This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I couldn’t tell you why, but I have had Smoke and Sacrifice on my radar forever. I must have watched the shortest trailer of it, and was sold before I even knew what it actually entailed. I mean the visuals are striking with the characters seeming like they have big head mode permanently on, but if I had done a little bit more research I probably wouldn’t have bought it.. That’s not an early admission if the game is good or not, but rather a big proponent of this game is crafting, and crafting by itself is one of the mechanics in video games I enjoy the least. This won’t just delve into a crafting rant, but by and large I don’t enjoy the games where crafting is the big tenant. Games like Rust, Ark, Conan Exiles, and to a point Minecraft don’t do anything for me. Yes, do I think people can create amazing things in those games, of course.. Do I think that those games have more than just crafting in them, sure.. but everything in those games is done with crafting being the main gameplay mechanic. Some could argue that Stardew Valley, a game I have very high on my list, is also a crafting game, because you have to build chests, sprinklers, or fences in the game. However, this is the crafting that I can tolerate, because I can also spend multiple a whole month in that game, not crafting and making lots of progress through fishing, mining, or regular farming without having to constantly put rocks and sticks together.

Ok, so we got off track a little bit, but it helps set the stage for Smoke and Sacrifice which is part action game and part crafting game. You play as a mother named Sachi who lives in a post-apocalyptic world where the sun has burnt out. Sachi’s home is a small patch of land that is powered by the “sun tree” which is complex machinery that is acting as a replacement sun but only works for a small area. The community worships the sun tree and in order to keep it running, the first born of every family is sacrificed to it, in order for it to continue working. One day when Sachi’s camp is attacked by monsters, she stumbles through a teleporter and finds that there is a world beneath hers that is very different. Here is where you come in to see if you can figure out what is happening in this underworld, and if you can survive and get back to your home.

We’ll start with the story since its right here in front of everyone. As you might imagine, the underworld is what is powering the sun tree and the people who are toiling in the underworld are all of the children that were “sacrificed” at birth to keep it running. Being down in the underworld for so long has made them forget any part of their life that was before being down here, and the live as slaves being forced to work machines or gather items to hit work quotas to survive. Fairly early on, your adventure turns to trying to find where your child is, and rescuing them from this world and that becomes your driving focus. You will learn that the church, or cult of the sun tree are.. you guessed it, behind this whole thing and while some might believe they are being altruistic and doing this to keep society afloat, some are in it for the power and control they have over the group. The story will then take you into helping out a resistance, fighting against those in charge as well as what you plan to do if your ultimate plans are going to destroy the sun tree. How would the group above ground survive? Will you find your son? What will happen?

The story isn’t actually too bad when you get into the thick of it. I do think it’s a little easy to see what direction it was going as I don’t think you could start this game up and not predict who the bad guys are 5 minutes into the game. This is an issue in video games in general, but where this games story can take a hit is in the pacing of it. Main quests are going to give you the story content you might want, but in order to hit some of those main quests you might need to spend a lot of time looking for very specific resources to then craft into something you need, fighting very specific enemies to gather items all before you can carry on a conversation or make a step towards the end. Again, this isn’t unique to Smoke and Sacrifice, hell I have wasted literal days doing side activities in something like Yakuza before I was supposed to continue the story, but I think the difference here is that I opted to stop in Yakuza to do the side stuff, and in this game you HAVE to stop to do the crafting aspect.

Ok, so lets talk about this gameplay that I keep alluding to. In S & S you navigate the underworld in a Isometric/top down look at your character and their surroundings. The world is divided into different Biomes, but is technically an open world where you can go anywhere you want, as long as you have the correct gear. When you are starting off you are limited to this grasslands/forest esque biome where you can pick plants that are growing, break vases that might have resources, punch trees that might loosen up some fruit or a branch, and fight a few enemies. You have plenty of inventory space (in the beginning) where you can literally pick up everything you ever find (items thankfully stack) and you just expand the map until you can see everything this area has. As you talk to the “drear” (essentially the almost zombified people who work in the underground) you will uncover recipes for crafting, whether that be a lantern, or your first weapon, etc. Eventually as you are completing quests you will eventually be given a quest that has requires you to go to a different biome and you will learn that at the very least you need special shoes before your character can walk around in that area without dying. In the Ice biome you will need warm boots, in the fire biome you will need fire-proof shoes, then there are rubber shoes to walk around the electrical biome, and eventually more gear for the poison biome. Pretty standard stuff, so you first have to get the recipe and then you craft the item and on and on it goes. There are save points and fast travel points around the map (you will have to pay to unlock the fast travel, like 3 coins you find in game.. not real money), but as you progress the recipes get more complex and might require you to make the item at a cookpot, workbench, or factory machine. These are things you can find around the world, and sadly not something you can build.

