Dark Sales

[b]Score is at the bottom of the review, while you are down there, leave a like if you liked this review![/b] [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/37072886/]Great reviews can be found at our curator page:[b] Devils in the Detail[/b] Make a deal with the devil and join our curator for more great reviews like this one![/url][/quote] [h1]Overview[/h1] A comedic game that I was unable to finish due to an overwhelming number of bugs. The combat is boring, the game is quite linear compared to its inspiration, Dark Souls. The graphics are decent and well animated, but they are too pastel and it can be really hard to tell what is a wall and what isn’t. [h1]Game Breakdown[/h1] [h3] Gameplay 🎮[/h3] [u]Exploration& Platforming[/u] Dark Sales is heavily inspired by its namesake Dark Souls. In the exploration department the game is quite linear other than the occasionally optional challenge room. This gated progression goes against Dark Souls philosophy of being able to explore in any direction, even ones that are too high level for the player. One of my favorite memories of Dark Souls is running into the ship graveyard in Dark Souls 1 and getting smashed by ghosts, which I learned to defeat by learning their attack patterns and using some anti-ghost goop on my weapon. I also wish that there is some indicator which door the player ahs been through before. It would make the game, and a certain less than enjoyable puzzle, much more fun because it would keep players from potentially going through the same doors more than one time. Rooms are often full of enemies, which combat is required to defeat. [u]Combat[/u] The combat in this title is quite basic. There is a block, a dodge roll, a light attack, and a heavy attack. The block makes the player invisible to most moves. Sadly, the moves that go through block don’t have any distinguishing features. They don’t glow or have a unique sound which makes them irritating. Dodge roll makes the player invincible, but if a direction isn’t pressed it turns into a backstep that has a huge amount of lag at the end of it so that the player is almost guaranteed to get hit by an attack after it ends. The backstep also completely bugs out on ice floors and it makes the player unable to move until they die. This occurred to me at least twice. What I was also really hoping for is multiple combat styles like Dark Souls. Dark Souls has a variety of weapons that all attack in different ways. Dark Sales on the other hand only has bare-handed fighting. The player eventually gets combos, but from what I can tell they do negligible damage and they aren’t especially worth doing. Besides the lack of damage this is also because they require heavy attacks which have delay. This delay is really high and the best way to get the most attacks in is to simply triple light attack combo. What also makes enemies harder is that they aren’t consistent in attack patterns. Sometimes they will do half of their attack pattern and then stop, so the player approaches and then the second half of the attack combo goes off. This is extremely frustrating to deal with and it happens regularly. The biggest issue this game has in terms of combat has to be bats. Unlike every other enemy in the game, they are flying and have no discernable pattern to learn. They only get stronger and get elemental attacks later and they are not fun to play against considering the combat system that is in the game. Especially because ranged attacks are limited based on collected supplies and aren’t refreshed upon a respawn, so it is quite easy to run out of ranged supplies while trying to clear a room for the first time. [u]Upgrading stats and equipment[/u] Upgrading stats is quite similar to Dark Souls in that there is an object in the game that the player rests at and then spends a form of currency to level them up. The stats are a bit confusing though as sometimes strength gives damage and other times it doesn’t. It seems like it is meant to deter min/max builds, but it isn’t very fun to have the game telling the player how to play the game. [u]Platforming[/u] When not in combat, the game is full of platforming. The physics are really floaty though, and the jump button holding to jump higher doesn’t feel very tight. Momentum is also saved in weird ways as well. This makes moving platforms annoying as they can easily make the player fall. This wouldn’t be so bad if the platforming sections are pretty punishing and will require a decent amount of replaying to get back to the point the player had jumped to. Lastly, ladders are terrible for platforming, and they start getting used more in the latter half of the game. This is because they require an additional button press which doesn’t always register well. [u]Bosses[/u] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2122758523 Bosses are a major disappointment as they are simply larger versions of enemies in the game. They don’t have unique animations for their attacks are they are usually just recolors. Once defeated, an item is gained from them, but it doesn’t always work in the way that the boss used it. One such example would be the briefcase attack. It goes through the players block, but it doesn’t go through enemy block. It is disappointing because I wanted to feel like I had gained the power of a boss but it instead felt like I get a watered-down version that wasn’t as useful or fun. [h3]📚 Story 📚[/h3] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2121926681 The story is the best part of the game. It enjoys throwing multiple forms of absurdist humor at the player which I enjoyed. [h3]🎧 Sound 🎧[/h3] There isn’t much in the way of sounds in this game. I sometimes thought my headset had turned off because the game because is so silent. There are only two musical tracks. One play when near the water cooler which works like a Dark Souls Bonfire. It has great monastic chanting and it is enjoyable to listen to. The only other part of the game that has music is boss rooms. These all use the same theme and I would have liked unique boss themes. The most common sound effect is the coin collection sound, and it is way too loud and it isn’t interesting. [h3]📺 Graphics 📺 [/h3] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2122759410 The graphics use well animated pixel art to create a nice living world. This area sadly isn’t bug free either as enemies clip through each other which makes it hard to read their attacks. The color pallete is also quite pastel and is hard on the eyes. [h3]⌨ Controls ⌨[/h3] The controls are fine except it feels like they don’t always register well. [h3]⚙ Performance & Bugs ⚙[/h3] [table] [tr] [td][u]Specs[/u][/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Cpu:[/td] [td]AMD FX-8350[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]GPU:[/td] [td]GTX 1080[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]RAM:[/td] [td]16 GB [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]HDD:[/td] [td]7200RPM 2 TB[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]SSD:[/td] [td]Corsair 240 GB[/td] [/tr] [/table] [u]Easy to Alt-Tab[/u]: [b]Yes[/b] The game soft locked me due to bugs 15 times. The game also crashed once. It is for this reason that I couldn’t complete the game. When I stopped playing, I had 10 bugs in 30 minutes, each requiring me to restart which caused me to lose progress. [h3]💰 Price to Content Ratio 💰[/h3] This game has 10 to 15 hours of gameply according to the developer, and from what I’ve seen this game isn’t worth the $15 USD. [u]PtCR: 0.5x - poor[/u] [h3] 🌟 Overall 🌟[/h3] 👍 [u]Pros[/u] 👍 Well animated 👎 [u]Cons[/u] 👎 Tons of bugs Poor combat Bad color pallete Frustrating platforming [table] [tr] [td]Gameplay[/td] [td]3/10[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Story[/td] [td]6/10[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Controls[/td] [td]2/10[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Sound[/td] [td]3/10[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Graphics[/td] [td]4/10[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Game Length[/td] [td]4/10[/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1] 👑 Final Rating: 3.7 👑 [/h1]