Platform: PS4, Mac, Linux, PC
Year: 2016
Once again, I find myself in a position where I really need to talk about a game that some might catch interest in. There’s always a game out there that seems to get me talking a little bit in one regard or another, as some of you may know, but fewer that I would go out of the way to actually put down in a review just as I am about to do here. I actually realize something about myself when I do these reviews. I’m not picky as to what I play for the most part…well, sans maybe the Strategy and/or MOBA genres, but the games that I tend to talk about tend to hold a rather unique place to me in one regard or another, rather they be on the hype train like Super Mario Maker, or the more obscure ones like Strider (2014). That said, oddly enough, all the ones that I done a review for are games that I've actually liked...maybe I should go out of the way and play a game that doesn't gel all that well with me and actually post a review of a game with an actual low score for a change. Eh, whatever. At any rate, this review will lean towards the obscure side of things.
Not too much is known that I can find about the development of Salt and Sanctuary. I do know that at the very least, the game was in planning and development in 2014, but was not released until March of 2016, originally on the Playstation 4, and then roughly three to four months later on PC based platforms. The game was developed by Ska Studios, a company known for games such as The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai and Charlie Murder…which I admit I haven’t heard the first thing of, neither the publisher nor the games. However, this company has been reportedly notorious of making pretty good indie games for various platforms that are inspired by a lot of big name franchises. Salt and Sanctuary, incidentally, is no different taking inspirations from the From Software game known as Dark Souls.
I was introduced to Salt and Sanctuary in a way by a YouTuber by the name of TearOfGrace. Tear is a user based out of England who, while nowhere near got the notoriety of Pewdiepie or Markiplier, does have that rather unique entertainment value that I actually…well, kind of got hooked on. Originally, when I found him, I was trying to convince myself of getting Binding of Isaac: Rebirth/Afterbirth over a year ago, and users such as Northernlion or Admiral Bahroo…weren’t…selling it really. I nearly decided to not get Binding of Isaac until I saw Tear’s videos and actually got a lot of enjoyment out of it, which ultimately got me to get the game. And though I came for the Binding of Isaac videos, I stayed for the…well, lack of a better term, legacy of TearOfGrace. In late March of 2016, Tear uploaded a couple of videos pertaining to Salt and Sanctuary. He went into it to not only break the constant streak of Binding of Isaac videos, but he’s also a bit of a Dark Souls masochist. It seemed to be a perfect fit for him. He’s only done two videos on Salt and Sanctuary, but seeing it in action and his commentary, paired with Snagem’s very own Darts pushing the likes of Sol and I to play Dark Souls 1 (which we did), got me rather interested in Salt and Sanctuary for a while.
Because as if I didn’t get enough of this in my life, apparently.
This past Christmas, Crystal picked it off my Steam Wish List and yours truly finally got to play it. How does Salt and Sanctuary fair in the hands of the Cold One? Find out.
The Story:
Ages ago, many lands were at war with each other, but a ray of hope comes forth. All the fighting can come to a stop by means of wedlock. The princess needs to be escorted across seas in due haste to finally bring peace to the lands. However, in mid transit, the ship is overran by monsters and subsequently wrecked. You wash up on an island beachside, miraculously alive. If you were alive, who is to say that anyone else, namely the princess, is alive as well? However, you’re not alone on this island. The island is a cursed place. Various unholy monsters and creatures reside in the many locales of this island, locales that resemble various places in the world that has been infamous in one regard or another.
Oh, this bodes well…
Truthfully, that would be the gist of it. There’s really not that much story there. Taking a page out of Dark Souls, Salt and Sanctuary provides you lore throughout the game in very small little bites. You get your general gist and motivation at the beginning of the game, and throughout the rest, you draw your own conclusions based on what you can find, and like Dark Souls, that’s where a good bit of the appeal comes from as far as the lore is concerned. The feeling of ‘there’s more to this than what there seems to be’ sticks with you from start to finish as you traverse the decrepit landscape and architectures of the island; that kind of feeling that kind of leaves you on edge the more information you gather.
The Gameplay:
So what happens when the storytelling, game mechanics, and most notoriously the brutality of Dark Souls and the exploration, pacing, and the controls of a “Metroidvania” game have a love child? Well, Salt and Sanctuary is the answer. On the Dark Souls side of things, for starters, is making your character. You get the choice of one of several classes, from the sturdy knight, to the squishy mage, and a few in between. Each class will have a set of equipment they each start with as well as some predetermined status at the beginning of the game that may dictate the pacing of your game at the start.
