Charming game — they knew exactly what style they were going for and nailed it. Tifalia's sassy inner monologue gave me life. The classic RPG feel was surprising and a nice touch (the "circus" aspect feeling more like a code for the campiness associated with that era of roleplaying games). The worldbuilding was really well-done and the performance theater retelling of the lore helped add to the fantastical atmosphere of the game.

I liked the theme of selfishness (i.e. choosing 'love') vs. selflessness (i.e. choosing sacrifice) in this game. It helps the story feel like a partial commentary on the games that inspired it; we have the MC often making choices in the routes that go against the greater good because they're at the expense of the LI. I like seeing that story beat "otomefied", if that makes sense. It's interesting to think about and Vilio's route — the 'true route' that unlocks only after you've finished everyone else's route — encapsulates this well.

Of all the routes, I would say I liked Zafora's the best. The others were good, with only Radie's drawing closer to being average or mid (which hurts to say as he really is the prettiest character in the game, it isn't even close when you compare the CGs). I believe that Zafora's route is the most universally disliked but I felt there was a lot of repetition in the stakes for the other four routes (without spoilers, they all involve the same mindset on the LI's part). I liked that Zafora's reasons for initially "rejecting" Tifalia make sense and the slowburn in their route was engaging and made their moments have more impact. The reactions of the other characters on this route were also natural and it felt like everyone waiting for their two stupid friends to get together.

After Zafora, Radie's route felt the most distinct and I love that his route involves Tifalia's origins (I like story focus on the MC). Paschalia, Ion, and Vilio had good routes for sure and there's details I appreciate about each of them individually; however, it's hard to look past the similarity in motivation. Their routes (with the exception of some absolutely crazy plot twists in Paschalia's route) end up following the same conflict resolution progression as a result, making the story feel really linear.

I wasn't going to log this separately at first but I decided to solely so I could review it. Honestly, what's really impressive about this route is how it's the perfect DLC. It's separate enough from the main story that it doesn't feel like you're paying for something that should have already been included while still offering a plausible alternative way the original story could have played out. I like how this DLC (the first of three planned ones) sets up a new story canon and rules while still aligned with Love Spell's themes. Minor spoilers ahead but I really enjoyed the appearances from the other LIs in this route — this route managed to have them appear and reference Luna's unique dynamics with each LI without it feeling like they were overtaking Aslan in his own route, which is hard to pull off! Great Gretuski did an amazing job with the pacing and tone of this route. The only reason I'm not rating it higher is I didn't enjoy some of the cultural depictions in this route. I understand what they were trying to reference but as a person of color who was already borderline on the fence about Marcello's portrayal in the previous game, this one really went over the line. Regardless, I am very impressed at how perfectly this route functions as a starting DLC so I fell compelled to write about it — definitely get it if you enjoyed the original, as the studio has only grown more capable and polished since their debut.

Big fan of Senna's character! I like how she contends with the fact that she comes off as mean without the story acting like it's unreasonable that she'd be annoyed at the protagonist for not taking things seriously. Clearly Cassia does not need a job after graduation and Senna does (lol). I've never done Picross before so I was nervous but the difficulty curve was reasonable and I enjoyed the music and experience of getting better at Picross while playing as a cute anime girl! Even though the Picross is the main focus, there is enough worldbuilding that I am intrigued about the setting.

TL;DR: You can't tell that this is the game that makes Mihoyo the least amount of money, there is no indication that they cut corners at all when it comes to Tears of Themis.

If you ask me, Mystic Messenger revolutionized mobile otome gaming and made it the standard to make otome gameplay include fanservice like calls, texting, etc. In my opinion, Tears of Themis is the most high quality and polished version of this template to-date (though, let's be clear, Tears of Themis is a blatant copy of Mr. Love: Queen's Choice). The game's concept is simple: you play as a lawyer that joins a secret team meant to deal with a citywide (nationwide?) crisis. Obviously, you can bang one of your teammates. But just like with Mystic Messenger, the game actually really cares about you being a lawyer, it's not just a gimmick — the game's UI and sound design are impeccable (with obvious cues from Ace Attorney, which, fun fact, they ask you if you're an Ace Attorney fan when filling out the surveys) and the art is gorgeous and never looks shoddy or out of place. The only time quality is ever lacking when it comes to Tears of Themis is the occasional obvious rushed translation job (check out Google Images for funny screencaps of garbled text). Other than that, literally everything else is above average: music, art, gameplay (there is unique gameplay attempted for every major event), story (more on this in a bit), and playability.

I would say that story-wise, Tears of Themis passes. In terms of "story content", Tears of Themis has three main categories: main story, personal stories (they're per love interest), and the individual card stories. Obviously all the spicy and romantic stuff is in the card stories but I don't really mind since it's fairly easy to accumulate SRs and SSRs over time (not so lucky if you want a specific SSR card). The personal stories, in my opinion, are overall great with the obvious exception of Marius who has a soap opera storyline that's so overdone that it feels like his route was written by a different person than the other three. The main story is not as bad as people make it out to be — it's not amazing, sure, but some chapters, especially later on, are actually compelling and worth your time. It's hard because the "theme" of Tears of Themis is supposedly the way that mental illness is ignored in society but Tears of Themis is occasionally really tone-deaf about how they handle this so some of the storylines are hard to deal with. Also, the main characters are all rich people and all of our major clients that we care about are rich people so that makes things worse.

For the gacha people, I'll be honest, I play Tears of Themis super casually so I'm not invested like some people are, but I don't think Tears of Themis is unfair if you're a casual player. I know that's kind of a bad bar to rate it by, because most gacha game players aren't casual in the sense that they desperately want a few cards, but let me explain myself: I dislike gacha games generally but can play them if I don't feel like I need to pay to actually enjoy the game. I can't stand a freemium game where you legitimately need to pay to advance at a normal rate (i.e. all the gameplay is locked behind powerful cards like in Obey Me). This is not a problem in Tears of Themis — if you don't care (i.e. you are just playing the game), you will have enough deck strength to advance through the story, guaranteed, especially since the points you get for pulling on banners can be used to level your SR cards up to five stars, which makes them basically as powerful as the SSR card you were aiming for anyway.

The very last thing I want to say is that the ongoing appeal to me of Tears of Themis, besides its interesting main story vs personal story vs card story structure, is how the game neatly splits love interests in two halves. I haven't played Mr. Love: Queen's Choice so I don't know how much Mihoyo is copying from them but I really like that Marius&Luke are the "have great chemistry with MC" routes and Artem&Vyn are the "have interesting and mature storylines" routes. It feels like you are getting a different experience with every love interest (if you aren't just there for one, which, hey the game is actually designed for that kind of player which is nice), so I don't feel like skipping solo events because I like seeing the changes in themes and dynamics.