Recent reviews by Caphriel

It's alright. There's some balance stuff to work out, but that's what EA is for I guess. It's way better played with a friend than solo.

Good game. Lots of fun. It's F2P, so try it out.

I wanted to like this game. I really, really wanted to like this game. It was highly recommended to me. Unfortunately, I do not like this game.

The tl;dr: for this review is that they tried to translate Souls mechanics too directly to a 2D platformer, and while the graphics are nice, the gameplay lacks polish. The result is a game that feels like you are wrestling with the controls. My primary cause of death was falling.

The game tries really hard to keep you from falling. If you try to walk too close to a ledge, you'll slide backwards away from the ledge. Right up until you get beyond the safety threshold, then you'll run right off. The safety threshold does not actually seem to be the edge. Combined with very limited air control, and just makes jumping down to a small platform below you one of hardest things in the game. Way harder than most of the early bosses.

The default character class is the Knight. Do not play the Knight. Heavy armor makes you run slower, and you're going to do a lot of backtracking. It makes you climb up ladders slower. It also reduces your jump distance, which exacerbates the previously-mentioned precision-jumping problems. If you want to play an easy class to start with, play a Mage. Then you can just fireball the enemies who are standing right next to the ledge you have to jump to, and who will hit you out of the air, causing you to enter hitstun and fall.

Speaking of hitstun, if you get hit while jumping, your character seems to secrete oil all over their body as a protective measure. This is the only explanation I can think of for the slide distance after you hit the ground. Do not get hit while jumping in an area with small platforms or with your back to a ledge... or a trap... or other enemies.

In fact, do not jump in fights. You have no defensive options while in the air. The fact that the game forces you to engage in jumping combat constantly suggests that maybe they should've given you more options while jumping other than "normal attack" and "plunging attack." But they didn't. Presumably because that's not sufficiently Souls-like. Although forcing you to engage in platforming over bottomless pits while fighting flying and shooting enemies isn't particularly Souls-like either, but what do I know?

On the ground, you can roll. Rolls have i-frames. Unlike Dark Souls, rolls also turn off collision frames with enemy bodies. This is important because the game is 2D. Unfortunately, many enemies, especially bosses, have bodies bigger than your roll distance. What happens when your roll ends inside an enemy's body? That's a great question, and the behavior seems to be mildly undefined. You'll get pushed out, probably toward whichever edge you were closer to. Unfortunately, because many larger enemies have enormous attack hitboxes that stay active or a while, you can dodge an attack and try to roll through the enemy, and then end up inside it and get pushed back out into its active attack frames. Or into it's follow-up attack.

Unfortunately, combat against normal enemies isn't particularly interesting. You will fight many mooks, against whom you will button mash out one of your basic combo strings, stunlocking them to death. You will fight some more interesting enemies that do not respawn, like Bronze Knights, who generally are best fought by parrying and counter-attacking. Actually, they're only fought by parrying and counter-attacking, because their attack cycles are fast and they do not flinch. Unless you're a mage, then you can cheese them with fireballs.

Unfortunately, platforming is not particularly interesting. It's more or less a non-challenge until it's mixed with enemies, then it becomes an experience that highlights many of the least polished bits of the combat and movement systems.

Unfortunately, the three bosses I fought were not particularly interesting. One of them is trivialized by even a mediocre shield (you can block all of the attacks, and poke in some damage between them.) One of them summons annoying mooks and simulates bullet hell gameplay... in a game where you have significantly less fine character control. He can create situations where damage is unavoidable though. And the third has simple attack patterns.

I cannot see later bosses being more interesting. Unlike Dark Souls, where attacking from a different side of the boss could meaningfully affect what attacks it can hit you with and where rolling could both dodge and take you to somewhere safe, bosses in this 2D interpretation provide only a few options for avoiding attacks - block (I've never successfully parried a boss attack and don't know if you can), retreat/roll backwards out of range, or roll forwards through it. Or in the case of bullet-hell boss, get hit because there are too many projectiles. Then when the enemy is not attacking you hit it a few times. Combat is very turn-taking.

Unfortunately, the level up system is terrible. The level up system is clearly inspired by Path of Exile. You earn (or sometimes find) orbs that let you unlock linked nodes on a round grid, or upgrade already-unlocked nodes. Nodes give you either +1 to a stat, an extra healing potion/stamina potion, or the ability to use the next tier of equipment or spells.

Here's a picture of the skill tree: https://saltandsanctuary.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Salt-and-Sanctuary/salt-and-sanctuary-skill-tree.jpg

Want to let your mage use light armor? You can't just put a few points into Str and End and be on your way. Instead, you have to build out into the Rogue/Hunter tree. Want your Paladin to use a crossbow to deal with those obnoxious enemies guarding cliffs? Sorry, that's on the other side of the grid. Same with healing Prayers for your Hunter. And items another tier up are significantly better than base items. So good luck being effective later with that level 0 bow you picked up early on. Want to experiment with an interesting or hybrid build? Nope. Follow that linear skill tree, pal.

Overall, I CANNOT recommend this game, especially at the full price. If you can get it on a hefty sale, and you're really, really into these kinds of games, go for it. But the gameplay is not sufficiently polished to support an $18 asking price.