The Soulslike genre, a description of games that derive inspiration or similarity from dark souls is still in a difficult place. The soulslike is still regarded the same way that FPS’s were before people realized that every first person shooter game couldn’t be classified as a “doom clone”.
Eventually people will realize that the souls genre which Fromsoft has an outsized footprint within goes far beyond Fromsoft games. With that in mind, I wanted to write about several games in the soulslike genre which are unfairly seen as failures when in fact they bring something interesting to the table.
All the games covered in this series have major flaws I want to discuss, but they also have interesting qualities that more polished soulslikes don’t. These are not necessarily undiscovered masterpieces just cool games that deserve more appreciation for their own qualities.
Salt and Sacrifice
This sequel to a cult favorite souls title has been unfairly maligned.
Fans of the game “Salt and Sanctuary” have acted recently as if it was an untouchable masterpiece. While I think it’s a great game, it also has as many issues as its sequel “Salt and Sacrifice”. Because of when “Salt and Sanctuary” was released, it was groundbreaking because not only were there few 2d soulslikes, but it was rare that a Metroidvania was combined with a soulslike. Now that the two genres have become synonymous, “Salt and Sanctuary” is still good but feels less special.
People sometimes conflate their own nostalgia with brilliance in game design so “Salt and Sanctuary” became something of a sacred cow. Comparisons to “Salt and Sanctuary” have dogged the sequel, “Salt and Sacrifice” making it seem as if the sequel was a step down. In reality, both titles are at the same level. They’re both crude little gems with their share of frustration and successes.
Ska studios is no Fromsoft, but they are similar to that studio in that they are more self-critical than their rabid defenders. It seems that Ska studios looked around and saw that the original game would no longer stand out in the deluge of Soulslike/Metroidvania games. Instead, they tried to do something more akin to a roguelike structure as well as incorporating a lot of aspects of the “Monster Hunter” franchise. The resulting game isn’t perfect, but neither was the original and the vitriol directed at this game by fans of the first is gross.
“Salt and Sacrifice” has a lot going for it. The crude hand drawn style that James Silva brought to “Salt and Sanctuary” has only been more improved on, with each of the mages (the monstrous bosses you will be primarily fighting in this game) summoning memorably fucked up little elementals as you try to destroy them. There’s such a beautiful chaos to this at times, particularly when two mages spawn next to each and are each battling it out with their respective little bestiaries.
The story is pretty standard in that it’s vague both narratively and morally. It’s become standard in most Souls games for the quest you were on to turn out to be a piece of manipulation and your character has to decide whether to go along with it. Despite the rote nature of this ambiguity, there are a lot of nice little touches as the game unfolds. The mages when defeated revert to helpless naked figures and die each with a unique monologue. Some try to sow doubt within you and many just bemoan their lost power. The force mage has a funny monologue applauding you for showing greater strength in destroying them his credo being based on strength alone.
Another great touch is your main quest giver eventually disappears from the HUD only to appear in an earlier area on a platform contemplating suicide. I never figured out what triggered this but it was effective and spooky.
Not that I am saying that “Salt and Sacrifice” is perfect. The game has many glaring flaws much of which it inherited from the original game and some which are new to this series. There is no map which was annoying about the original game but particularly frustrating because the areas in the new game are each gigantic. This is partially helped by the “mage hunt” system which gives you rough direction as to where you are trying to go in each area. So as you hunt each mage you eventually find all the different sections of each area, which are more like 5 or six areas in one.
The problem with this is if you are trying to find a section you couldn’t unlock because you didn’t have one of your abilities or if you die and are trying to recover your “salt” (the game’s term for experience points). Then without a map, you are going to have a difficult time figuring out where you last died. Granted the areas are more visually distinct than the last game, but they are so huge that exploring them without a map is difficult.
