Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord is an interesting thing. It’s a sequel to a game we never got here in the states and though we did get the anime adaptation which covered the story of the first game, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into it. The prospect of playing a sequel without having played prior games in a series can be quite daunting — particularly when the stories are linked together. Thankfully in the case of Tears to Tiara II, the story is entirely self-contained, which means you won’t have any trouble understanding the plot.

The game itself is developed in collaboration between two studios — Aquaplus who handles the visual novel segments, and Sting who handles the gameplay segments. In it, you play as Hamilcar (voiced by Yoshitsugu Matsuoka who you may know as Kirito from Sword Art Online), a noble descendant of the honorable and fierce House Barca — a family who rules over Hispania until the Divine Empire arrives.

The Divine Empire is a brutal regime which uses religion as a means to power, and they’re also responsible for your father’s death — something that ignites a young Hamilcar’s spark for revenge. Throughout the course of the story, you go from being a slave to leader of a rebellion and along the way befriend a goddess by the name of Astarte (or Tarte, as she is called by the party) who leads you on the path to vengeance.

You’ll also gain a lot of party members, so many in fact that you won’t be able to use them all. It’s no surprise though since your goal as leader of the rebellion is to amass an army and take down the evil empire — but it can be both a blessing and a curse, as there are several points throughout the story where you may be left without a couple of your highest level characters and have to make due.

The story is told over the course of thirteen chapters, with individual stages in between. According to Atlus, it should be about 80 hours, but I finished it in roughly 42. It’s important to note though that for the purpose of my review I gave myself some concessions, for example I played on easy which awards you more currency and skipped over majority of the voice acting which is something that most people playing the game probably won’t do.

This is a dialogue heavy game, it’s largely a visual novel with some tactical RPG gameplay thrown in for good measure — so it would not surprise me if you could stretch the game to 80 hours or more by listening to all of the voices and playing on normal or higher difficulty. It’s a lengthy game regardless of how you look at it — and once you complete it there’s even more to do, though I personally haven’t had the time to do anything beyond completing the main story.

Speaking of which, one of the problems I have with the game (and I have very few) is that the first five hours of the game seem to be strictly introductory. You’ll be spending about an hour of half reading through cutscenes before you actually get into the game, and while the gameplay appears to be very fleeting — it leaves you wanting more. Because of the nature of visual novels, you won’t be spending much time playing the game — battles only happen in between each story segment. This is clearly a design element given the game’s visual novel leanings, but it’s important to mention because if you’re looking for a game that puts gameplay first and story second, this is not the game for you.

You’ll be playing the game for at least five hours before you get into the meat of it and more things start becoming available to you. It’s at around the five hour point that you acquire a base of operations and unlock the shop — I was wondering for the hours leading up to this whether or not the game even had a shop, but as it turns out the beginning of the game is just a very slow process to introduce you to the basics though tutorials continue to come at sporadic intervals throughout. You can even unlock the ability to craft things like weapons, armor, materials and upgraded party members though that comes much later on.

Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord is all about story, and it shows. Yes — there is gameplay and yes — this is a game, but the tactical RPG segments play second fiddle to the story which some people might not like. When I first started playing the game, I wasn’t very interested in the story because of the very slow start — but as the story progressed, I found myself more and more entwined and wanting to know just what is going to happen.

That isn’t to say that the combat is bad though, because the combat is actually quite complex with many layers and can be extremely enjoyable but also unforgiving. Even on the easiest difficulty I had trouble, but I’m not the best at video games and I didn’t truly grasp the mechanics until much later into the game.

One big selling point seems to be that you have an elephant for use in combat called Noa which carries around a chariot with its own HP, and the chariot is interesting, because there are a number of uses for it during battle — primarily to switch out and heal party members. Did you lose one of your characters to that boss? That’s okay, you can use the quadriga to replace them with a reinforcement. If you can get them to the quadriga beforehand though you can also swap them for another party member and let them return to full health inside. It’s an interesting mechanic, though I never really used it in my first playthrough.

They also introduce a number of other interesting mechanics, like chain stock, group combos and abilities. Chain Stock is sort of like an ability meter, a few techniques and group combos require you to have a certain amount which is then used up, and you can also use it to boost the effectiveness of spells to get an increase in things like area of affect, damage, or success rate.

