Tears of Themis – Newest gacha otome detective anime game on the block

The wait is finally over after a gruelling one month pre-registration period. Tears of Themis (ToT) went global on 29 Jul 2021 with a whooping more than 630k pre-registered players (+- tens of thousands duplicate accounts). Mihoyo, the developer of multiple award winning Genshin Impact, finally released their first otome game in English globally so that half-starved audience like myself have another dating simulation to look forward to everyday. As a free to play player on Genshin Impact, I was breaming with excitement that ToT would change the face of otome gaming as we know it because a f2p player can be treated to various stories, events, games and puzzles without having to pay.

Having played Mr Love since March and finally arriving at the last available chapter and maxing my player level to the current cap, I had been relegated to doing daily quests to get by the days. Now that ToT has been launched and I spent the good part of yesterday understanding the game mechanics, I would like to pen down my reviews of the game in comparison to MLDD.

Game Play

ToT’s game play can be largely split into three key components – 1. Main story progression which includes debate battles, key suspect interrogation, crime scene investigation, evidence linking and court litigation. For those who are familiar with Ace Attorney, the game play is pretty much the same. 2. Relationship development with either one or all of the four love interests by visiting them daily or collecting their SR or SSR cards which comes with a date/story/video calls which over time will help you gain greater affinity and commitment to the game. This is similar to Date and Footage system within MLDD. 3. Deck building to increase your power across characters and attributes (Logic, Empathy and Intuition) which is essential to bring you through various debate tasks that increases with difficulty as the story progresses.

This forces you to put some effort into building your deck and levelling, evolving and skilling up all your cards, including the often neglected R cards as they will play a role in winning battles until you manage to roll for SR or SSR cards. Each of these enhancements require materials which you will gather from different segments of the game. As there wasn’t really a tutorial around this, I have done a quick compilation of the materials required for what and where you can find them.

Purpose	Materials Needed	Where to Get
1. New cards & Upgrade	Gems/S-Chips/Tear of Themis	Visions/Mall
2. Enhance	Oracle of Justice	Story/Anomaly/Operations/ Friendship Badges Exchange
3. Evolve	Logic/Empathy/Intuition Chips Equalization/Vision/Mind/Infinity Chips	Respective Study Levels/ Friendship Badges Exchange/ Temple of Trials
4. Skill Up	Various materials	Anomaly Levels
5. Enhance/Evolve/Skill Up	Stellin	Story/Business Consult

ToT will also release monthly or bi-monthly events that comes with its own variety of side quests and puzzles which will add a fresh dimension to the game play. This is similar to Genshin Impact. I love how they introduce many different mini-games to break the tempo. Though MLDD has events at least once a month as well, most of them are designed around drawing time limited gachas. For all these reasons, I will say that ToT gameplay is definitely a notch superior to MLDD.

Story

For otome lovers, the story plot is essential to drawing you into the world and keeping you engaged. I have always marvelled at the ways in which these visual novels can continue to spin the romance into seasons and endless chapters. But that is the beauty of it because we don’t really believe that the romance ends the moment the guy kisses the girl and finally confesses his love. There can be so much more depth to an otome. For this reason, I was particularly impressed with MLDD.

Though the story is depicted in a make believe world of superpowers and time travel, the plots and twists are heart rending and has even caused me to shed tears and think about the story and analyse the character intent long after I am done with it. I have played MLDD up to the latest release on the SEA server of Chapter 25. The story writing was excellent way up to chapter 18. After that it seemed like either the writer changed or lost the steam or plot. Following chapters  lacked coherence and failed to connect to earlier plot points. However I haven’t given up on it and I look forward all the way to Season 2. Of course I do wonder how many spin offs can one really work on with time travel before it just becomes old.

ToT on the other hand is premised on a modern city rifed with corruption and all the social ills one can easily think of. As a junior attorney in a up and coming law firm, you work with different partners to investigate crimes and bring the real perpetrators to light all in the name of justice. I think Mihoyo was smart to go down this route because the potential is limitless. Just think about how many seasons of CSI there are and you get the idea that this can hardly get old. I have currently only played up to end of Chapter 2 of ToT and I like the themes that each of the chapter explored. It does indeed question one’s value about right and wrong, justice versus compassion because ultimately this world is not black and white but multiple shades of grey. To be honest it does feel too real at times. I will talk more about these in future reviews.

