Sanctuary Saga

I really tried to like this game as shown by having 4.5 times the hours played than any other reviewer right now. It has the skeleton to be fun and has a lot of promise early on, but is less than what I’d expect from an early access game. The core combat is row based kind of like Darkest Dungeon, it’s fun and a lot of the initial abilities are creative and made me think it’s have some deep tactics later on. Unfortunately Santuary Saga doesn’t seem to have any more abilities than with your starting party. So it’s just the same exact gameplay grinding over and over. I may have missed something, but I got midway through level 2 and 7 hours into the game so if they do have variety it doesn’t show up for a long time. Beyond that their "unique" argument system which is just another form of damage that instead of killing you causes your party member to do nothing that turn is broken. Even without or with just 1 arg built up I'd have character refuse to act regularly, there's definitely a point it becomes debilitating if the meter is mostly full, but there's really no point in trying to heal arg. There is a huge bait for a better game when the tutorial has a chest with supplies in it which you use for leveling up by buying gear, but for some reason I’ve not run into any other chests with more than a key. If the level up system is based on loot, it seems like getting loot should be more of a thing than just getting a couple resources per fight and spending those on equipment at your home. It mentions you can only change equipment at vendors…no duh, all you get anywhere else is supplies. It’s frustrating as you’ll defeat a boss laying on a pile of treasure and you get literally nothing special, boss fights give you less resources than easier combats so there’s no point. You’ll even unlock areas after boss fights or solving puzzles…and just nothing there outside of maybe finding a dead body with the text “They didn’t make it.” There’s also not enough variation in map layouts and events in the random expeditions, in 7 hours I ran into the exact same map layouts multiple times and literally nothing is different on them (even enemy placement as far as I can tell, exact same enemies per zone, just matching your level.) The only events seem to be from quests and “bosses.” Quests seem to just be finding a location on a map then your characters chat for a couple lines and then it’s complete. Bosses your character chat for a bit and then you fight an enemy that has more health and gets two turns per round. Unfortunately as with everything else I just found the same three bosses again and again. I also found a broken puzzle that bricked an expedition and had to reload to an earlier save. Fortunately I just ran into it once, but given how little content is in the game that is a huge issue. The game is just shallow, it’s fun for an hour, but I wouldn’t recommend investing more time than that because while it acts like it will get better, it just doesn’t (at least for the next 6 hours.) There’s games that are a mile wide and an inch deep that can be fun…this is not that, this game is an inch wide and an inch deep.

TLDR: If you like JRPGs you'll probably like this one. Some notes from watching others play: Main quest is gated behind leveling up, which is gear based. Want more story? Focus on leveling your party. Too easy? Bump up the difficulty. This can be changed anytime in the caravan.

good

Can't recommend this one because even if it was free I wouldn't really want to play it for very long. I'm refunding it. The turn based combat is pretty dull and even though the game claims that it has row based tactical combat it just didn't feel like the rows really mattered. The combat controls are clunky, sometimes you have to press up/down to target, sometimes left/right and it didn't feel like there was any rhyme or reason to which worked and which didn't at any given time. Healing or buffing friendly characters was a pain if you had to target one character because it didn't really show you who you were healing as clearly as it should and again - the arrow keys didn't always do what you expected them to do. Not sure why it wasn't just set up as a simple up/down to scroll through targets, something consistent, but it wasn't. Fighting enemies wasn't much fun either and attacks felt like they were all the same even though a lot of them didn't look the same. Sometimes attacks wouldn't work the way the description said they worked, such as when one attack said it targets 2 random enemies. Well, fine, there are 2 enemies on screen so it should attack each one once, right? You'd think that but no, it hit one enemy and didn't hit, or miss, the other. The second attack just didn't occur. This issue only happened once in the time I played, the rest of the time that attack either hit both enemies or one attack hit and the other showed a "miss" meaning it actually launched the attack but it just didn't hit. The game really tells you almost nothing about how combat works - as in why certain attacks only do 1 damage to some enemies but other attacks will kill them in one or two hits. There's very little feedback and almost no information about how things work. That can be fine in some games but it felt like a lot was missing in this game. It also didn't seem to matter how/what I used to attack because most enemies just died so fast it didn't matter. The combat balance felt off because of this. Skills also cost nothing to use so you can get away with spamming skills constantly which, given the fact that all skills seemed much stronger than a regular attack, means having a basic attack is pointless. Beyond the poor combat I was not super keen on the upgrade system or the resource system, the "argument" system, or the relationship stuff either. Graphics are okay for this style, I guess, and the animations are passable but those are probably the best things about the game. The sound was about average. If this was the developer's first attempt at a game I would say they did a pretty good job, but despite that this game just isn't for me and I can't recommend it.

Great little party based RPG with surprising depth. The party relationship mechanic adds a lot. Really enjoying my time so far.

A game bringing me back to the SNES. It's a lot of fun, great characters, and the inner balance of the Relationship system is a lot of fun for managing your own party. If you've ever liked JRPGs, then this is the game for you. Plus, with the roguelite aspect of it, it seems like you'll get a ton of hours out of it.

It reminds me of the 16 bit era of JRPGs. Combat is challenging. Each party member has a variety of useful skills so I've generally Dolgrim as the tank and would rotate in the other characters. The expeditions can feel kind of long but defeating a mini boss provides a full heal - I wish there was also an option to return to the Caravan at those points.

For some reason my save was replaced by some other person's save. I lost all my progress.

clicked on the mode to enjoy story got freakin wrecked. you cannot go back to previous map in case you explore a little too much. you can't go back to a camp in case things get rough and there is only a few of you left. you don't gain experience just items you can trade for better equipment but there was no option to do that while in the middle of exploring a huge mission. you do gain more skills after you use certain abilities a number of times? idk most of them were useless. the character they give to use as a tank is paper thin and can't handle taking damage at all. it felt like i was almost playing a roguelite and expected to have to try again and use some of the stuff i gained to make them better, but i know that this game isn't one so when i was down to two people left and had no way of reviving anyone i was screwed. game over continue or new game. i picked option 3 uninstall. each new area got more difficult and my gear did not change at all. i was facing over whelming odds and no way to come back from it and my save files are in the middle of the worst parts. 1.4 hours in and im uninstalling this garbage. i expected better.

Fun little RPG. Battle mechanics took a little time to get used to, but once you learn them and find a team that works for you, the game ends up being fun.