Sancticide PC Review
Summary: Sancticide feels like it has potential that has yet to be fully realised. If you enjoyed Morrowind or Skyrim style combat, and have the same nostalgia for Diablo 2 that I do, you'll probably still have a good time (once the bugs are ironed out).
3
Morrowind meets Diablo
I’m not entirely sure what Sancticide is trying to pull off, but whatever it is, I think they still have quite a lot of work to do. Leaving Early Access on Steam on March 11, my personal feeling is of an ‘uneven’ work—some elements seem to have received significant time and attention, whilst others seem only a few steps away from placeholder assets. Mileage will vary on how much this bothers you, especially at only $30 AUD, but I think it’s worth knowing in advance that Sancticide might have left Early Access in name only.
Firstly—as usual, no spoilers. I will try to limit any screenshots to the tutorial mission. To cover the bare essentials, Sancticide is a third-person action RPG. Set following a ‘biblical apocalypse’, you play as a ‘sin collector’, gaining experience as you collect items and defeat enemies, which in turn allows you to level up and spend points on skills that improve survivability, attack power or the versatility of your ‘purple’ magic.
The ‘biblical’ setting brought to mind Diablo II and III when Sancticide started, particularly with animated cut scenes that reminded me of graphic novel panels. However, I think a better comparison is Morrowind regarding how your character controls—with better animations and considerably worse camera controls. I want to emphasise the camera—I don’t think it was a bug, because it felt just as bad whether I played on my PC with a controller or mouse/keyboard or on Steam Deck. It was sufficiently bad that I felt like I was playing with simulated stick drift on purpose. I think the camera was consistently trying to centre on my character during movement, but when I tried to test that, I couldn’t confirm it or reproduce it consistently. With lock-on during combat, the camera control is tolerable; however, when moving throughout the environments generally or not using lock-on for multiple enemies, my experience was bad enough that I wondered if it was ‘broken’. It is a strong example of something that might have benefitted from extra time and testing.
I personally found the story mostly forgettable. I’m not sure how much of that is because I couldn’t connect the dialogue and voice acting. I mentioned in the intro my sense that some of the assets in Sancticide feel placeholders—the writing and voiced lines immediately come to mind. This definitely impacted how I attended to the story and ‘barks’ between combat encounters. But there’s a chance the developers lost me in the first cut scene—it’s kind of hard for me to believe that my character would be agreeable to align themselves with an entity or organisation after what happened to them. The unique ‘purple’ power reminds me of the Force if you were Starkiller again, although my interest in the story waned as I encountered relatively banal game systems.
The game runs reasonably well at ‘Epic’ settings. My gaming laptop sounded like it was trying to lift off at times, but I never encountered anything that concerned me, which is saying a lot for anything recently released these days. I wouldn’t say it’s especially ‘pretty’, but the post-apocalyptic setting doesn’t lend itself to beauty. The character models for the enemies seem simple and serviceable and similarly so for the weapons—overall, nothing stood out to me as graphically wonderful, but neither was it ‘bad’. Draw distances aren’t worth considering given the environments twist and turn from my time with the game. I thought elements of environmental art, particularly diegetic art, were great. The characters’ flavour text and barks took away some of the shine, but I enjoyed the efforts at painting this world through the corpses of enemies and allies alike.
The combat itself is not bad, again reminiscent of a Bethesda classic: Skyrim. The first time I used ‘push’, I was instantly reminded of the first Dragon shout. The parry and block system is generous, although sometimes I wasn’t sure if I had staggered an enemy or not based on how quick the animation was. Most of the difficulty I experienced was managing multiple enemies that felt comfortable to attack simultaneously (which, when paired with my gripe about camera controls above, predictably led to some frustration). I didn’t notice anything particularly special about the bosses—if you happen to die/fail the first attempt, that seems sufficient enough of a lesson that you will clear them the next time.
I was surprised at the health pool of most of the enemies I encountered early on; they felt a bit spongy, but as different weapons were introduced, I realised that this was likely tuned to emphasise the importance of gear, both melee and ranged. I think this makes sense for an action RPG, particularly if the developers are as inspired by the Diablo series as I suspect they were. It is likely another example of something that might be tuned a bit finer, but I think that’s a well-established practice for ARPGs and not something to be concerned about.
Overall, I think Sancticide is a serviceable ARPG that reminded me of a really, really good Morrowind or Skyrim mod with a 2020s post-apocalyptic skin on it. Like I said at the top, with a bit more time to iron out simple issues like camera controls, maybe some tighter writing and a story that made me want to explore the world? I reckon this could have hooked me, despite what I experienced as a relatively flavourless world in terms of overall art and character design. Based on my experience with games releasing from Early Access, I expect there will be significant updates within the next couple of months—so maybe stick Sancticide on your wishlist, join the Discord and keep an eye out for how polished this uncut gem might get.
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