Warning: mention of sexual and physical abuse
I recently played The Goddess of Tears' demo. I skimmed through the demo, played through the events on the map and the special stories that are exclusive to this demo and partly voiced.
While the released game will be fully voiced and nsfw, the demo is sfw and not voiced (besides some extra special stories). What I have seen of the art and the UI so far is pretty good.
Regarding the stories and the characters, the demo only shows the very earliest part of the game so I do not know much about the characters but Gizeld, Salinus and Katarina, Salinus's sister, definitely stood out in the main part of the demo. I was surprised to see that Gizeld was quite cold, was interested in Salinus and loved Katarina's slightly arrogant and prickly but very reasonable personality.
What especially captured my interest, however, was not the main part of the demo but Sheyd's special story. In the special story, he was saved from his imprisonment by Salinus, brought to Katarina to take care of her because she tried to kill herself after her brother raped her. In order to keep her alive, he did some dark magic stuff and sacrificed his immortality so he could keep her around and make her constantly suffer, physically abusing her if she went against his wishes. He resented her a lot and said it was because he went through hell for her but she forgot and went against her words. I wonder whether it was because of Katarina's memory loss and if you ask her question in her salon about her love history, she said she was in love with Gizeld but said other than that, she did not remember. In the main part of the demo, in the church during a certain time, Filina found Katarina crying there alone and her legs were so injured that she could not walk. Darius then showed up, said she regularly cried alone without telling anybody else and carried her to her place. I wonder whether the injury in that scene was inflicted by Salinus...
The whole Katarina + Salinus thing is kinda interesting because I see so many otome games having a male sibling or young guy that suffered in place of a female character or resented an innocent character for not suffering like he did (Ex: Hakuouki) but this is probably the first time I saw that the broken character was able to inflict pain on the more ignorant one lol.
So, yeah, I am excited for Katarina hen lol.
Also, another interesting thing about this game is how Katarina seems to slightly resemble the villainess type character from the rampaign otome game isekai anime, manga and light novels despite The Goddess of Tears being published over 20 years ago. The game has European aesthetic and magic. Katarina is the sister of one of the love interests who is evil and was betrothed to the prince prior to the protagonist showing up. Katarina's name is the name of a very popular otome isekai protagonist. She is arrogant and accomplished and absolutely gorgeous. Of course, she isn't evil, her brother is but it is interesting to see the resemblance between Katarina and otome isekai protagonists.
