Salt and Sacrifice, the proven North American beta
Salt and Sacrifice
Let's make things clear right away: the Salt and Sacrifice beta that entertained a group of lucky American players for the weekend does not add anything particularly full-bodied to the content we have already talked about in our previous test. The build is very similar, the bosses are those, even the explorable area - in our memory - does not present any particular difference. At first glance, you might almost think you are facing the exact same code and have nothing else to add.The feeling changes when we open a chest a few minutes from the start of the game that throws a wagon of objects all dedicated to multiplayer in our face. There we automatically realized that the team leveraged this weekend as a stress test and beta testing of the new features, as well as some balance calculations.
On the hunt for wizards
Salt and Sacrifice: the portal that manages the interconnection between the zones Let's go step by step, so as to give everyone a smattering while waiting for the review and the release of the game, currently set at the beginning of May. We refer you to the Salt and Sacrifice tried a few months ago for a more structured study, but we still try to give you the main information.Salt and Sacrifice is the spiritual sequel of the almost homonymous Salt and Sanctuary, a game released in 2016 and made by the tiny Ska Studios team. He takes up the tones of the progenitor, the very particular artistic style - which brings with him great fans and as many detractors - as well as a declared and shameless tendency to follow the path traced by Miyazaki and FromSoftware with the souls.
Specifically, this new chapter puts us in the shoes of an inquisitor, relegated to a world now almost totally fragmented in which it is possible to travel through portals that respond to combinations of runes. Our main goal is to hunt down and defeat the mages, elemental villains who are creating an inhuman mess, so as to bring the world back to normal and make everyone happy and content. Impossible to deepen the narrative aspect having been able to test only the first area over and over again, but we are curious to understand how progression will be managed during the game.
The jolly cooperation
Salt and Sacrifice: the mages are ruthless As mentioned, we avoid giving you all duplicate information on the functioning of the gameplay and on the main mechanics, but we will focus on the aspect that is the cornerstone of this beta: multiplayer.In full souls style Salt and Sacrifice's online management is divided between asynchronous, cooperative and competitive elements. At the beginning of our new adventure - this time we chose a paladin, who was therefore immediately forced to fat roll due to his armor - a chest along the way literally filled us with consumables. Candles, talismans, runes and any object that had to do in some specific way with the online component of the title.
We do not hide from you that we have struggled in some cases to find someone to join, probably also due to the our location not exactly close to North America, but we were still able to test some specific moments of the old and new features. Salt and Sacrifice, as it does for almost every other aspect, borrows the ideas launched on the market by FromSoftware and tries to adapt them to their systems, even adding some nice mechanics.
All this makes you smile, considering that the the core of the game itself and the usefulness of some consumables are still really cumbersome, as if they had remained in the style of the first Dark Souls. In light of this, but it will then be tested first hand in the final product, it makes you smile and turn your nose up at the same time to see that the archetype that damnably recalls the concept of "humanity" is still present. Among the consumables, in fact, it will be possible to become "guiltless" and become available again to play online, as well as recover a portion of the maximum life and reactivate who knows what mechanics in play. Of this aspect as of any other it is impossible for us to tell you now how balanced it is and how many of these consumables we will find on our way, but the risk of leaving players at the mercy of the fear of wasting an opportunity and then dying an instant later is the same. electrifying time how hard to really do well in terms of design and balance. Our best wishes to the guys at Ska Studios for this.
Next to this we find a series of objects, all different from each other, useful both for cooperation and for the invasion of another player's world. To embellish - or mess up even more, it depends on perception - it is in fact possible to use objects that allow you to summon a helper to overcome a certain portion of the adventure, as well as to use a password to allow only specific friends to physically enter the your own world.
Salt and Sacrifice: NPCs galore If the idea of necessarily being good buddies doesn't convince you, you might decide to use an object that allows you to then leave your partner a chest. Only you will know if this crate has positive, negative or random content. If you are able to convince the other player to open it and trust you, you will receive a reward in return. This is a really nice mechanic, but it will require some testing to really understand its usefulness and meaning in the long run.
It wouldn't be a souls-like if it weren't also for invasion. it is possible to invade other players' games and be clearly invaded. In this case, a real battle starts which will only be resolved with the death of one or the other. Here nothing new to report compared to what we have known for more than a decade, but we must hope that lag and input delay do not become an even worse enemy than the opponent himself. Having played these two days with a very high ping for obvious reasons, let's avoid making judgments now on the quality of the netcode. perhaps the only real important news, which if it were really well implemented could be a good way to give a wake up call also to FromSoftware in the freedom of managing multiplayer. Salt and Sacrifice will allow you to create a totally shared game between two players. This means that once you find yourself playing together, it will not simply be summoned into the game of the summoner, but a totally new and shared world will be generated. The average level of the world will normalize to that of the weakest user, while the progression will follow the progress according to the progress of the players in their respective worlds. You've beaten a particular boss, but your partner hasn't? Well, that boss will be there ready in the shared world waiting for you, then giving the unique rewards only to those who still didn't have them. Once you return to your own world, you will take back the progress made in the cooperative, making the game completely canonical within your journey.
Salt and Sacrifice: the knight and his steed. .. almost Anyone who is accustomed to the multiplayer mechanics of the souls understands how this totally changes the cards on the table, allowing for the first time to generate a truly total cooperative experience. It is obviously early to decree its success and good balance in all its components, but we can only be happy even with its presence, with all due respect to the players like myself, who for masochism do not even evoke an NPC during the first run.
We were aware of the quality of Ska Studios' production already during our first rehearsal. As far as mechanics and gameplay are concerned, the game remains solid, just as all the reservations we had already expressed are still pressing there. What has left us pleasantly intrigued is the myriad of possibilities with which the online experience is managed, asynchronous or not. Now it's very close to the release and we can't wait to mature and let you know our final judgment on Salt and Sacrifice.
