By now, its cute. Altho the "8 chapters" may be misleading at the start. Since every chapter is pretty short by itself, usually just one mission.

Now, the actual reviewing starts. I havent played into it too much, I am just 3 chapters in, but that was already enough to see some core gameplay.

lets start up with the battle system - The card based system may seem a bit complicated at the start, but in the end - its not. Cards have 5 Levels - 1,2,3,4 and S - and 5 actions - Attack, Special, Block, Dodge and Magic. you draw a hand of 8 and pick 3 of them. higher card does its action and when its a standoff there is a rock paper scissors system to determin who gets a hit in. Strategy comes in when you take enemy Prediction into account, meaning the color of their cards. but theres a guy right at the start explaining you all that.
And even tho it seems ovrwhelming at the beginning, it flows from your hand after 2 or 3 fights.

now to the art style - the FaceArt is pretty well made, the Intro and Chapter End Pictures all have a nice feel and good handdrawn style to them. the world is pretty colorful, altho sometimes a little overwhelming (more later). The character models themselves seem to bee pretty SD style, means they are more head than anything else.

Music - from what I could experience, the usic is good. Battle music gets one pumped and the town has that nice quiet peaceful feeling.

but I cand give all good things. some negative stuff that sprung to me.

first of all, You are playing a thief whose dayjob is to be a Private Investigator... best part - he goes thieving without any different outfit. He is out there in the same gear he can be seen through the day. then in the 3rd chapter someone actually comes into your office, having a job fr your thief Alter Ego... I will take it that the Guards are really stupid, this is a THief training Town or Suspension of disbelief.

then, the city is horribly cluttered. At least the starting one. Some paths cant be seen until you run into them, same with pickups. a lot of buildings you can only identify by waltzing right in.

all in all, I like it. Its to be recommended.

PS: if the dev reads this - could it be that this is a sidestory-ish of tears for Tiara ? since I get a vibe from some names (namely the namegiving "Goddess Tear" as well as an Item that summons Tiara in Battle.

Pretty solid RPG Maker based game.

Story involves the event of a Thief Wannabe aiming to be the best thief in town.
Game has a rater simply plot but it does a darn fine job at the character development.
Though you will be reading a lot. Like any RPG

Combat is a game of Rock-paper-scizors mixed with RPG elements and card fights. Takes a while to get used to it but once you do its a breeze.


Downsides is that the game revolves entirely in the same town. Adding a new character here and there. This isn't something new on the JRPG world, but makes you wish the map was bigger.


Pretty solid game, if you are not buying this full price, give it a chance on a sale. It's worth the time.

Well i am at a point now where i think i can review this. Yes this is an rpgmaker game but it is different from 99.9% of them. It has it's own menu (not that crap pre made one) i am pretty sure it has it's own music which is not bad.

The battle system is unique which is rare for a game made on rpgm If i am not mitaken this uses the vx version ? Anyhow to the point it uses a card / luck based system You have you defend cards attack cards spell card and you evasion cards. So how this battle systems works is like this.

enemy you
2 defend 3 attack 2 attack 3 attack 4 magic 3 defend

Each card has a value up to 5 (1,2,3,4,S=5) The set up i have above me will work like this

On the first turn since i have 3 attack his 2 defend will do nothing. Other then reduce the damage. On the next turn i have 4 magic and he has 3 attack magic is casted at random so sometimes you will get a buff spell or and attack or healing spell. Let's say we get an atack spell. we would basically negate his attack. (i think) now he has 2 attack and i have 3 defend his attack would do nothing.

there is a way to tell which card is which but that is explained in game. you can change the colour of you cards to try and fool the other player/monster so there is a bit a thinking involved. being a different rpgm game i would have to say give this a go it will not be for everyone.

there are stats involved attack defense evasion ect when you level up you gain a point and you can choose which stats to increase.

As of this moment Im about 70% done with both the main story and side missions.

Story - Not anything major, it has one but ultimately it's just chapter after chapter of what happens in the daily lives of the main characters. Personally I prefer this, as the characters in general are quite entertaining and they have a nice chemistry with one another. You play the role of Seil, a dude who wants to be a major thief, along side him is his child hood friend Seana.

