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Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012



Salt and Sanctuary is a 2D Metroidvania-style game developed by Ska Studios, a husband and wife development team. Even a brief glance will make it clear that it's also strongly inspired by From Software's Dark Souls franchise, both in terms of overall atmosphere and specific mechanics. However this game is no mere copycat (*cough* Lords of the Fallen *cough*) as it utilizes what it takes from Dark Souls very well, usually putting its own unique spin on it. Amusingly enough, in the transition from the third dimension to the second, the game ends up replicating the feel of the Koji Igarashi-directed Castlevania games. Oddly appropriate, given that the Dark Souls games are often referred to as "how a 3D Castlevania should feel."

This LP will be a mostly comprehensive playthrough of the game. I will be attempting to show off all of the different playstyles available, as well as a wide variety of gear and weapons. I will also be showing off all of the game's areas, however I may end up missing a chest or two; there are a lot of secrets in this game and I do not have them all memorized. But you can expect to see a majority of the game's content in this playthrough.

Updates are planned for every Monday and Friday, around 5 PM EST.















Genocyber fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Apr 7, 2017

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NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






It's interesting to see this as a contrast to the other LP of this game currently running. Highwang's also quite good at it, but he's playing a gimmick run and has less introspection than he should.

NGDBSS fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Jan 31, 2017

Jukebox Hero
Dec 27, 2007
stars in his eyes
I actually completely skipped the gimmick run because I'm not familiar with the game. Same way I skipped another Bloodborne LP on here because they only used the kirkhammer; I get bored as hell watching one moveset over and over.

discworld is all I read
Apr 7, 2009

DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?
Yeah, after watching a stream of this game and the current gimmick LP, I kinda look forward to someone who might wear different armors or attempt to show off the game and after your Bloodborne LP, I'm sure you can do good things with this.

Jukebox Hero
Dec 27, 2007
stars in his eyes
It's really cool the various healing items have different effects and methods; Is the Red Shards or whatever they are always there? It sounded like it was a 'patch yourself up between fights' option which sounds pretty universally valuable.

Are we going to be seeing the other creeds? I imagine it's like Dark Souls, for some strange reason, and you can change it eventually.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

Jukebox Hero posted:

It's really cool the various healing items have different effects and methods; Is the Red Shards or whatever they are always there? It sounded like it was a 'patch yourself up between fights' option which sounds pretty universally valuable.

Are we going to be seeing the other creeds? I imagine it's like Dark Souls, for some strange reason, and you can change it eventually.

Red Shards are always there, yeah. They're basically like the Lifegems from DS2.

I'll be showing off most of the Creeds. Not all because a few don't really have anything special going for them to be worth showing off.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Getting in on the ground floor for this.

One interesting feature: parries work in the Dark Souls style, except when you have a pistol. Then they work in the Bloodborne style--shooting an enemy while attacking stuns them. Except...Bloodborne wasn't out yet when this game was being made.

Funny how they had the same idea.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

Speedball posted:

Getting in on the ground floor for this.

One interesting feature: parries work in the Dark Souls style, except when you have a pistol. Then they work in the Bloodborne style--shooting an enemy while attacking stuns them. Except...Bloodborne wasn't out yet when this game was being made.

Funny how they had the same idea.

That's actually true for all projectiles that you can shoot: arrows, crossbow bolts, even magic!

betamax hipster
Aug 13, 2016

Speedball posted:

Getting in on the ground floor for this.

One interesting feature: parries work in the Dark Souls style, except when you have a pistol. Then they work in the Bloodborne style--shooting an enemy while attacking stuns them. Except...Bloodborne wasn't out yet when this game was being made.

Funny how they had the same idea.

Bloodborne was released like a year before Salt and Sanctuary shipped. It's probably not a case of convergent evolution.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

betamax hipster posted:

Bloodborne was released like a year before Salt and Sanctuary shipped. It's probably not a case of convergent evolution.

I checked and you're right. Hm. Well, maybe they ripped off a really good idea then. Hard to say.

Jukebox Hero
Dec 27, 2007
stars in his eyes
S/S is just Ska merging their tropes with Soulsborn tropes and I kind of like the result.

