YMMV / Tears to Tiara

• Complete Monster: From the anime: Believing Arawn to be an evil being who will devastate the world and allow whoever summoned him to rule over whatever is left, High Priest Drwc leads an army of soldiers in an attack on a village to find Riannon of the Gael tribe, intending to use her to summon Arwan. When Riannon refuses to come with him, Drwc has two children brought forth and threatens to have his men cut off their fingers before torturing and killing them. Reappearing near the end of the series, Drwc tries to kill Riannon and her brother Arthur in horrible fashions, such as casting a spell on Riannon so that whenever Arthur attacks him, she feels pain instead of Drwc, and torturing Arthur with electricity.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Octavia. Among Arawn's wives, she's more or less the most popular one among the group, as shown by extended role she's given in the PS3 remake and anime.
• Genius Bonus: Barring the obvious Arthur, Morgan, and Gaius, a lot of names and characters harken back to Welsh mythology like Arawn, Rhiannon, Epona, Annwn, Pwyll, etc. Especially clever is the Sword in the Stone being named 'Dyrnwyn' rather than the generic Excalibur. Taliesin is named after a poet who supposedly lived during the time of King Arthur and wrote a bunch of poems about him.
  • Myrddin is more of an Expy of Greek Titan Prometheus and has nothing in common with his Welsh namesake. The villains feel like a Gnostic Demiurge committee, being tasked by an aloof deity to create the world but failing at making it `perfect`... and are not happy about it.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Arawn's Accidental Marriage to his harem girls when his English voice actor Illich Guardiola actually would marry one of his 16-year old students.
• Ho Yay:
  • Arawn, to both his mentor Pwyll and his apprentice Arthur. To a lesser extent, Decimus towards Gaius via Subordinate Excuse. One one hand, deep camaraderie and eternal loyalty; on the other... somewhere between Arawn and Pwyll's nigh-instant Heterosexual Life-Partners status and Arawn hallucinating Pwyll before he resolves into Arthur and spurs Arawn to stop dying...
  • Though merely really good friends in the game, that friendship necklace Octavia gave Morgan in the anime might make one think otherwise. And the holding hands...
• Narm:
  • The English version of the original game's theme plays at certain points in the story - usually those where you would not want to be distracted by its questionable quality.
  • The English dub of the anime is pretty good, but the Gael characters have Irish accents that range from subtle, nuanced, and believable to MAGICALLY DELICIOUS.
• Questionable Casting: Greg Ayres as Rathy, except Rathy is a girl.

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