Amulet of Athos: Legend of the Sarian Knights

I found out that writing a review is really long and painstaking process, since this will be mah second review, it means that I review only titles that would be worth my time. Since this game is in development, then I will take that precious time to weave this unformal wall of text, wich can work as an ego boost and precious critique of this "piece". What drew me into playing this were very atmospheric screenshots, they looked really good, epic deep storyline served as a huge warning sign for cliche,tactical,mature,ambience all those words that make my senses giggle were there. So I told myself "What the heck, Im giving this baby a try." and what ride it was.

Downloaded,100+mb was rather not pretty in my eyes,but what the heck,unpacked,installed,double clicked on the .exe and we are off!!! To tell you the truth, the title screen took my breath, it was really epic and I mean REALLY. Without further adue I choosed to start the game. To my great amazement, it gave me option to skip intro. This really made me feel awesome about this game, like someone finnally uses his brain in development. Me being a story whore, entered the intro sequence...thus the downfall cameth. Intro was kind of long, but who cares when you can skip it. It told us about some hellborn/darkspawn invasion, how countries were decimated by this hellish menace led by some demonlord,couldnt remembered his name,you know the classical big bad demons,save the world bohoo. One day nations united and created some high council, that recruited some sarian knights/grey wardens, best knights of the land. The intro is then centered around the main protagonists father, he was some lord ready to face the demon overlord,but before that his wife gave him some strange artifact from banished wizard named athos, hence the name of title, he refused it at first,but was convicned by his wife. Then an big battle against demonlord,ridiculously showing 999999999999999 damage,showing how badass they were,but demonlord was more badass, cockslaped faces of the main protagonists father and his lackeys,sorry I couldnt remembered his name, by yet again 99999999999999999999999 damage. Main protagonists father was the only one who survived those ludicrious numbers, thanks to the amulet, but then something happened, the amulet granted him a great power to defeat that big bad demon. Defeated, the hellborn were vanquished,the sarian knights/grey wardens became a legend. But everything comes with a price, actually this didnt went as in fairytales, amulet made him schizophrenic psychopath, hearing voices,to kill everyone who didnt worshiped him as god, he went on a rampage killing innocents and even his dear wife, when he came to his senses, that what monster he is, he asked his best buddy,brother-in-arms Karn, to end his pitifull life, as his best buddy he refused at first, but after not so long convincing, he killed him. After 10+ years, we take control of the real main protagonist,his son, Zack.

Balance:4.5/5
The tactical hogwash was true, it was really true. The combat is sideview ATB,with 3 party members and with many twists and I mean great twists. Those twists include interesting skills, working guard,classes and stamina system. There is abundance of skills, but they work, they really work, every skill compliments eachother, for instance your main protagonist is, guardian, a walking tank. He has this really interesting skill called protection, wich takes whole damage from party member to himself, wich is really great feature, you would think its overpowered, but its not, next he has stances, the only stance for now was speed up stance, making his ATB meter go really fast. This and the protection skill compliment eachother, while not dishing much dmg, he takes all punches and is able to diss enemy armor. Im not going to ruin the fun for you,but I will just say, BRAVO!!! I actually hunted down every single enemy on map, wich is a rare in RPGM titles. Battles arent that hard, but they propose a challenge, almost perfect ballance. Surely you wonder why not 5 when I sing an ode about how awesome it is. The only problem for me was, that there werent many skills, sure battles were fun, but the pacing could do some more tweaking,but the problem could be, that I killed every single enemy on maps. If you want a RPGM game with fun, working,tactical battle system and battles, I would say:"Dont waste a second and download!!!!".

Level design:4.75/5
Second or first biggest strength of this game. I know many will organise a witchunt on me for this, because "he uses the RTP set with blah blah blah blah". Just swallow your ego and hands down,because this game has memorable locations and I meant it. The mapping, overlays everything combined made me thing this game wasnt made in RPGMVX, he may use RTP, but he uses it with such pinpoint accuracy for details, that its just...beautiful. You can feel how much love was put in those scenes, how it was thought out, monsters didnt hunt you down so you could skip battles completely, great balance of resting,exploring and action parts,bonus was lockpicking minigame.Many "hidden" stuff, balanced, no pixelhunting or facepalming on intelligence of creator. Everything fits like a puzzle, its like wow, but not everything is perfect,but in this case I may say so. The only 2 things that bugged me were minor lack of puzzles and the city. Yes the city was astonishing, but I thought that it would be bigger, it would had more you know like you could implement that card game in the pub or some districts except for plaza. It was good, but I was dissapointed. The assasin part was really great to watch and participate, yes participate, it was clearly seen that creator put alot of love into this.

