the teeth and the cloven hooves.
Voice Acting: If you didn’t notice at the top of this review there are four different languages listed under the voice acting portion. FOUR. Let that sink in. Unfortunately, there is no English pack for all of us native English speakers, but you can download ANY language pack and use it. No restrictions. AND if that wasn’t cool enough, you can download different languages for each character. No, I’m not kidding. Do you want Artem to speak Simplified Chinese, and Luke to speak Korean? You can do it. That’s ridiculous. After playing so many games where you have to jump through hoops to get voice packs, for a free game this seems unbelievable. But believe it. That’s how awesome Tears of Themis is.
Naturally, I picked Japanese as my voice pack and left all characters speaking it. Afterall, Tears of Themis ended up on my radar because of hot guys with voices I liked. So you’ve got Suwabe Junichi (諏訪部 順一) as Artem, Kaji Yuuki (梶 裕貴) as Luke, Fukuyama Jun (福山 潤) as Vyn, and Ishikawa Kaito (石川 界人) as Marius. That’s a powerful set of seiyuu, guys. If you don’t know who any of those people are because you’re new or have a hard time remembering names, let me tell you that each of these seiyuu have been in top tier roles. They’re all very good at what they do.
So needless to say I was blown away by the performance of everyone, and the prominence of how much voice acting is in this game despite it being considered “partial” voice acting. I get it, it isn’t fully voiced. But this is more than just a single sentence in card battles or only if you purchase the premium stories. They voice everything in the main story, and some event stories. When I say everything in the main story, I mean everything for the VAs they have, side characters may not have a voice actor, but some do.
Expression Rating: Shu. If you want Daddy Suwabe to be your doting mentor/boss, pick up Tears of Themis. If you want kawaii Yuuki playing your supportive childhood friend, pick up Tears of Themis. If you want the talented Fukuyama to be the intelligent and mysterious doctor you look up to, pick up Tears of Themis. And if you want multifaceted Ishikawa flirting and calling you onee~-san, pick up Tears of Themis.
Art: Hnnngh, the art is soooo goooood. I’m going to be real with you all right now, I’ve been simping over Genshin Impact characters for a year. I have a place for all my merchandise (who doesn’t?) and there are a few Genshin Impact dudes up there. If that name doesn’t sound familiar, and you notice I didn’t add a link to another review, it’s because Genshin Impact is not a romance game, so I haven’t reviewed it, nor do I plan to. This is all important, trust me. Genshin Impact is made by a company called miHoYo, and I know that there’s likely multiple artists on the team, but Tears of Themis is also made by miHoYo. So I was drawn to the art right away, despite it not being as intricate as Genshin Impact’s character designs.
Not only do I love the art design, but the expression for the sprites is pretty stellar, imo. I absolutely love it when a MC is able to deadpan instead of looking cheery or confused all the time. The sprites have a few different outfits, when required, and. They. Move. This game is animated. Short clips with little movement, or portions where you’re walking and talking with a LI and they’re actually walking during the scene. It’s not always animated, sometimes the sprites are just standing there like the typical VN style, but the fact that there is any animation is a big deal for an otome. They blink, they move their mouth when talking, and they just generally move. It’s the coolest thing. Obey Me! had something similar, but not to this extreme. It’s awesome.
Still Picture Rating: ★★★★★ Many design. Such good. Very movement.
CGs: If you thought I was squeeing over the art, wait until I get going on the CGs. You get everything great about the art in the CGs! Some CGs are cute chibi, some are highly detailed and have movement that you can add to your background in game, so you have a live wallpaper. Some are on cards with little movement. And some don’t move at all, like the chibi art and some of the regular art on cards. There’s really nothing I dislike about the art and CGs for this game! Except… a lot of the highest quality CGs (where you can set them as live backgrounds) are locked behind events and paywalls. Unfortunately, this is just the way freemium games work. I didn’t collect A LOT of CGs because I wasn’t paying for them, or I didn’t manage to pull them in the gacha promos.
Look at this Photograph Rating: 85%. Since the coolest CGs require cash to obtain, rendering the casual (or free player that grinds) unable to get them, the photo rating was lowered. Otherwise, they’re great CGs. Top quality. Beautiful, imo. And definitely something I’ll miss from the game.
UI/Mechanics: Tears of Themis is unlike any mobile game I have ever played. It is chock full of so much stuff that I had to drop it because it didn’t mesh with my playstyle. Usually I separate this into if you’ve played a mobile game before and if you haven’t, but I think it’s different enough that a basic rundown overall would help everyone. To start out, Tears of Themis is an energy management, gacha battling, investigative, logic, otome VN. That’s a mouthful! And I’m not talking about a mouthful of– Ahem! Back on track. I’m going to tackle these in the order I listed.
