Skip Salt and Sacrifice

[Ace]

It's nowhere near the same quality as the original. It's a slapdash number-fighter rather than anything close to the souls-like combat from the original. Bosses simply do not have openings unless you're using a very specific style of build.

It feels like the developer played the game once, with his own personal preference of a build, made a game around that, and then added the rest after the fact.

I mean this quite literally. Bosses have hitboxes and attack speeds so damn thicc that even with the BEST POSSIBLE ROLL SPEED, you CANNOT HIT THEM AND STILL SAFELY ROLL AWAY BEFORE THE NEXT ATTACK, and it's not like they have a stamina meter where you can wear them down into a "Break" state, or anything like that. They just keep swinging.

So you essentially have to spend every boss fight in Co-op, trading out who gets hit just to do damage, and playing solo is damn near impossible.

Honestly, truly, it's not a good game. It's not worth your money, and aside from the paid reviews epic store shows (Because remember, Epic does not allow for user reviews, and they KNEW ahead of time people were not going to be happy with their product because of the lack of polish and the bugs, which I will get to later), people seem fairly displeased with it all around.

Multiplayer is ALREADY DEAD. As in the golden candle, which is used to enable multiplayer, does not work and has been disabled. Invasions are not a thing that has ever happened to me in my many hours of play, and using a cursed page to invade resulted in just...waiting.

However, I CAN play online, proven by the fact that I am able to still connect to anyone who I directly have a passcode to, which is fine in and of itself, but if the items themselves do not work, and Epic has no forums with which to connect, you're left with searching through reddit or some other site for someone to play with, which is already more hassle than it's worth.

Now, to list the bugs I've encountered in my hours of play (Sub 10 , I think roughly 8, if we don't count just testing the classes on the first boss and afking in town):

Dropped salt (your exp) falling through the floor and vanishing forever.

Dropped salt getting stuck in the air and being unable to be reclaimed.

Bosses falling out of the boss room, leaving you stuck in the boss room.

Being launched through a solid wall that I was trying to wall-jump off of.

Enemies flying INSANE distances (like a zombie jumping up an entire mountainside through floors and walls just to land next to me.).

Enemies attacks "Trading" resets their attack animations, so their attacks sometimes hit 2-3 times in the span of 1 animation.

Silver vanishing from inventory. It wasn't even a death loss. It just vanished.

Jumps are finicky, meaning you often fall through things you clearly were close enough to grab onto, often leading to death and again, lost progress.


I honestly feel Salt and Sacrifice was made as a quick cash in on the brand, made so "Hard" that it would pad out the runtime so refunds couldn't be made. I say this, because after the first hour or so, the gameplay quality drops DRAMATICALLY. Enemies get even more stiff, animations get worse, bosses get lazier and more broken.

[Bankai9212]

*the backlogs wants to know your location. Lol jokes aside I'll play it at some point but the whole monster hunter mage mechanic felt like it made to make up for the lack of overall bosses.

[gungadin22000]

I like this game - it tries a lot of new things compared to SS1, and not all of them work out that well, but the game is still very enjoyable.

By the way, you CAN deplete a the "poise meter" of a boss. Hit it enough times, it will stun briefly and its face will get shiny like a grapple hook spot. Jump and grapple it in the face for extra damage.

[Mike]

I'm enjoying it. Feels just as good as the first game and the devs actually tried to try something different rather then just making the same game. I can understand people not liking the new "monster hunter" lite mechanics but they don't make it bad by any means, there are still normal bosses you will be fighting as you progress the just like the first game so it is a non issue for me.

I feel this game needed something to make it unique compared to the first because of the "souls-like" genre is filled to the brim atm and many are bored/burned out of the formulae (me included).

For 20 bucks I got what was advertised and what I expected from a game made by the same people as the first game.

