The little game that tried too hard
Salt and Sanctuary is a 2D Dark Souls clone by Ska Studios. Rarely has a studio worn its inspiration so clearly on its sleeve. If you've played Dark Souls, this is a very pretty looking but comparatively poorly executed 2D version of that. If you haven't played Dark Souls, let me explain how it works. It's brutally punishing in difficulty, but (almost) always fair in the way it implements that difficulty. You are rewarded for being patient, observing enemies patterns and behaviors. The more careful you are, the more powerful you'll become since reckless deaths causes you to lose Souls (or Salt in this case) which is the main currency for leveling and upgrading equipment. In the beginning you're allowed to choose a class, but that only affects your starting equipment and where you start in the massive sphere grid type skill tree. Otherwise you'll find new equipment hidden throughout the world and your choice of equipment determines your playstyle.
One of the few mechanical ways the game distances itself from its Dark Souls dad is the aforementioned skill tree. However this is only superficially different from the stats in Dark Souls. Every level you gain by spending Salt awards you with a skill point (or Black Pearl as it's called) to spend in this tree. Upon inspecting said tree you quickly realize it's just a fancy way of masking the more efficient stat screen from Dark Souls. Most nodes in the tree just increase one of your stats by one. The only really interesting part of all this is certain nodes grants proficiency in a certain weapon or armor type, and the amount of points required to unlock them corresponds to the level of said equipment. Say you obtain a sweet level 3 great axe, you need to advance to that point in the skill tree in order to equip it. That node might not jive with the way you've built your character, which means you're shit out of luck. There is a way to refund skill points, by ways of an item called Grey Pearls, but these are rare and precious so you'll never be able to completely respec your character.
Talking about equipment and the skill tree, there is a diverse and varied amount of playstyles to choose from. Everything from lightweight assassins armed with fast knifes and bows, to heavily armored tanks with either massive greatswords or classic sword n' board, to delicate mages weilding powerful magic. This is probably where the game shines mostly, besides its fantastic art style. Whatever your playstyle of choice, there will be an amazing weapon to suit your need. Let's just say my second character, a battlemage, is running around with a 7 ft long arcane scissor. And yes, it does clip.
Another mechanical way it differentiates itself from Dark Souls is its natural Metroidvania lean. Being a massive connected 2D world its only natural for it to gate sections of by means of abilities you gain later in the game. In this case they're called Brands and the give you both new movement abilities and ways to interact with the environment. Sadly though this is where things start going south for this game. Movement feels great once you've unlocked the upgrades, but that only happens more than halfway through the game. Until then everything feels sluggish and unresponsive. You will die from falling off ledges, and you will be infuriated because in many times there is nothing you could've done, since the controls are so unsuitable for platforming. You will hate the dodge roll. You will curse ledges and jumping puzzles. You will scream for a double jump.
Combat is also very hit-or-miss in this game, many enemies can be killed by just mashing attacks and hoping to get it going before the enemy does the same thing. Other enemies just fly off and stay outside melee range until they fly in to attack with their ridiculous hitboxes. There are only a few amounts of enemies that feel legitimately fair to fight, and all of them are massive miniboss types. There's also a fair amount of bullshit enemies that straight-up kill you if they catch you. Whoever designed the Spindlebeast should be taken outside behind the studio and shot in the head.
Bosses are likewise mediocre. Almost all have the exact same patterns, 3-4 hit melee combo and one or two ranged attacks. Once you drain half their HP they start chaining attacks. The ones that have easily dodged attacks are a joke to fight, which encompasses 70-80% of all bosses. The rest are mostly straight up unfair, with attacks that cannot be dodged unless you stand in the right spot before they begin. Many times in these fights you're reliant on being able to dodge behind the boss in order to gain the necessary ground needed to avoid the attack. Problem is sometimes the game decides you can't dodge through the bosses hitbox and just shoves you back to where you started. This will happen to you in many boss fights. Everytime it did happen I kept thinking "this wouldn't be a problem in 3D".
This brings me to the biggest problem of this game. It's 2D. Dark Souls doesn't work in 2D. This game does it damnedest to make it work, but in the end it doesn't. Platforming is just bad, there is no excuse for it. Bosses all feel the same except for the ones with attacks that are just unfair. Regular enemies are all boring to fight, some are straight-up stupid. At times this strikes me as a game that didn't have a QA team, but then I realize they wanted to make a Dark Souls game, they just couldn't afford to make it a 3D world. Any solution I could think of could be shut down by the sentence "well Dark Souls doesn't have that". All the features that's not present in Dark Souls feels shoehorned in to make it a coherent world. There are some that could have been cool, but they're rarely realized to its full potential.
This is a game that tries to hard to be like its idol. If you're aching to play another Souls game, go ahead. You'll probably sit through the awful platforming, samey bossfights and flat out stupid enemy design. For those who just want a good Metroidvania game, there are much better places to go.
