Recent reviews by 󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡

Attempting to come back to this game brought forth a surge of awful repressed memories that I had forgotten for some time but it's all back now. I liked Sanctum a lot, but I cannot stand playing this for too long. This is simply NOT a singleplayer game. I haven't even played coop, and yet I already know it was balanced for it because of how useless towers feel in this game. The only one with any firepower is you, and while that should mean there's more for you to do, there isn't. In fact, you only get two weapons so there's even less creativity and skill when it comes to killing things in this game compared to the last one. All you do is empty one gun, switch to the next, empty, repeat. The first Sanctum is like this in a way, but certain waves would make you focus more on a specific weapon over the other and the effect that would have in the long run matters. It was always interesting choosing which weapon to upgrade, or maybe which tower to upgrade, but not anymore. Now you can ONLY upgrade towers, and you have a maximum limit of them. Look, I get the design choices of this game, but none of it is fun, or interesting, or engaging. It's designed to have you shoot a bunch of ♥♥♥♥ with your friends rather than intelligently design mazes or make cool synergies with your towers/weapons.

So, that was about the crux of this game sucking, which btw, if you read any other reviews they all agree including a bunch of positive ones. Most of which you'll find they played coop and not solo. Now I'll list off a bunch of miscellaneous (yet still pretty important) problems I've had.

Enemy types are far more obnoxious and not fun to deal with here, and since your towers suck really hard already even against normal mobs you'll not be seeing much help from them against things they cannot damage at all. Also enemies go after you, so again, in coop, this matters a lot. Whereas in solo, that will only happen in one area of the map, so if there are multiple paths the enemies will just be walking along without a care in the world eating bullets from towers like they're raindrops.

There's a stupid progression system so you'll be even more limited from the get-go. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some broken tower or perk later on which dominates everything else, but I'm not wasting my time to find that. Not that I would even enjoy the game any more if there was such a thing.

Speaking of which, perks. They essentially replaced being able to upgrade weapons and they're as lousy and boring as it possibly gets. If you didn't think the game was almost solely about shooting your guns then you haven't looked at these things yet. Most of them don't even affect your towers, and are usually as simple as "do more damage" or "stand near enemy and have this happen."

Positioning. In Sanctum 1, you can build televators which will bring you atop your maze for easier shooting and surveillance, but more importantly you could teleport to them at any moment. The idea is that you can build them for more convenient positioning, but at the cost of a tower slot. That was too good, of course, so there aren't such things here. Instead you're supposed to clone yourself so you can be in the right spots at the right time to actually deal with anything on maps where you cannot merge the enemy paths on. This is probably the most egregious thing this game does that heavily favors it toward coop.

So being in the right place matters, how about actually knowing wtf is going on in a map? Well we got you covered here with this minimap that shows a bunch of red dots and the player cursor being the same color as the background. Have fun trying to even find yourself in the first place. Pressing tab doesn't help, all it does is enlarge the already terrible minimap. In Sanctum 1, you press tab and instantly get a top-down overview of the map, as if you teleported high above the map and can see everything below in real time. The televators are very prominent, and the actual good enemy designs let you know exactly where the big threats are. So you press tab and you can piece together which enemy should be taken out and which televator is the most convenient for carrying that out.

Another thing that's sort of in-line with the last complaint is visual clarity. Sanctum 1 was very... white. The enemies are black, and the maps are well lit so you can make things out much easier. If there's a darker map on 2, even the old top-down map perspective wouldn't help much, and because the enemies aren't visually distinct they end up blending together. Doesn't help there would be a whole bunch of garbage in the way because the maps have to look cooler or whatever.

Why the hell is there sometimes a timer forcing you to move your ass to build things out of nowhere? Seriously, why? It's as if the game knows it can take an eternity to move from one side of the map to the other thanks to there being no televators. It also knows towers are damn near useless anyways so who cares? Just rush the player because they should probably stop thinking and instead be shooting at things.

I have no desire to even "get good" at this game because it's not fun to experiment, it's not fun to shoot stuff, it's not fun to play. Unless you have a friend, or a robot, or maybe even a dog. I'm sure a dog playing this game could accomplish a higher dps than the most optimal tower setup in this game.