Gameplay - I find that this game have relatively great gameplay for an rpgmaker title. You steal, your craft to some degree and you sell items. On your journey, you have quite a few problems to solve, and usually you can solve them in more than 1 way, usually the more in your face way will be less thief like and or cost you money. The battle system is what I consider the most important element next to characters in an rpg. It's a RPS turn based system with a bit of luck involved. It mostly consists of 5 actions:

Strong Attack - beats dodge and defend if they're of the same level. It has a stalemate with attack and magic if they're of the same level.
Attack - loses to dodge and defend if they're of the same level. It has a stalemate with strong attack and magic if they're of the same level.
Magic - beats dodge and defend if they're of the same level. It has a stalemate with strong attack and attack if they're of the same level.
Defend - beats attack if they're of the same level. Loses to strong attack and magic if they're of the same level.
Dodge - beats attack if they're of the same level. Loses to strong attack and magic if they're of the same level.

The highest level card will always win, an example would be despite the fact that Strong attack beats dodge if they're the same level, if you attack with a level 2 strong attack amd the opponent happens to be using a level 3 dodge, the dodge will trump the strong attack. Looking at the strength and weaknesses above, you're probably thinking you should only use strong attacks or magic every chance you get. Well, you can't. This is where some of the "Luck" part of the game comes into play. In order to do any of the above actions, you must have the corresponding card to do so. When the fight begins you are assigned a total of 9 cards, these cards comes in varying levels of 1, 2, 3 and 4. Each turn you must use any 3 cards. When the next turn comes around you will automatically draw 3 new cards.

The enemies you fight are limited to only using Strong Attacks, Attack, Defend and Dodge. The cards are color coded so you can guess about 80% of the time what enemy is gonna do, but you have little way of knowing the level of their action. Sometimes the enemy will try to bluff you, making you think a card they're using is a particular card, when in fact it's not. This doesnt happen too often, and your chances of prediction increases with Seil's agility parameter.

Sound - Pretty good, sfx in fights sounds about right. The music is great imo.

Replay Value - I don't feel there's much if at all any, it's relatively impossible to miss a side event unless you wished to. However the game seems relatively long, I've only put 22 hours into the game and I feel confident that the game will last at least another 10-12 hours.

Tldr? Buy it. It's a great rpg for $10 with lovable characters and a fun battle system.

Finding good JRPG games is few and far between. Yet sometimes you can find a great gem. A lot of work went into this one, tweaking the systems of RPGMaker to create a unique game. While RPG Maker games are often decryed as cheap and worthless, it is clear a lot of work and programming went into creating this one, and the result is everything I expected. I plan to spend much more time enjoying this one.

Today, Kouen and Lasharus play The Sacred Tears TRUE.

The game's a JRPG, and the story concerns a guy named Seil (of which we're still not sure about
the pronunciation) and his aspirations to become a master thief. Told episodically, you can
pick up and play whenever you feel like it, without feeling like you're pausing at a crucial
point.

The game is quite well designed, with an interesting battle system, and classical SNES-era
graphics, and Kouen and Lasharus enjoyed the parts of the game they played, scoring it a solid
7.5/10

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=325267415

My final impression of this as "FIN" appeared on my screen was that it's "Squandered Potential: The Game", and after thinking some more on it I still think that's the case. Whatever it had going for it in the first 10 hours doesn't build up to anything greater, and in the long run that obviously hurts the game.

The card-based fighting system is fresh but without much depth, and as such it can't support the game in it's final stages. It was nice to have a system that was more about managing risk than exploiting the enemies weaknesses though. There's a demo out for this game so rather than talk about it if you're interested just go try it out.

The plot feels like it ends up going nowhere and probably 3/4ths of it is everyday character interactions, which isn't that bad but after spending so much time with these characters (23 hrs + some missed content) I just wished there was a more compelling / interesting plot. If i had to compare it to something it's like a slice of life JRPG, if that sounds interesting to you then by all means pick this up.