You get energy to progress through the battles and VN portions of the story, and to do other things like playing the (12) other “game” sections of the game. You have to progress through the battles in order to advance through the story, there is no circumventing this. Each chapter holds roughly 25 story parts, and most are story > battle > story > investigate > story > etc. I couldn’t tell you how quickly your energy replenishes because you get so much energy from doing dailies and leveling that I never got under my energy cap. Ever. Level 54 when I quit and I’d never seen my energy run out.
In order to do the “battles” - which are really debates in the game - you have to have a deck of cards. These cards are obtained through various means, the most common is through the gacha pulls. If you pull a duplicate for a card, it powers up the card, up to 5x. If you pull enough cards, you’re guaranteed a SR or above, watch the dates for banners you’re pulling from and how many are required before a higher card is promised, otherwise you might put a bunch of pulls into a banner that goes away before you get your guaranteed card. Then, from collecting various other items from the game, you can level these cards and skill them up so they are bigger and badder. As a note, each card has a story as well, which you unlock as it levels up or skills up. These are unvoiced (for most cards) and fun little outings for you and the LI on the card. You also get rewards for doing the story on the card, so don’t forget to go through them when you can.
During each chapter in the game (there are currently 5 out as of January 2022) there will be investigative portions. In these portions you are usually trying to find evidence of your client’s innocence, as it seems you’re always representing the defendant, I think? It isn’t set up the same way I know the US court system to be (makes sense because it’s from China) so that’s kind of the way it works. Anyways, you poke things around a room to find clues. These clues get filed away for later use.
When constructing arguments for your official court case, you have to match clues together to draw a conclusion that will help your case. If you weren’t paying attention to the story, or the investigation, then this is going to be more difficult than you might think. Don’t worry, you just waste time if you try to match two things that aren’t supposed to go together, nothing bad happens. You get like a million tries. I know because I was just trying to speed through one chapter and did this. That’s about when I realized I’m not really playing the game anymore and probably shouldn’t keep logging in.
Otome is pretty self-explanatory. You date guys as a female MC. Nothing complicated here.
The battling system is a little more in-depth than my card is higher than your card, but the tutorial in the game covers this so I’m not going to go into it. You can auto a lot of the game, like card battles and even have the clue collecting tell you where all the clues are so you’re not just poking around blindly. I preferred to do my own battles because I think I did it better than the AI did, in other words I was able to beat out events that I was woefully underprepared for by being strategic instead of just throwing the “best” card for that specific battle at it.
On top of all of this (which is all simply for the main story), there are events that are constantly running. There are dailies you can do for items that’ll help you complete the main story. There are “trials” where you battle for… well, more stuff and unlocking more stuff, so you kind of have to do it. There are practice trials (I think that’s what they were called, I can’t remember now) where you can spend energy and get items. There’s a map where you can visit your LI’s for one on one time. This is where you can play games with them, touch them, pet them, and even undress them (to an extent, it’s still rated for all ages!). There is a mini-house-thing now, that I can’t really explain except you participate in some events or something to get schematics for furniture… or something. They implemented a new achievement system, so that was kind of neat, but it’s not really intuitive and only really there for measuring progress. There is A LOT. This game is so full that I couldn’t keep up with it. It’s very demanding if you’re one of the types that easily gets swept away with FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
So! That’s all the mechanics!
The UI is pretty easy to navigate, imo. There are a few things in odd places like your inventory being under your character where you hold all the items for your cards, and then in another tab you hold your usable items. So basically you never see this or see when things are going to expire unless you go and look for it. They are attempting to streamline things, I’ve seen a few UI changes since launch already, so who knows what improvements they’ll make after now?
What’s this button do? Rating: A-. The game is easy to navigate for the most part, it’s hard to get lost with a Home button in nearly every screen. There’s a ton to do in this game. Too much for me, but it’s nice seeing so much available for those that want something more hefty than a few chapters a day.
Errors: For the most part, the main story is translated really well. I don’t think I had any WTF moments until I started doing events. The events… well, they’re not as meticulously translated. You get some very odd translations that mean nothing close to whatever they were intending. But even though there are some big translation mistakes in the events, they’re not super common. You’re likely to find half a dozen AT MOST during the event which runs for 10 days on average. The game is made very well, imo. I had no loading issues. I turn off all notifications when I start a new game, so I can’t tell you if that gets annoying or even works. Basically, you’re not going to find game-breaking issues here.
Here there be Bugs Rating: Pass. This game is new and shiny and with all the work they put into it, it shows. No bugs crawling around.
Background Music: I want to say the music is good, but I’m drawing a blank right now. I do actually listen to it, I know because the characters are voiced for the main story, so I know I’ve heard it several times. Yet I can’t hear a single note in my head right now. Maybe it’s just okay? Doesn’t add anything but doesn’t detract either? That’s the only thing I can think of. No impression made.
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