Also how can anyone with even a bit brain cells call the new game a "cash grab" when the first game came out 6 years ago lol??? This is no annual franchise like AC or COD it is a game that has be in development and beta tested for years, so calling it a "cash-grab" when it is only $20 is incredibly disingenuous. This is a game where you must get use the mechanics or you will get destroyed by the later bosses. You need to understand the parry/timed block mechanic because you can negate all damage and you don't lose stamina if your block is timed properly. Sounds like OP assumed this game would play exactly like every other souls-like where it is hit, hit, dodge ....repeat over and over. In this game you NEED to parry or you will get juggled by attacks that are not meant to be i-framed dodged.

To each there own but I would advise people to try the game for themselves (Yes you can refund after 2hrs on Epic as well if you don't like it) if you like the first game because it is more of the same except with a twist and some new mechanics. The OP here seems like he tried to play the game expecting to dodge roll everything and got frustrated because that is not how many boss fights in this game work and it is very unforgiving if you dodge into attacks incorrectly. Its the same as complaining that Nioh was cheap/too hard because you can't dodge i-frame every single attack liek in a souls game.

I have 8-10hrs in this game (so far) at this point and while i will not praise this game as some must play 10/10 game, it is exactly what it says it is and what people of the first game would expect. Its a very fun 2D Souls/MH/metroid-vania game that is at the price an indie game should be priced at. As with any game a person may be interested in, I recommend trying it yourself before taking OPs (or my word) at face value.

[gungadin22000]

A good post, especially regarding parrying now being more essential than it used to be. SS1 was very much based on DS, SS2 seems to have taken a page out of Sekiro's book as well, with more free-form exploration with the grappling hook and parry mechanics.

I play a dodgerolly character, so a video on how to properly use parry in this game may be a way to convince some naysayers about the juggle mechanics not being obscenely unfair. Personally, on my light armour build, it seems to me that you can dodge while getting up from being knocked down, so constant juggle combos don't seem to be that much of an issue to me. Then again, I am only level 30something and have killed 5 mages so far.

And yeah, this game is clearly not lazy, unimaginative or derivative and the asking price is far from unreasonable. "Cash grab" is an extremely unfair accusation to make at a 2 man hipster dev studio, especially one with a very long history of making quality indies like Ska/Totally Skrewed Software.

[Ace]

Originally posted by gungadin22000:

I like this game - it tries a lot of new things compared to SS1, and not all of them work out that well, but the game is still very enjoyable.

By the way, you CAN deplete a the "poise meter" of a boss. Hit it enough times, it will stun briefly and its face will get shiny like a grapple hook spot. Jump and grapple it in the face for extra damage.

I mean, yes, but that often takes a significant amount of damage. It's more of a "finisher" by the time it's stunned, and is really build reliant, and is specific to some bosses, and just doesn't happen on others.

I don't want to just say it has no value, because the art is nice and the enemy visual designs are neat, but the gameplay mechanical side of the game is a bad joke.

Originally posted by gungadin22000:

A good post, especially regarding parrying now being more essential than it used to be. SS1 was very much based on DS, SS2 seems to have taken a page out of Sekiro's book as well, with more free-form exploration with the grappling hook and parry mechanics.

I play a dodgerolly character, so a video on how to properly use parry in this game may be a way to convince some naysayers about the juggle mechanics not being obscenely unfair. Personally, on my light armour build, it seems to me that you can dodge while getting up from being knocked down, so constant juggle combos don't seem to be that much of an issue to me. Then again, I am only level 30something and have killed 5 mages so far.

And yeah, this game is clearly not lazy, unimaginative or derivative and the asking price is far from unreasonable. "Cash grab" is an extremely unfair accusation to make at a 2 man hipster dev studio, especially one with a very long history of making quality indies like Ska/Totally Skrewed Software.

Well, I'd love to see what kind of cancel mechanics you've got that allow you to roll out of the air mid knockback, because that's not a natural mechanic that I've seen.

If you're talking about rolling off of the ground after being knocked down, that's not what people mean. People are talking about getting fully dropped from level appropriate enemies hitting them once at full HP because of combos that take place mid-air.

Also, there's a parry mechanic? The one where you block on contact is a deathwish and stuns bosses for MAYBE a single swing. It's nothing worth risking getting one shot, and yet dodge rolls do not have enough recovery frames between the roll and starting an attack to actively hit a boss and not be hit in return for it. The frame numbers simply do not add up.

If a roll behind + single swing + roll again is too slow to preform with a dagger, what else are you supposed to do against the boss? Parry it, get one shot when the parry window doesn't trigger (because it's really not consistent with animations at all.), and then keep throwing yourself at that wall until the game lets you win?

I'm about 20 mages in across a multitude of builds. I figure I'll probably be about a week before you start seeing the "DO NOT BUYS" on youtube all over the place.

And honestly, Ska's sob stories do not move me. S&S was abandoned pretty hard after launch, and many of the issues of that game remained. It doesn't really matter how big or small your company is, when you charge money for a product, it doesn't alleviate you from criticism or your game from being buggy or bad.

If S&S was a free to play, sure. I'd chalk it up to inexperience, since they've only made a handful of extremely basic, samey games, like the dishwasher samurai and junk like that, but when it comes to asking for money for a product, especially when you're only releasing it in places where feedback can't be given, it paints a picture of a much crappier Ska. One whose sob stories do not sway me, and as it stands, still does not make up for the fact that STATED FEATURES DO NOT WORK.

You can't just wave your hands in the air and go "Oh well, I'm only one guy, you really shouldn't have expected the bullet points on the box to actually function properly!"

That's not how Products work. That's a lazy defense for lazy development. If it had stated on the store page that it was a work in progress? Fine. Whatever. But it doesn't.

And knowing Ska, and how poorly they managed the original, there's a good chance this is just "how the game is" and will always be, with no updates, bug fixes, DLC or anything like that. They're not known for great support, they're known for making a game and then bailing out and using "We're only 2 people" as an excuse time after time after time while the game fades into obscurity while the people who bought it are left trying to hack together some kind of play value out of the thing.

[Mike]

Originally posted by Scrompfy:

Originally posted by gungadin22000:

I like this game - it tries a lot of new things compared to SS1, and not all of them work out that well, but the game is still very enjoyable.

By the way, you CAN deplete a the "poise meter" of a boss. Hit it enough times, it will stun briefly and its face will get shiny like a grapple hook spot. Jump and grapple it in the face for extra damage.

I mean, yes, but that often takes a significant amount of damage. It's more of a "finisher" by the time it's stunned, and is really build reliant, and is specific to some bosses, and just doesn't happen on others.

I don't want to just say it has no value, because the art is nice and the enemy visual designs are neat, but the gameplay mechanical side of the game is a bad joke.

Originally posted by gungadin22000:

A good post, especially regarding parrying now being more essential than it used to be. SS1 was very much based on DS, SS2 seems to have taken a page out of Sekiro's book as well, with more free-form exploration with the grappling hook and parry mechanics.

I play a dodgerolly character, so a video on how to properly use parry in this game may be a way to convince some naysayers about the juggle mechanics not being obscenely unfair. Personally, on my light armour build, it seems to me that you can dodge while getting up from being knocked down, so constant juggle combos don't seem to be that much of an issue to me. Then again, I am only level 30something and have killed 5 mages so far.

And yeah, this game is clearly not lazy, unimaginative or derivative and the asking price is far from unreasonable. "Cash grab" is an extremely unfair accusation to make at a 2 man hipster dev studio, especially one with a very long history of making quality indies like Ska/Totally Skrewed Software.

Well, I'd love to see what kind of cancel mechanics you've got that allow you to roll out of the air mid knockback, because that's not a natural mechanic that I've seen.

If you're talking about rolling off of the ground after being knocked down, that's not what people mean. People are talking about getting fully dropped from level appropriate enemies hitting them once at full HP because of combos that take place mid-air.

