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…

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? Y…

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

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.

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.

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.