Ska Studios is gearing up to roll out a successor to its own 2016 platform action game Salt and Sanctuary, this time called Salt and Sacrifice. While it’s officially out tomorrow, I only got the game this past weekend and there’s a lot more to explore. In lieu of a full review prior to the game’s launch, I’d like to introduce my first impressions of Salt and Sacrifice, two things that were decidedly mixed up after dozens of hours of mage hunting.
Following in the footsteps of its predecessor, Salt and Sacrifice achieves a 2D Soul-like feel. After perishing in the opening moments, your character becomes a Spellmarked, an entity that crosses the line between life and death with the power of magic. Another of your titles is as an Inquisitor tasked with hunting and cannibalizing the hearts of dangerous Mages, giant monster bosses you’ll battle throughout the game. They’re all pre-builds for the genre but do its job of bringing you into the world and tracking down the Mages, although the Inquisitors’ plight has yet to get me past the setup.
I enjoyed running through Ashbourne Village and Bol Gerahn, the first two locations I was sent to on my quest to kill the various Mages. The former is a ruined settlement surrounded by verdant hills and jungle, while the latter takes me to explore the sandy ruins in the desert. I like the variety in the settings and there are some interesting background challenges to be worked on. The levels are large and have all sorts of paths and shortcuts to find while fighting native enemies for each place. Hidden around the world are key points to progress in Salt and Sacrifice, vaguely interesting points that begin the main experiment in the game: the hunt for a Named Mage.
Mages are human beings with monstrous forms composed of various elements such as ice, fire, water, poison, light, and many others. Marked Inquisitors track Mages around a level and clash with them in encounters with summoned enemy minions. The mages will hide again after a short while, and the process repeats itself until the boss settles down in one place and the real fight begins. These bosses are half fun, half painful for slogans to adopt. My favorite battles by far are the ones that reward recognition of the Mage’s attack patterns, resulting in a satisfying kill after a few tries. Unfortunately, the deeper I got into the game, the more their attacks became one-shot cheap hits. I only find success in recent matches if I get lucky instead of learning anything useful from the encounter.
Salt and Sacrifice reminds me of Monster Hunter in its crafting and equipment system; however, I have yet to be sold on implementing it. Defeated Mages and their minions will drop crafting materials used to craft armor and weapons in the style of those creatures and the elements they represent. I really like that Mage fights are not an overnight situation and can be found and defeated outside of their named Mage hunts for more ingredients. What makes the system difficult for me is the need to unlock certain armor and weapon classes in the Tree of Skill.
Since the ability to use only every craftable item is locked after skill points, trying out different weapons or using armor will have limited versatility which will help the fight against a Specific mage easier. For example, I went into building Highblade Skills (katana) in the skill tree early on, thinking that equipment usage would only be tied to stats. As a result, I’m now limited in what I can wear and use in battle as all light and heavy armor skill buttons are on other parts of the tree. I feel stymied by the lack of testing out different weapons, and the same goes for preparing for battles, I have the right gear but can’t wear it effectively. It’s frustrating having to go back and figure out what skills to pay for – with limited reagents – and reallocate these precious skill points elsewhere to unlock the ability to wear some other armor together.
While my most recent hours in Salt and Sacrifice have been, for lack of a better term, salty, I think there’s a lot to like here for Souls fans and even lovers love Monster Hunter. They are two sequences that share a lot of DNA with attack animations prioritized and focused on learning boss patterns to win. Playing one helped me play the other, so combining the hunting and crafting aspects into one Soul sounds like a great idea on paper. However, Ska Studios didn’t apply the best ideas from each film to create the perfect combination. I’m cautiously optimistic that the rest of Salt and Sacrifice will eventually redeem itself, but from what I’ve played so far, it’s flawed in ways that make hours of boss fights fruitless without rewards that I can actually use. I don’t think I’ve covered everything Salt and Sacrifice has to offer, but I’ll share my final thoughts in a full review when I do.