Beautifully written with some horrifying imagery.

This VN gets flak for its poor translation (haven't heard THAT before) but it's not even that bad. I've seen "unreadable" as a way to describe it and that is far from the truth. Yes, some words are misspelled, sentences are grammatically incorrect - you're bound to find something wrong with each string of text. However it is very, very minor and doesn't take away from the story. Is it bad? Yeah...sort of? But wouldn't you rather take a somewhat bad translation over none at all? I can't even count the amount of visual novels I would like to read but can't simply because there isn't a fan translation.

Uh, yes. Best devs ever and they deserve the support.

Despite not recently playing this game, it just always seems to creep into the back of my mind when i think of how much better it could've been designed. Let me explain.

Permanent upgrades in rogue-lites just ruin the entire idea of a difficulty curve. All they do is incentivize dying/ending a run. They can somewhat be done right if they're very minute just to add a little variety, but with immortal redneck they're absolutely necessary to complete the game. Basically, the enemies get tougher and drop more gold as you advance through the levels. That's...really it. The three pyramids all have different room layouts and whatnot, but as you advance it's just more of the same, but slightly harder each time. This is just a really lazy way to curve the difficulty, and without the upgrades you just can't beat the last pyramid (well it's probably possible tool assisted but w/e)

So just get the upgrades, right? Unfortunately they cause a lot of unbalance since there isn't a limit to how much you can get of them and you could pretty much just grind away at this stupid skill tree until you're maxed out. But...let's not even think about it anymore. Why is there a skill tree in the first place that just gives the idea of you progressing your character? Just remove the skill tree, and balance the game around it.

...Anyhow, this is still a really well made game.

Let me address this first: the supposed "poor gunplay" doesn't mean ♥♥♥♥. At least to me anyways. I play video games to first and foremost beat them. I get enjoyment out of actually gaining skill, and completing them. Not because I like the sounds a gun makes, or guts ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flying everywhere. Even the late totalbiscuit said this. Calling the gunplay "anemic" and then going on to praise ziggurat, which has only slightly better if not the same level of gunplay. This just really ticked me off when i first heard it and i started doubting he even knew what he was talking about when it came to actual critique for the game. Of course I don't care about that now, but it's still dumb to say "THE GUNPLAY RUINED IT FOR ME!!!!" or to even harp on this flawed argument for more than 30 seconds.

Anyway moving on... immortal redneck plays very well. It's fast paced and has parkour elements to mix up how you approach things, or just to add some variety to rooms. The simple act of having to grab onto a ledge to pull yourself is so important since you're vulnerable, but in most cases it gives you a height advantage, or you're climbing to get out of a pit you fell into, etc. However that's all thrown out the window when you get the awesome upgrade that allows you to permanently have a double jump. There are scrolls of course that do allow you to get a double jump for your current run, but a permanent upgrade for rooms seemingly based around having only one jump? Pretty stupid. It's like in isaac if you could just start off a run with flight and spectral tears or something. The extra jump scrolls aren't limited either, you can be jumping like 6 times in the air and the enemies will just gawk at you and then the game becomes like Tower of Guns but without the crazy bullet hell element, or really any threats at all.

Now onto the guns. I feel they're pretty well designed. Most seem similar but they handle situations very differently. Do you want a lazer pistol that can damage multiple enemies or a normal pistol that is stronger but can only hit single targets? Personally i love the idea of having a shotgun, and a vertical shotgun. They're both basically the same thing, but it allows you to use more shotguns if you feel like it. The weapons all have a purpose, and none are severely game breaking (except maybe that black hole gun). Ammo is dealt with in a pretty nice way. Having limited ammo is integral to how the game plays. You don't usually need to conserve it, but it punishes you for missing since you only have so much, so in most cases you have to use different guns until you find an ammo pack. Thankfully most guns are good generalists so you shouldn't have to worry about having a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ gun you're forced to use.

The earlier bosses are neat, the later ones are meh. Weryt is easily the best boss in the game. Has the best music, and very well telegraphed attacks that make a really fun boss battle. I feel the boss battles get more and more uninspired as the game goes on, but whatever. Honestly the main point of the game is just having fun in the normal enemy rooms and clearing them out with your large variety of weapons.

