The Tiamat Sacrament

Battle System- 3/5
You'll be spending a lot of time at this part of the game. Battles are fairly traditional with a few nice twists thrown in. The most important of which lies with the main character, who is a dragon, and has the ability to inhale magical runes and exhales to produce vicious attacks. Inhale a rune of fire, and you'll breathe a torrent of flame to roast your enemies, inhale a rune of water and you'll be able to call a healing rain down upon the party. This game mechanic serves a second function as well, as your main character will evolve into a more powerful type of dragon after he has consumed enough runes. The rune type you have absorbed most determines your dragon's next form and abilities. On top of all that, every time you evolve the number of runes you can inhale at a single time is increased, allowing you to combine runes for more powerful or interesting effects.

While I enjoyed all of this quite a bit, there is a fundamental problem to the battle system. Runes are annoying to acquire. You can only obtain them through the use of your second party member, who has next to no fighting ability and is mainly there to provide support. She begins the game with the ability to turn an enemy into a Rune, but only if they are at 5% max hp or lower. It is pretty damn hard to get an enemy to that life without killing them. You can upgrade her weapon to increase the effectiveness of this skill, but by the end of the demo I could still only capture enemies with 15% or lower of their life total. Since most enemies tended to die in two or three hits, even less if I was using skills, I constantly found myself missing opportunities to grab Runes even though I was actively seeking them out.

There are a few more twists thrown into the battle system as well. The dragon can learn extra abilities by equipping stones you'll acquire throughout your adventure. At the beginning of each battle he absorbs a bit of the stone's power, and after you've fought enough he'll be granted a new ability. Although these skills are useful they pale in comparison to inhaling Runes. Your supportive party member has the ability to Observe enemies, which will give the percentage of their hp remaining, and also allow her to copy their skills if she observes it used multiple times. The bosses are challenging, and will require you to be carrying a large stock of runes to have any chance at victory, which unfortunately turned out to be tedious to gather.

Storyline- 3/5
A standard take down the evil empire plot by collecting a series of items, though since it is told from the point of view of a dragon it tends to be more interesting than most other of its ilk. The author takes their time to develop dragons a bit further beyond their typical fantasy stereotypes, which is a nice touch I appreciated. The script has an old school fantasy vibe about it, which may appeal to some and not to others. Overall the story kept me curious about what was going to happen next, but I was never on the edge of my seat or anything.

Characters- 3/5
It is fun to play as a dragon. The main character is easily the most interesting of the cast, sort of mixing the innocence of being a newborn with the arrogance of being a powerful dragon. There are a couple nice touches in this category, such as the dragon's inability to use items because he can't open their contents with his claws. The rest of the cast was quite forgettable, including your other party member. As of the demo I didn't get to see much of the villains, other than a random subordinate of the emperor terrorizing the village folk and an evil duke who doesn't get much screen time.

Level Design- 4/5
Definitely a high point of the demo. You'll spend most of your time in dungeons full of interesting and occasionally unconventional puzzles. You'll spend a bit of time thinking, but there's enough hints strewn about that you shouldn't get lost anywhere. Most of the dungeons are short and rely on a single theme, and you'll be finished with them long before they overstay their welcome. Town design is rather lackluster, with buildings strewn about randomly separated by nothing more than a few trees.

Graphics- 2/5
A mix of RTP and various other graphics floating around on the web. Most things look decent enough, especially our draconic hero. Unfortunately since the graphics come from so many sources they often appear inconsistent, which was occasionally distracting. This is most noticeable in the enemy battlers.

Music/Sound- 2/5
Everything was ripped from other games as far as I could tell. Most of it seemed to be from Wild ARMs, Final Fantasy, and Breath of Fire. Having so much high profile music was a big turn off to me, in particular the music from Final Fantasy as it's almost universally recognizable.

Random stuff I liked-
Playing as a dragon. I think it deserves mentioning twice.

Random stuff I hated-
NPCs are set to always have their walking animation active, even when they're standing still behind a shop counter. This annoyed me in old games and it annoys me here.

Enemies tend to have high agility, often higher than your own party. Since this game uses an ATB system, it means you'll be spending entirely too much time staring at the screen while waiting to act.

Your second party member joins with absolutely no way to attack enemies. Since she's faster than the main character, you'll be spending a lot of time asking her to defend until you've copied your first attack skill.

Final Thoughts-
A solid adventure with a great deal of potential. It's worth trying out, and definitely worth keeping an eye on.