The Tiamat Sacrament

Those of you who know me may have noticed that I've been gone from the community for a while. It's been months, possibly even a year or so, since I last picked up an RPG Maker title. I randomly decided to get back on the bandwagon, looked at the most recently updated game, and up came The Tiamat Sacrament.

I'll be the first to admit that "You get to play as a dragon!" was the first thing I noticed when skimming over the reviews, and I was pretty much sold. But that's not why you came here. You came for a review, so without further ado, let the games begin!

So what's thie Tiamat Sacrament thing all about anyway? (Story)
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In The Tiamat Sacrament, the principle character is Az'uar, a newly hatched dragon who awakens with no memories. He has what is called "blood memory", an amalgamation of the dragon race's combined knowledge, which helps to reveal plot details along the way. Without giving too much of the game away, it's your basic "collect seven mystical macguffins to save the world" scenario. I've got three macguffins so far, and have just reached the lily pad dungeon.

So far, while the skeleton of the story is cliché, the unique main character and some well put together cutscenes help to set The Tiamat Sacrament apart from the other horses in the race. It's been engaging enough to keep me interested, and I can be quite picky when it comes to stories.

From what I've played so far, I rate the story 4 out of 5.

So, what, it's just Az'uar all on his lonesome? (Characters)
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Well, no. Along the way, Az'uar will be accompanied by some interesting allies. I don't know if anyone joins the party later on, but so far I've had Xandra, a scholar from the main "hub" town Draslin, and Kelburn, who I don't know much about yet but for the purposes of this review he shall affectionately be dubbed "Paperweight".

The NPCs are quite varied, boasting some pretty fun characters you don't see often in RPGs: gambling kids, random guys in the wilderness who give you enemy hints, and the obligatory underground resistance.

I don't really have any qualms about it, characterisation in this game scores a nice clean 5 from me.

Where are we going and how do we get there? (Mapping)
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The maps in the game do exactly what they set out to do. Everything is functional, exits are clearly marked and there's never too much going on in any one place. Dungeons are nicely laid out and a decent length, lasting long enough to pose a challenge but not so long that you get bored with it.

...there are some notable exceptions to this. Take note, Drakonais: BORDERLANDS IS FAR TOO BIG. It got to the point where I was so confused by the layout I had to make maps, and Borderlands, not including the entrance map, consists of ELEVEN 1600x1600 areas. ELEVEN!

Please, please, either make this area shorter or reduce the encounter rate.

Mapping scores 4. It loses a point for the ridiculous size of the Borderlands area.

So you play as a dragon, huh? That must be pretty exciting! (Gameplay)
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The Tiamat Sacrament has some gameplay gimmicks that are, quite frankly, the most fun you can have on a weekday.

I'll start off with battles. Each character has their own battle mechanic, which helps to prevent things from becoming too mundane. This is a good thing.

Az'uar is initially the only character with a straight physical attack. He can also inhale runes, which allows him to perform elemental attacks that affect all enemies, or beneficial effects that affect all allies. While inhaling, an enemy attack might cause him to have the breath knocked out of him, which wastes your rune and Az'uar's turn. After inhaling enough runes, Az'uar will evolve into more powerful forms, allowing him to inhale more runes at once to form combinations. I haven't had much experience with this yet, but it's a solid little system that I quite enjoy using. He can also learn new skills by equipping the essences of dragons he gains on his quest, learning a small percentage of three possible skills at the start of each battle.

Xandra is a scholar, and thus is relegated to the role of Blue Mage, naturally. In battle, she can "Observe" enemies, and when they use a skill while she's observing, she will eventually learn it. The rate at which a skill is learned varies. Xandra is also your primary source of runes, being able to seal enemies when they're below a certain HP threshold.

Kelburn I haven't been using very long, but he appears to have a mechanic utilising rune blades.

The gameplay is far from perfect, though. First off, the ATB is way, way, way, way, way, way, way too sloooooooooow. I can understand what Drakonais was going for here, but the fact of the matter is that mundane random battles take far too long because the ATB gauge takes forever and a day to fill, and that means that the higher-than-average encounter rate eventually gets quite annoying. ESPECIALLY when you're in the middle of doing a puzzle. This is especially noticeable when you get Kelburn, as Az'uar can quite easily take two turns in the time it takes Kelburn's bar to fill up once. I could go and make myself a cup of tea, rescue a kitten from a tree, and end world hunger, and when I got back Kelburn would still be waiting for his turn. Or dead.

Which brings me to another thing. There comes a point in the game where the puzzles become absolutely ridiculous, to the point where Drakonais has had to post solutions for them in the game page. Friendly tip: if your puzzles are so difficult that people have to refer to sources outside of the game to find the solution, you might want to rethink them. :P

That's not to say that you can't figure the answers out with a bit of trial and error, but here's the thing: the two puzzles I'm specifically referring to are the rock puzzle in Borderlands, and the lily pad puzzle in the grotto. The rock puzzle is just stupid, quite frankly. Under no circumstances should there ever be a puzzle in an RPG that you have to keep reloading a save file to solve. It's also frustrating that you can actually move the rocks into a formation that makes it impossible to escape, forcing you to reload your save and lose any exp you gained, or teleport back to Draslin and hike back to the cave. This is simply poor game design, and I hope that Drakonais will address it because it really detracts from the fun of the game.

The lily pad puzzle I gave up on. I'm sorry, Drakonais, but you've crafted a puzzle that actually made me want to stop playing your game. The thing with this type of puzzle is that it only really works if the player can see the whole area from the start; this way they can work out which parts will rise and fall, and work their path backwards. However, when you can't see the whole thing this is impossible to do, and thus becomes a trial-and-error torture session. This isn't a puzzle, this is sadism.

If that isn't bad enough, you didn't actually post a solution for the second lily pad area, and if I fail it I'm taken all the way back to the first one and have no choice but to reload my save. Again, this is poor design. You really need to revisit this idea Drakonais, and I'm intending this as contructive cricitism, as without these flaws, your game would go from being fun to being amazing.

Also, just a suggestion: When Xandra is observing, why not show the player a list of skills they can learn from each enemy? This way, we'd know when it was worth observing over taking another action, and any skills we haven't seen an enemy use would flag up something that we haven't met the conditions for yet. This would encourage new strategies for battles. Please let me know what you think of this idea.

I give gameplay a 3 because of the slow ATB mainly. With this fixed and some puzzle tweaking, it would be an easy 4, possibly even a 5.

Dragon roar, the crackle of flame, the tedium of boss music. (Music and sound)
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The sound effects and music used in The Tiamat Sacrament fit the bill, for the most part. My only gripes really are that the sound effects aren't that varied, with more or less the same sounds being used for many different actions in battle. The biggest complaint I could really make about music is that the random battle music sounds more exciting than the boss theme, which doesn't really fit the situation very well.

Music and sound also gets a 3 from me.

So what you're saying is... (Overall comments)
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The Tiamat Sacrament is a solid game, and a good one to come out of my RPG Maker slump on. It's certainly inspired me to try more games from the site. With a few tweaks, Drakonais could quite easily make this one of the best pre-XP RM games I've ever played.

...but seriously, please make the ATB faster.

Averaging out the scores, the game scores 3.8, or 4 rounded up. Definitely one you'll want to look at.