Also, there's a parry mechanic? The one where you block on contact is a deathwish and stuns bosses for MAYBE a single swing. It's nothing worth risking getting one shot, and yet dodge rolls do not have enough recovery frames between the roll and starting an attack to actively hit a boss and not be hit in return for it. The frame numbers simply do not add up.

If a roll behind + single swing + roll again is too slow to preform with a dagger, what else are you supposed to do against the boss? Parry it, get one shot when the parry window doesn't trigger (because it's really not consistent with animations at all.), and then keep throwing yourself at that wall until the game lets you win?

I'm about 20 mages in across a multitude of builds. I figure I'll probably be about a week before you start seeing the "DO NOT BUYS" on youtube all over the place.

And honestly, Ska's sob stories do not move me. S&S was abandoned pretty hard after launch, and many of the issues of that game remained. It doesn't really matter how big or small your company is, when you charge money for a product, it doesn't alleviate you from criticism or your game from being buggy or bad.

If S&S was a free to play, sure. I'd chalk it up to inexperience, since they've only made a handful of extremely basic, samey games, like the dishwasher samurai and junk like that, but when it comes to asking for money for a product, especially when you're only releasing it in places where feedback can't be given, it paints a picture of a much crappier Ska. One whose sob stories do not sway me, and as it stands, still does not make up for the fact that STATED FEATURES DO NOT WORK.

You can't just wave your hands in the air and go "Oh well, I'm only one guy, you really shouldn't have expected the bullet points on the box to actually function properly!"

That's not how Products work. :katana_psych: That's a lazy defense for lazy development. If it had stated on the store page that it was a work in progress? Fine. Whatever. But it doesn't.

And knowing Ska, and how poorly they managed the original, there's a good chance this is just "how the game is" and will always be, with no updates, bug fixes, DLC or anything like that. They're not known for great support, they're known for making a game and then bailing out and using "We're only 2 people" as an excuse time after time after time while the game fades into obscurity while the people who bought it are left trying to hack together some kind of play value out of the thing.

I will continue to disagree with most everything you said. I play games for fun and don't expect every single game to get constant updates and content. There are plenty of games that are released and left the way they were intended.

I am about 11-12hr in at this point, I have ran into no bugs what-so-ever, I have played 1 invasion (got ganked) and further I get the more I enjoy it because I'm having to actually learn the bosses mechanics (like GOOD bosses tend have going for them). I have no favoritism for the dev team which is why I did not know that both this and the last game was made by just 2 people, which is even more impressive to me.

What I purchased was a great indie 2D action game with souls-like and MH-like mechanics (even the lore is getting interesting and not over convoluted). I feel I have already gotten my worth because I have enjoyed everything I have experienced so far. The problem I have with your statements is even if I agreed with you on the "issues" you believe the game has, I would still NOT tell others it is NOT "worth it" or that it is bad. I would simply recommend others to try it with caution to see if they like it because what I like is not what everyone else likes.

This trend of hating on games because they are not up to YOUR expectations and trying to get everyone else to hate it along side you is just childish and only kills the chance for these smaller games to get a bigger audience. I would rather others try the game themselves and if they don't like it after 1.5 hrs then refund, its that simple.

From my experience I recommend this game for people who are into souls-like 2D platformers (especially if you like the first). The difference between my take and yours is that I'm not screaming from the mountain tops to automatically dislike the game because I said so lol.

So once again You have your OPINION and I have mine. I just recommend people try it themselves first if they have any interest at all.

EDIT: Also as far as the timed block is concerned that mechanic is 100% useful and needed in times where you get overwhelmed and cannot dodge the bosses attacks. Its NOT hard and only requires you get the timing down because once you do you can time block any boss attack and take no damage and no stamina loss. For example the stone boss has a move that summons a rock spike right under you. If you perfect block that then it literally can't hurt you and you still are in a good spot. You are using the block incorrectly because its not to Stagger the bosses its to use when rolling will get yo into trouble. Also I am using a greatsword to block and I still take very little damage or stamina loss. If you don't utilize it you will get juggled to death, you will roll into attacks all of the time and you will get frustrated as your post seems to show. Learn the mechanics and those bosses that gave you an issue because easy.

