Salt and Sanctuary - Review @ theEscapist

Salt and Sanctuary Review - Soulsvania

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Whether it's zombies, a hulking dragon, or the terrain itself, just about everything in the world of Salt & Sanctuary threatens the player's continued existence. Moreover, nothing tells you where to go, what to do, or how to do it. The developer, Ska Studios, invites us to explore and learn from our failures. It encourages us to take note of its intricacies: how enemies move, when they strike, what booby traps and other surprises lay in wait, at the ready to kill or maim us.

This process will eventually lead players to move from one sanctuary to the next, braving hordes of bloodthirsty creatures that dwell in forests, towers, caverns, and dungeons which stretch between places of respite. This difficult road is also punctuated by powerful foes and mighty bosses who are the gatekeepers to your progress. I often found myself crashing against them like waves beating a cliffside, slowly making progress by eroding the challenge before me. Sometimes I would need to become stronger, or rethink my strategy. Other times, I would need to become painfully intimate with my surroundings and fight with near-perfect execution.

This can be arduous, but the frustrations always seem to melt away when failure, at long last, gives way to success. The elation that comes from overcoming a boundary is proportional to how difficult it was to best. It's something that creates a feedback loop, impelling us to charge headlong into the next crucible, so we can be beat down and built up all over again.

That dysfunctional relationship is something fans of From Software's work know well by this point, and Ska Studios has mimicked the formula beautifully. It lives up to its billing as a blend of Castlevania and Dark Souls, presenting players with a complex web of environments that make wonderful use of verticality, interlocking and looping in on one another in fascinating ways.



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Score: 4/5

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