Characters:2.5/5
Now we move onto the weaker parts of the game...cast. The main problem of RPGM games I see, is that their characters dont have personality. They just clutter some lines,every character,the same reactions etc. etc. I could go on forever. This game suffers from it too. Our main protagonist is the typical "I have almost no emotions or mind, I just have to save the world." Surely such traumatic incident as slaughterhouse in his house, would cripple his mind in many ways, his trauma would be great, changing his personality according to it. But no,here he lives his life normally, normally talking about it like nothing happened,like it was some rumor,no impact, like he was some kind of robot or something. Other characters dont vary too much from one another, thats why I couldnt remember 1/2 cast of this game. Everyone is determined to do his role and nothing else, like they arent even living,they dont have personality. There are some "emotional" scenes or hidden motives...but they feel so generic,so artificial, like Diago,Diego would fit him more, defended Sauryia from assasins, because he made some promise that he will protect his friends blah blah,like where did we heard this before? Or typical, side lovestory,cmon dont tell me you didnt knew it would happen, with Mya, hinting that she has crush on the hero, but nothing else, no trying to talk to him, no weird change of emotional flow or anything. You know how it feels to have a crush on someone, but here, its almost nothing. Characters should have a personality,a life, dreams, background etc. but here they only have lines.

Story:3/5
Another weak part, in my opinion, of the game. As I mentioned before, its typical "epic" tale about demon overlords, chosen heroes, fancy big damage numbers etc. etc. But at least the creator did job to make twists and turns. As you saw in mah intro, that I subtly showed , that author was inspired by Dragon age wich was inspired by Tolkien fantasy wich was inspired by.... But the inspiration of Dragon age is really seen here, dark atmosphere, alot of blood, darkspawn oh I mean hellborn. Dragon age took the most used storyline and did something that I was shocked, instead of creating a new storyline, it centered on the presentation, not the storyline, wich was a risk, but a damn good risk. This game tried something identical,for me, but didnt went that well. The cutscenes are OK, but thats all, they say what they have to say and nothing more, no animations, well apart from the big shiny explosions...the storyline is predictable,nothing "awesome" the twists with the amulet makes wearer mad is nice touch up, but it wont save the whole game. Absence of magic for normal people was interesting too, but its still not enough. The political intrigues are just assasin going for the king, no minor lords plotting against each other, king carefully executing nobles, marriages in order to gain influence,femme fatale, poisons, treachery, false alliances,blackmailing etc. NOTHING, only we know that some noble guy wants to gut king, thats all, the author had world to shape, but he didnt, he made one big blank page.

Music and sounds:3.5/5
I know,I know it uses rips we heard gazillions of times...but we wont just stop there, no. This game has some music not heard before, well for me. Beautifull maps deserve beautifull music and that did happen partly. The music here isnt just,"it does it work and nothing more",no. It really accompanied maps really well in majority, but sometimes it didnt fit well. Sounds were OK and sometimes lackluster. The author should revise some places to change the music and sound effects, to make it fit more.

Summary homies.

The good
-Excellent battles
-Balanced gameplay
-Beautifull maps
-Fun
-Small details,like lockpicking minigame

The bad
-Cliche story
-Dull and boring characters
-Unused story and backstory potential
-Some laughable cutscenes, yes the 999999999999999 dmg.

Overall:4/5
Afterall this is one greatly refined, thought out, balanced and great to play RPGVX title. Saddened by the story, wich was luckily shadowed by the gameplay. Me being a story whore, I dont know if I will try the next release,because the story didnt grasped me, but the gameplay is really really good. So its hard to decide, I dont want to be biased on only one thing that I like most,sooo I am giving this game.........3.85/5,but as being optimistic and rating system here, the score is 4/5. If the author will take character development and story into consideration, in the next release, I will surely download it, to see if my review changed anything.

Closing words
Awesome potential.