SMOKE AND SACRIFICE Review for PlayStation 4

Intro: Smoke and Sacrifice by Solar Sail Games and award-winning publisher Curve Digital, is a story driven, open world RPG that takes places in the middle of a small village. In this world the sun was eventually destroyed, which caused the Sun Tree to become the sole and primary source of energy. However, villagers must present and sacrifice their first-born children to the Sun Associates in order to provide energy for the Sun Tree. This continuous cycle finally changes when your character Sachi brings her son Lio to the alter to be sacrificed but has second thoughts when it comes down to it. A long journey including fighting vivid creatures, trips to the underworld, and crafting resources; come and help Sachi retrieve her son and discover the truth about her village.

Gameplay: This game consists of only the story mode and has very few controls to its gameplay. It’s filled with tight movements backed by close and light fighting maneuvers. There isn’t much to do outside of your given objective, besides navigating throughout the map and jousting through your items. Also, the dialogue is a main feature of the game. It’s one of the main ways to collect information throughout the game. However, all dialogue had to be manually read, which made for a good bit of reading through the course of the game. Simply put this is a game with fairly simple controls.

Character/POV: In Smoke and Sacrifice you have complete control of your character Sachi who is viewed in a 3^rd person POV. The camera follows her movement and gives you a decent array to view while you are playing. However, the main limitation I noted when playing is no control over this camera. In most games I can have some type of way to change the camera view, so I can adjust while in awkward angles but I wasn’t given that option here. On the other hand, I was impressed at the multiple ways the developers were able to create boundaries. During the game, there was always some terrain that ended the map and walking onto this terrain would diminish your health if not wearing the right equipment such as the frozen tundra, black tar, purple smoke, flames, etc.

Verdict: I personally think that Smoke and Sacrifice’s main focal point is how strongly story driven it is. I think that is the bright spot of the game and it depends how invested you are into the plot to determine your enjoyment level. But, personally for me I believe this game is lacking in very important areas that I need to really dig and invest my time into a game.

Pros: Interesting Character Designs, Storyline, Worldbuilding, Fast loading, Small file size

Cons: No Voice Establish, No options, Weak animations, Fast play, Camera View

6/10

Check Out the Smoke and Sacrifice Trailers:

Smoke and Sacrifice is available now for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The game is also available for PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch.