Reseñas recientes de Salvatos

Possibly the best party game I’ve played. Seemingly endless fun, from the characters’ funny sounds to the impossible shenanigans.

*This review is mostly based on 8 hours playing the demo, and one 2-hour run post-release. Will update sometime.*

TL;DR: A good game but not quite ready for release, and the lack of explanations might frustrate you and make it seem harder than it is.

Does the fact that every card you play is destroyed from your deck worry you? It worried me, but it actually works because you get frequent chances to replenish your deck, and you're not playing with several unique cards but rather a fairly tight set of base effects and improved versions of them. It doesn't really matter that your sword is gone after you attack, because you probably have 4 more in your deck, you can get another 6 from the next chest you find, and you might have a magical power that gives you 2 swords for free at the start of every room.

Instead of being a detriment, it's a mechanic that adds a very interesting flow to the game and makes it feel more like you're managing resources rather than recruiting and protecting semi-permanent units like in some other card-based roguelites. With the ability to steal cards from enemies and even the environment, and the possibility of losing cards to them, it feels very similar to taking damage and healing, but with the added dimension of dictating the options you get on your turn.

With that out of the way, I am thoroughly impressed by the gameplay. 10 hours in, I have about 75% of the content unlocked and I still find new types of enemies, cards and powers that completely change my strategies and turn my priorities on their head. I keep reaching rooms that make me think "that new enemy is going to ruin my run" and narrowly adapting my strategy in time to counter them. Some demons' weaknesses are another demon's strengths, so you can't just bank on one type of card and steamroll through everything, you need to be adaptable and try to remember what's waiting for you in each room to keep the right cards in hand by the time you get there. For example, an axe is useless against a row of shielded skeletons, but it was a miracle that I drew 6 of them when I stumbled upon the hydra for the first time.

The "memories" and "imaginary friends" you permanently unlock progressively make it easier to reach farther into the game, and there is enough variety in them to experiment with very different combinations. I keep wanting to see what's in the next room and try playing with a completely different set of abilities. I'm thoroughly captivated by the game.

Now, the game isn’t perfect, so here are the things that need improved in my opinion:
- The game should still be considered in Early Access due to the amount of bugs and the unclear descriptions for a lot of things. Some parts of the menu even still say "to do" instead of having actual content.
- The game relies too much on you finding out that X card has Y side effect on enemy Z. Enemy tooltips don’t tell you everything, and some very important tips are only found on transition/loading screens. The very brief and random nature of those tips doesn’t do a good enough job of telling you how you can use your cards without you having to waste them trying everything just in case. A few examples: the fact that the whip removes shields, that pulling a trap through an enemy kills it, the way that flame demons and bomb snakes explode upon death so you can use them to your advantage, the fact that you get one card of each stack added to your hand when you open a chest, unless you already have 10+ cards in hand, etc.
- Some cards also have a lack of details. For example, the card that "fills your hand with swords" also destroys everything you were already holding, so tough luck when you play it for the first time.
- The amount of RAM the game uses is simply insane for a turn-based 2D game.

All in all, a solid game in the making, but it doesn’t yet have all the polish it should have at release.

Does the fact that every card you play is destroyed from your deck worry you? It worried me, but it actually works because you get frequent chances to replenish your deck, and you're not playing with several unique cards but rather a fairly tight set of base effects and improved versions of them. It doesn't really matter that your sword is gone after you attack, because you probably have 4 more in your deck, you can get another 6 from the next chest you find, and you might have a magical power that gives you 2 swords for free at the start of every room.

Instead of being a detriment, it's a mechanic that adds a very interesting flow to the game and makes it feel more like you're managing resources rather than recruiting and protecting semi-permanent units like in some other card-based roguelites. With the ability to steal cards from enemies and even the environment, and the possibility of losing cards to them, it feels very similar to taking damage and healing, but with the added dimension of dictating the options you get on your turn.

With that out of the way, I am thoroughly impressed by the demo so far. 3 hours in, I only have about 45% of the content unlocked and I consistently find new types of enemies, cards and powers that completely change my strategies and turn my priorities on their head. I keep reaching rooms that make me think "whoa that new enemy is going to ruin my run" and narrowly adapting my strategy in time to counter them. Some demons' weaknesses are another demon's strengths, so you can't just bank on one type of card and steamroll through everything, you need to be adaptable and try to remember what's waiting for you in each room to keep the right cards in hand by the time you get there. For example, an axe is useless against a row of shielded skeletons, but it was a miracle that I drew 6 of them when I stumbled upon the hydra.

The "memories" and "imaginary friends" you permanently unlock progressively make it easier to reach farther into the game, and there is enough variety in them to experiment with very different combinations. I keep wanting to see what's in the next room and try playing with a completely different set of abilities. I'm thoroughly captivated by the game.

Back when Ash of Gods was on Kickstarter, I remember thinking that I would gladly pay the base price just for the main theme because I couldn’t get enough of it. I listened to it repeatedly for several days and had it on repeat in the car. Now, not every track here is as amazing to me, but there are a few more very cool fighting pieces and a lot of tracks that work well as background music for tabletop RPGs, so I’m happy to have them outside the game.

The vocals are definitely a high point for me, successful both at sounding at once exotic and epic in tracks such as "Terminum", "Flame in your Hands" or "Enlightenment", and soul-touching in "The Echo of the Fallen" and "Pray in Wodan". Well worth the price.

