Parent's Guide: Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord is essentially half wordy visual novel, and half turn-based tactical role-playing game. Telling the tale of the young Hamil, a high priest and heir to the world of Hispania, whose people have been forced to denounce their old gods and work as slaves for the Divine Empire, all appears lost, and Hamil appears something of a weed, until a young girl called Tarte appears to him, claiming to be their long lost Goddess. Awakening a part of him hell bent on revenge, they join forces together, and, with the help of an underground resistance, set to work to overthrow the Empire and gain independence for the whole of Hispania.

Tears to Tiara II is a very text-heavy game, with hours upon hours of story to read through before you get to any traditional gameplay - and with voiceovers only available in Japanese, a solid reading ability is essential, as well as a healthy dose of patience. Luckily, the characters are lively, entertaining, and at times funny, and the tale of love, loss and war is solid too, so if you love sinking time into a good book, this could be a solid choice.

The battles, meanwhile, are strategic, turn-based affairs, slotted in between the lengthy story sections, which take place on a grid-like battlefield, and are not too unlike a game of chess. Different characters, with different weapons and different elemental affinities have different strengths and weaknesses, and managing these, as well as positioning your troops effectively is key to beating each stage. An Easy difficulty and the ability to rewind several turns of battle to correct mistakes should prove invaluable for newer players, particularly if this is their first time playing a strategic role-playing game, but overall, this isn't too tricky.

Tears to Tiara II features occasional innuendos and sex references, talking about sizes of women's chests, references to characters "sharing a bed" (albeit innocently), and hints about characters preferring more "carnal relationships", but there's no blatant nudity or sex scenes. Bad language is also occasional, with words like s**t, bas**rd and p**s popping up from time to time. Violence meanwhile is fairly minor, with characters slashing at each other with swords (with no realistic impacts) or magical explosions, and enemies simply disappearing in colourful bursts of light when defeated. Cutscenes, which are mostly still images, do depict people impaled on swords, rivers turning into blood or a character being burnt at the stake (although they don't actually die).

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 3