#Shrouded in sanity story full#

Your view repositions itself a lot, which is.just a bizarre decision. Moving between rooms isn't consistent, either - you'll enter a south-facing doorway (i.e., 'down'), and the next screen that loads will reposition the world so you're entering from the E, W, or even S. Room by room, most of the game's Victorian setting look too similar, making some halls and rooms almost indistinguishable from one another. The art style itself ranges from beautiful to hideously drab. Admirable for a single dev with an eye for Souls' formula, sure, but still glaring - annoying - faults.

#Shrouded in sanity story full#

The game's full of poor or incomplete design choices like that. (Think Gothic 3's awful stunlocking boars, or, more accurately, getting to be that stunlocking boar.) Enemies who themselves sport guns aren't programmed correctly, and instead of offering any attempt at challenge, run up to your avatar and fire in the wrong direction until you kill them. The gun is also useless except for one or two specific bosses, who, due to poor design choices, open their arms wide to welcome a stunning bullet over and over and over and over without break. More likely you'll choose to either roll or block exclusively rather than combining tools during your enemies' frenetic onslaughts, making whichever you don't use a pointless addition to the gameplay. Fighting enemies will consist of quick sword swipes, heavy sword swipes (pointless - they don't do much more damage and put you at risk of attack), and either dodging or blocking attacks, coupled with the chance to parry enemies using a gun or timed-attacks a la Buttborne / Dark Souls. Could be cool, but it's clearly not intended.

Speaking of escaping, you can bypass all non-boss combat by running away. If multiple enemies enter the fray, combat tends to turn into button mashing and a race to either escape or separate enemies. One-on-one combat is alright decently fast-paced. In addition to the gameplay just not feeling complete, the level design ranges from quaint to hideous to blindingly repetitive, and the writing chops on display are - no pun intended - soulless. Shrouded in Sanity is a decent game, particularly coming from a single developer, but it has a wealth of problems that keep me from recommending it. That's a bit key if you're making a Souls-like, isn't it?