Review: Saga of Sins – Cracked Glass

WARNING: Moderate Story Spoilers Ahead

Anybody who read my review of Pentiment towards the end of last year might be forgiven for thinking that I’m a drooling history fanboy who loves archaic art styles without reservation and will gobble up any sort of pre-modern art in a video game with a voracity reserved for small black holes. Surely, Saga of Sins would scratch the itch again and leave me a satisfied gamer. As it turns out, not so much.

Developed by indie studio Bonus Level Entertainment, Saga of Sins puts players in the armored boots of Cecil, a resident of the too-on-the-nose town of Sinwell who’s recently returned from the Crusades. The church is in bad shape, the residents of the town are doing everything possible to embody the Seven Deadly Sins, and the town priest Ulric wants you to clean things up. How? By entering the minds of the villagers as one of four mythological (and quasi-demonic) creatures and literally confronting their sins in an effort to scare them straight through thirty-one different levels of Metroidvania-style action.

“Say two Hail Marys, three Our Fathers, and enter the Konami Code.”

Visually, Saga of Sins bears a distant relationship to Vanillaware games like Odin Sphere combined with the general style of art found in stained glass windows in cathedrals and churches throughout the Western Hemisphere. The animation style isn’t entirely fluid, retaining angular movements similar to shadow puppets, but it works. Backgrounds are well designed and the environments definitely work to make it clear which particular deadly sin you’re fighting against. Your different demonic forms are pleasantly distinctive from each other and the variety of enemy creatures you go up against fit thematically with the types of sins. Visual effects are somewhat subdued, but they do fit with the overall theme of stained glass and art. Taken on its own, Saga of Sins is not a bad looking game by any stretch of the imagination.

As far as music and sound, Saga of Sins does a workman-like job. There are distinct themes for each of the seven types of areas as well as boss fight themes and “traveling” music as you walk from place to place. Monsters have their own distinctive sounds when attacking, but all of them have the same sort of shattering glass sound at their defeat. Various sound effects from the types of attack you as a player unleash to more subtle sounds are well implemented and do not do anything to distract from the gameplay. Voice work is probably the one area where the end results are less than acceptable. The acting veers between “pretty good” and “SyFy Channel cheese.” Worse, while early encounters between Cecil and the residents of Sinwell are fully voiced, later encounters are not. If it’s not a bug, it’s a terrible oversight.

Some of us get to savor the experience of egg on our face a little more than others.

When it comes to gameplay, Saga of Sins has some serious problems right alongside its generally high quality design. As Metroidvanias go, it’s not quite as brutal as say Hollow Knight, and the progression of abilities for your different demon forms are fairly straightforward. It’s the progression of actually unlocking those demon forms that is such a pain in the ass. We’re told that we need to obtain Glass Fragments to ultimately repair the broken stained glass windows in Sinwell’s church, which also unlocks the different demon forms. But we’re not told what the threshold is for those unlocks. You essentially go through a significant portion of the entire game with only three of the four forms. And while you come across areas and obstacles which are specifically meant for different forms, you can’t revisit levels you’ve cleared the first time until about the halfway point. Hidden chests and secret areas abound, but past a certain point, you kind of lose your motivation to go after them. Not that Saga of Sins will let you, though. When you’ve got a tooltip at the loading screen for each level occasionally reminding you that you unlock something “special” if you find all 111 secret chests, you realize that it’s a chore which you’ll have to check off sooner or later.

That same sense of “this is a chore” extends to upgrading your abilities. Again, past a certain point, you’re just grinding for coins to pay for the upgrades, which invariably involves going back through previously cleared levels with your different demon forms to reach areas you couldn’t before. It’s a degree of tedium which kills a lot of narrative momentum. Speaking of killing, players will note in very short order than each villager whose mind they enter disappears from the village. While you may be tempted to think they’ve simply gone back to their homes and are living a life freed from the shackles of sin, thus no longer requiring your attention…yeah, no. In a narrative twist which feels completely unearned and wildly predictable, it turns out that going into the minds of villagers and wiping out their sins straight up kills them. But hey, you can always visit the graveyard and dive back in to find those chests you missed the first time around!

This literally took five minutes to cross.

The only exceptions are the ten “innocents” scattered here and there throughout the town. If you make it through their puzzle-related levels and successfully reach the chest at the end, you’ll earn extra coins. Once. Since there are no enemies in the minds of the innocents, you’re basically doing it for the stunts and the chance at one of three Glass Fragments. And you don’t get to find out which innocents have the fragments until you beat the level. Otherwise, you’re stuck killing off a bunch of villagers and getting a small junior high level observation on the nature of morality each time you clear a level. There’s no sense of Gothic dread nor pseudo-medieval “passion play” sensibilities.

Mechanically, Saga of Sins is pure 80s and 90s platforming, almost classic Metroidvania gameplay. And while I’m certainly a fan of the classics, particularly titles from the halcyon days of Sega Genesis and the NES, Saga of Sins tries to “improve the formula” with limited success. As you defeat enemies, you build up a powered dash, which you can use to reach certain areas or bull rush other enemies to death. Using the dash on enemies leads to improved gold rewards, but you so rarely get an opportunity to hit more than a few enemies at a time that the mechanic feels kind of wasted. Boss fights sometimes try to break things up with different mechanics, such as outrunning a wave of gold coins (representing Greed) or destroying the literal heart of a painting using your different demon forms to deal damage.

“No, but it sure as hell makes me think I’m suffering from ergot poisoning!”

But for some reason, the developers absolutely went nuts on the idea of mirror mechanics, inverting your controls so that left and right are swapped, which leads to considerable frustration whether it’s traversing an area, going through an innocent mind, or a boss fight that almost drove me to chuck my controller at the TV. While certain boss fights have obvious visual cues that you’re making progress on defeating the boss, others refuse to give you any idea of how much longer the torture will continue. The Greed Boss does not give you any indication of how much further you have to run (which gets mighty irritating if you haven’t built up enough extra health through upgrades). Meanwhile, the Pride Boss combines lack of information with mirror mechanics AND what feels like a very specific restriction on what kind of form you have to use. Compared to the intriguing level designs throughout the rest of the game, these moments just rankle. And in truth, if I’m literally having to turn my head upside down in order to navigate a puzzle level over and over again, maybe think about a different design choice.

If you’re looking for a Metroidvania that’s got some atmosphere and good classic gameplay, you could do worse than Saga of Sins, but you could also do so much better. The weak narrative and overuse of mirror mechanics dampens the visual appeal and fundamental experience. Anybody trying to make comparisons between this game and Pentiment absolutely doesn’t know what they’re talking about and should not be trusted in terms of recommendations.

“This is…nope! Can’t do it! This is beyond nuts!”

Axel reviewed Saga of Sins on PC with a review code. Saga of Sins is also available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch. 

 

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments