Love Letter to Souls | Salt & Sanctuary Review

Aboard a storm-ravaged ship, a brief tutorial shows you the ropes of Ska Studios’ new title. After learning the basics and slashing your way through enemies that are tearing apart your crewmates, you will find yourself topside against a gargantuan Cthulhu-like beast, that will inevitably, just like a lot of the bosses from the games that clearly inspired it, smash you into a pulp in no more than two hits. Welcome to Salt & Sanctuary, the Dark Souls inspired 2D hardcore action RPG, a game that clearly and unabashedly captures the mystique and gruelling difficulty of the Souls series. A sprawling world is yours to explore as you rifle through every nook and cranny to dive deep into the lore and discover a breadth of secrets.

After unsurprisingly failing to the first boss, your character will find themselves washed up on a mysterious island, not knowing anything about what lies ahead, you will dive head first into whatever awaits. Before all of this, you will have the opportunity to create the character that you will venture forward with. Choosing between a number of different classes, from knights, mages, clerics, paladins and even a chef with a cast iron skillet. All of these diverse classes will determine your starting gear and stats. Much like the Souls games, each enemy you defeat along your journey will get you a currency that can be used to upgrade your character, in this case, Salt, each time you die the Salt you have collected will be absorbed by the adversary that was your undoing. Granting you one opportunity to return to the scene of the crime, defeat your foe and claim back what is rightfully yours. However, this feat isn’t as easy as it sounds, given the opportunity, every enemy, great or small has the ability to take you down in a few well-timed hits, making for some rather frustrating moments where I witnessed a large amount of Salt vanish in front of my eyes with only myself to blame.

The levelling up system in Salt & Sanctuary has a similar structure to those from Final Fantasy X or Path of Exile, in that it is an overwhelmingly huge skill tree. Unlike those other games, this tree doesn’t feel as important, with only a handful of skills that actually can be upgraded, a lot of tree feels the same. Depending on what direction you head in within your tree, determines what kind of weapons and gear you will be able to use. Crossbows, whips, light armour and daggers one direction, Magic and wands another. I opted to head in the Heavy Armoured Swordfighter direction in my playthrough and sadly although I was happy that I turned myself into a hulking damage dealing tank, at that stage it would have taken a massive investment if I ever wanted to head into trying out another class.

The sanctuaries that are littered throughout the diverse map act as rest stops, where you can heal, level up and replenish your potion stocks, not unlike the bonfires from the Souls series. In addition to each sanctuary, you are able to place a number of assorted stone idols that will draw people to your sanctuary. A stone guide will permit you to fast travel, a stone merchant will let you purchase items or a stone blacksmith will allow you to upgrade your weapons. Upgrading your weapons is a big part of Salt & Sanctuary, not only are you able to upgrade each weapon and piece of gear to increase their stats you are also able to transmute your gear which transforms it, allowing for you to improve your arsenal to an even greater level.

Akin to the games that it clearly was inspired by, the boss battles and design are home to some of the greater moments throughout Salt & Sanctuary. The same candelabra sits at the beginning of every boss arena, every time I spotted one of those I was equally terrified as I was intrigued. From gargantuan behemoths to magic-hurling wizards, each boss was incredibly unique and made for some intense, difficult and often frustrating battles.

Everything in between these epic boss battles also displays the unwavering love of the series that Miyazaki has called his own. Hand drawn art delivers some gorgeous environments and equally grotesque enemies that will require you to be on the top of your game when heading into every encounter. The varied environments you will traverse throughout the 12+ hour journey, differ between dark and dank caverns, colossal sprawling castles and breezy ocean shores.  The level design all the way through Salt & Sanctuary is second to none, the Metroidvania-style map requires players to backtrack throughout it once new abilities are unlocked, discovering new locations that you weren’t able to reach previously or unravelling hidden treasures that could have easily been missed.

Ska Studios have also included both a New Game Plus mode that increases the games difficulty and allows you to try different classes as well as the ability to set a Stone Sellsword at any of your Sanctuaries, allowing players to invite their friends to play some local co-op, which is handy especially on some of the tougher bosses. Adding a wealth of replayability to the already quite lengthy campaign.

Salt & Sanctuary doesn’t shy away from its inspirations, it embraces them. Some may see it as a conflict of identity whereas it should be seen as a no holds barred love letter to a hugely successful franchise. Creating their own unique epic boss battles, distinctive and grotesque enemy design and an ever unfolding environment, Salt & Sanctuary exceeds in almost every aspect that it sets out to achieve.

This review is based off a retail copy of the Playstation 4 version of Sheltered published and developed by Ska Studios.