Scar-Lead Salvation is a roguelite third-person-shooter where you play as a woman with amnesia who has to fight her way out of a military complex full of robots. Who is she? Why does she know how to fight so well? Who is this mysterious A.I. talking to her and sorta helping her? Why is she able to die and come back over and over? You learn the answers to all of these questions and more as the information is drip-fed to you as you make more and more progress through the game.
It's a roguelite, but only sorta. It feels like they wanted to make a roguelite but got bored and half-assed it. The reason why other roguelites work is because they give you a ton of tools to use and toys to play with that make each playthrough dynamic and interesting while also making you feel like you're getting more and more powerful as you play. Scar-Lead Salvation doesn't really do that. There are only a small handful of weapons - most of which absolutely suck and aren't worth using - and the sort of semi-permanent upgrades the game offers don't ever feel like they make much difference. You never feel like you're actually getting stronger, and the runs aren't dynamic because you end up using the same weapons every time. So, it basically totally fails as a roguelite.
The levels are procedurally generated from a surprisingly shallow pool of room layouts, and the game is pretty short. There are only three bosses in the whole game. At first, you're compelled to kill everything in each room in order to earn a maximum amount of in-game currency, but when you realize the weapons and upgrades all suck you end up just running past everything. In typical roguelite fashion, your first run through the game is sort of a facade and the "real" game starts when you beat the final boss and find yourself at the beginning again, only this time the enemies are way tougher. So you do it all again, with the same lame weapons and upgrades and fight the same three bosses again. And that's it.
The game is sort of difficult - especially the third level on your second run - but it's more annoying than necessarily hard. At first, the game is really disappointingly simple with pretty sad enemies that aren't much of a threat, but that third level just gets insane with enemies filling the screen with a ridiculous amount of bullets. It's crazy. But not particularly fun. The game doesn't give you enough tools to effectively dodge through the storm of bullets and fight back, and the weapons suck anyway, so you're better off just running past everything as fast as you can.
The game just isn't good to play. It's about as deep as a dried up rain puddle. I was kind of okay-ish with it to start, but hated it by the end.
This game is from Compile Heart and Idea Factory, which is a big reason why I was excited to play it in the first place. I figured there would at least be some anime waifus to ogle or something. It's a disappointment there too, unfortunately. There's seriously only one character, and while she does look good, this is not a fanservice-y romp at all. They sort of tried, though, because as you take damage her outer armor comes off and her clothes gradually disappear, but it never gets anywhere remotely close to spicy.
The most hilarious thing about Scar-Lead Salvation is that they tried to sell it for a full $60 MSRP on Steam and PlayStation. It absolutely is not worth that much, which they must have realized because the Xbox version launched at only $30. Now, $30 is a lot closer to what it should have been all along, but I'd say it still isn't worth it. It's too shallow and too short and you keep waiting for it to reach a climax and get good but it never does. It really does just feel like half, or less, of a game.
As such, I can't recommend it. At all. As a third-person-shooter Scar-Lead Salvation plays fine, I guess, but the levels are boring, it fails as a roguelite, the weapons suck, the fanservice sucks, and everything is way too shallow and half-baked. It's genuinely really disappointing. Maybe when it's $10 give it a try, but skipping it entirely is probably the best choice.
Comments
Post a Comment