In Salt and Sanctuary, a two-dimensional action RPG platformer that draws heavily from the Dark Souls franchise, Ska Studios has provided a welcome reprieve for fans impatiently awaiting From Software’s Dark Souls III. From aesthetics to mechanical choices, Salt and Sanctuary wholeheartedly embraces the influence that From’s flagship brand has on it. Most importantly, the game features two of the most crucial elements for a compelling title in the genre: clever, complex level design and a deep, responsive combat system.

From the opening menu, it’s clear that Salt and Sanctuary is intended to be a Souls variant. The similarities become even more obvious when the player faces the first boss of the game, who in traditional Souls style, can be beaten but is not expected to be. Some ambiguous text, a shipwreck, and a mysterious benefactor later, the player next finds that the game’s primary resource, salt, is mechanically identical to the way that souls are used in a Souls game. When I started to find cryptic notes left behind by other players, the parallels become downright overt.

This isn’t just a two-dimensional Dark Souls clone, though. The game features increasingly complex platforming sequences, with some sections reminding me of old Mega Man games. While sanctuaries operate very similarly to Souls-style bonfires, each sanctuary is also tied to one of Salt and Sanctuary‘s seven creeds. If you’re a member of the corresponding creed, a sanctuary will offer additional bonuses. While the Dark Souls games have covenants that perform a similar function, Salt and Sanctuary goes far deeper with the concept, and to good effect. Deciding which resources should be dedicated to which sanctuaries while also considering which creed the player has joined creates some interesting gameplay tension and requires long-term strategic planning by the player.

Not every departure is for the best. Most notably, Salt and Sanctuary features a second resource, gold, in addition to salt. While salt works how we would expect for the genre—if you die, you can go get it back; if you die again, you lose it forever—gold uses a different system: if you die, you keep your gold, but give up ten percent to the “mysterious cleric” who revives you at your last sanctuary. Gold was an unnecessary design element for two reasons: first, there’s nothing that can be bought with gold that couldn’t have simply been bought with salt. In fact, the vast majority of my gold was spent buying pouches of salt with an effective exchange rate of 500 gold per 100 salt (being a salt dealer in this world is clearly the optimal play). Second, because you just outright lose a chunk of gold each time you die, it makes you less likely to experiment with a risky jump or continually retry a troublesome section. The compromise is to go spend everything at a merchant anytime your gold count is getting high. This works, but it’s a needless waste of the player’s time. It would have been much simpler to have only a single resource that could be used for everything.

The Dark Souls series is infamous for its difficulty level, and readers will want to know how Salt and Sanctuary holds up in that regard. Interestingly, in my three playthroughs of the game, I’ve had three markedly different experiences—and not in the way you’d expect. In my first playthrough, I started as a hunter, but based on the gear I found in the early game, morphed into a greatsword-wielding tank with infinite strength and endurance. And let me tell you: my first playthrough of the game was easy. Trivial, even. I beat most bosses on the first try by simply tanking blows, drinking potions, and doing massive damage. Most bosses were dead so fast that I barely got to see their move sets.

Playthrough number two was with a dedicated mage, and it might as well have been an entirely different game. Magic in Salt and Sanctuary has a number of factors constantly vying for your attention. If you use too much of one element (fire, lightning, etc.) without balancing by using another, you die, although the mage does start with a ring to negate this effect, which I used throughout the playthrough. Instead of a mana pool, magic draws from the player’s stamina meter, and each spell cast lowers the player’s maximum stamina. If you’re not paying attention, you’ll find that you can’t cast any more spells at a crucial moment because you’ve fallen to the minimum allowed stamina. You can use an item to replenish, but that’s just another thing to juggle during an intense boss fight. The payoff to all this is that you can keep your distance from enemies while doing large amounts of damage. However, my mage just wasn’t doing as much damage as my initial tank character, and without heavy armor to protect her, she couldn’t survive many blows. This playthrough required much more strategy, consisting of actually learning each boss’s patterns in order to dodge enough attacks to give me time to deal sufficient damage to win each battle. Also, because magic is somewhat slow and hard to aim, small, flying enemies that I barely noticed in my first playthrough often gave my mage fits.

For my third playthrough, I opted to play as a hybrid character: a greataxe-wielding paladin with cleric support skills. This playthrough was excruciating. The resources put into learning prayer abilities took away from the strength and endurance needed to have a proper melee build, and the ultimate result was a character that was good at nothing. Additionally, the greataxe’s attack animation gives it minimal reach compared to the greatsword, meaning this character had to get closer than either of my first two in order to score hits, and with significantly worse armor than my dedicated tank. Bosses that I had absolutely no trouble with in previous playthroughs became walls of frustration that took multiple attempts to overcome. One in particular, who didn’t stand out in the least during my first playthrough, took literally dozens of attempts to defeat. It was baffling.

All of this is to say: your character build matters. If you’re appropriately leveled with decently upgraded weapons, the game shouldn’t be too difficult. But if you build an unfocused character that tries to do too many things at once, you’re going to have a bad time. These disparate difficulty levels will provide plenty of fodder for speed- and challenge-runners as well as give the game a ton of replay value, but less experienced players will need to do a little research in order to find a workable build.

Salt and Sanctuary‘s skill tree is overwhelming at first glance, but once you get past that initial impression, it’s actually quite intuitive. When you level up, you get a Black Pearl, which can be saved for later or immediately placed in any skill slot adjacent to an already-unlocked skill (starting skills are determined by character class). “Skill” is a bit of a misnomer, really, since most of these slots simply upgrade one of the character’s six stats, but you can also unlock the ability to hold additional potions or to use various weapon types, armors, and magics.

The boss fights in Salt and Sanctuary mostly follow a similar formula: wait for the boss to attack, roll through said attack, then swing at the boss’s back. It’s another, though likely unintentional, reference to the Dark Souls games, in which “circle around and hit him in the butt” is the solution for most boss fights. That said, each boss in Salt and Sanctuary is beautifully rendered, and the timing for each attack is different, so there’s plenty of room for mastery. In true Souls style, there is exactly one battle I would classify as a “puzzle boss.”

Salt and Sanctuary grabbed my attention in its opening moments, and I didn’t want to put down the controller for days. The moment I completed my first playthrough, I fired up a second one to see how much content I missed.

If you’re a fan of the Dark Souls series, you will find a lot to love in this game. The references large and small will give you pleasant a-ha moments throughout. But Salt and Sanctuary isn’t so niche as to only appeal to Dark Souls fans. It stands on its own as a stylish, mechanically sound action RPG platformer that will be enjoyed by anyone who is a fan of either genre. With Salt and Sanctuary, Ska Studios attempted to pay homage to a predecessor while creating something distinctly its own. In this, the two-person team succeeded. Salt and Sanctuary is a welcome addition to the ever-expanding Souls genre.

Photo credits: Screenshots of Salt and Sanctuary taken by Danny Brown via PS4.