Who here played Dishwasher, or Vampire Smile, or Charlie Murder? You can actually watch the art evolve over the course of the games.

Although I'm a shameless Ska Studios fanboy, I've been playing his games since Blood Plus and Survival Crisis Z. He's made a shitload of games if you step back for a minute, really.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

I played Dishwasher and Vampire Smile but not Charlie Murder.

Hypocrisy
Oct 4, 2006
Lord of Sarcasm

Fun fact: This game also has a near 100 page fan made plot document.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

Hypocrisy posted:

Fun fact: This game also has a near 100 page fan made plot document.

I just looked that up and :laffo:

100 pages of 14 pt font.

Jukebox Hero
Dec 27, 2007
stars in his eyes
I'm surprised but not as much as you'd expect.

The plot we've seen so far does seem pretty interesting, even in a DS ripoff kind of way: Dead sailor, missing princess, gods and such coming up... I like the naval theme and hope it keeps coming up.

How's the weapon diversity? I've seen a knife, a mace, and an oar so far.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

Jukebox Hero posted:

I'm surprised but not as much as you'd expect.

The plot we've seen so far does seem pretty interesting, even in a DS ripoff kind of way: Dead sailor, missing princess, gods and such coming up... I like the naval theme and hope it keeps coming up.

How's the weapon diversity? I've seen a knife, a mace, and an oar so far.

There's daggers, swords, maces/axes, greatswords, great axes, great hammers, spears, halberds, and whips. You also have bows, crossbows, and guns for ranged. And then wands and staves for casting magic.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Most of the weapons have somewhat different movesets. Unlike Dark Souls many of them have quicker, more intricate combos. Air juggling is a big thing in Salt & Sanctuary too. So combat isn't nearly as ponderous as you'd expect from a Soulslike.

RudeCat
Aug 7, 2012

The rudest cat for the rudest jobs


This all makes the game sound a whole lot more interesting than it seemed from the very small exposure I got to it. I'm really looking forward to seeing more!

Jukebox Hero
Dec 27, 2007
stars in his eyes
If anybody knows how to do crazy 2D, devil may cry poo poo it's Ska, they've always has a pretty bombastic bent to their games; I'm really intrigued to see what the souls formula does when you add air combos

Jeedy Jay
Nov 8, 2012

betamax hipster posted:

Bloodborne was released like a year before Salt and Sanctuary shipped. It's probably not a case of convergent evolution.

Released, yes. S&S was a game that spent a really long time floating around in development.

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

Jukebox Hero posted:

If anybody knows how to do crazy 2D, devil may cry poo poo it's Ska, they've always has a pretty bombastic bent to their games; I'm really intrigued to see what the souls formula does when you add air combos

What else have they done? Google is determined not to help

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

Crane Fist posted:

What else have they done? Google is determined not to help

http://ska-studios.com/games/

Sadly their previous games are all XBLA or XBLIG, which is why I've never played them. Since they all run on the same engine (MT Framework or something?) they'll hopefully make PC ports at some point. I think they've expressed interest in doing that in the past.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

Time to venture into the jolliest place in the land.

Genocyber fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Feb 3, 2017

Iretep
Nov 10, 2009
Learning to parry with the pistol is usually a waste of time since you can just spam the fire button instead and have the parried thing die faster.
And yeah, i kind of gave up on the lore of this game around the time i saw what the level up tree contained.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

I don't mind the lore of this game. Parts of it are even inspired. But like Dark Souls itself, you can get through the whole thing without knowing or caring what you're doing.

Speaking of, apparently it's the Village of Smiles because the queen went mad and was fond of cutting people's throats and mouths open when murdering them. So they retaliated by giving her the biggest smile of all. Gristly.

The traps in this game WILL kill you in one hit unless you're prepared. The swinging log traps, anyway. You can usually survive the little crossbow ones.

Asehujiko
Apr 6, 2011
The boss looks incredibly goofy when she's doing the windmill.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Asehujiko posted:

The boss looks incredibly goofy when she's doing the windmill.
That's a bit of a trend in this game, the art direction is all over the place - I rather suspect this is what happens when your only reference for "dark fantasy" is the Souls games.