Next, the game makes one thing clear: You have to be careful from start to finish of this game. One missed jump, one missed swing of your weapon, overlooking key details of the ground you walk on, and it could very well cost you your life easily. You can’t go around like in most games as if you are the juggernaut and expect to power your way through. The game will punish you for it. It doesn’t matter if you are low leveled or maxed leveled, if you want to have the best chance at survival, you will have to upgrade your skills to be able to use the weapons, wear the armor, and cast the spells, that you find on the island and pay attention to everything, and that’s not even getting into the matter of raising your endurance to carry it all. Furthermore, as far as weapons and armor are concerned, you will have to upgrade them to make life on the island just a slight bit easier.
Something tells me this is going to be a long game.
To upgrade said skills and armor, you will need salt. Like collecting souls in Dark Souls, to obtain salt, you defeat enemies or find the occasional item that grant you salt. This is going to be your primary currency in this game to make upgrades of any kind, rather it be getting skills into your skill tree or to upgrade your weapons and armor. The bigger the upgrade, obviously, the bigger the price in salt. Furthermore, as far as weapons and armor are concerned, to upgrade them, they will also require materials that the creatures on the island drops so one has to be mindful of what they’re upgrading. Speaking of said salt, one loses all of their salt upon dying. You will have a chance to re-obtain your lost salt, rather if it’s an enemy that slain you, or if you died by falling too long of a fall or succumb to some hazard. Dying a second time without retrieving the salt will make you permanently lose that amount of salt for good.
Also speaking of said weapons and armor usage, fighting is also based around Dark Souls. You can hack and slash all you care for, but your attack speed will be dictated based on what weapon you carry, how its carried, if you’re carrying anything extra, such as a wand or a shield, and, just as any actual person swinging a weapon around, you’re not swinging a big sword forever more until you stop pressing the button because you are also hindered by a stamina meter. Every jump, spell, and weapon attack you do will be dictated by constantly refilling, yet ever shrinking stamina meter. The longer you stay out to fight and explore, the more your stamina meter starts to shrink. Incidentally, the same can be said about your health meter as well. The more damage you take, heal all you like, but the overall max HP will shrink to show how wounded you are. Both meters will only go back to normal when you either have an item to alleviate it or you find a sanctuary to rest.
Sweet serenity…
And on that note, the sanctuaries themselves. Throughout the game, there are places where you can claim a sanctuary for the creed you are in. At the start of the game, you can choose one of three creeds, and what each of these creeds provide are different in one fashion or another. Some may worship gods, others don’t. Regardless if they do or not, they all will have some sort of use to you. While you get the choice of one of three in the beginning, you’ll find there are several throughout. Some may go based on the will of man and provide more material things such as heavier weaponry, while one may go on based on nature, while others may be a magic based creed. You will be able to make offerings to the creed, using various stone idols to summon various NPCs into the creed to get certain services and benefits that will extend throughout the area you are currently in. You’ll be able to change creeds any time you like, however, doing so will make you an apostate of the Creed you left, and you will not be able to take an oath to the creed again, let alone use the services in the sanctuary, if there are any, until you essentially bribe your sins away by means of a person in an out of the way area to absolve your sin. You will still be able to rest in the previous sanctuary, but that’s about all the leeway you get.
On the Metroidvania side of things, the island is laid out similarly to a Metroid or an Igarashi-brand Castlevania title. Within the map, there are secrets abound everywhere that aren’t obvious by any means and to fully explore the entire map, you will need to obtain Brands, which are essentially symbols burned into you, to be able to explore. There is one that will allow you to defy gravity at certain points to be allowed to walk on ceilings and another one that allows you to wall jump to climb to higher points, for example. There are six in all for you to collect to be able to traverse the extent of the island. Furthermore, you will have to fight most bosses in this game to advance, and obviously they are not glad to see you.
Oh, I’m sure she is!