Perhaps I wasn’t paying attention — or maybe I didn’t have to, again I was playing on easy, but I didn’t use Chain Stock until the end of the game when one particular boss had a pesky leadership skill which causes anyone within his range to have a 50% drop in stats. That’s a large number, and there was only one way to deal with it — by standing outside of his radius and using abilities with range. You might think this is restricted to bow and staff users, but it’s not. Even warriors with melee weapons that excel in close quarters combat have techniques they can use to do damage to foes at a distance, and this was ultimately how I defeated the boss.

Like the enemies, you can also set a leader and when you do your party will have access to their leadership skill — throughout my time with the game, I stuck with my robot party member named Chalcus as the leader whose leadership ability gives you extra gold but also offers him a bonus to his damage. There are a number of these available, each member of your party will have one — but most are limited in their area of effect. You can expect to see buffs like a bonus to attack, defense, hit and things of that nature.

Back to combo attacks, you unlock these much later in the game and continue to up to the end, and they allow you to use two or more party members to create an overwhelming attack that uses up Chain Stock and can only be used once per battle — but this is each combo attack, so the more combo attacks you unlock, the more you can use.

One major factor in combat are elements, each character, ability and spell have one assigned to them. There’s also an elemental wheel called the element cycle that rotates during combat, giving favor to one particular element even if it would normally be at a disadvantage and making your abilities that much powerful against their target element. There are seven elements total, and they work as you might suspect doing more or less damage to one another depending on weaknesses. For example, wind is weak to fire and fire is weak to water — but if fire is favored, wind might not do so much and fire might do a little more.

This is one of the many mechanics I wasn’t able to grasp until the game was nearly over, but when I finally got it, there was a huge difference. You’ll want to be saving your stronger abilities and techniques for when their element is favored — the advantage you gain is immense. You don’t always have to of course, but when you’re fighting a boss, it can be the difference between winning and losing.

There are also a number of environmental hazards found within each stage. You won’t see many of these early on, but as you progress through the story they become more and more prevalent. There are traps which stop your movement if you land on them, obelisks and cursed stone pillars which will weaken your characters, seals which will weaken you or seals that will buff you (though most of the time they’ll be buffing the enemy until you force them to vacate the spot).

Then in addition to all of those mechanics, you also have objectives during battles. You might for example have to complete these objectives within a certain amount of turns, and that can be difficult — especially if you want to complete the bonus objectives and open all of the treasure chests that you’ll find scattered across each map. As difficult as these missions are, there’s a mechanic you can use which will let you go back to an earlier turn to fix the mistakes you might have made. I had to make use of this many times during my playthrough, particularly on the segments requiring you to finish your objective within a set amount of turns.

Once you’ve completed the story, you’ll gain access to an extra scenario, a 50-floor challenge dungeon and New Game+ so the game has immense replay value as well. Though I didn’t get a chance to experience any of that in the process of this review, I fully intend to go back and try to experience all of it and ultimately acquire the coveted platinum trophy. I’m over halfway there!

The narrative and gameplay are both extremely compelling, and it comes together with the anime visuals and gorgeous music to create an excellent package that fans of story driven Japanese RPGs should love. If you can get past the amount of dialogue this game provides and are looking for a deep and enthralling story with some excellent albeit scarce gameplay, Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord is for you — but if you aren’t interested in story then you might want to skip this one as it may not be your thing.

The II in the title might sound intimidating, but as someone who came in with no expectations and zero experience with visual novels but a strong love for story-driven games, I would absolutely recommend it. I can only hope this game also gets the anime treatment as well, because it sure deserves it.

Developer: Aquaplus (Story) / Sting (Gameplay)

Publisher: Atlus (USA)

Platform: PlayStation 3 (Physical, Digital)

Rating: T

Release Date: October 14, 2014 (NA), November 7, 2014 (EU)

MSRP: $39.99/€39.99

Pros:

Well written story with lots of dialogue, all with voices

High replay value including an extra scenario, end-game dungeon and new game+

Great sound design with an excellent score and good choice in actors

While combat is scarce, it can be satisfying and complex

The game comes at a low price point of $39.99 and if you buy the physical edition still comes bundled with an artbook

Cons:

The first five hours of the game consist of a lengthy tutorial

During large battles with a lot of animation there is a noticeable drop in FPS

The game seemingly rewards playing on an easier difficulty by offering you more currency

Disclaimer: A copy of Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord was provided by Atlus for the purpose of review.