Salt and Sanctuary Review (JarlFrank)
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It's basically Dark Souls in 2D. Create a character, explore an island inhabited by dark creatures, and defeat difficult bosses. Good game, highly recommended if you like soulslikes and metroidvanias.
Like Dark Souls, experience is represented by a resource that is lost upon death: salt. Also like Dark Souls, you can only save your game at certain locations, the sanctuaries. These are safe places where you can level up by spending salt, and you can summon NPCs by placing statues on the shrine (a blacksmith statue to summon a blacksmith who can upgrade your equipment, for example). Whenever you have a lot of salt on you, it's a good idea to return to a sanctuary and level up. Whenever you die, the enemy that killed you steals your salt. You have to return and kill the enemy to get it back - but if you die before you get it back, it's lost forever. This creates some tension especially after boss fights when you're loaded up with salt, as it can always be lost if you're not careful.
Exploration is the game's strongest point. There are secrets hidden everywhere, with lots of loot to discover. You can find new equipment, orbs that give you a free character point, and items that you can hand in to a guy at the sanctuary to receive rewards. There are even entire optional areas with optional bosses. As you progress through the game, you unlock more and more abilities that help you traverse the environment, like walljumping and dashing while airborne. Often, you will spot locations that are out of reach for now, but later you learn an ability that allows you to get there, making backtracking worthwhile in some cases.
The levels of the game are interconnected like in a Metroidvania. But unlike most Metroidvanias, there is no map so you have to rely on your own sense of direction. There are a lot of "Aah, so *this* is where this leads to!" moments as you finally get to open a passage that has been locked for half the game by arriving from the other side.
Combat is solid and copies a lot of mechanics from Dark Souls, too. You got regular attacks, heavy attacks, and a dodge roll. The dodge roll gives you complete invulnerability while you're rolling, and it allows you to pass through enemies. In most of the boss fights, using it this way is pretty much required to prevail. It's a decent combat system and feels very fluid once you familiarize yourself with the controls.
Speaking of controls, while the game is heavily inspired by Dark Souls in pretty much every aspect, it didn't copy the horrible controls! It plays really well with mouse and keyboard, with WASD movement, space to jump, the mouse to aim and attack, and shift to roll/dash. The controls are very responsive, unlike Dark Souls.
Overall, a great game that successfully translates the Souls formula into a 2D format. Recommended!