Another thing that got to me was that the playable map was incredibly small, essentially it's just the one town and a handful of dungeons. This game has 20+ hours of content with 24 main missions and 24 side ones. The problem with this is that quite a number of these missions involve you running around the town talking to every NPC you see in order to advance said missions, which gets old fast. There are a few missions which take you "out" of the main town but it's just a scene cut into whatever building the plot requires you to be in. If the devs could have worked in another town or two, expanded on the plot a bit, and cut out the filler I feel like it would have done wonders for this game

In spite of those flaws the game does have it's merits. The CGs and character portraits were well drawn and even though the gameplay and story weren't exceptional it all came together to create a comfy experience. That's the real draw of this to me though, it's just a nice relaxing experience that was able to easily string me along for 20 some hours, I just wish there was more to it in the end.




Seana is the cutest

An interesting concept of Rock-Paper-Scissor Gameplay whit twist and bluffing! I definitly recommend to give it a try since it feels different to many other J-RPG or Game Maker avaible on steam

Please do note that this game is made in 2005, so it's a fairly old game that was recently translated.

Nonetheless, Sacred Tears TRUE is probably one of the most solid RPG maker games I've ever played. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to use any of the presets, for the character sprites (though I admit I don't really favor it that much), portraits, tile sets, down to the very menu itself, unlike many RPG maker games on Steam. Moreover, there are several CGs that are well drawn between each chapter and some boss fights, though a bit rough, but consistent. The music sounds like most JRPGs, but it's still of good quality, and doesn't feel the least bit annoying.

The game's description is pretty accurate, so do take a look at it if you're interested. The game is put into an episodic format, with 24 chapters for the main story and 24 chapters of side quests (although the first one is just a free play chapter to explore around the town). Each chapter lasts as long as a couple minutes to well, under an hour, depending on how much you explore/grind/etc.

The plot pretty much consists of Seil, a low-rank, wannabe thief, along with his childhood friend Seana, doing various of jobs through their daily lives (time progression is notable, actually, if you pay attention to the tree colors in the outskirts). Ultimately, Seil seeks to steal the ultimate treasure of the empire, the Sacred Tear; it's a dream of every thief in Genoseed. A more "dramatic" plot does slowly unveil as the chapters go on, but it's nothing really memorable. I didn't really like that the background story of the Genoseed/the Empire/Holy Church kind of isn't extremely clear. You'll pick up some as the missions go along and talking with NPCs, but through most of the game I was kind of unsure what to think of them.

But somehow, the character development makes up for that. Each character is rich with personality, especially Seil, a hot-headed, often reckless kid (who the other characters kind of often poke fun at), and Seana, who is the more mature of the two, but easily provoked, especially by Seil. The dialogue is fairly light-hearted for the most part (and expect a good amount of it --it's an RPG), and overall it made the game a fairly relaxing experience.

Like someone else said, much of the game consists of running around, but as someone who actually hates exploring in RPGs (shoot me), I didn't mind it. There is a good number of "hidden" items you may want to pick up, whether to craft items, sell for fil ( the game's currency), or to improve the level of your characters skills. Besides, you can dash with Z (oh and if the dash bar/chapter name on the screen bothers you, you can press shift to make it go away or move it to another arrangement), so it cuts down a lot of the time. You'll pass by most of the items in each chapter on the way doing most of the storyline work. Plus the area of exploration is pretty small. It's called a "City Adventure" for a reason. There's one central area, with different sectors of the down, along with a suburb, and the town outskirts. It's difficult to get lost, and they do clearly tell you where you need to go.

Now for the battle system itself, I admit that the tutorial kind of misses out on a lot of information. The manual does help with it though, especially explaining the stats, with things like Seana's "judge" wasn't exactly clear (it's her judgement of what type of magic to cast, whether that's fire, frost, spark, ATK up, DEF up, or Healing) or Seil's "evade" stat, which the tutorial called "agility" (it's how accurate Seil can predict the enemy's cards/moves). If you do mess up though, you can redistribute stats any time during the game (on the field) by going to the menu ~> status screen. I also found it helpful to change it around during different boss battles, especially if you have difficulty beating the boss.

