Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord Review

Back in the early days of the Internet, there was an image that made the rounds on AOL and Angelfire sites that always stuck with me. It was an arcade cabinet with a mushroom cloud on its screen, and just below that, where you'd normally find joysticks, was a Photoshopped sea of a ton of different colored buttons covering the entire space. The name of the game was something like "OMG Buttons!" and the caption under the cabinet said, in reference to the mushroom cloud, "Wrong button." As I FINALLY finished Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord on PS3, that image jumped to mind. Why? Because I feel like this long-winded visual novel/SRPG could accurately be renamed "OMG Words!" Tears to Tiara II is, without a doubt, the wordiest game I've probably ever played, and it took me months to get through all the text to see the story's end. There are some solid SRPG mechanics in play when you are actually playing, but the game's intensely long conversations means that getting to that gameplay is not something everyone will have the patience to accomplish.

OMG Words!, I mean, Tears to Tiara II: Heir to the Overlord presents an interesting concept up front - the mashup of the visual novel genre so popular in Japan (and with a lot of players here in the States) and the evergreen strategy RPG into one long, extraordinarily and intricately detailed game. Seeing as both are somewhat niche genres, the audience for a game like this is extremely limited. Luckily, the game does manage to pull off the important aspects of both genres, even if it leans more heavily to the visual novel side of things. As with any visual novel, things live and die by the strength of the story and characters, and the plot here is a decent if somewhat familiar one. The unfortunately named main character Hamilcar (is this what Luke Skywalker drives to work?) has been a slave to the Divine Empire his entire life. His father was once head of the House of Barca and ruler of the nation of Hispania, but was deposed by the Empire when Hamilcar was young. As an adult, Hamilcar gets swept up in the quietly simmering plans for rebellion against the Divine Empire, and the story takes you through the typical "one guy vs. impossible odds to save the whole world" RPG playbook. The story is quite good and never fails to keep the player's attention, but suffers as dialogue (spoken in Japanese, written in English) drags on and on and on. It wasn't uncommon to find myself reading for an hour or more between actual SRPG gameplay and save points, and this side of things will be just fine with visual novel fans.

On the SRPG side of things, the picture isn't as bright. Don't get me wrong, Tears to Tiara II has some amazing gameplay and mechanics, there just isn't enough of it. My play-through of the entire game clocked in at about 90 hours over a few months, and I'd estimate at least 75% of that time was spent quietly reading and waiting for the next bit of action. When you do finally get through to the SRPG bits, you will find a lot to like, especially if you are a strategy enthusiast. Moving your characters, taking turns attacking and defending, equipping items and such... all of it is typical SRPG stuff and it is as appealing here as it is anywhere else. The single best aspect of the game is the rewind feature. Like the excellent Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together on PSP, Tears to Tiara II gives the player the ability to turn back time and find a way out of hot water (yes, the Cher reference was intentional). At any point, in any battle, you can simply go backwards, undoing any mistakes you may have made and replaying the battle from any point in time. Like Bravely Default's feature to turn down or off all random encounters should be boilerplate for every JRPG in the future, the rewind feature is one I wish all SRPGs had. It cuts down on forced restarts and saved game reloads, and allows the player to explore any and all options in combat without real penalty. And with a game as wordy as this one, not having to slog through the seemingly endless dialogue more than once is greatly, greatly appreciated.

As you can probably already guess, my only real problem with this game was the extreme amount of text to read and how long it stretched out my total playtime. Without the visual novel part, this would be a maybe 20 hour SRPG with a decent story and great mechanics. Without the SRPG side, this would be a 60-70 hour story, and if I really wanted to do that much reading, I'd give in to my wife's demands and read the Wheel of Time series. I am all for longer games, especially longer JRPGs (tactical or not), but Tears to Tiara II's length was simply ridiculous, demanding way too much time through conversations that, admittedly, I started skipping toward the end of the game. Even then, it still took well over two and a half months to completely finish the game's story, and I just don't have that kind of time for console titles any more. In a crowded marketplace games must truly excel to command such a commitment, and this one, though good, even amazing in some ways, doesn't cut the mustard. It isn't often that you'll hear me complain about a game's length, especially a game being too long rather than too short, but Tears to Tiara II deserves the criticism. If Tears to Tiara III is ever released, I'll definitely be interested in seeing where these characters go next. I just hope they can tell me the tale in half or even a third the time they took to tell me this one. OMG Words! indeed.

Final Rating: 72%. For the gamer who likes reading more than gaming.