Forget about the romantic drama side of Tears of Themis for a moment, and what you have sitting alongside it is a detective visual novel quite obviously inspired by the Ace Attorney series. The main character and her allies, including all four potential love interests – a fellow lawyer, a private detective, a criminal psychologist, and the heir apparent to a wealthy but shady local businessman – find themselves investigating a series of criminal cases linked by an overarching conspiracy, with the resolution to each episode being the day the case comes to court.
ToT episodes are split into three types of stages – story, debate, and trial – of which the latter two both make use of a rock-paper-scissors inspired mini-game, where your aim is to wear down your opponent’s health bar before they deplete yours by presenting stronger arguments against their choices. The strength of your argument is determined by factors like a card’s level and rarity, but also by its attribute, a colour-coded indication of the type of reasoning behind the argument the card represents.
Tears of Themis attributes explained
There are three attributes in Tears of Themis: Logic (blue diamond), Empathy (red heart), and Intuition (green triangle). The relative strengths and weaknesses of attributes are as follows:
- Empathy grants 1.5x damage against Intuition
- Intuition grants 1.5x damage against Logic
- Logic grants 1.5x damage against Empathy
Each character card (“Vision”) you pull from the gacha will possess one of these attribute types, indicated by a coloured icon displayed near the upper right-hand corner. Note that the characters themselves don’t have any particular innate attributes, and that you can mix-and-match cards from as many or as few of the four male leads as you want when assembling your deck for a debate or trial.
Fortunately, debate and trial nodes indicate which attribute is your opponent’s strongest before you begin, allowing you to customise your deck to more easily outmanoeuvre them. However, bear in mind that the boss’ strongest attribute likely isn’t the only one they’ll be using in the debate – so it’s beneficial to have a balanced deck that skews towards beating their main attribute, rather than loading up your hand with just one card type.
ToT is a gacha game that does include some light RPG-ish elements when it comes to card building, so naturally, it’s not just a matter of presenting a card with the correct attribute; you need to level your cards regularly, and consider pulling on the gacha for cards of higher rarity, in order to maximise the amount of damage you can deal against an opponent’s statement.
Picturing yourself playing Tears of Themis for the long-haul? Take a look at our Tears of Themis birthday list so you can plan your calendar accordingly!