Sancticide is a dark fantasy action RPG that blends hack-and-slash combat with roguelite elements. You step into the shoes of a sin collector, tasked with eradicating sinners in a post-apocalyptic world. The game promises a challenging and immersive experience, but does it deliver or does it leave you suffering?
Plenty to Do
The core gameplay loop revolves around exploration and combat. As you explore, you will discover several elements that are required for you to complete your tasks. You collect experience points (XP) along the way, as well as items across different categories in order to satisfy different tasks. There are also additional objects to interact with, such as chests, which reward you with things such as XP and weapons.
One of the main features of Sancticide is the Power Wheel, where you unlock and subsequently equip different powers, such as pull and push. For example, you may encounter a gate that is chained shut. As such, you would equip the push power, target the chains, and then execute your power. What happens next is the gate almost flies off of its hinges as you blast it open with raw, unfiltered power!
Power on Tap
The Power Wheel feels a little strange at first, as similar games in this genre have specific powers mapped to specific buttons. However, the more you encounter elements that require different methods of interaction, the more natural Power Wheel becomes. However, bear in mind that it took me a long time to stop instinctively trying to smash through obstacles and instead remember to implement the required power(s).
Enemies are both varied and look great. Combat, however, is slightly clunky and doesn’t flow as well as might be expected. There is certainly room for improvement around this aspect, but overall combat isn’t bad in any way and has the potential to be much better upon release.
Good Surface-Level Visuals
Visually, the character models and animations are decent, although the environments often end up feeling bland and repetitive. At first, the environments seemed interesting, but as I continued to explore, I soon realised that there wasn’t much to them in terms of depth. A lot of what I could see didn’t extend beyond the surface level and that was a shame as Santicide has the potential to build massively upon this. However, it is worth noting that this is a demo of a game that is currently in development, and this may indeed change upon release.
On the contrary, the audio design is consistently good, with everything possessing convincing sound effects. Wood and other elements smash as you hit them, footsteps sound good as you navigate the environment, and the voice acting is decent.
Conclusion
This demo (level) is very short and once complete, you are plopped into a battle arena where you can familiarise yourself with the battle aspect of the game until your heart’s content. As such, it is difficult to gauge how the game will be when experienced in full. Until then, we simply have to wait until the release to see where the developers take it.
With this in mind, Sancticide generally looks good overall with the potential to get significantly better. There are indeed some areas that need ironing out, such as the environment visuals and clunky combat, but it certainly feels like good progress has been made so far and I look forward to seeing what the full game looks like upon release.
Pros
- Good character models.
- Large selection of weapons.
- Interesting premise.
Cons
- Clunky combat.
- Environments can feel bland and repetitive.