Eventually your inventory will balloon up and then the real fun beings (or the opposite of that). You will at any given time be carrying around multiple weapons, multiple boots or headgear (because the upgraded boots still only work on one biome), food for healing, and a boatload of other resources because you never know what a recipe is going to call for. You do have a fairly robust inventory space, and in the beginning of the game you won’t come anywhere close to filling it even if you pick up every item, but for the back half of the game, you can expect to constantly be battling with space. There are chests you can unlock (if you find a key) that are scattered around the world which will give you some reprieve, but you will never truly know what you can drop off and never need again, because there is degradation of weapons, items, and many resources. Weapons can break if you don’t keep them repaired, same for armor, your torch can run out of light and need to be fixed. Some resources just go bad like meat or veggies if they aren’t cooked into a proper dish, nearly everything is on some timer that you constantly have to keep paying attention to, or keep the resources in your possession so you can address these issues as they arise. As you start factoring these things in, the amount of space that seemed abundant earlier on now seems very small. By the end of the game I was carrying 5 or so different boots, at least 3 different weapons, a ranged weapon + Ammo (2 separate slots), armor, 2 helmets, repair mix for weapons and armor (2 more slots), at least two different types of cooked food, coins for fast travel portals, a torch + repair part for that, and probably at least 2 quest items.. That is 22 items for what seems like a fairly needed setup, and I am sure this is common in these types of games, but boy do I hate having to constantly travel between chests to just keep swapping around items to progress.

Combat is a fairly large part of this game as well, not just because there are a lot of enemies, but because you will need certain resources that only enemies can give you. There is an attack button, dodge button, and you will eventually learn a full-block button, but a lot of the combat is learning what your enemies can do. Until you start getting more powerful weapons, you will have to learn when to attack and when to get out of the way as each enemy has their own attack pattern. I wouldn’t put any of the fights on par with Dark Souls battles, but you will fight some bosses where you will need to be able to roll in, attack twice, roll out just to slowly wear down their health bar. With that said, it is incredibly rewarding to take down an enemy that has been giving you trouble for the first time, or defeat a mini-boss and watch the bounty of resources pop out of them when they die. There is a day/night cycle that is always in affect which not only requires you to have a working torch for night time (if you don’t you will slowly choke and die in the smog), but also makes enemies more aggressive during night time. I would never recommend standing around until day time just to take on a battle, and there are enemies that are only available at day or night that you will eventually need to hunt down. While the excitement exists for the first time you tackle a new enemy or master their pattern, when you have to fight the giant bore 6 or 7 times in a row, simply because you need to harvest the resource only they have, then it can feel quite tedious.

Should you die, you will automatically reload at the last time you saved the game, there are no checkpoints here and if you get carried away and try to save it only once a sitting, you are eventually going to end up losing a lot of progress. There are some save points that pop up right before taking on actual bosses, so you at least can retry those rather quickly, but getting stuck in an unfamiliar biome can lead to death rather quickly as you attempt to learn new enemies or what you can eat in the area. The game is bound to burn you at least once, just to let you know what you screwed up.

Despite being considered an RPG, there is no leveling up in this game. Your character never gains a level and gets better attributes, everything comes down to your actual skill in fighting and pattern recognition and what items you equip. A better sword will make quicker work of some enemies, and a better armor will allow you to take more hits, standard faire, but there is no goal level you need to be at for any part of the game. You could spend 20 hours of the game fighting slimes and you won’t be any better off then someone who rolls past every enemy and only fights bosses. This is both a blessing and a curse. I am an RPG nut and I just like seeing numbers go up and sometimes over leveling so I can just wallop enemies into submission without putting in thought, obviously I can’t do this here. So while there were some tough boss fights that took me multiple attempts, and I would have loved to go “gain a few levels” before trying again I also know that every victory is one that I earned through my own ability and not because my numbers were better. Fight enough giant bores and you can beat them without getting hit, simply because you have memorized their attack patterns.

I think this game took me around 8 hours, probably less and while on paper I love that length of a game, this game feels long because there are just chunks of time where it is hard to see the progress you are making. Sure I spent a lot of time gathering enough resources to craft fire boots or make a new sword that is going to help in the long run, but at the same time I didn’t clear a single quest or make real progress. Hell I spent about 30 minutes before the final boss, stocking up on food, and that requires fighting lesser enemies, and gathering vegetables and then finding a cookpot to cook everything. It’s not hard work, but it is work.

While Smoke and Sacrifice had a lot to overcome for me, because if I am still being honest, I just don't care for the crafting genre still. I can commend this game being competent or interesting in its other features, but it still has an uphill climb for me to think that this would be a game I would recommend others play, or even one I would like to re-visit. This game does have replay value if you want to unlock all the recipes or try out and craft different weapons, but that is farthest from my mind in terms of a reason to revisit. The story and world are interesting, but as I mentioned there is a pacing problem because at any given time you have to stop and gather resources or craft before you can make progress in a story.. That happens in all games, but felt rougher in this one, since I didn't care for the in-between. I feel like the analogy here is saying, I like Street Fighter games, except for all that fighting.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: ummm... no

Where does it rank: Smoke and Sacrifice was better then I thought it would be, once I started seeing all the crafting tendrils creeping around the game, but that isn't to say its the greatest of all time. I have it ranked as the 125th greatest game of all time. Every step forward I felt I made in terms of enjoying the combat or engaging with the story, would come crashing down when I would have to spend 20 minutes looking for a shoe recipe and crafting supplies before I could move forward. I also hated the constant item countdowns that you would have to manage in the later game. Watching closely to see if any weapon or armor needs repair, because if it broke outright you would have to build a new one, making sure you prioritize cooking or eating food before it goes bad, and constantly having to repair your lantern for every night cycle.

What's it Between: Smoke and Sacrifice sits between Hand of Fate (124th) and Let's Build a Zoo (126th)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening