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The Sacred Garden Review
The Sacred Garden - An Atmosphere That Will Make You Kill... The Game?
Review by Deacon Batista
First of all I want to say that this game is now one of my favourites, especially for the RPG Maker XP. The newest version of it was released in 2006, the older version(s) even earlier I think. It is said that it has a maximum playtime of 10 hours, but I think if you know what to do it is about 5 hours. But let's get right to the game itself.
The story is really nothing original. The young Justin wants to find his father. Then he is told that his mom isn't his real mother, but she once found him in the forest. So this is in my opinion really no creative thing, but normally I care less about the story, because it is not neccessary to make a good game. And in addition to that there are no criterions for a good story. It is just very subjective.
The same with the dialogues. I think they are standard, but we can't expect great literature from each other anyway, because we are all not Michael Crichton. So I think it is not that bad that story and dialogues are not the best thing about this game.
But what is really good is the graphic. I don't know how many of the graphics are selfmade or not (not many I think?), but they look quite good all in all although they do not fit to each other all the time, because they were different styles sometimes. The monsters in the battles also do not fit to their on map sprites every time, but you can't say that the graphics look trashy. The sprites itself are all RMXP style. Especially the monster graphics were very great with its animations. As well as the party's battle animations. The whole design of the game is awesome too e.g. the great textbox or the battle menue layout. What is missing are facesets. In special sequences there are artworks of the persons, but that was too rare. Missing facesets unfortunately make the dialogues less interesting and less living.
Before I come to the biggest strength of the game I should mention the greatest weaknesses of it. And those are indeed the random fights which are a total gameplay killer. On one single map they are visible opponents and I really don't understand why all the other maps can't have that too. I think the author just did not have fitting sprites. Luckily you can't escape from those fights, but they were still really nasty.
Here is a screenshot of a random battle. So don't think this are the most interesting opponents in the game.
[img]http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7510/thenewscreenru7.png[/img]
Then there is the mapping and it is like a coin with too completely different sites. On the one hand you really love the quite well mapped landscapes, but on the other hand you don't understand why the game has so many mapping and tile mistakes. Sometimes there are walls missing, or you can run through a tree or a wrong placed light effect and stuff like that. Many weird things. Not to mention the ship in one scene which has really the same size as the hero which was horrible. So all this gave the game a ''trashy touch'' which is very unneccessary in my opinion and could have been avoided.
But finally I want to praise the atmosphere of the game which makes it even more than worth playing even with all those mentioned mistakes. The atmosphere is just a dream in this game. The beautiful landscapes fit perfectly to the great music tracks and the wonderful light effects! The fascinating thing is that the author did not even use all the possibilities he had e.g. no chirping birds or other sound effects to make the atmosphere better. Wonderful panoramas are also only used in some sequnces, but not for maps (except of one I remember?). So there is even more potential to find in this game.
And I guarantee you when you finally reach the Sacred Garden itself after some hours of fighting, it will be a damn wonderful feeling. Trust me.
A Village. Here Justin live with his ''mother''.
[img]http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/1527/newestscreenzf2.png[img]
And that's really the case if you see the whole game. I would wish that the author does bring up one more new version of it with fixed mistakes and without random fights and maybe with facesets.
So all in all I was somehow addicted to this game although it was damn frustrating sometimes. Often you did not know where to go next, because the Quest Log was not updated. So you have to search and to search and in that case you can even reach the 10 hours of playtime although the game does not have one map after another, but it has one ''region'' and you often have to go back to specific areas to do something. So you explore this world more and more. I prefer that.
And still we shouldn't forget that it is quite an old game. As far as I know the RMXP was quite new at that time and there weren't many good games available at that times.
Final Rating: 7 out of 10 points. I know it is a standard rating for solid games, but for a XP game of that age it is very high I think. Without random fights and mapping mistakes I would even give at least 9 points, with some facesets even the full 10 points, which would be VERY good if you remind all the other little weaknesses I mentioned above.
So, play it and you will know how to create a tremendous atmosphere in your game too.
Reviewer's Score: 7 / 10, Posted Sat, 25 Jul 2009 05:44:04 -0400
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Game Details
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Developer:
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darkhalo
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Platform:
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RPG Maker XP
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Genre:
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RPG
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Status:
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Complete |
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Last Updated:
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2008-08-09 |
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Views:
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20186 |
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Downloads:
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User Rating:
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  30 Vote(s) |
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