Review for Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption. Game for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 18/10/2018 The version for PC came out on 23/10/2018
It's been a few years since a small indie, Titan Souls, managed to successfully combine the souls formula with Shadow of the Colossus, creating an interesting and challenging experience. Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption aims to do the same thing, but on a more ambitious level, placing the game in a 3D setting and without using the as beautiful as comfortable pixel-art. The project starts from excellent ideas, given that in addition to the interesting conjugation of the two videogame cult, Sinner also decides to introduce a system of weakening the character, which will become increasingly weaker as the game continues.
Despite the latter element being handled quite well though. the project turned out to be perhaps too ambitious for Darkstar: the game in fact has serious flaws, especially in terms of game design.
One thing that many do not understand about the now cult video game Dark Souls is what makes this title great. Quite often the discussions about souls and souls-like are limited to talking about the high difficulty of these games, without realizing that it is not the sheer difficulty that makes them great, but the way they allow you to overcome these obstacles.
Any enemy found in Dark Souls can be faced and taken down in a number of ways, and it is up to the player's imagination to find which one is best. One of the groups that didn't exactly understand this detail is the studio behind Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption. This can be seen from the fact that in their game the difficulty is such only due to unfair mechanics in the comparison of the player, which cannot be properly circumvented except with the trial and error. And this talk introduces Sinner's biggest problems: the game designs behind the bosses.
Each boss fight in the game tries to be different from the previous one, and almost succeeds, but the way Darkstar has decided to balance the title makes them all, in their own way, potentially frustrating. Every single boss has at least one unfair mechanic, which causes immediate death of the player: whether it be the fault of the arena that breaks without an optimal graphic signal, of the attacks with tracking that lead to one-shot or attacks that continue to do damage even after they are over, any battle can be frustrating. We emphasize the potential to frustrate to introduce a further problem of the game, namely the banality of battles.
While all of them can kill unfairly, only a couple of bosses can actually be considered difficult, with the others being so simple that they can be taken down in no time despite the huge amount of life they possess. The fact that the bosses are therefore both trivial, at least for the most part, and incorrect, is already a good sentence for Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption, being a title composed solely of boss-fights.
Not everything is to be thrown away though: some mechanics are interesting and work well, such as fixed equipment which tries to make the player think about how to best use their arsenal, although often there is not the need. The sacrifice system was also handled very well, serving its role as an “additional challenge” for the title. But this positive parenthesis does not last long, since there is also the technical side to discuss. In terms of stability, the game performs quite well on PS4 Pro, it has a drop in framerate but of little importance. Where instead you begin to feel the gravity of the situation is in the aesthetic sector.
Nothing in Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption manages to impress on an aesthetic level. The boss arenas and the bosses themselves are extremely mundane, the main hub is bare and creates no interest. The few things that can arouse a minimum of interest are of a citational nature, such as the protagonist who looks a lot like ICO or a quote to the Berserk eclipse at the end. Even in this case, however, we are talking about copies made badly, which do not save Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption from sinking into the oblivion of banality. Instead, the audio sector is better, with very nice tracks and suitable for almost every boss-fight.
Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption is a title crushed by its own ambitiousness. Darkstar started with good ideas, but was unable to support us with good quality game design. The game can be appreciated by fans of souls-like, being also particularly short it manages not to tire, but it has no appeal outside this niche. The banal aesthetic aggravates the situation of a game that, unfortunately, has disappointed even the most realistic expectations.
► Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption is an indie-type game developed and published by Darkstar for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 18/10/2018 The version for PC came out on 23/10/2018
