Salt and Sacrifice Review (Depresster)
This is my first ever proper review of something so the formatting and stuff will probably be very rough but I really would like to share my thoughts on this game.
I played Salt and Sacrifice before I ever played Sanctuary, and I didn't like the game from the moment I started playing it. Encounters often felt unfair and cheap, such as constant ganks or instant reactions from enemies that can juggle you for days without much you can really do about it. Attacks can be spammed out and the player movement doesn't really allow for the kind of manoeuvrability the game expects from you.
To start with, the mage bosses in this game don't really feel like bosses at all, they spend most of the time running away and spawning mobs that suffer from a myriad of issues, such as said spawned mobs attacking you before they are even fully visible on screen or possessing cheap gimmicks (enemies that can block in this game are an absolute joke and take forever to guard break)
Once you do get to the "boss fight" part of the actual fight, it typically goes one of two ways, either the mage is a complete joke and easy to demolish, or the mage suffers from a bunch of incredibly cheap, incredibly spammy moves that can just 1 shot you, it is very frustrating and such a downgrade from the quality of bosses that were present in Sanctuary.
Speaking of Sanctuary, after I completed Sacrifice, I decided to give it a try and the difference between the games is night and day, sacrifice is bloated with issues that drag the game down that were never present in Sanctuary, and it's baffling some of the design choices when comparing the two.
Things such as the quality of combat, weapons, level design are so much more inferior in Sacrifice, as it abandons the free flowing open world of Sanctuary in favour of a more linear stage selection-esque system present in alot of other games, but this causes the game world to feel far less interesting, and exploration is far less rewarding, as loot rewards are heavily gutted in this game, you will rarely find a new cool weapon or armour set, as 99% of the weapons etc you get are just crafted by beating bosses, the entire process of immersing yourself in the world and slowly exploring and discovering new and interesting items and weapons is completely absent in this game, yet in Sanctuary I'd say they really nailed the open world aspect, unsure why they changed this.
Bosses and combat encounters in general compared to Sanctuary feel far more dumbed down and more luck dependant than skill, although the variety in moves in Sanctuary for enemies and bosses weren't the most deep, they were fair and thrilling as opposed to Sacrifice where it jumps between a joke and total bullshit.
The platforming in this game feels really janky and unresponsive, which admittedly was my least favourite part in Sanctuary too, but here enemies will constantly snipe you out of the air with the tiniest projectile which kills all your momentum, or you will get knocked about like a ragdoll and bounced around without having much say in the matter.
On the more artistic side of things, personally I feel the art style is a complete downgrade from the more dark and unpleasant style of Sanctuary, and the music for this game feels far less inspired than that of Sanctuarys too, with no real standout tracks which is a massive shame.
I could go on and on about the unsatisfying combat (weapons have far less reach than Sanctuary, making them feel far less satisfying, a lot of the weapons just have no forward momentum at all too, so you feel very static when attacking), or the boring level design (rip open world), ganky enemies (enemies that just pop into existence or combo you for days, cant forget that mobs can just be in mage boss fights too to make it even more of a cluster fuck), poor boss quality and so on, but I don't want to just drag on when this review is already a mess.
Personally, I would like to see some more changes to the games balance, I've already come to terms that this game will never live up to the love I have for Sanctuary (one of my favourite games of all time), but I do think with some adjustments, this game could be decent, but it needs a lot of work, which makes it really difficult for me to recommend this game for anyone.