Yet again, I wish for a more nuanced review option from Steam than a mere "thumbs up" or "thumbs down"... I'll ultimately err on the positive mostly because it is not a bad game for what it sets out to do, it's just lacking in much ambition.
Tears Revolude is a Japanese-made mobile game ported over to Steam. It can be played entirely with the mouse using only the left button (right button does nothing "cancel" involves hitting a "back" button), using the keyboard, or a gamepad.
The game has four difficulty modes, and since, in a game like this, that basically is asking "how much do you want to grind", I picked the "Normal" mode. I shouldn't have bothered, however, as you need to grind a bit, anyway, to level up your skills, which gain levels through a set number of uses, regardless of what they are used upon. Hence, you gain better healing spells by having the healer drop heals regardless of actually having taken damage, and hover around the healing points or edge of the map. The game suggests I reforge my weapon levels every 10 character levels, but there's literally nothing better to spend your money upon, so I wound up reforging every time I came back to town, and being even more massively overpowered every trip.
Dungeons are basically just unadorned hallways. Fights are represented by purple clouds you walk into, and because most passages are so narrow, they're basically unavoidable. There are treasures that disappear after being opened, which also appear on the map. Dungeons are generally rather short and far from complicated, at least so far as I've gotten into the game, but you also have very little MP. (Granted, MP restoration items are also cheap, though...)
On Normal Mode in the early game, your characters will take about 60 damage (100 on a crit) from enemies while having several hundred to a thousand HP, and then bosses will suddenly be dealing ten times that, while having a hundred times the HP. (There is no "defense" stat, you have to equip physical/magical damage % reduction gems to reduce damage.) There are health restoration points (basically like save points, but you can save anywhere, anyway,) right before every boss.
This doesn't make the bosses hard, however, as there's also a special ("Limit Break") system. If you make a character who has an offensive special use this with everyone else joining in, you are asked to connect the dots as quickly as possible to increase damage... or just use a gamepad and spin the stick to gain power five times faster, since there's no penalty for a wrong imput, and you just need to tilt the stick in a direction corresponding to one of the arrows. Doing this super-charges the special such that you deal roughly 50 times as much damage as your skills, and insta-gib bosses.
Equipment consists of a weapon, two accessories, and multiple "gem" slots, the last of which you have to pay to unlock over the course of the adventure. The "four weapon types" are basically a way to alter what stats your weapon focuses upon, so the main character (who is a mixed physical/magic character) can have the standard sword; the more physical attack, less magical attack sword; the more magic attack, less physical attack sword; and a more HP/MP, less attack sword. Swapping out is free, but this basically just amounts to asking whether you want a specialized or generalized character, and it rarely makes a huge difference.
Gems can give things like simple +10 ATK, or give multiple benefits like regneration plus +200 HP plus bonus ATK while in critical health, all fitting into a single gem slot. Obviously, this makes the gems that have tons of benefits far more valuable and desirable, and the bait used as rewards for the mini-quests or bonus dungeons.
The game also features a "TRP" or *sigh* "Tears Revolude Points", which are gained per 5 fights (regardless of relative power of the enemies) or from accomplishing certain (in-game only) achievements. These points are shared across saves, but spent in specific save files. These seem like they may have been how microtransactions were shoehorned in, but they just replaced it with a "fight more to get more points" system. In the world map, these points can be spent in a shop to get things like more money or some of the better gems.
The story is also nothing to really write home about.
You play as a guy named Sion who's in a cave that they call a "hidden lab" for unexplained reasons, looking for... something unexplained from some famous artist. He's accompanied by a woman who dresses in nothing but a leather bustier and thong that fights with a whip for unexplained reasons. (I mean the reason why she's in the party is never explained, not the reason why a woman who wears nothing but leather enjoys hanging out in dungeons and whipping people... I mean, they don't explain that either, but I figure her motivations for that one are pretty self-explanatory.) Instead of finding whatever it was they were looking for that clearly wasn't important if they're willing to totally forget it as soon as the plot starts, they find a deadpan snarker girl who's pretty much the only character who breathes any kind of interesting dialogue into the whole game.
You then proceed to go to more dungeons that are supposed "labs" of this artist, only to find out the evil... "The Guild"... by which they mean "The Empire", wants this mysterious humanoid MacGuffin with no memories. We're informed of their villainy primarily through their fashion choices, since they seem to get their outfits from the same catalgues as 80's anime "evil empress of the moon" characters.
The heroes, after defeating some of The Empi- The Guild's top captains handily decides they need help for some reason, and so turns to the resistance movement against The Guild, called... "The Resistance". Yeah, they stayed up late thinking of these names...
What mysterious secrets does the humanoid MacGuffin who seems to maybe not be human after all hold? There couldn't possibly be some doomsday secret where only the mysterious waif the main character rescues in the first ten minutes turns out to be able to decide the fate of the world, could there? I won't spoil the ending because I haven't finished it, anyway, but the game is not exactly A-game storytelling, as you can probably tell. It's pretty paint-by-numbers JRPG fare...
So, why do I recommend it, anyway? Well, sometimes you just enjoy something mindless and comfortable. I got this game in a bundle deal, and I definitely recommend people interested wait for a sale, but it's basically a simple, familiar comfort food for someone who grew up on playing JRPGs on the SNES and PS1, and who plays free amateur RPG Maker games for a lark. It has the same sort of feeling as an amateur developer's 3rd try, where it has at least some polish, but not the skill to make anything great, and the plot is at least MST3K treatment-worthy. In that sense, it's a Good-Bad Game, and if you're of that particular mindset, it's enjoyable... I'd just recommend not playing on the harder modes, since this game wouldn't be any fun if it were more of a grind.
