Just wanted to say I finished my first run through of the game this week and it was worth every penny, I absolutely loved playing it. In the end I completed the main goal of the game and 3 of the sub-goals. At the end of the game it says that if you play through again, you take all the in-game currency you’ve earned plus the completed goals with you, presumably to allow you to focus on different aspects of the game second time. It took me around 25 hours to play through once. I’ll definitely be coming back to it later this year when I’ve got more grammar/vocabularly under my belt to give it a second go through.
GAME: Tears of Themis
PLATFORM: mobile
PRICE: free (with the option of in-app purchases, of course)
GENRE: visual-novel, otome, slice-of-life but also kinda sci-fi -ish? (It’s set in the future)
LEVEL: I’d say around N3/N2, but don’t take my word for it… The grammar can be ok, but the vocabulary can be a bit more tricky sometimes.
REVIEW: downloaded it last year out of boredom, and I now play it every day, multiple times a day. Why? Because of the hot guys storyline, of course!
It’s set in the not-far off future (2030-something), but it’s still very recognisable to today’s life. The only thing they seem to have that we don’t have yet is 6G and some fancier technology ![]()
The protagonist, Rosa, is a lawyer, that always seems to get involved in some of the craziest cases available (by crazy, I mean messed-up). The main story-line is comprised of episodes, and most of the time you are joined by one of the guys (there are 4), whom helps you search for clues, or just stands there acting pretty.
I can’t say much for the writing, as I usually play it in English (my Japanese level is not quite there
), but the audio…. Crikey, the voices are superb (in my humble opinion). The way he says お姉さん… ![]()
The art is also very nice, and I’ve encountered only minimal bugs that didn’t affect the gameplay at all.
I’d suggest it to anyone that is thirsty like me and also if you’re a fan of otome, visual novels, detective-style games.
Some triggers could be:
- There’s some instances of fan-service
but I’m in it for it
- Some of the cases can become heavy. There are mentions of drug use, suicide, human experimenting, etc…
- The game uses ‘card decks’ to have debates with the ‘enemies’. In order to get cards, there’s a ‘gacha’ system. So this could potentially be a gambling issue.
I’m going thru the trilogy now, almost done with the second one and I think these are surprisingly easy games, provided you know your kanji. The kanji is definitely advanced and theres no furigana but the grammar is very simple, with very clear cut explanations of events that are repeated many times. Occasionally a character will have a funky way of talking (theres a clown character in the second game that was near indecipherable for me) but its usually pretty easy breezy reading. I definitely recommended it if you’re like me and put way more time into learning kanji than you did grammar and general conversational construction.
How easy is to play games in Japanese on the switch lite? Nintendo can be pretty restrictive with the region stuff.
Can you use JP eshop easily overseas?
If you use non JP eshop can you still change language of the game to Japanese?
Does the available of Japanese vary game to game depending the western release?
The Nintendo Switch line of consoles all rely on the same eShop ecosystem. They are all region free but come with some caveats. You will have to create a separate account per regional eShop and funds so far as I can tell are not transferable.
I certainly do, in the USA.
This, unfortunately, is a mixed bag. It seems that language compatibility is not totally transparent. You may purchase a title that doesn’t have Japanese listed (non-JP-eShop) for your release, but find that changing your system language forces the game into Japanese. The game itself may just offer Japanese as a language setting. There seems to be a lot of lee-way for developers to choose how languages are managed by the game. By the hardware version, software version, or whatever the system settings dictate.
Short answer. Yes
Good post, just a little correction
You don’t have to do that, you can simply go to accounts.nintendo.com/profile/edit and change your region right there. Next time you access the e-shop on your Switch, you’ll be asked to sign in again and then you have access to the e-shop of the country you have selected previously
So simplest way would be to just use JP eShop then its guaranteed to have Japanese?
@latepatate
Would this work if you have eshop credit? I usually use prepaid cards for games
It could be that you must use all of your funds before you’re able to switch, I don’t know. I always pay with my linked paypal account
What happens if you switch back and forth buying games from both regions? Does the game remember correctly from which region it’s bought and you can play them while in both regions? That sounds like an ample source of problems
.
Once you have bought them, you can actually redownload them no matter what e-shop region you’re in. You can try it out with Japanese demos for example - you can switch to Japan, download a demo, delete it, and when you switch back to your original region, you will still be able to download it from your purchases site (or whatever it is called)
Wow, that’s even easier than making another account and using that for the purchase (AFAIK you can still play the game on any account if you download it with the JP account). I wish the PSN store worked like that, but they don’t even take overseas cards! Buying JP giftcards with a bad exchange rate combined with that the JP PSN store games seem to be extra expensive and stingy with the discounts, stuff can get expensive fast. Most of the time comes to the same price when importing the physical thing…
I don’t have a switch but been contemplating one for a long time, especially since I’ve been postponing building a PC for at least 3 years for various reasons (like GFX card availability) ![]()
Your Nintendo eShop account balance does not carry over when you change the country that your Nintendo Account is set to. You will need to use the remaining funds in your Nintendo Account balance before you will be able to change the country.
However it also says:
If a Nintendo eShop exists for your region, credit cards issued from your region will not work in a different region’s eShop. (For example, credit cards issued for the U.S. will only work in the Nintendo eShop for North America.)
Strange, since I’ve heard all cards work in the Japan store ![]()
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…You rang, apparently ![]()
Did Discourse do something weird? It seems to think you mentioned me in this reply
I did but edited it out quickly :D. I was just confused about your similar names
.
Makes sense ![]()
Well, I’m here now, might as well join in and get some practice while gaming!
oh this looks promising unlike what Nintendo has done in the past with the 3ds.
Looks like Switch would be the easiest way to get JP games.
You can always use international cards, no? Like mastercard
Oh for sure! Luckily, you can make your 3DS region free by installing a custom firmware on it (which really isn’t hard to do these days, even with no technical knowledge you can just follow a guide and be done in a few minutes) but there’s no way of accessing the e-shop of another region
Yeah, I think so, too - with the exception of a PC maybe. Many games on switch just have one international version that includes all possible languages, so most of the time, you don’t even have to go through the hassle of changing e-shop regions or buying from multiple accounts. I think all games made by Nintendo themselves have one international version which means you can simply change the game language by changing your Switch’s system language
My debit card works for the Japanese 3DS e-shop, but not for the Japanese Switch e-shop =(
Would switching regions directly on the Switch console work as well? I think I once tried it, but didn’t buy any games afterwards.

