Introduction

Developed by Han-Squirrel Studio, Sands of Salzaar can be described as an open-world sandbox RPG similar in many ways to the Mount & Blade series. However, with its visual novel-style character cutouts and the general anime aesthetic, it's easy to mistake it for just another JRPG.

But the thing is, this isn't a JRPG. If I were an evil man aiming to bring more confusion into the world, I would classify this game as a CRPG, as in a Chinese RPG. And this fact is what originally made me interested in this project when it was just entering early access.

You see, prior to Sands of Salzaar, I've never played a Chinese game. Mostly because they tend to be in Chinese. As a result, I welcomed the opportunity to do so, now that there was a game that both had an English translation and some mechanics that appealed to me.

And seeing how the early access phase is now over and the game is officially released, you can find my thoughts on it below.

Journey to the West

Going into the game, I didn't know what to expect. All I knew about gaming in China was that they liked Heroes of Might and Magic and WarCraft III over there, which was encouraging. But also, that they really liked mobile games, and that was a bit worrying.

So, let me begin by assuring you that Sands of Salzaar is nothing like a mobile game. In fact, if my goal was to write the shortest review for this title, I'd proclaim it the reverse Anachronox and call it a day.

You see, Anachronox combined some very much Western characters and aesthetic with a JRPG core. Sands of Salzaar then flips this around and offers us this fusion of a game that looks like a JRPG but has its roots firmly in Western gameplay sensibilities.

In fact, many of the game's elements feel directly inspired by various Western properties. You have the Path of Exile-style talent tree. Might and Magic's skill trainers scattered around the world. And then, of course, there's the whole Mount & Blade-style open-world gameplay, and the general quest structure you'd expect from a computer RPG.

On top of that, the game in general can at times feel like a love letter to Western media where every once in a while, you get some cheeky line like, "We need to go back. Back to the future." And while those could just be a quirk of the translation, having played through the game, I really do feel that that stuff was there right from the start.

So, how does it all actually work?

Well, the basic premise is that you're a "traveler" in a vaguely-Arabic world ravaged by constant conflict and cataclysms. And right as the game starts, the Ifrit, humanity's ancient foe long thought to be banished, are starting to reappear. Naturally, you take it upon yourself to figure out how and why that's happening.

From there, the story will take many twists and turns typical for a JRPG where stakes get progressively higher until all of existence is in danger, time travel and alternate realities are seen as something quaint, and pretty much everyone you meet is a god or demon of some description.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how to properly critique a story like this. Sure, I liked the game's setting, and some of the side quests I thought were pretty neat. But once omnipotent children start popping out of interdimensional voids and grabbing people's hearts Kali Ma style, and after you express your displeasure with such behavior they turn into giant spiders, I'm out. But seeing how JRPGs as a genre are still going strong to this day, there must be people who enjoy that sort of stuff.

And on a technical level, while the game's translation is perfectly understandable, it's far from perfect. But once you consider that this is an indie project without a huge budget, and Chinese is a tricky language, to put it mildly, it's hard to complain about clumsy or awkward sentences.

Romance of the Five Factions

With the game's story being what it is, let's take a look at the actual gameplay. The best way to describe it would be isometric (both when it comes to exploration and battles) Mount & Blade.

You have a vast open-world populated by five major factions, each with its own unit upgrade tree. These factions have major settlements and smaller outposts that produce resources, send out villagers and caravans, and generally do their own thing. The factions oftentimes decide to expand their territory at their neighbors' expense by sending out armies led by heroes. These heroes can switch sides, go independent, or even join you as companions with a unique personality and skill tree. Oftentimes, they also have some unique personal quest.

Speaking of quests. Unlike Mount & Blade that fully leans into the whole sandbox thing, Sands of Salzaar combines it with a more traditional RPG approach where on top of procedurally generated quests you mostly use to make some quick cash or improve your relations with various characters or factions, you also have the big main quest, your unique class quest, companion quests, and various side stories you can discover while exploring.