However much as I like the premise of the story telling, I found that each ToT chapter wore me out much faster than when I was going through the MLDD chapters. I was trying to figure out what made the difference and I think it boiled down to ToT leaning heavily on triggering your right brain to read, understand, analyse and rationalise decisions. On the other hand, MLDD chapters tugged more on the left brain by triggering emotions and some people’s inherent love for drama. I recalled that my drive to read the next chapter of MLDD drove me to the point of doing my dailies and even spending money just to get more stamina to level up faster. Even though the first 5.1 chapters are available at launch with ToT, I was ready to make a hard stop after completing chapter 2. Perhaps I am just much more a left brain person.

Based on this, it is hard to say which game wins on story hence I will say both ToT and MLDD tie in this category. I suppose it boils down to preference. But who knows things could change down the line as the story unfolds.

Characters

For a dating sim, it must have characters that you would love to date, bring home and for some fantasise over. Both MLDD and ToT have four love interests and one cannot help but see the obvious similarities between the character designs. As ToT is the later game to the market by at least one year, I daresay that their characters were largely based off MLDD’s characters. For that they lose points in terms of originality. Come on, even if rich CEOs are a running trend for all otomes, surely you don’t need to have two doctors who study psychiatry!

Luke Pearce gives me Kiro + Gavin vibes in the way that he is an old hang out buddy whom you reunited with after a 8 year separation. He is now a very handy gadgety private investigator though he appears to be hiding a secret identity. Luke was part of a secret research and may inadvertently been infected during one of his missions. Sounds oddly familiar.

Artem Wing gives off Victor + Gavin vibes. Victor because he is the intelligent, silent and stoic type and Gavin for his possessiveness and awkwardness with his emotions. Thankfully he doesn’t go around calling you dummy and they didn’t make him a CEO, though a star lawyer who has never lost a case and senior partner isn’t that far off either.

Vyn Richter is probably Mihoyo’s attempt at trying to recreate another Lucien but sadly falls far off. He is an intelligent and rather mysterious psychiatrist who plays mind games with others and thus makes you wonder if he is also just playing you around. Vyn has a penchant to fall into a different scarier persona when threatened. I didn’t quite like that they gave him white hair and golden eyes as it makes him look old. Anyway I like Lucien alot and Vyn is a pale imitation. I hope the developers intend to grow him differently.

Marius von Hagen is a mix of Shaw (the fifth love interest in MLDD) and Victor. He is the uncanny young rich CEO in the story though the most charming part about him is how he addresses you as Jie Jie and his relentless tongue in cheek comments. Beneath his apparent lack of regard for bureaucracy and authority lies wisdom beyond his age as he learns quickly to meander around the company politics, and finds allies whom he can rely on. His character is thus far the most unique among the four.

As you can see, it felt that Mihoyo took what people liked about MLDD characters and shake them up a bit to create new characters for ToT. I haven’t have the chance to go on much dates with any of them yet but judging by my interaction with them in first two chapters, the romance is almost non-existent. Again I think it may have something to do with the style of writing which is tugging at the wrong side of my brain. The only character who has triggered any reaction from me is Marius and Artem. As such, in terms of characters and romance I will safely say for now is that MLDD wins.

Artwork and Animation

ToT’s artwork and animation is absolutely lovely for a free mobile game. I like it that the game put in effort to creating every scene, character movement and even animating their SSR cards. There is variety of things to look out for in every scene and it does help a lot in immersing you into Stellis City.

It is a pity that there is currently no English voiceover for the story, it is only available in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. It might take away some of the experience for those who don’t understand these languages but otherwise the voice acting is great and every line is voiced even outside of the main characters. If there is anything to comment on would be that in terms of attractiveness of the love interests, I do find that MLDD character artwork is nicer as they look more real and mature compared to ToT which looks more anime-ish and cute. Really depends on preference. Other than that, ToT wins in this area.

BGM

I love V.K. so nothing more to say about that. MLDD made the best decision when they got him to compose most of their BGM for the game. What’s more, the individual compositions bring to live each and every arc and adds a different dimension to enjoying the story. ToT’s BGM is pleasant enough to accompany the game but it lacks the depth that V.K.’s composition brings. MLDD wins hands down.

In summary, it is currently hard to say which game is superior with this genre. ToT will appeal to those who like to he entertained with fresh content and enjoys good artwork and animation and have the feels for exploring themes of social issues. MLDD appeals to those looking for a good romance story filled with angst and heart flutters and gorgeous looking guys. So take your pick ladies! Either way it is a win for us to be able to toggle between two very good quality games.