The controls of the game are simplistic, more geared like a Metroidvania instead of Dark Souls, which I find as a reprieve. In Dark Souls, the attack and guard buttons were all on the shoulder buttons, which was extremely awkward for about the first two or three hours of the game. In Salt and Sanctuary, the buttons are in more sensible positions, X is your light attack, Y is your heavy, A is Jump, B is a general action button, like executing an enemy when prompted or checking chests. The Left Bumper switches your immediate weapons on the fly and the Left Trigger button is guard if you got a shield. Right trigger is an evasive roll and the Right Bumper is using the item that you got selected on your HUD. The left and right on your directional pad cycles your usable set items and down lights torches that you find to light your way through extremely dark areas. On your start menu, trigger buttons are reserved in cycling items on your HUD and using said items and furthermore turning the pages in your menus when the occasion calls for it.
The overall simplicity of controls and the homage to both genres in their respective rights makes the gameplay quite enjoyable throughout. Without the distraction of being mindful of where your button presses are, you can focus more on what’s going on in the game, an issue that I had with Dark Souls. If there’s any issue that I might have with this game, it would be the fact that it’s fairly easy to get lost in this game in your first run through. The game provides you with no map at all, rather it be on the pause screen or as a small progressive thing on your HUD like you would see in games like Dust: An Elysian Tale or Castlevania.
Visuals and Audio:
By design of the developer, there’s not much to put in here. As far as visuals are concerned, everything is hand drawn and simplistic; everything from the character design, to the weapons, armor, and the locales that you explore. That said, there is a whole lot of grey and general darkness. There isn’t much in the way to the color palette. Desaturation is what I believe is the word I’m looking for. That being said, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. That, coupled with the occasional minimalist music tracks that play every few minutes or so while traversing the accursed island, brings a feeling of urgency and dread, constantly reminding you that you have to get the hell off of this island.
The only time the music in particular ramps up is during the boss fights. Some bosses are reserved with a rock theme while others have a more orchastraic one to let you know that you are in deep.
The Side Notes:
There isn’t much more that I can talk about at this point. As far as replay value is concerned, there is a New Game Plus that you can do, replaying the game from start to finish, staring from where you wash up on the beach on the island. Nothing changes other than the strength of the enemies and the amount of salt they drop. You’d probably be doing New Game Plus to do nothing more than to finish up what achievements you didn’t get on your initial playthrough. If you go into new game plus properly built, you’ll have no problems with it. It’s just the matter of using the skills you acquired, both in game and out, and breezing on through.
There is a 2-player co-op mode in Salt and Sanctuary. By acquiring a Stone Sellsword idol and offering it up in a sanctuary, you will be able to get a second player into your game. Unfortunately, this is a feature that I was not able to use because I literally have no one to play with for that the co-op mode is local couch only. I can’t vouch if there are any tweaks between a one player and two player game.
The only online component to the game is by means of seeing where players died by randomly placed grave markers of various creeds throughout the island and seemingly-at-first randomly placed bottles. Believe it or not, these can be potentially of use. The grave markers indicate where another player died, potentially warning you of danger in the area you are in. As a side note, incidentally, some of the people in the game that you find hanging by noose or impaled in the background, just as you see pictured above, are also players that met an unfortunate end somehow. Incidentally, the same could be said of the Journey Bottles. You will be able to get one of these yourself. These messages are short to give a heads up to other players to potential dangers or much needed-to-know secrets, messages that you too can make. But of course, since this is the internet we’re talking about, there’s also potential to troll on various degrees as well.
You don’t say.
The Final Say:
Salt and Sanctuary is a game that I had a pretty fun time in. I’m going to lie, just as Dark Souls was, there are going to be various parts that will be frustrating to get through, but it isn’t going to cheat you at all. If you screw up, it’s your fault. It’s brutal, but once you get the pace that the game wants you to go in, it will pretty much be millhouse. Its homage to both the Souls series as well as Metroidvanias synergize quite well. It will demand skill over power leveling, but at the same time also encourages you to explore to find safe havens and secrets to further help you on your quests. The lore was pretty cool and interesting once I finally was able to piece it together, the bosses were fun to fight against, the general ambiance of the game was great, and not having to be mindful of the controls too much left me in the position where I can actually stay more focused in the game than anything else. That being said, there is no clear direction in the game and with no map of any kind, you are bound to probably run in circles, if not die in the process, many times until you finally figure out where you need to go, which may be a turn off. To put in perspective, my very first file ran over 100 hours. All in all, I give Salt and Sanctuary a 9 out of 10.
Hello darkness, my old friend…