Game mechanics
Debates
Debates are the "battle" stages in Tears of Themis. In debates, there will be an enemy who will have various arguments with HP. The player attacks the enemy by selecting their cards to use against enemy's arguments and lower the enemy's HP. Each card selection is a turn, and the player has a limited amount of turns to complete the stage. Additionally, every time a player selects a card to use, the enemy will attack back and lower the player's HP.
If a player runs out of cards, they can refresh the deck at the cost of 1 turn.
Once all arguments have been defeated, the player wins stage. Players can be defeated though if they:
- Run out of turns
- The player's HP reaches 0
Attributes
Arguments and cards will have different attributes: Intuition, Logic, Empathy, or Null (no typing). The attribute of the card you select will affect how much damage your attack does. Strong attacks will deal 2.0x damage while weak attacks will do 0.5x damage. Attacks that are neutral or against Null will do 1.0x damage.
| Type | Strong Against | Weak Against |
|---|---|---|
 Logic
|
 Empathy
|
 Intuition
|
| Empathy
|
Intuition
|
Logic
|
| Intuition
|
Logic
|
Empathy
|
One easy way to remember typings are by color and converting them into elements used in other games. For example, Logic is blue and correlates to Water, which beats Empathy's red (Fire), but weak against Intuition's green (Grass).
Skills
- See also: Skills
Cards will also have skills. Some cards have skills which passively take effect, and others have skills which take effect when a player selects them.
Cards will affect Influence (Attack stat) or Defense such as boosting your own Influence/Defense stats or lowering the enemy's Influence/Defense stats to boost damage/lower damage you take.
Some cards will even have skills that passively boost the base stats of cards, such as Formidable cards that boost Influence when equipped from the Support deck.
Questioning
There are story segments where players must question a character and must find key evidence from the questioning. The questions involve selectable phrases that appear on the screen that will then trigger questioning and dialogue related to that phrase. Some dialogue reveals important information related to the case that will be logged as key evidence. Some phrases can also unlock additional phrases that the player can ask the character.
Clue Analysis
Clue Analysis involves inspecting an item, looking for spots of interest, and trying to unlock clues related to the case from the item. The item is in a 3D space, so players can revolve the item in different directions to try to look for clues.
Inspection
Inspection consists of analyzing a character for features that stand out about them. Tapping a key section of the character can then either trigger dialogue or show a zoomed-in pop up of the area where you can further inspect the character's. Some zoom-in areas can consist of more than one clue.
