Salt and Sanctuary tries to emulate Dark Souls and falls flat, according to RPS's Alec Meer.
<blockquote style="text-align: justify;"> Everything I love about Dark Souls is everything that makes me want to scream in Salt and Sanctuary [official site].
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that, but there’s no escaping that 2D stab ‘em up Salt & Sanctuary is designed to be one thing and one thing only: an indie Dark Souls. And by ‘indie’ I just don’t mean whatever the hell that even means from a development perspective any more, but rather stylistic go-tos such as platforming, side-scrolling and big-eyed characters. This is pressed, like so much Playdough mashed into a child’s dinner, on top of Dark Souls inspirations which run all the way from Souls – sorry, Salt – collection which is lost upon death to one handed/two handed weapon switching to even suspiciously similar fonts.
Sometimes it goes too far in emulating its icon – overwrought names such as The Sodden Knight and The Festering Banquet lack a certain delicacy – but rarely does the game ever embrace the humour which might be required to make its silly names and tousle-haired moppet characters work.
I’m showing my hand too soon, I admit. I found Salt & Sanctuary consistently irritating even though I could not in good conscience call it bad, to the extent that I struggle to be level-headed when describing even basic aspects. I didn’t finish it, because I bounced off it in irritation. It’s one of those cases where I can’t entirely identify why, but boils down to that I was not enjoying myself, even though I had expected to.
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