Dark Sacrifice review: Innovative religious themes, slow-paced combat gameplay

Games with religious themes are always more sensitive than games with other themes, perhaps because of the mysterious factors contained in religion itself, which is a very abstract existence. If someone tries to concretize this abstract mystery and show it in games or other forms, it will inevitably not be misunderstood. Such misunderstandings can easily create a conflict of beliefs, which can lead to the game itself being banned as a host. But now Hibernian Workshop, a group of three Frenchmen, has taken a leap of faith and created a 2D ARPG religious game called Dark Sacrifice.

Mystery is the basic element of religion and one of the important elements. As a highlight of the unique mystery of religion, this paper adopts a simple dark style in the painting style. The first game interface is full of strong dark painting style, giving players a sense of mystery that they can see but can not see far. In the game, elements such as religious figure statues and altars are selected to cooperate with the atmosphere, and by adding faith values, players can feel the charm of religion in actual actions in the game. In the game, players can use faith value worship to obtain various in-game buff. The strong dark painting style and the players' worship bring more religious style impact from the vision and behavior, and with the lyrical background music, perfect for the players to build a religious theme game from vision, behavior to hearing.

As a game with a religious background, although this game does not spend much energy on the introduction of religion, it better sets off a religious atmosphere for players from the aspects of painting style, religion-specific architecture and music. The dialogue content of NPCS in the game is also full of words such as sacrificing themselves. It presents a religious background game from two aspects of abstract feeling and concrete architecture. Moreover, such a only formal religion does not involve specific religious beliefs and culture, and can also skillfully avoid all sensitive topics and conflicts about religion, and this work is perfect in the interpretation of religious themes.

As a 2D art style ARPG game, the game is mainly action themed with a bit of Roguelike elements. There are three reasons why the word is added before Roguelike. First of all, the equipment acquired by the player in the copy will not be completely taken out of the map, only those items that are bright and green will be allowed to be taken out of the map, and other items will automatically disappear when the player leaves the copy. Secondly, although the player needs to explore the content of the map, the location and type of monsters are unchanged, in other words, the player can backboard. Finally, the game has a teleport within the copy, if the player finds and activates the teleport before he dies, he can directly teleport and continue to explore the copy, if the teleport is not found, he needs to re-explore the copy.

There are only three kinds of skills in the battle: chop, roll and block, and all three skills are limited by physical strength, and lack of physical strength will lead to skills that cannot be released. Blocking and tumbling are defensive skills that consume less physical energy, and tumbling is introduced as a defensive skill because the player can't be attacked when the character is rolling, and the player will not be harmed as long as the block is successful. In terms of attack, it will consume large physical strength, and can only carry out three consecutive attacks in the early stage. From a single number of skills, the player cannot make more combos. As far as skill casting is concerned, hard straight is also longer, which is also the reason why it is not suitable for continuous strikes.

Perhaps the producers have noticed this and made up for it by creating a richer set of equipment for the player. Weapons as the first choice of equipment, the content is also more rich, there are spears, swords, mace, claws, bows and arrows. Different weapons vary in attack range, attack speed, and damage. The rich choice of weapons complements the single skill and at the same time brings an excellent experience in the striking sense of action. In addition to weapons, the content of equipment also includes armor, ornaments, etc., which are similar to weapons and will not be introduced one by one.

The single skill does not allow the author to experience the pleasure of fighting in the battle, but the rich types of weapons in solving this problem but also bring a different combat experience. In the actual battle, players need to judge the distance of the enemy attack and reasonably estimate the attack range of their own weapons, and a slightly longer hard straight brings players time to think and judge. Reasonable use of tumbling to avoid damage, take the opportunity to get close to the enemy for effective attack, coupled with the game's characters come with two sets of equipment system, support players to switch freely, in terms of combat strategy and enrich the player's combat experience. It turns out that action games do not necessarily rely on gorgeous continuous moves to win the love of players, this knife into the flesh of the attack and slow rhythm, emphasis on the battle process of play is also a new way to attract players entertainment.

Compared with the simple skill design, this work is somewhat cumbersome in the aspect of inscription system. Because in addition to the inscription system there is a sacred stone system. The Sacred Stone system gives the player a boost in stamina, damage boost, and belief points. The inscription system provides the player with increased stamina, attack accuracy, and field of view. The second difference lies in the way of adding points, the sacred stone system requires players to explore the hidden stone in the map during the brush process to add points, and the inscription system is that players will get a certain number of points per kill a monster, and accumulate a certain number of points to unlock an inscription. From the functional point of view, both are to bring permanent gain effect to the player, which is slightly troublesome in two places. From the point of view of the point of view, both are the process of brushing points, although the form is different but does not prevent the two together, and the sacred stone system itself is slightly simple, the two can be combined to bring the player a more convenient game experience.

Although the game was developed by an independent studio, no corners were cut when it came to the game content. The large map section brings more copy content to the player, and there are rich elements inside the copy, in addition to the unique religious altar, there are various treasure chests and organ traps. A variety of BOSS designs also enrich the player's brush experience, and dozens of NPCS not only tell different stories for players, but also help players in weapon selection and game saving. Players can also receive quests from individual NPCS to deepen the purpose of their swipe, and even players can meet NPCS inside the copy to give players tips on how to finish the game.

More game content will not only improve the durability of the game, but also show the sincerity of the studio for the players. The most intuitive experience that the large map section brings to the author is the rich copy content. What is more valuable is that the studio is not simply satisfied with making the map larger, but adds rich elements to the map, so that players can no longer explore the map simply by grinding monsters, but also experience some accidents of second kill traps, although this may make players feel crashed. But isn't the game experience enriched in this way? The flaw in the game's content is that it tries to give the player an unusual story with a large number of NPCS, but still leaves the story broken. The producers may also be aware of this, and also added a library map content, in an effort to make the story more systematic, but I personally feel that it has little effect, and this addition of the library map does not do a good job in terms of optimization, the game character will be stuck when moving inside.

Mysterious religious themes, a bit of Roguelike, and plenty of explorable content make the game more hardcore in difficulty. As a game developed by an independent studio, although there are many jumps, but in terms of the breadth and depth of the content can really see the carved side; As a 2D ARPG game, the producers have taken a different approach to bring the player a better sense of attack through the rich content of weapons, not to mention the novel and clever handling of religious themes, which is what makes this game remarkable. Perhaps the story content is unclear, the inscription system is bloated, and even the library map appears to be inadequate, but these minor deficiencies are not absolute reasons to hinder the good reviews of the book.

After all, as an ARPG game, a good combat experience is the most important!