Saga of Sins Review – Can We Atone for Our Sins?

I’ve always enjoyed the idea of taking on the Seven Deadly Sins in a video game. Struggling against the faults of human nature adds a meaningful twist to a game, especially when it’s in a genre that sometimes focuses on gameplay over immersion. Getting to take on Sloth, Greed, and the rest of the big Seven, especially in a game reminiscent of the fantastic Mega Man series, therefore sounded right up my alley. Needless to say, I was excited to check out Saga of Sins, which does exactly that. Developer Bonus Level Entertainment used Eternal Darkness as an inspiration as well, which is one of my favorite horror games. What results is a game that has fun gameplay and an interesting story, but falls short in a few areas.

Story

Saga of Sins takes place during the outbreak of the Black Death pandemic. You play as Cecil, a cleric who has returned from the crusades to attempt to save his village Sinwell (a bit of an on-the-nose name) from this plague. His mentor Ulric explains to him that the plague spread because the village has fallen to sin, and the sinners must be purged of these sins in order to stop the Black Death. To do this, Cecil must go into the minds of the sinners and confront their sins head on.

Throughout the story, Cecil begins to have strange dreams, with a mysterious voice telling him strange things. On top of this, he begins having visions, and revelations make him question if his mission is truly just.

Overall, I enjoyed the game’s story. While it is mostly pretty straightforward, but there are some twists along the way to keep it interesting throughout. I liked the game’s use of horror elements in Cecil’s visions to help show the burden he is dealing with, and his deteriorating sanity from trying to carry out this mission.

Gameplay

The gameplay for Saga of Sins is fairly straightforward — while in Sinwell, all you can do is run throughout it, explore, and talk to the villagers. Once you enter a level, however (which takes place in a villager’s mind), the game takes on its action-adventure gameplay. You take the form of up to four beasts to fight the demons, allowing you to shoot, double jump, and use a powerful attack called the Power Dash when charged.

You start the game with only the Werewolf form, and unlock the others as you progress through the story and collect Glass Shards. Once you unlock more, you will be able to swap forms at any time, each one giving you a unique bullet type and a form of utility for exploration — the Werewolf for example can howl to break fragile parts of the background, revealing a hidden treasure.

I really liked the concept of the different forms and unlocking them, but I wish they would’ve done a little more to distinguish one from the other. Little things like just having the Werewolf form move faster than the others, or having a certain one be more resistant to physical attacks would have been appreciated. Even giving them different powerful attacks, rather than them all having Power Dash, could have gone a long way in making them feel more unique.

There is a good variety of enemies in Saga of Sins. Each sin will have different types of demons to fight from each other, and they all have unique attack patterns — some will just stand and shoot bullets at you, while others will run up to attack. The boss fights are similarly unique, with none being too similar to each other. For the most part, I really liked the enemy variety and design, but — despite their variety — some of the bosses were disappointing, feeling more like an obstacle course or puzzle than an actual battle.

In between levels, there is a Skill Tree you can access to make Cecil more powerful. Using gold that you collect within levels, you can choose to boost different aspects of yourself, such as increasing your health, or improving the bullets of one of your forms. The Tree is really simple, and you can fill most of it up just by going through the story, but the improvements do feel impactful in helping you through levels.

Overall, I enjoyed the gameplay. It combined combat against a solid variety of enemies with some platforming, which kept things from getting stale. Nothing felt overly hard or unfair. I did feel like they were a little heavy-handed in the tutorials, however — I didn’t need to be told five different times that killing enemies with Power Dash makes them drop more gold.

Progression and Navigation

Progression in Saga of Sins is very straightforward. Each level is accessed by speaking to a villager in Sinwell, and entering their mind. For each of the Seven Deadly Sins, there are two regular levels and a boss level — you must clear the regular levels before you can fight the boss of the respective sin. As you clear levels and save villagers from their sins, the village will open up more so you can talk to more people.

With one major exception, the levels are mostly linear, with only a few hidden or branching paths to find treasure. You’ll have to do a fair bit of platforming while navigating levels. Eventually, this will involve using the utility of each form to go through timed platforms, climb walls, and more — you will even need to use Power Dash to get to certain areas.

The way these levels were designed may be my favorite aspect of the game. Each level type has a unique type of obstacle to help represent their respective sin. For example, Sloth levels will have some kind of liquid on the floors that make you move really slowly, while enemies in Envy levels will take gold whenever they hit you. This is a great way to help represent each sin as you’re trying to fight against them.

In addition to levels within the sinners’ minds, you can go into the minds of innocent people as well. These optional sections are not full levels, but rather a puzzle that you will have to figure out, which will give you either treasure or a Glass Shard when solved. Some of these puzzles cannot be solved until you make it further into the game, but they can be accessed at any time.

Eventually, you will be able to return to levels you cleared and try to get anything you missed the first time. The pause menu conveniently shows you every level you’ve unlocked and cleared, as well as show you how much of the treasure you found in each one. I enjoyed the level design of the game overall, but I think it could have benefited from one or two more levels per sin, so the game would last a little longer.

Longevity and Replayability

Speaking of the game’s length, Saga of Sins is very short — going through the story takes only around 7-8 hours, however there are a few things to do to extend the runtime. There are multiple endings you can get for the game, but once you complete the game and see an ending, you can just reload the file to take you to before the final boss. This will save you from having to replay the entire game to view another ending.

The game also encourages you to replay levels. This is because there is some story to unlock if you find every treasure chest in the game, and a side quest will eventually unlock that requires you to play through every single level and boss again, regardless of if you’ve found everything already or not. Since nothing changes from replaying these levels (minus being able to access more areas in the earlier levels), this can feel tedious, as you’re essentially just playing through the game again without the story. But since you can do all of this within one save file, there really isn’t a reason to play through the game again, unless you want to try another difficulty.

Verdict

I enjoyed my time with Saga of Sins for the most part, even if it was a little short. It does a good job in allowing you to fight against the Seven Deadly Sins in Mega Man style gameplay, while also sprinkling in some horror to help enhance the story. I would recommend the game to anyone who enjoys this kind of 2D action platformer, and the short length could even make it a good place to start if you’re interested in trying this genre. However, if you’re looking for a deep story or in-depth gameplay, you will find neither here.