A Solid 16/10 - Let's Play Salt and Sanctuary

Yeah, despite the obvious Souls influence it doesn’t really play much like them thanks to the 2D plane and a more combo-focused mashy combat system.

Also, new update:

I’d never seen the attack of the Probably Clay Phantom before.

Apologies for the slight delay, today. Episode is currently processing and should be up soon.

Missed Friday’s update, but I’ll be one update ahead from now on so that shouldn’t occur in the future.

Today we got a cool new area with some unbelievably annoying enemies.

Time to visit the land of stink. It’s a Souls-inspired game, it has to have a poisonous bog.

That armor set is the Boatman’s set. Remove the o.

Another double boss-a-reeno. Goes pretty smoothy thanks to our ::skull_crossbones:JAWS OF DEATH:skull_crossbones:, though.

I kind of like the lore behind these two bosses.

Mainlined the LP over a couple of days and I’m loving it so far. Started playing on my own and I’m enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would, never been a big of actually -playing- souls style games but they always appealed to me because I was a sucker for the Kings Field style games.

It’s kind of charming how hellacious the human models and animation are, and then the environments are kind of gorgeous in a Darkest Dungeon sort of style. This game really feels like such a mixed big, but instead of being angry when it shits on the floor you just have to put your hands on your hips and roll your eyes. It means well, and it certainty has passion put in it, but now and then you have skeletons teleporting all over the place and the odd one will give you a swift kick to the jimmies.
It reminds me in a way of GunGirl 2 (god what a horrific name) where everyone is just straight out gross crawled out of newgrounds style and the level assets are just big blobs of whatever defaults came in whatever pack they were using. But underneath all that is a fairly fun metroidvania in the vein of cave story, with all sorts of bonkers weapons and secrets to find. Also the music owns so there’s that.

Saw the recent patch just gave Reapers a proper execution now, so I’m already plotting and planning how to swing that kind of playthrough. Thanks for giving me the resource to come back to when I eventually forget some important bear ass I need for upgrading stuff or missing some sweet ass piece of fashion in the bottom of a pit.

King’s Field is the shit. Fast question, don’t think about it: which is your favorite KF?

I was not aware there was a recent patch. I was planning on using another reaper soon anyway so that’s pretty fortuitous timing.

Anyway update time. 100% optional areas.

KF 2, or just King’s Field here in the states remains my all time favorite. The second one was the first one I played though and it just really stuck with me. Plus you have this track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDapXvnjAhI which I ended up hearing a lot of, and it perfectly encapsulates why the game owns. Also finally being able to murder that giant kraken was one of the most satisfying things to me (even if I did just cheese it with fire wall), so it holds a special place in my heart.

I really should look at the fanmade games people have made with the Sword of Moonlight tools, it just amazes me that people are still making new stuff as late as 2016 in this engine for a series that is rather under the radar.

It’s really a shame to see how short Mal’s Castle is, given all the obvious care there was in making sure the required brands were present and how sweet ass the entrance is. Least she had a cool design, a more manevelant humanoid version of Moonlight Butterfly is p. ace in my book.

Murdelia Mal is likely a callback to a boss called Murderfly from Ska’s earlier game The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile. They’re pretty distinct from one another, though. While I’m here, it’s worth noting that Vampire Smile also had weaponized scissors called The Guillotine.

Bzzzz! Wrong, and you were so close too! The actual answer is Shadow Tower, I’m afraid.

But yeah, KF2 is pretty good. Never actually finished it, I got maybe 1/3 of the way in and started to get lost so I took a break. Then never returned to, as I end up doing with a lot of games. :V

My favorite, as you might be able to tell, is Shadow Tower. Dank dungeon crawling goodness with weird monster designs is much more my thing than KF’s heavier emphasis on exploration.

Oh, that’s neat. This is the nice thing about having a good place of discourse for LPs, you get to learn shit even if you’re the one making the LP.

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[quote=“Fiendly, post:22, topic:1472, full:true”]
Murdelia Mal is likely a callback to a boss called Murderfly from Ska’s earlier game The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile. They’re pretty distinct from one another, though. While I’m here, it’s worth noting that Vampire Smile also had weaponized scissors called The Guillotine.
[/quote] I sadly never owned a 360, so I missed out on all those handfuls of actually interesting XBLIG/Marketplace games. Good gravy this game looks dumb in the best ways though.

Wow, I somehow have never seen this either. Looks like the are using the same kind of engine they would later use for the Echo Night games perhaps? Interconnected but since it’s actually split up between doors and proper levels instead of being one big blob of a world looks like it runs much better too. Also having no music just like the Echo Night game seems like yeah, is prolly the same engine. Gotta check this out at some point for sure!

It’s dumb, but so good, one of my favorite games ever (and one of my first LPs embarrassingly enough). They did 2D Devil May Cry with that game just as well as they did 2D Dark Souls with this game. They’ve been working on a PC version of Vampire Smile with new content for literal years now, and I have no idea how long it’s been since they’ve mentioned any progress, but if it ever comes out, it’ll be worth checking out.

There are two Shadow Tower games, actually. One for the PSX which has an official localization, and a sequel (Shadow Tower Abyss) for the PS2 which only has a fan translation. Both are pretty good but assuming you have a decently specced computer I’d recommend the PS2 one more. It’s easily the best playing of the KF/ST games (you can chop off enemy limbs and you have guns in addition to swords) and it also seems to be a big influence on Demon’s Souls directly (survivability stuff like durability, separate theme worlds connected to a nexus that has all your shops, the general tone of the game, etc.).

That aside, new update. It’s another area. Not much else to say.

Oh boy, my favorite part of the game is next~
[/sarcasm]

Shame that the level was so bland, if jam packed with goodies for upgrading. At least the boss(es?) were mechanically interesting if not all that particularly threatening. The spider folk just feel like a leftover of “whoops we had a cool idea for a monster and need to drop it in somewhere, well here you go”.

The shortcuts continue their dubiousness and feel more like a product “oh yeah this -is- to the right of Salty Saul’s Pottery Pit, we should slap a hallway between here” Beside’s Mal’s Floating Castle, they seem really afraid to really compartmentalize areas completely. The only reason Mal’s is way on it’s own is, well I mean it’s fucking floating. Unless you have some hell gondola made of ship parts and human limbs that goes up and down from somewhere, then it’s gonna be off doing it’s own thing.

Maybe this all is partly a product of being a 2D space, where in souls games it’s easier to cordon off various areas by just splaying the whole thing out and have things wrap around on one another with elevators and the like. Other metroidvanias do this by making it a big root structure of some kind, going really far down/up and splitting off at multiple levels. In this game it’s kinda just blobbed all in a big mass, which I guess thematically makes sense in it being just an island but, ehh nitpicks.

Can’t wait to see eventual frustration forest though.

Could be their love for Dark Souls and its cohesive world coloring their design philosophy a bit too strongly.

I may have over-sold the frustration-factor a bit. Though that kind of came as a surprise to me as well.

She’s right. This is really, really not representative of the true first-time experience of the Pitchwoods.

You know, if those Yoku blocks were a common thing in his duchy, there may have been another reason besides his illegitimacy and his complex over it for Carsejaw’s decades-long witch hunts.
As for why he looks like Nito, the sword and armor he’s wearing are ceremonial stuff he had made for performing executions and witch hunts. They were designed to make him look like the grim reaper or similar embodiment of death.

He’s giant because that’s just what seems to happen to important Drowned/Cursed people that end up on the island I guess.

Also, if you fall down that huge pit right before the Betrayers, and have a lightsource active, you can see that the whole bottom of the area is filled entirely with corpses.