Title: 悠久のティアブレイド -Fragments of Memory-
Developer: Otomate
Release Date: 5th October 2017
Age Rating: 12+
Length: 10+ Hours
Links: Official Site, VNDB
This is the Fandisc of the original Yuukyuu no Tierblade game, it consists of three main parts:
- Eclipse – This takes place after the true ending of the original game, where the gang are living fairly peacefully until they get a SOS from the moon. When they go to investigate, they meet two strange men…
- Fragment – These are small stories that take place during the timeline of the original game but weren’t shown at the time. Most are pretty cutesy in nature.
- Future – As implied by the name, this is essentially afterstories for each of the love interests from the original game.
Given that I actually enjoyed the original Tierblade game quite a lot, I’m not entirely sure what took me so long to get around to actually playing it (which seems to be the theme of this year’s reviews, haha). Anyways, did this game manage to live up to the original or, like many a fandisc, simply fail to deliver what the fans actually want?
Okay, first off, I feel like much of your potential enjoyment of this game probably comes down to whether or not you enjoyed the sections that take place in the past. Personally, I really enjoyed the chapter dedicated to this in the original game and it was nice to learn more about these characters that meant so much to Row & Older Eve. Of course, more scenes with Gill are also a bonus. However, since you are essnetially “forced” to read through these past sections to complete the Eclipse part of this game, I can imagine that some players weren’t the biggest fan.
One of my complaints about the original game was the long, overly drawn-out mecha fight scenes. I was happy that these were mainly contained to the Eclipse section (with a little sprinkle amongst the afterstories) so there wasn’t nearly as much repetition.
Speaking of Eclipse, I actually thought that it was a thoroughly enjoyable story. It added yet more world-building to the game, the two new characters were properly fleshed out for side-characters & the plot was actually pretty decent. It totally made me tear up at the end & the final epilogue in particular was very good!
One of my favourite things about the original game was the characters – they’re all surprisinly likable! This includes both heroines – I’m not normally the biggest fan of games with multiple heroines, especially when they’re not voiced. However, there is a plausible story reason for having two heroines & they don’t interact on screen that much to annoy me about the lack of voicing for them. Younger Eve is probably my favourite due to her innocence causing many hilarious situations, however, that’s not to say that I dislike Older Eve!
Sud is a good boy overall & I’m glad that his more “mother” like side showed in this game. Much of this game takes place outside of the Neosphere so it was nice to see him in his “usual” environment.
Atharva is utterly hilarious, I especially love the personality contrast between himself and Younger Eve – they make for a great couple! (He’s still too pretty also!)
Yajur was such an interesting character in the original game (if you’ve played it then you’ll know what I mean!). Since his epilogue in the original was a bit of a cop-out I was hoping for some fluff in this & it certainly did not disappoint. Yajur can be frustrating at times but I still think he’s a pretty great character & you can tell how much he’s developed over the course of the series.
Cradle…Oh Cradle…My opinion of him is that his routes are style over substance – I love the cute scenes back when he was in the Neosphere with Eve & the idea of splitting his route in two depending on which version of him you prefer is interesting BUT the routes always end up being pretty much copy-pastes of each other, with maybe ~15 minutes of character-specific content. I was hoping that they’d have completely seperate afterstories but, alas, no. Younger cradle is my favourite from the pair because he’s so darn cute but not really in an Otoge way, haha.
Finally, we have my dear Row – easily my favourite character from this game. He and Older Eve are actually one of my all-time favourite pairings out of all the Otome Games that I’ve played – they just have so much history & their story theme about learning to “live” again was just too good! Considering that he probably could’ve been considered Yandere in the original game, it’s pretty funny how soft and sweet he is in this game. His afterstory was TOO GOOD!
As you can probably tell, the artwork by Kinami Yuki & Ike was just as stunning as it was in the original game, if not even more so. It’s definitely a subjective thing but I truly enjoy the artwork in this game so much – there were lots of oversized CGs too which made for a nice change & similarly to the original, there were plenty of bonus CGs to go around.
The BGM was pretty much the same as the original with a few additions. It was nostalgic to hear some of the tracks & the whole soundtrack was generally of good quality. I enjoyed the game’s opening song immensly.
Alright, it’s time to finally face this game’s main downfall – it’s just too darn short! I know I’m on the faster side for reading but this game took literally just over 10 hours for me to get through everything. The afterstories in particular were only like an hour each which is definitely below-average for one of Otomate’s fandiscs. I would probably be more mad about this if it was nearer to release date since I bought a shop set of this so probably spent like ~12k yen on it, which it probably isn’t worth to most people.
Final Thoughts
My Score: 8/10
If you enjoyed the original Tierblade game, especially the past segments, then this is most certainly a game that I would recommend. With lots of fluffy scenes as well as a good amount of plot and worldbuilding, this was a thoroughly enjoyable game overall.
Even though I’m a fan of both this & the original Tierblade game, I feel like this is a good place to end the series. Although, a switch port with additional scenes would be quite nice! (However, any port is likely to be similar to the Yunohana Spring port containing main game + fandisc). I’d really love to see this team work on a new title!
The game’s main letdown is that it is on the shorter side but given that you can buy copies online for under 2k yen, I’d say it’s totally worth it at that price!
Thank you for reading~
Zettai Renai! 