Salt and Sanctuary (PS4): Soulselvania

A friend had suggested this title to me somewhat of a ways back and I gave it a causal nod, a quick viewing of the video and then pretty much forgot about it. It was pitched me as a game that I should give a try if "I liked games like Dark Souls". Somewhat recently it came across my mind as I had just used my speedway points for a free PSN card and had 20 clams to burn. Looking to mix up the pallet of the stuff I had been playing recently, I decided to take up my friends suggestion.

SALT AND SANCTUARY:(PS4)

Much like its souls-ian predecessor, the story for Salt and Sanctuary is pretty scant, but if you follow along with what you learn from NPCs, you can piece it together. You are one of the worlds many Saltborne (oh yeah, this is unabashed parody). You are stowing away on a ship that is carrying your nation's princess, in transit for a wedding of political alliance. But during the course of the travel, you ship is ransacked by marauders. One of the dying crew pleads for you to find and save the princess.

As you battle through the ship and approach the main deck, you as set upon by mammoth beast called the Unspeakable Deep. It promptly smashes you into paste. The ship is destroyed, but you find yourself washed ashore of a beach. Collecting your resolve you decide to search out the princess, still. Upon meeting a old man on the beach and telling him of your creed, your adventure can then begin.

Good fuckin' luck.

So as my cheekily written title leads in, this game borrows incredibly heavy from the mechanics that made From Software's Souls series so popular. Right down to the menu, sound effects, and fonts used. it functions with a similar combat system, stat structure, equipment system, and inventory mechanics. Even saying it borrows heavily is being pretty generous.

But the biggest shakeup and what sets it apart from Souls similar games like Nioh, Lords of the Fallen, and so on is that this is all done in a hand drawn 2d style of gameplay. So some things change, primarily in the combat of the game. In Dark Souls you could lift your shield and circle while you wait for an opening, using your roll to protect you from swings. In S&S however there is no circling, and you have to bring your shield up to defend, parry, or dodge roll through the attack.

Ska Studios took great care to make the combat feel weighted and intentional.
Weapons and their use all affect how you approach every fight.

However, because of the new layout of the game there are new strategies that present itself. This game is only working on a 4 point axis so now you have ledges and stairs above and below you. So now you have a jump mechanic that comes into play and you can use the stage around you to evade or retreat if necessary.  The people at Ska Studios (bleh on the name) did a very good job of find a way to work all these mechanics into a 2d plane and have them work well.

It also has a familiar feeling to another 2d series of games, now that I think about it. The map is a giant expanse that has locked pathways and shortcuts that manage to loop you back around to checkpoints and previous areas. There are ladders to climb and knock down, leaps of faith to take, you will learn new abilities as you play along the game that open up new areas for you to explore, so its not a linear game. It's kinda like if Metroid and Castlevania had some kinda gamebaby. They really should have word for that.

Unfortunately, this means it also contains one of the most annoying combat features that you get in Castlevania games and that is the knock back. I can't think of how many times I would be fighting some baddie in this game and get hit with an errant shot that would almost always send me off a ledge plummeting down to my death. It almost happened like clockwork. 

Dying too borrows from the Souls convention. Where if you die, you lose all the salt you were carrying, which in this game functions as your XP to level up your character or improve you weapons. When you die, the monster that defeated you will hold it with some smoky mist around them and you have to kill them to get it back. If you die from falling from a ledge without having been hit by an enemy, instead a monster bat will spawn and attack you. Thankfully it is usually very easy to defeat and easy to gain your salt back. Even dying to a boss is somewhat forgiving since you don't actually need to beat them to get it back, just knock down about a 5th of their bar to at least save it for this attempt.

But S&S curiously also has gold that can be spent at shops as well. You can use this to get basic equipment, most of which you will find as you play along the game anyways. But you can us it to get small bags of salt for a little more leveling, or for some of the base level upgrade materials. Every time you die you will lose a portion of this, but I can't think of a single instance where not having gold inconvenienced me in some way. Don't really see why its in here.

You make offerings to add shops and functions, but when you pick they are locked in.

The art direction of the game you could argue is somewhat cartoony I guess? The character creator is somewhat goofy looking and you really don't have a whole lot of freedom other than hairstyle, color, and if you wear lipstick or not (boy or girl). But this is Ska Studios, and the art design is very reminiscent of one of their previously releases Charlie Murder. Stiff and a little janky.  Where the art direction really shines is in its monster design. The washed out color pallet and the stiff, almost old flash-esq animation really lends itself to the game's monster design.