Also there are more characters. They don't actually change your redneck character himself but they start you off with different weapons and attributes which is cool.

So yeah, good game almost ruined by a stupid skill tree. What's funny is that some people praise it even though it's one of the laziest ways to balance a game. Again, I haven't played it recently but to my knowledge the only major update that has happened to it is adding a half baked endless mode where you become so powerful from scrolls that you're stuck with one weapon, and one shotting enemies just by looking at them. Speaking of scrolls the only reason they are how they are is because their entire purpose is to make you play the game differently. At least in most cases, anyway. Whether positive or negative, they're probably only like this because of the dumb skill tree being the main way you upgrade your character.

Oh and the music is cool too.

The one time I play for the plot.

This game seriously needs more content and some balance changes. I beat it in about an hour, including the time it took just to learn how to play. I see so much potential in this game, really hoping the devs update it.

*EDIT*

So the devs do listen to the community and even had an update. I won't go into a full review about every single aspect of this game, but i will list some suggestions on how it should be changed.

1) What kept me from replaying the game is how terribly balanced it is. The guns themselves are usually pretty unique, like a spike ball cannon. But then how do you balance a gun like that? Well make it one shot of course. unfortunately that is like what, the second cheapest gun you can get? One shotting enemies in this game makes it incredibly easy. You could go on for a good 5 waves with just that one gun until you'd need a tower to defend your back. So its cost effiecient, and just efficient in general. The game loses all replayability when that's just the best strategy. At that point you'd need to limit yourself to make the game any harder. Rockets are useless since you need to hit things with the explosion, which would seem pretty nice if the blast radius was bigger than what it is now. The strategy for it is just shooting your tower and hoping the blast goes around it and wipes everything. Most "top tier" expensive guns are good at what they're trying to do. Unfortunately there are not enough enemies on screen to support it. Making it just another easy way to win.

As for towers, all low tier ones are trash. You'd expect that right? But they're so bad it isn't even worth spending anything on them. ESPECIALLY when it costs the same amount to upgrade them as it would for a higher tier tower, which is made even more ridiculous by just how worthless they are after upgrades. It almost seems like the devs just threw in some different cool looking towers (same with guns) and just did not know what to do with them.

2) I think what's holding this game back is the lack of different enemies. Because at this point its just about how well the guns and towers can handle multiple enemies instead of say, how well they can do against enemies with special properties like fire, ice, etc. But beside that putting actual different enemies in the game like skeletons or something that have different health would at least change it up a bit. Make enemies weak or resistant to certain guns or status effects. The game at this state seems like a work in progress really.

3) Gamemodes. or the lack thereof. There are three levels. forest, graveyard, and island. island is the hardest because its small and there are tons of enemies. So much so that it is (probably) impossible to not take damage in the first wave, seeing as how you cant get that one shot gun instantly. Of course that's a seperate problem entirely. There are (sorry if im wrong i havent played the game super recently) around 7 waves per level. That is way too short. Of course there isn't any incentive to want to keep playing more than what there is because you already have the best stuff. So it would just be the same thing each and every wave. Which is why a survival gamemode would get kind of repetitive. There just is not enough RNG to keep you on your toes.

Maybe having a level select and a campaign-esque "story" mode where you play through each level on a file would make it a bit more diverse other than just picking a level and throwing you into it. Of course if there were like 10 levels or something i'd see this being a great idea. But three seems kind of short.

5) If the gameplay was fixed and everything to make it not super repetitive and monotonous, then a good way to improve it even further would be to have different skills to change up gameplay. Sort of like Tower of Guns where you can choose a single skill that stays with you for your entire playthrough. That way it would make each game seem less like the last one you played. Of course i'd say this happens after everything is fixed.

Although, I don't think this game ever really wanted to be something spectacular. Just a little hour of fun for $4. But it could be so much more than that. I'll be waiting to see what happens to this game in the future.

*Finishes room*

That was easy

*Goes to next room*

*Gets bombarded with a million projectiles*

*Ded*

Guess Im done with this game

for the rose dagger

How do I post a review of this when I have no idea what the hell I'm doing in game? Well, it looks more promising than Minecraft. Fanboys be h8ing.

Da Bess