Jukebox Hero
Dec 27, 2007
stars in his eyes
One thing I'm noticing:
Ska games are written in a way where everything's making fun of itself by being too serious. For example: One early game, Blood Plus iirc, was a legend of Zelda style action rpg with multiple player characters; It was basically so edgy it wrapped around and became self parody around the point it's steadily escalated until your party consists of:
- a teenaged car thief
-a cyborg ghost of a school shooter(it's complicated)
-a chainsaw wielding woman you found in an underground, abandoned church
And
- a severed head(?) with legs and arms (they're basically mister Saturns from hell)

Or in the Dishwasher games, where the narration can never quite decide if what's going on in the plot is awesome or stupid, or the way your arsenal can include a super soaker and a toaster on an extension cord from a battery backpack.

But in Salt/Sanctuary, it's so derivative of Dark Souls that it can't really do any of that weird sincere-yet-knowing earnestness tone it gets when it's doing more original material; the original work is so grimdark that I'm not sure if the 'queen of smiles' is meant to be kinda goofy like the giant kitchen knife wielding skeleton butterfly in Dishwasher 2 or if they're actually trying to play it seriously because Dark Souls might actually have a giant sword doll mannequin monster to fight that has jazz hands attacks.

Simon The Digger
Dec 22, 2010

Some Kind of Magical Idiot
The game you're thinking of is called Blood Zero, actually. Blood Plus is an anime. (I am also a huge mark for Ska Software.)

It'd be interesting to see an LP of Blood Zero, if not for the fact that it's...tricky to get it to work on Windows 7/8/10.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Oh, Genocyber, have you played the first DLC for Resident Evil 7 yet? It's pretty good. Little different than the previous Mercenaries mode.

There's "Nightmare" where you run around in the basement and can only make items and weapons from scrap-collecting machines, there's a puzzle Escape Room, and "Ethan Must Die," where you die in almost one hit to anything but get randomized loot strewn about the mansion.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

Speedball posted:

Oh, Genocyber, have you played the first DLC for Resident Evil 7 yet? It's pretty good. Little different than the previous Mercenaries mode.

There's "Nightmare" where you run around in the basement and can only make items and weapons from scrap-collecting machines, there's a puzzle Escape Room, and "Ethan Must Die," where you die in almost one hit to anything but get randomized loot strewn about the mansion.

I have not. Probably going to hold off on purchasing the DLC what with Nioh (and For Honor) so close to release.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

It's time for platforming with fall damage, everyone's favorite video game mechanic.

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
These are good.

I don't really have anything to contribute, I'm just watching them and being entertained.

BDA
Dec 10, 2007

Extremely grim and evil.

Jukebox Hero posted:

Dark Souls might actually have a giant sword doll mannequin monster to fight that has jazz hands attacks.
It doesn't, but it does have a pole-dancing Slenderman.

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

Anime Reference posted:

It doesn't, but it does have a pole-dancing Slenderman.

Yeah? True?

I mean is that something that's in this game or are we just naming stuff we see in our nightmares? Because Dark Souls also doesn't feature everyone is snakes

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

I went with the poison guys as my covenant once. The poison...wasn't great against a lot of enemies. They also specialize in a lot of dexterity weapons, though, at least.

Iretep
Nov 10, 2009
Im gusssing the idea is that you poison the weapons and the dex weapons faster attack speeds lets you proc poison faster. Dex seems to be the stat thats filled with all the gimmicks that dont really work well compared to STRs gimmick of doing insane damage.

betamax hipster
Aug 13, 2016
Turns out death is the strongest status effect.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

I kind of like how all the merchants of every covenant have different dialogue, even the generic "what are you buying" dialogue. The poison merchant said "Let's get you outfitted, killer."

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throw to first DAMN IT
Apr 10, 2007
This whole thread has been raging at the people who don't want Saracen invasion to their homes

Perhaps you too should be more accepting of their cultures
I guess I managed to miss it somehow, what's the penalty for dying repeatedly because you are bad?

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