Saint of Chains

8/10 A solid first-person survival-horror. The Silent Hill inspiration is reflected in the enemy design and map design. Always isolated, your protagonist frequently crosses over to a 'nightmare realm'. Another inspiration I noticed was Condemned. The occasional communication with an ally over the radio and the narrative based around a cult gave me strong vibes of the first Condemned game. Inspiration alone isn't the only thing the game has going for it. The devs clearly had a story they wanted to tell and accomplished it with this game. The cutscenes are short (and skippable) and have an old-school charm - between the low-fi textures and sometimes awkward line delivery. The story is relatively easy to follow, with fragments delivered by cutscene and story-progression item descriptions. Enemy design and environments are where this game shines. Where some indie horrors use trash mobs over & over again, Saint of Chains introduces a new enemy the instant you start to get used to them. Enemy design is intricate and there are lots of small details relevant to the protagonist's mental state. The dev team took some of the best design motifs from Jacob's Ladder & Silent Hill 2 when they created each enemy. The maps in the game stood out as some of the best I've seen in an indie game. Each level is thoughtfully crafted to be lonely, disturbing, sometimes-stressful and easily readable. Sound design is fantastic across every level. Some noises are so distorted that it unsettles you because you cannot work out if what you heard was an enemy or background ambience. The lighting & color grading really impressed me. The game can be very dark, but key details are usually readily visible. The pitfall of some lo-fi games is making maps that are too easy to get lost in. Lack of environmental detail can make it tricky to know where you are and Saint of Chains included objects and lighting changes to help you differentiate corridors. Some areas are downright beautiful - especially the normal world town locations at night. Where the PSX generation games had to limit map size, this game manages to fit large, realistic places without being labyrinthian or requiring excessive backtracking. A few times I caught myself expecting the end of the game to be near, only for another chapter to pop up. Negatives: Mentioned by other reviewers, the combat system can feel clunky beyond belief at times. It's not game-breaking, thanks to the updates by the devs. Some of the combat issues do not add to the immersion or fear factor, like the block mechanic. After swinging a melee weapon, you must wait for the animation to finish before you can try blocking. The time required is the same between all melee weapons, heavy or lightweight. Most enemies are able to recover from a pain-state and hit you long before you finish the swing animation. This had me scratching my head, as there ought to be an option to use lighter single-handed tools like the wrench to get around long cooldowns. Another fix for this would be to vary enemy attack patterns. Currently, all melee enemies run up to you, pause after they reach you and take a swing. Guns are bare-bones but do the job. Only found 3 across my time: a pistol, a weak shotgun and a rifle. The pistol is the clear winner for design, sound and ease of use. The shotgun feels anemic with a weak sounding blast, huge spread and very little point-blank damage. Performance was smooth. Only ever encountered a stutter upon the start of a new level, as the environment loaded in. No crashes to mention. No game-breaking bugs. TLDR; Great game with some minor design hiccups. Definitely worth it at the current price for fans of Condemned/Silent Hill/Jacob's Ladder.