I picked this up on Steam about a week ago. It’s being touted as a “2-d Dark Souls”. It’s a brutally hard platformer. The graphics, while unique, have been described as “ugly” in a number of discussions i’ve seen in various places, but the gameplay more than makes up for it IMO.
There’s some RPG and Metroidvania elements to it. You can level up your character, and the game has a skill tree that looks almost as intimidating as Path of Exile’s at first glance. But most of the branches revolve around various weapons, magic, prayers, etc, so it’s actually kind of straightforward: pick your weapon and follow the path for it. You find a ridiculous amount of weapons and armor and although i’ve focused on 2h swords for my first playthrough, from what i hear there are many different viable builds. Weapons and armor can also be upgraded.
It’s very very easy to die in this game, and without looking for tips on the internet, most people will take a while to figure out how to beat the bosses. There are also a ton of traps, breakable platforms which will send you plummeting to your death, and regular monsters which will hurt you quite badly if you’re not careful.
I think I am roughly about 1/3 of the way through the game right now, and despite some frustration from the high difficulty level, am really enjoying this game. I have not played any of the Dark Souls games, but Salt and Sanctuary is drawing a lot of comparisons to those, so if you like very hard platformers, you should definitely check this out. I am playing the PC version through Steam with an XBOX 360 controller, but it’s also available on the PS4.