A cliche story with Bland Tactical RPG Elements

Tears of Avia is a tactical JRPG created from a Kickstarter that didn’t garner enough support but was carried through to its finished project and sure enough, it does show. Now its been 5 years in the making quite obviously and that is down to the small team creating it. The story itself is ok but not gripping on any scale, you pick from one of five characters who are thrust into the same starting scenario regardless of who you choose. No longer are you introduced to the quirky Afren are you thrust into a battle. I picked Momoko (The Priest) as I generally enjoy playing as a healer type character and if given the opportunity even in an offline tactic game then I will. In general, she plays really well but the tactical side of Tears of Avia is where the game falls flat for me.

Now from what I have seen, there are two difficulty modes which are Normal and Hardcore. As someone who has delved deep into the worlds of Disgaea and Final Fantasy Tactics I am much in love with the difficulty and character-building elements, they just feel right. Tears of Avia for me feels like it hasn’t been tested. Normal Mode is just extremely easy and you can grind pretty much early on in no time making the rest of the game easy. Sure you can do this in the aforementioned games but they were still very challenging. Battles in Tears of Avia can feel very slow sometimes and when fighting larger groups you need to be prepared for a long battle. Characters have abilities dependent on the Class you started off with. As a Priest, I had a weak attack at close range but access to a Smite ability which deals damage to enemies, after levelling up you are able to pick a new skill from the Talent Tree you are given which has three trees and I was able to choose from a few including a Healing spell. The Talent Tree is a good system for this style of game and the one in Tears of Avia works well and it makes for an interesting system as you can play a different playstyle on each playthrough, unfortunately, with how easy the game is, it doesn’t matter much and I just don’t think Tears of Avia is a game worth playing more than once. The game does pick up sometime in but when the had hurdle of the first few hours are the make or break then in the case of Tears of Avia, Break is ultimately where the game leads.

The graphics are decent enough but sadly Tears of Avia is a game that is very lackluster. The towns look nice but some of the battle scenes are bland and void of anything. There are no NPC’s to speak to even though they are completely visible in some places but you are only able to speak with Shopkeepers or important characters in your party. You can enter various buildings but this is usually where the plot happens and is usually used to progress. There is no moving between areas and battles and everything is one by clicking on an overworld map. The soundtrack is good but again it doesn’t jump out at you but overall it is enough to not be constantly annoying. I did enjoy seeing some of the characters moves especially Afren as he has access to some lucratively powerful attacks early on which looks kind of strange for so early in the game, they look like finisher type moves that you would see on the last boss. The character portraits on screen looks pretty awesome and they quite clearly had a dedicated artist on that front.



I do feel that Tears of Avia could have been something good if it has a bit more “oomph” behind it. I think they made a good game overall but it definitely could have been better. Now for a game that had such a long development due to such a small team building it and creating something they wanted, I will give credit for that.

If anything I would hope for a second game in the series that would completely turn around what I believe the team behind Tears of Avia are capable of creating.

A Steam Code was provided by PQube