Getting more and more into the horror genre in the past years, a small title, Saving Grace, seemed to look compellingly enough for me to try it out, even though I was not exactly sure about what should I expect. Well, unfortunately, I still ended up quite disappointed as I could not find an aspect that would make the time I spend with this game worth it.
As your daughter, Grace, gets kidnapped by mysterious hooded cultists, your wife tries to find her. Unsuccessfully. After spending some time alone in sadness and despair, you decide to go search for them. Yet, it is not that simple as there are forces of evil in your way, coming right from Hell itself, who seem to have their own twisted and devious plan for your family.
The main problem is that the story is not gripping at all. I had absolutely zero interest in caring about characters, finding out about the “mysteries”, or even being thrilled about how the game might end. That accompanies another issue, which is that the story is overly ambitious, trying to jump in timelines and include prophecies that result in a dreadful, uninteresting mess. On top of that, both endings try to question your final choice. It falls completely flat, and I did not care.

It does not mean that the broad general idea of the story is bad, per se. However, trying to fit the search for your family, flashbacks into your past, random several fighting sequences, uncovering the truth about the cult, and exploring Hell itself while keeping in mind various prophecies is just way too much for an hour and a half. Sometimes stories do not have to be overcomplicated to have an impact, especially with such a small amount of playtime.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2411537270
Saving Grace suffers from the same problem with its gameplay. It tries, once again, offer too much for its own good. This title fails to provide a compelling experience because all the different gameplay segments last only for a few minutes. It is not enough for what it tries to do, and perhaps it would be better if it would stick with one defined style, which would be more fleshed out and satisfying to play.

This title tries to set an eerie atmosphere at first, making you find numerous items, so you could proceed to the next part. Sometimes it works a bit during scripted events, but the whole town is unnecessarily large. That results in you wandering around while nothing is happening. There is no feeling of being threatened by the unknown. No tension. Maybe it would be better if one of the cultists would roam the area or guard certain places, but you will not find it there. It is also worth mentioning that the game basically tells you where you should go look for the said items.

After that, Saving Grace suddenly changes its pace by giving you a curved sword and basically ordering you to get to the end and kill every demon in your way. While I appreciate the details like cutting off the limbs and such, it feels out of place. The game just stopped with trying to be atmospheric, changing itself into a boring hack-and-slash, as the demons behave like slow zombies rather than somehow intelligent beings.

Then it changes the pace again by giving you a handgun. However, you have to kill cultists now. I would imagine that fighting a secret cult that kidnaps people for their twisted rituals would be somehow challenging or that the game would at least make it intriguing. No. These fellows decide that the very best thing to do against a person with a gun is to slowly run towards them with nothing but fists. Not only that it looks ludicrous at best, but it is also not enjoyable. And even if you somehow manage to die, you just respawn a meter or two next to your lovely killer. That is dull, especially as the combat is apparently important in this title.

Perhaps the best part of Saving Grace is its boss fight, which is heavily marketed as some sort of selling point. And it is okayish, with a few different attack patterns. That only makes me think why other enemies did not get such treatment? Why the game tried to be an atmospheric horror when it turns into a mindless action halfway through?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2411537348
I would say that the visuals are enough for what the game is. Sure, they are not astonishing, but not that bad either. Some of the details hidden throughout the level are pretty nice, so there is definitely some thought in it. What I had a problem with is the game’s voice acting. Sometimes it is serviceable, and sometimes it is so bad that I could not understand some of the words properly. Sometimes it is missing completely. And there are pop-ups with the speakers’ caricature at times instead of normal subtitles or voice, which ruins any last bits of immersion completely.

And that is all. It is a shame, really. While I believe that the general idea behind Saving Grace might be interesting, it does not work in such a short game. There just is not something I would recommend this title for, and I probably will not even remember Saving Grace soon. Perhaps some future attempts will be more thought-out, but this one did not work for me.

PC Specs & Performance

As for the performance… It is quite bad. Saving Grace runs on the Unity engine, and I often had drops down to 30 frames per second, resulting in a tedious experience. The game was tested with an i5 8300, GTX 1060 6GB, and 16GB RAM, running at the highest settings, at 1920x1080 resolution. I would expect much better performance, especially as it is more crucial to the first-person shooter.

Acknowledgement

This game was provided for review purposes by the developer through DitD.

Curator Link

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Terrible game