An example where I feel it really shines is one of the earliest bosses in the game, the Queen of Smiles. Basically she is kinda of skeleton queen who can summon swords to throw at you, She's basically got a skull for a head without a bottom jaw, and it appears to be weeping blood. The way the characters are designed it just looks fucking awesome and with the kinda tense operatic boss theme that plays when you fight her, it just frames together a scene for a great moment. The stiff animations make it feel lifeless and creepy, and just lends to her overall design. Many of the bosses and monsters have this effect, and it's great.

I'm not ashamed to admit this fight took me more tries to beat than it probably should have.

One way how this game differs is in relation to cooperative play. Surprisingly, there is very little online play to speak of. You can sometimes find tombs where characters died in a section, break them to see a few after images to see how it happened, you will sometimes see a another playing in your shrines, but that's really about it. You can play this game two player though. Basically as you set up shrines around the world and you can place offerings to basically inhabit your shrines with villagers who provide various services to the player.

For co-op play, you need a sellsword. By talking to them you can summon an additional player for couch co-op. The catch is they have to be on a different account so they can't just use any other characters you have previously made. So if your co-op friend doesn't have the game, you can work around this by making a generic User1 account (on ps4) and make a character that way.

Other than that there doesn't seem to be much else in the way of online. You can't invade other players or be invaded, you don't see after images of players progressing around the same areas you are. You can't drop a sign to be summoned to help someone in an area just before a boss. So one hand I can't actively sunbro in front of a boss and farm salt, but on the other I don't have to worry about trekking for an hour into unfamiliar territory and have to worry about some jackass spawning into my game and ruining my progress, (there is plenty of other shit to do that).

The aforementioned boss fight theme is pretty great, but I find the soundtrack of the game to be rather lacking. Maybe not lacking but unimpressive. I've said the same thing about the Souls games sometimes, or the Tales series. The music or lack there of works for the game, but its not memorable. In many instances you won't even have music, just a couple of notable tracks here and there to punctuate things, such as boss fights or your home base.

S&S features a creed system that operates loosely like the covens of the Souls games, but without the persistent online mechanic, I found very little reason for it. You can't unlock certain items to buy without changing your creed, which causes you to be an apostate. You can change a shrine to your shrine which gives you sin, and doing either of these things will make people hostile to you, but if I am being honest I didn't find very much reason to do it.

Story and questlines are scarce in this game and much like the series it apes, much of it can be found by talking to the NPCs you come across on your adventure and it fleshes the tale out a bit more if you do. There doesn't appear to be a lot of them though. And spoiler alert, the original reason for starting the adventure never really seems to be addressed by the end of the game. I might have missed it, but I honestly don't think that I did.

One complaint with the game is probably to some also one of the game's biggest assets: This game is fucking punishing. I've struggled with difficult games before, Even when I think I'm hot shit at Dark Souls when a sequel comes out I always have that moment of "Fuck this, this game is impossible." Whelp, Salt & Sanctuary that is prevalent as well. This game is going to chew you up and spit you out, and it will do so often. It is particularly rough in the early going when you are still figuring out all the mechanics and the the bosses will usually wreck you before you even get a chance to observe their patterns. This game is an exercise in stubbornness.

Some fights will greatly test your patience.

The difficulty curve was all over the place too. Once I finally got a decent build in place, I would mow through some enemies only to get fucked by one that was way more difficult than everything around it. Some bosses I would approach and bring down on my first attempt, others would just rip me a new one for 50 attempts. It never felt like a gradual build up.

Probably the thing I didn't like the most was the somewhat confusing skill tree system it uses. If you've ever played Path of Exile and looked at their skill tree you would have a good idea of what I'm talking about. This is a game where you kinda want to have an idea of what kind of character you are trying to go for at the onset, and you will want to work your way from there. You earn gems to move a node with each level, and some require multiples to do so. There is also a system of grey gems which let you remove a node and replace it.

The skill tree can be daunting. I just looked what what weapon I wanted to focus
and then followed the line that took me to the highest level of that weapon.

But what it doesn't explain, for example, is when you unlock the skill nodes for say Greatweapon 5 you don't need to have levels in great weapons 1-4 anymore. With enough gray gems I could reset a significant number of skill points, but I never thought to do it because it and respec as I needed. They still provide a stat boost, but really they are meant to fix a fudge up or if you went down a path you didn't want to for the end game of your character.

You can perhaps consider Salt & Sanctuary to be a Souls or Castlevania clone, but I really see it as a love letter to a pair of games that basically invented a pair of genres. The game will drive you to a fury, and make you want to spike your controllers, but it also provides that same level of satisfaction once you actually muscle your way through it. By the time I ended up getting all the way through it I seem to have burned a good 40 hours or more.

For a game that was like only like 18 bucks, I have to say that counts as a pretty worthwhile purchase.

Fuck the stupid Witch of the Swamp.
That fight was impossible.