I love Metroidvanias, but combined with Souls-like elements makes for a very fun concoction. This one in particular I have so much fun exploring. The story telling and world building adds to the mystery and the fun of unraveling the story. It has a very good variety of enemies/bosses/items. It also oozes so much atmosphere. One of the better Metroidvanias (I played a fair number of them).
Another one is Dark Souls 2. I get it being disliked; can’t be helped as it had a lot of departures from the first. But out of all 3, this one I played x3 as much. I absolutely love the sheer variety of locations (it’s ridiculous); exploration is super fun and rewarding.
Is Salt and Sanctuary not a popular game? It’s one of the better and well reviewed 2D souls-likes.
Salt and Sacrifice did get dunked on for being Epic exclusive and worse than Salt and Sanctuary though.
I love Metroidvanias
Give Ender Lilies a try if you didn’t play it yet by the way. Really good Metroidvania and one of my favorites (besides the obvious ones like Hollow Knight and Ori).
It’s the impression I get, I rarely hear it discussed or people just haven’t heard of it when Hollow Knight comes up.
I actually gave Ender Lilies a shot. I have to admit it didn’t grab me for some reason. I don’t remember what problem I had with it exactly. BUT it does have a phenomenal soundtrack (Awakening, North).
Have you played Aquaria? I should’ve mentioned this one instead (slipped my mind) because it feels even more obscure than Salt and Sanctuary.
Completely agree on Dark Souls 2, I’ve played almost all of the Souls games, yet I keep finding myself coming back to Dark Souls 2, I’m not sure what it is about the game, because there are definitely things I don’t like about it (Mainly adaptability and hollowfication reducing your health) but it’s still easily my most replayed Souls game. I especially love the early game, where you have 4 different paths you can take from Majula, it lets me leave if I am struggling with an area and come back to it later after playing a different path for a while
I’ve been meaning to play salt and sanctuary for a while, but haven’t done it yet. I might pick that game up next time my bank account is a bit more full, because that sounds right up my alley
I also keep wanting to come back to DS2 for the long journey with so many cool locations.
Salt and Sanctuary really holds a special place for me. The atmosphere is absolutely top notch; we’re talking Hollow Knight levels in my opinion. The map design is also phenomenal along with tons of secrets and shortcuts. Not sure if the recent patch fixed it, but the combat is kinda unbalanced from what I recall. Heavy armor is more or less useless so you might as well go fashion-souls. And 2-handed strength weapons are king.
Idk where the DS2 hate came from, before DS3 released i remember DS2 being quite well regarded, i put in well over 300 or so hours just replaying the game over and over again trying to create OP builds and beating the game as fast as i could. while DS3 felt super polished with a really impressive map design, it just wasn’t as fun as DS2 for me.
I think most of the hate was from the initial release. At this point blatant hate is undeserved and it might be a meme at this point or a bandwagon to hop on where everyone knows “DS2 bad”.
Salt and Sanctuary (more for it being unpopular vs bad hivemind).
I love Metroidvanias, but combined with Souls-like elements makes for a very fun concoction. This one in particular I have so much fun exploring. The story telling and world building adds to the mystery and the fun of unraveling the story. It has a very good variety of enemies/bosses/items. It also oozes so much atmosphere. One of the better Metroidvanias (I played a fair number of them).
Another one is Dark Souls 2. I get it being disliked; can’t be helped as it had a lot of departures from the first. But out of all 3, this one I played x3 as much. I absolutely love the sheer variety of locations (it’s ridiculous); exploration is super fun and rewarding.
Is Salt and Sanctuary not a popular game? It’s one of the better and well reviewed 2D souls-likes. Salt and Sacrifice did get dunked on for being Epic exclusive and worse than Salt and Sanctuary though.
Give Ender Lilies a try if you didn’t play it yet by the way. Really good Metroidvania and one of my favorites (besides the obvious ones like Hollow Knight and Ori).
It’s the impression I get, I rarely hear it discussed or people just haven’t heard of it when Hollow Knight comes up.
I actually gave Ender Lilies a shot. I have to admit it didn’t grab me for some reason. I don’t remember what problem I had with it exactly. BUT it does have a phenomenal soundtrack (Awakening, North).
Have you played Aquaria? I should’ve mentioned this one instead (slipped my mind) because it feels even more obscure than Salt and Sanctuary.
Nope, but I do have it in my Steam library for some reason so I’m gonna check it out soon.
Completely agree on Dark Souls 2, I’ve played almost all of the Souls games, yet I keep finding myself coming back to Dark Souls 2, I’m not sure what it is about the game, because there are definitely things I don’t like about it (Mainly adaptability and hollowfication reducing your health) but it’s still easily my most replayed Souls game. I especially love the early game, where you have 4 different paths you can take from Majula, it lets me leave if I am struggling with an area and come back to it later after playing a different path for a while
I’ve been meaning to play salt and sanctuary for a while, but haven’t done it yet. I might pick that game up next time my bank account is a bit more full, because that sounds right up my alley
I also keep wanting to come back to DS2 for the long journey with so many cool locations.
Salt and Sanctuary really holds a special place for me. The atmosphere is absolutely top notch; we’re talking Hollow Knight levels in my opinion. The map design is also phenomenal along with tons of secrets and shortcuts. Not sure if the recent patch fixed it, but the combat is kinda unbalanced from what I recall. Heavy armor is more or less useless so you might as well go fashion-souls. And 2-handed strength weapons are king.
Idk where the DS2 hate came from, before DS3 released i remember DS2 being quite well regarded, i put in well over 300 or so hours just replaying the game over and over again trying to create OP builds and beating the game as fast as i could. while DS3 felt super polished with a really impressive map design, it just wasn’t as fun as DS2 for me.
I think most of the hate was from the initial release. At this point blatant hate is undeserved and it might be a meme at this point or a bandwagon to hop on where everyone knows “DS2 bad”.