[gungadin22000]

I suspect that going from SS1 to SS2 is a bit like me going from Dark Souls to Nioh. In Nioh, blocking is actually super-useful and deals zero HP damage to you, only draining your stamina bar until depleted.

Gonna have to try making a vanguard-knight type character and going very blocky to test this out at some point.

[BadMedium]

The man looked at his well-combat system with quality-of-life components in SS1 and started hacking stuff off. And for what? Did he contract out to the B-team at Fromsoft to make this one? What happened?

[Tourette's Guy]

Unfortunately the game is a step back from Salt and Sanctuary in basically everything. It tries to be many things at the same time, and fails at every single of them.

Was it that hard just to make a sequel maintaining the same features but with proper online features? We just wanted another 2D dark souls. Not this Monster Hunter/Dark Souls hybrid with the bullsheet of Elden Ring combat.

[NoMegaCorps]

Honestly I stopped playing Salt and Sacrifice halfway through. Then I looked on YouTube regarding the ending and was very disappointed.

Definitely a step back all around from Salt and Sanctuary.

[Jauder le Bonette]

Originally posted by Mike:

[

EDIT: Also as far as the timed block is concerned that mechanic is 100% useful and needed in times where you get overwhelmed and cannot dodge the bosses attacks. Its NOT hard and only requires you get the timing down because once you do you can time block any boss attack and take no damage and no stamina loss. For example the stone boss has a move that summons a rock spike right under you. If you perfect block that then it literally can't hurt you and you still are in a good spot. You are using the block incorrectly because its not to Stagger the bosses its to use when rolling will get yo into trouble. Also I am using a greatsword to block and I still take very little damage or stamina loss. If you don't utilize it you will get juggled to death, you will roll into attacks all of the time and you will get frustrated as your post seems to show. Learn the mechanics and those bosses that gave you an issue because easy.

How in the actual ♥♥♥♥ anyone is supposed to know this mechanic even exists

[gungadin22000]

It's a fairly common mechanic in melee combat RPGs. This game seems to borrow it from Sekiro to an extent. I worked it out by accident after discovering perfect blocking sounded differently and stunned minions when done correctly.

Did you want a tutorial for it?

[TonkatsuRamen]

Originally posted by gungadin22000:

A good post, especially regarding parrying now being more essential than it used to be. SS1 was very much based on DS, SS2 seems to have taken a page out of Sekiro's book as well, with more free-form exploration with the grappling hook and parry mechanics.

I play a dodgerolly character, so a video on how to properly use parry in this game may be a way to convince some naysayers about the juggle mechanics not being obscenely unfair. Personally, on my light armour build, it seems to me that you can dodge while getting up from being knocked down, so constant juggle combos don't seem to be that much of an issue to me. Then again, I am only level 30something and have killed 5 mages so far.

And yeah, this game is clearly not lazy, unimaginative or derivative and the asking price is far from unreasonable. "Cash grab" is an extremely unfair accusation to make at a 2 man hipster dev studio, especially one with a very long history of making quality indies like Ska/Totally Skrewed Software.

I never parried once and I am standing in front of the last boss haha

[ColonelBaker]

I've been using the multiplayer feature the whole time. I'm in the last zone now and have been doing PvP and co-op the whole time with no issues. I usually wait like 10-20s before finding someone. The game has issues but it's not nearly as bad as OP is making it out to be.

[Jauder le Bonette]

Originally posted by gungadin22000:

It's a fairly common mechanic in melee combat RPGs. This game seems to borrow it from Sekiro to an extent. I worked it out by accident after discovering perfect blocking sounded differently and stunned minions when done correctly.

Did you want a tutorial for it?

If as you say this mechanic is mandatory to enjoy the game - of course i ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ do