I avoided all of the pre-release hype surrounding this game and came into it essentially blind. Granted, I know at some point Keannu Reeves shows up (couldn't avoid that one) but that's about it, and I haven't gotten that far in the story yet. Having said that, and coming at this with tempered expectations, I now feel comfortable giving this a positive review after about eight hours of gameplay. Initial impressions are positive: it's not groundbreaking, but it definitely scratches the itch for good single player story to dive into. It reminds me a lot of The Witcher III; at least, I can tell it's made by the same devs. I haven't had any gamebreaking bugs yet. Just having a good time. If I could give one piece of advice to the devs: THE MENU AND INVENTORY SYSTEM IS WHACK!!! Seriously, what the hell were you thinking? It's all over the place. Super confusing. The whole thing needs to be scrapped and re-designed.
[For anyone curious, I'm playing this on a 2008 unibody Macbook Pro with a 2.66 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, GeForce 9600M GT and 4 gigs of RAM running Windows 7. I can't run it in 1440 x 900 resolution, but it plays fairly well in windowed mode at lower resolutions. I'm pretty happy that it even runs at a playable framerate on this old a laptop.] I'm having fun playing this game so far. The graphics look great and the character design can be very interesting. Level design has been good so far too- clearly a lot of work went into designing this game. One thing that stands out as somewhat strange, however, is the orchestral soundtrack which is certainly beautiful but doesn't quite fit the tone of the visuals and Death being there and all that stuff. The music feels like something you'd expect while exploring the beautiful vistas of Skyrim or something. As far as gameplay and balance goes, I haven't played enough to be able to say for sure, but the most important thing is that it has kept my interest, it's fun, and there's some challenge to it. So far so good. To me, the most important thing is that I'm having fun while playing a game, and so far I definitely am. I do wish there was an option to use PS3 or PS4 buttons for the interface instead of Xbox, because I play with a DS3. Salt and Sanctuary has this and it's very much appreciated. Overall, great job devs. This is the first game I've reviewed on GoG or Steam because it's the first time I've bought a game this close to launch (no one needs to hear my opinion about The Witcher 3 in 2018).