There are only like five kinds of normal enemies though, but they are just recolored over the chapters, getting harder (a cat, slime, dog, a trio of bats, and soliders...well six if you count gangsters (but they forever look the same)). Along with some secret field bosses (that drop acessories) and other general storyline bosses.

Although some didn't feel like the card system had depth. I felt differently. The card system lays out 9 different cards at a time for you. They will range in numbers from 1 to 4 (and sometimes... "S" or "5" I can't tell, but the number is in gold). You can choose three of them in certain order. The enemy will choose 3 as well. Now, there are 5 different type of cards: attack, special attack, dodge, defend, and magic (which is what Seana is for, who stays in the back with no HP bar of her own). The cards with the highest value wins, but in the case of ties, certain cards will beat others or have a tie. For example, a 4 attack card will counter out any special or magic attack, but will lose against dodges or blocks (in which the opponent can use a counter attack if it's...two successful ones in a row I think? I might be wrong).

The game tends to hint what cards the enemy will be using. Green typically means a defend or dodge. Blue typically means an attack. Red typically means a strong attack. A red "CAUTION" means that one of those cards are of a 4 value (but it's any type of card). But this isn't always. The higher your evade stat, the more accurate the predictions are. It won't ever be perfect though. An enemy can "bluff". So what's the point of strategy then? Well, as you use up cards you will recieve new cards of new values, and if you use your highest values first, you're more than likely going to wind up with card values of 1/2. Now, if you know the enemy is probably not even going to attack this turn, you can use rid of those cards (sometimes nothing can happen, like if you're both on the defensive), though be wary if they're a type of attack card (not including magic) as it can result in a counter attack. Of course, this doesn't mean that a high attack value card isn't hiding in there either. You can also do this if you feel that you can take another blow this turn. Though I will say that sometimes a fairy can come and increase a random card value by one, or switch one or more cards with a new one. And sometimes a 1 value attack card will turn into a red 4 attack card, which I think just happens by chance. Yes, luck does apply in this game, but in a turn-based game, when doesn't it?

There are potions (each health 50% HP) in this game that can be used at the start of any turn with shift. You will gain potions periodically, for a reason I haven't quite figured out. It might be turns or some other condition during battle. Max is 10, though you can trade 10 potions for a kit that you can use to provide yourself with more potions when you run out. There are also auto revivals you can craft or buy, although hard to craft or somewhat pricy. There are other items you can craft to help aid you in battle, though I haven't quite bothered.

Oh, and if you're really lazy to even think during battle, like during a boss battle. You can give Seil a fair amount of HP, no additional attack, no evade, and really high defense. Then give Seana high magic attack, and low judgement. This way the enemy only can really hit you 1~5, even with hard hitting special attacks. The only way you can attack though in this method is by Seana's magic attack. Though if she keeps using buffs instead of attacks, well...it takes forever.

TL;DR I recommend this game as it's a solid RPG. The character development is great, the dialogue can be amusing, and overall it's a fairly relaxing experience. I don't feel pressured to grind or explore aimlessly (oh yeah, there's no random battles). I personally find the battle system to be pretty refreshing. But if you're still unsure if you want this game, there's a demo you can download on their homepage.

I've played the game for 15 hours so far and I still haven't even finished the first row of missions. Maybe I'm just being thorough, but for a game that's less than 50 MB in size, I think it's surprisingly involved.

This game is fun, and even tho i only beat the first 3 or so chapters it made a good impression on me and the battle system is refeashing then just select attack then select the enemy you wish to hit which is most turn base RPG, but over all this game is good and i be playing this when i got a enough time to dive in to it and play for a few hours every now and then.

Finally beat this after some rush and frustation at the end part of the game
Looks like like I have love-hate relationship with this game

I hate how lack of development ant empowerement the battle and level system in this game
I hate the way main character develop, feel a bit unnatural to me
I hate how frustating the battle at some point
I hate the small quantity of map, especially dungeon in this game
I haate that there's a blacksmith, but cannot upgrade equipment there :p
I haaate how i was forced to almost always save the game, in case NORMAL monster beat me
I haate that I can't find how to open most of the chest, and forced to break all doors :(

But there's plenty elements that makes me keep playing
I love how unusual and the uncertainty of the battle system. Really make me think for a sec what should I do
I love the set and the plot of the game. The story flows just nice with episodic sytem
i loove the dialog in this game. It keeps me want to advance the story and finish the game
I loove the art that appear every end of a chapter. Sometimes it gave warm feeling in my kokoro
I loove how developers put the secret in this game. Feels so clasic
I looove how detail the sprite and eventing. Make always keep my my eyes at characters movement and eyes
I looove how polished some part of this game. That final boss entrance cinematic, give me chill and nostalgic feeling
I looooooooove the soundtrack of this game. Really brilliant and engaging

Not playing many games from RPGMaker engine, especially the old one. But I can say Sacred Tears True is one of the best game developed here, especially if you love many elements from old JRPG. Every fans of JRPG should give this one a try ;)

good game and simple :) i love it !!! and reminds me of good old days....

Good game with nice story. Story follows young thief that starts as unexperienced and hardly know and becomes most famous thief of the city at the end. Characters are likeable and seem to grow when story progresses and music is also nice.

Unique battle system made battles enjoyable and there wasn't much need for grinding in order to beat bosses. Sometimes in battle bad luck strikes, when opponent puls three level four attacks with one or more special attacks, when you least expect it. It's still possible to survive from this, if you use health potions between opponents attacks.

Cutscenes were nicely drawn, but it is impossible to skip them and there were couple of times. Saving is also very important and game doesn't never ask if you would want to save. I learned in hard way, that it is always good to save after fight. Those wolves are so annoying >_<. Best was after hard boss fight I didn't save and there was another boss! You can imagine what happened.

I also didn't like fact that there were only four types of monsters, slimes, cats, wolves and bats with standard, enchanted and boss forms. In mission where there were soldiers were talking about monsters inside building I had to laugh when these "monsters" were cats.

There isn't much information about game available in English in internet and manual doesn't explain things as well as it should, so sometimes some missions felt troublesome, when I couldn't find right person or place, but with more searching answers can be found. It might just take sometime, because you missed one person...

It has been a while since last time I played jrpg and I think that this game gets 9/10. This was good game with some minor faults.

The only manual is an online webpage that is useless, only describing basic concepts and not going into how to control your characters, switch chapters, switch between the various modes (thief mode, etc. The tutorial is a joke and the card system involves no strategy because never know oppoents plan so how plan accordingly.

Have fun running around. It's 90% of this game. Battle system gets boring quickly and lacks depth imo. Also as far as I know you can't escape once you trigger an encounter. Game is tiny - handful of dungeons and one city.

It's bad. There are better jRPG's out ther for similar price.

Been waiting a looooong time for this game to get translated. It's a pretty good game. The artwork is pretty cool.

If you are an Otaku (Fan of Anime), and you like does action, romantic, decicion game type, oh yeah and puzzle games type and card-battle types, this game is good enought for you, if the Movie trailer didint inspire you, theres a demo version fo this game where you can try out this game and see if you like it or not, only bad side is dying, but the good side is that you can save in any location in this game so dont worry so much on dying if your does gamers that saves the game every 5 seconds, the sountracks of this game, battle music and everything is really greate, it is also challenging but it worth it, they did a greate job with the story, i havent beat the game yet but so far is really greate, if you dont understand how this games works on battle or whats the actual main objective, go to Manuals after you open The Sacred Tears TRUE, again, greate game, awesome story, i loved it, im putting to much details but whatever, buy it and have fun

Amazing 15+ hour indie rpg. It uses a card-based rock-paper-scissors type battle system that is easy to learn but hard to master. This simple innovation makes the combat in the game tons of fun.

The characters were very interesting and the combat especially was well drawn/animated.

Just note that there is no "save the world" typical jrpg plot here. Instead, this is more of a "slice of life" rpg story where as the days progress and more jobs are done, you learn more about all the characters in the city. In essence, the development of characters was made the plot, and I really enjoyed that.

Highly recommended to fans of jrpgs who want something a little different.