What a phenomenal experience. The first couple hours were nice but not as great as the hype suggested. But things kept getting more intense and engrossing as the game progressed. Combat was an interesting challenge despite technically consisting almost only of attack/dodge/parry. Using Auto difficulty, it always kept me on the edge and most bosses took me two attempts to learn their patterns and get a good rhythm. This is probably the closest I’ve experienced to Dark Souls-like combat, so it kicked my ass several times, but it was always a relief and a thrill to pull those tougher fights off after dying no more than once.

The visual puzzle elements remained engaging enough throughout the game as they were mixed in with other aspects, even though they seemed early on like they were the only thing you were doing other than walking and fighting. A few of them where you had a time constraint seemed to be too unforgiving though, and not entirely clear about what you needed to do or the fact that you had to run through them or die. Considering the risk of a complete game over if you die too many times, those seemed like a cheap way to stack the odds against you, and I wouldnt have been motivated to start over if that had happened. I ended up dying more often confused about where to go or why I had to run than killed in combat.

That said, those criticisms are perhaps more of a warning to keep your difficulty setting reasonable for your skill level than a dark spot on my recommendation to play this. It was seriously one hell of an experience.

The camera tends to be insufferable in action gameplay, making the movement awkward and frustrating in turn, but pretty much everything else is solid. I find it a little better with a controller. The expansions have added a good deal of variety to even Endless Mode and I find myself going back from time to time to unlock more cards.

Linux support has been quite good.

First impressions after a single 3-hour run:

- All aspects of the game are fun so far (combat, exploration, deck-building, story and choices, RPG elements). The deck-building in particular feels immediately familiar with its features, yet sufficiently fresh in its implementation.

- The art is obviously very appealing.

- The music is unobtrusive but pleasant.

- The writing is satisfying (as far as English is concerned) and the UI is sufficiently clear, and nice to look at.

- Overall difficulty (i.e. your odds of completing a run) seems high by design when playing on Normal. Yet I have to note that the AI does a lot of dumb things in combat and seems to make up for it with high stats or powerful abilities. It's a little annoying to get the feeling that your opponent is going easy on you by attacking terrain for no reason, moving units when they should be attacking, placing buffs in between obstacles where they can't be applied to any ally, etc. If intentional, I would have preferred combat difficulty to have more to do with the cards at the enemy's disposal, terrain setups and raw stats, while keeping a sound strategy at all difficulty levels. If not, I feel the game could use an AI improvement as a patch down the line, but it's not game-breaking on its own.

Definitely a recommendation from me for anyone interested in rogue-likes and/or deck-builders as it aptly combines both genres. Also runs perfectly on Linux Mint!

FR: La traduction semble bien au premier coup d'oeil dans les menus, mais contient pas mal d'anglicismes et semble avoir imité le manque de virgules de la version anglaise, ce qui peut nuire à la lecture. Je ne suis pas allé plus loin pour voir de quoi a l'air la narration.

I wish the game had a more interesting free roaming option like Most Wanted instead of limiting it to exploring the maps, but other than that the racing and chasing are pretty satisfying and the game runs well on older hardware. Not a bad choice for a cheap game of pursuit.

Great for single player. Runs well on Linux.

The game has fallen short of my expectations but it's a mixed bag of some great elements and some that are varying levels of annoying. The music, sounds and visuals are great. The setting and atmosphere captivated me from the start. Combat is pretty interesting but can sort of be abused. I beat the game playing every fight solo unless I had to take other people with me, which made the whole injury system a non-issue (I either won, or lost and replayed the fight, so never ended a fight with injuries), and I know several people don't like how a single character is better than a full party because of the turn order system. Overall though, it kept me engaged throughout the game, whereas The Banner Saga's fights got repetitive fairly fast (and there were so many of them).

My main concern with the game lies with the story logic and writing. As others have said, dialogue is often weird, with characters blurting out a bunch of stuff at once, and others replying with something completely different and unexpected. Many of the choices you make aren't as clear as they could be (an innocent-looking comment turns into you threatening someone) and there are far-reaching consequences to "choices" that aren't even really conscious (I lost a main character and his entire party because someone in the group did something I had no control over; apparently I should have killed them way back at the beginning when I met them, but why would I have done that?).

Devs are currently working on improving the English translation, so hopefully that will smooth out some of the rough edges. Not sure that involves adjusting the choices and consequences, though. So players should still know going into this game that it will kick them in the proverbial nuts every now and then for very arbitrary reasons. That's what they mean by "roguelike storytelling." ♥♥♥♥ happens and you can either deal with it and keep going or retry for a better outcome now that you've seen the trick; but for me, that's an approach that works better for skill-based gameplay than for storytelling. And as others said, you have a whole map full of branching paths to explore, but anything other than the shortest route will inevitably lead to people dying and you probably getting a bad end, so you're not really encouraged to actually explore all those options. Unless you can detach yourself from the characters and enjoy finding out what new terrible things can happen to them if you go this way instead of that.

Still, overall it's a good effort that I would recommend if you know what you're getting into. The soundtrack alone makes me happy to have backed the project on Kickstarter, and I look forward to the novel. The multiplayer mode (still in development at the time of writing) also adds value if you do enjoy the combat and you're into pvp.