Developer: Darkstar
Publisher: Another Indie
Platform: PS4, Xbox one, Switch
Tested on: Switch
Sinner: Sacrifice of Redemption – Review
We all have a love-and-hate relationship with games like Bloodborne and the Dark Souls series. One moment we are frustrated and swear that it is the last time we ever touched the game and a moment later we are in love with it, because of the depth and strong connection you need with the game if you want to progress to one of the many bosses and murder them brutally. But for some people, the minions you need to slay before you even get at the boss feel a bit boring, so the Darkstar indie team has developed a game with only bosses, and oh, boy we are addicted again.
Story
You wake up as a man with no memories at all. The only thing you remember is your name, Adam. Sadly for you, Adam will face the greatest struggle of his life. When he wakes up he quickly understands that he needs to face his sins and defeat them, to become sane again. You will quickly feel that each sin Adam faces, will leave a mark that will give you a greater disadvantage. Step by step, Adam can recover his memories and attain redemption. But If Adam can’t bear the sacrifices, there is a chance he will wallow in his past.
Graphics
If you look through some of the flaws and rough edges, this is one of the more decent games, in terms of graphics on the Nintendo Switch. Although we have only a certain amount of ‘rooms’ we can access outside of the starting area where you have a small tutorial. They made every room or area related to a theme, which will result in different texture uses and a variety of scenery, which is very nice for an indie game. The bosses themselves are neatly designed and stand out in the environments, making sure the key topic of the game is perfectly executed.
Sound
They nailed it in every asset of sound, not only have they made use of an array of eerie sounds, but they also know when silence is key. Clashes of weapons sound more real than ever before. You surely will get a few moments where your arm hairs will stand up straight. The only thing that bothered us was the fact that even they have these amazing cutscenes they only provide us with some text instead of a narrator whose voice acts the memories.
Gameplay
Sinner: Sacrifice of Redemption is a boss battler action RPG, which is inspired by the Dark Souls series and Shadow of the Colossus. The game starts off with a rather short tutorial where you can learn the base mechanics against a few enemies before you enter the main room. Here you will stand face to face in front of seven altars, each of them representing the unspeakable sin you committed in the past.
This game does the opposite of most games and punishes you for making progress. Each altar asks a sacrifice which will only be redeemable when you want to try out another altar, this only counts when you didn’t kill the boss of that particular sin. If you did kill the boss and you take back your sacrifice, it will resurrect all over again. So maybe keep that in mind, because some sacrifices are worse than others.
You play as a knight in shiny armor, and have a few tools at your disposal. You can choose between attacking with your two-handed sword or a sword-and-shield setup. Also, you have a few items like throwing knives, bombs, and heals at your disposal, those, however, are limited and need to be used with great care. The two most important things to keep an eye on are your health and stamina bar as they will make or break you. This all because of the fact that each action, item or whatsoever lowers your stamina and each hit lowers your health.
There are seven bosses you need to defeat and seven sacrifices that need to be made. The bosses all have different abilities besides their auto attacks. Not only are they quite annoying to dodge, if you manage to get past a certain point on their health bar certain abilities become more frequent, stronger or even more complex.
If you manage to kill all of those you can summon the main boss for your last battle. None of this will be easy, because we mentioned before that it is inspired by the Dark Souls series and we all know how much we cursed our way through these memorable titles.
Conclusion
Sinner: Sacrifice of Redemption has well-considered gameplay with a sinister story lurking with every boss you encounter. The graphics and sound may not be the best, but still pretty good for an indie game that is released on the Nintendo Switch. This game brought us hours on end of fun and frustration. Darkstar managed to bring something new and daring, inspired by the Dark Souls games with twists we want to see more in the future. If you’re looking to cut out all the grinding the Dark Souls games have, with a handicap system that makes things harder as you progress, you might want to check out this pocket-sized title.
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