Sacred Star TeamJan 5, 2023Free to playView on Steam ↗

Sacred Earth - Alternative

As a lone girl who has awoken after a long slumber, travel through a broken world to remember just what happened, and where all of your friends have gone in this short, post-apocalyptic fantasy Visual Novel/JRPG with tabletop inspired elements.

Estimated lifetime revenue

Free-to-play

Revenue comes from in-game items and microtransactions, which our price-based model doesn't estimate. Copies below reflect the player base, not paid sales.

Est. copies sold

518

mid estimate

Reviews

Review score

94%

9.4/10

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About

About the game

Overview

Sacred Earth - Alternative is a short hybrid visual novel/RPG proof of concept that tells the beginning of a story about a broken world and the people left behind on it.

Play as a lone girl who has awoken after a long slumber, and travel to learn and remember just what happened here, and where all of your friends have gone.

Gameplay consists of visual novel story presentation, along with node-based tabletop inspired map travel, and fast paced RPG battles.

Main Features

- Node Based Travel: Rather than walk around like a traditional RPG, players will traverse webs of nodes where many events happen one after the other. Manage your TP for the smoothest dungeon experience.

- Fast Paced Turn Based Combat: Combat is fast and furious. Placing emphasis on managing resources and utilizing your skills many beneficial effects to come out on top.

- Elemental Superiority: Take control of the battle with Field Elements, and unleash Elemental Arts to pile on massive amounts of damage against your foes

- Voice Acting: Bring the story to life with character lines voiced in many scenes.

Player reviews (18)

Recommended6h played9 found helpfulFeb 2024

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Recommended5h played5 found helpfulJan 2023

[h1]Sacred Earth Meets Seraphic Blue[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] I played the IGMC version of the game, and while it had decent writing, the rushed nature of the contest and the need to keep the game under an hour meant it was hard to get emotionally invested in all of Konoe's friends who died. Fortunately, the full release has no such limitation, which means more cutscenes can be added to flesh out Konoe's old team. We still don't get the full story, since their past journey isn't playable, but it does give more weight to their sacrifice and provide comic relief. However, we are abruptly introduced to two new characters in the ending, likely to set up a sequel. That said, I'm not sure where this game fits into the Sacred Earth timeline. I initially thought it was either a prequel or distant sequel, but the twist in the end makes it even less certain, [spoiler]since Konoe's world isn't the same one as Miltiades. The Celestial Tree at the end seems like it might be connected to the curse in Sacred Earth New Theory if it's a threat to the multiverse, but only time will tell.[/spoiler] [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The game doesn't have the combo system that [i]Promise[/i] had, but it does have its own interesting Field Element mechanic. When the player character or enemies use elemental skills, an element shows up at the top of the screen, and up to three can be placed. These will grant buffs to both sides of the field and allow either side to consume elements to power up their EX Arts. This is pretty similar to how [i]Seraphic Blue[/i]'s element system works, but you only have one playable character and therefore can only consume wind, fire, and light. Personally, I feel like this battle system would have been more interesting with a party, since everyone would have different elements and arts to consume them. This may be intentional storywise, to show that Konoe is incomplete without her memories and friends. Unlike [i]Promise[/i] and [i]New Theory[/i], this game has item usage and the bosses seem to be balanced around it. The maximum of each item you can carry is limited and you can't farm money infinitely, but this is balanced by item usage not taking up a turn. I played the final battle suboptimally and still had a decent amount of items to spare, so the scarcity is still manageable. You can spend AP to learn new skills, though like previous games, encounters are limited, so you need to spend your AP wisely. You can't go wrong by learning all the non-passives first, though IMO, Cleansing Burst should be a mandatory skill due to how important it is to keep the enemy from being buffed. Balance-wise, since there is only one party member, the game is overall harder than its predecessors. Enemies will often set up field elements that they can consume, but you can't, making it disadvantageous to fight enemies that can use elements that Konoe is weak to. This can be mitigated somewhat with the Ether Gem system, but you would have to stack multiple ether gems of the same element to get around the enemy's empowered arts. That said, the final battle is very difficult even though the enemy uses the same elements as Konoe, as well as stronger versions of certain arts. You'll often have to make less DPS optimal decisions just to keep the enemy from consuming elements, and it can be difficult to outdamage their barrier ability. It's still statistically doable, but it can be very tricky to juggle offense and defense. While the game does show the status effects of both sides, it doesn't tell you how many actions each side has per round. Sometimes, Konoe will get more actions than usual and sometimes, the enemies will, making it unpredictable and hard to make good judgements on when to attack or defend. There's this strange mechanic where enemies, including bosses, have a random chance to have a modifier before their names, which makes them stronger or weaker. Personally, I don't see the point of having this feature instead of a proper difficulty setting like in [i]Promise[/i], since it's basically just RNG. Though I wonder if beating the Mighty versions of all the bosses is even possible. [h2]Verdict[/h2] 8/10 This definitely feels like a Gaiden Game in terms of story, since it feels like it's setting up future appearances for [spoiler]True Konoe[/spoiler] and we don't really get the same amount of plot as [i]Promise[/i]. While the additional flashback scenes help a bit in fleshing out Konoe's world, it feels like this game really needs a prequel where we play as Konoe's original party in their quest to oppose Kagura. In terms of gameplay, the whole battle system is fine in concept, but it really feels like it was meant for a whole party rather than a solo protagonist, since there's a limit to how much Konoe can exploit the battle system alone.

Sacred Earth - Alternative

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Player reviews (18)

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