You have to travel back to the main hub to upgrade weapons, level up and do a myriad of other tasks yet for some reason you can’t travel back to individual bonfires just one huge area which means losing a great deal of progress any time you wish to return to the HUD. This is understandable to try to give players the immersive feel of Demon Souls or other Fromsoft games, but it would have been nice to at least be able to level up by individual bonfires.
The combat is good but has many of the same issues as the original game with a lot of bosses and enemies doing one shot attacks and ragdolling your character across then screen. And in some of the bosses, the design is a bit too sweaty with bosses endlessly attacking and combat ending up being a series of trading damage.
I did hear a podcast interview with Silva, where he was tricked into being interviewed by someone who doesn’t like Souls games. But Silva said tellingly that they didn’t do playtesting on the game because they wanted it to appeal to hardcore souls players. This is a weird Fromsoft like strategy of refusing to compromise but I think you can see in a lot of the bosses that they should have been playtested more because in my opinion they are a bit too frenetic.
Some of the bosses feel like a realization of the mistaken critique of Elden ring that you just had to wait forever while the boss freaks out and then can only do one attack. It’s unclear if the strategy you are supposed to use is like Elden Ring in which , you have to break a bosses posture in order to get a chance to do serious damage but unlike Elden Ring, it feels a lot more random when boss posture actually breaks. I was able to beat most of the bosses in the game thus far but most of the time, I just felt like I got lucky rather than having a sense of learning their moveset. There is a cool guard break mechanic that occurs when you break a boss’s posture and you get to grapple onto them and do a critical attack, the problem was that I only saw this on my second playthrough when I was using a heavier weapon.
In contrast to the simplistic parrying system of the first game, “Salt and Sacrifice” has introduced a perfect blocking system like “Sekiro”. However, in my view, they went a bit overboard in how severe the system is in order to pull off a riposte. Even very simple enemies can require 2 or 3 perfect blocks to parry and some of the harder ones require 4 or 5 of them which is just a bit too harsh. This has lead some fans to claim that parrying is not in the game, it still is but it’s been made so difficult that many may not actually attempt it. Also the game does little to explain how the system works such that I didn’t even try and learn how to use it until I had been playing for a really long time.
Nevertheless, mastering the perfect block system is immensely satisfying now that I am getting the hang of it. There are certain enemies that I just can’t tell if you’re supposed to be able to perfect block, they do a long flurry of attacks which I rarely succeeded in blocking the whole time. But in most cases, it feels very satisfying to pull off a perfect block and get the riposte.
However, comparing the perfect block system in this game to a game that perfected it like “Sekiro” is illuminating. “Sekiro” never punished you for just blocking attacks, it rewarded you for deflecting with perfect timing and you could block for quite a while before having your posture broken. “Sekiro” also got rid of stamina so you could block and attack frenetically.
“Salt and Sacrifice” did an opposite approach where even in the patched version of the game, stamina is very restrictive. You are really punished by a huge loss of stamina for missing a perfect block. If “Salt and Sacrifice” had implemented a less punishing system where failing a perfect block doesn’t massively impact your stamina then it would be a lot more fun to engage with.
The game has a lot of flaws, but it still is interesting and worth your time, as much as any video game is.
The negative reaction to “Salt and Sacrifice” sadly is not confined to the aspects of the game that don’t work. Fans of the original game have been downright nitpicky about things they don’t like even when they are clearly improvements on the original. I read a post on Reddit saying that the music in the original game was better than the sequel which is hilarious because then original game only had two music cues where as “Salt and Sacrifice” has a full ambient soundtrack. The art is significantly better in the newer game, yet I read people bashing it because they dared to use a more complex color palette.
It’s fair that many people don’t like “Salt and Sacrifice” but is it fair if it’s being hated because the designers took risks? Ska Studios could have just rehashed “Salt and Sanctuary” and made a more forgettable game, but they stuck their neck out and tried something new. And for that, they have been unfairly punished by their own fan community. While “Salt and Sacrifice” is no masterpiece, it’s a considerably more interesting game than it’s given credit for.