This basically means that there's plenty for you to do here. On top of quests, you can engage in trading. Or you can join a faction and help them expand their territory. Or you can create your own kingdom and take over the world. You can also become a proper adventurer going around the map clearing dungeons and collecting resources. You can even engage in some romance or become an amateur pugilist.

Unfortunately, many of the game's systems can feel really undercooked and inconsistent. The quest log is the perfect example of this. Some quests give you a clear indicator of where you need to go. Others show you a general area of where your goal is. And others still just give you some vague directions without marking your goal in any way. And without some sort of in-game encyclopedia where you can look people and locations up, it can be a real pain to find where you're supposed to be going.

While looking something up about the game, I believe I saw a developer post somewhere saying the core team consisted of just three people here. And if that's the case, I guess it can explain this general lack of polish and the fact that while a game has a lot of systems, many of them are not nearly as deep as I would've liked.

But if there ever was a game where "mods will fix it" was an applicable statement, this is it. I'm not usually one to use mods, especially not during a first playthrough, but here, I got a couple of them really early. And it was easy too. Once you launch the game, you can enter the mod manager connected to Steam's Workshop and start downloading mods in just a couple of clicks.

The unfortunate part is that most of the mods are in Chinese at this point. Still, some of them are in English, and for some, it doesn't matter, like the mods that remove the whole equipment durability thing from the game.

You see, repairing your gear is expensive in this game. Prohibitively so. To the point where if you want to use decent gear, you won't have enough resources left to upgrade all your units. This means that if you do want to have a functional army, you'll need to either use whatever gear you find then throw it away after it's broken, or run around the map raiding abandoned camps in search of repair tools. Alternatively, you can use a mod and not deal with that stuff. And even so, you won't exactly be rolling in the resources you'll need to upgrade your troops.

Speaking of which. Each of the game's factions has a unique upgrade tree for their units that come in squads of up to about ten soldiers. But then, you also have a number of minor factions that act as bandits. If you keep fighting those bandits, they'll recognize your strength and will try to get away when encountering you. If you keep hunting them down, they'll become stronger. But if at some point you reach the point where they want to run away, and instead of forcing a fight you let them go, they'll eventually trust you enough to let you recruit their unique troops. And on top of that, there's also a great number of neutral troops with their own advancement opportunities.

So, let's talk about what you'll be doing with all those units. If you know your Mount & Blade, I'm guessing you're very familiar with the idea of putting your archers on some hill, protecting them with a shield wall, and using your cavalry to flank the enemy.

Well, that's not exactly how things work here. After a battle starts, you only get a second or two to get your bearings before your disorganized horde of units clashes with the enemy, and trying to effectively control all this becomes all but impossible. Usually, games tend to have animations that are too slow. Sands of Salzaar has the opposite problem. Everything just happens way too fast. And with up to several hundreds of units on the screen at once, it can get so busy with all the effects, you'll have trouble determining what's going on or where your character even is.

In fact, when putting the game's title through a translator, instead of Sands of Salzaar, we get The Horde and the Scimitar. And that really is an apt title, I feel.

Apart from regular army battles, the game also has dungeons where you can only use your companions, and sieges. The latter task you with capturing and holding a number of strategic points on the map.

And because things can get really chaotic, the game lets you automate unit AI, allowing you to only focus on your main character. And that turns the game's combat system into something more akin to a Diablo-like action-RPG.

How does that work? Well, the game has a number of playable classes, each with its own unique skill tree. For my main playthrough, I played as a Shaman. I could summon wolves and bears and even had the ability to send a stampede of beasts after my foes. I could also transform into a bear, and after completing my class quest, a dragon.

That was a pretty strong kit. But then some other classes can supplement their starting skills by learning magic from special trainers. And pretty much everyone can use the rare skill tomes that allow you to learn "neutral" skills.

You can further customize your character through the talent tree that allows you to become a better merchant, leader, or diplomat. Some of the talents are quite useful, while others can be a bit on the underwhelming side. I'll be honest though, I'm not 100% sure what gives you new talent points, but I think you get them by completing quests and tackling various challenges.

I wasn't a huge fan of the fact that while originally you have plenty of options, eventually you'll be able to unlock most of your skills and talents, and that just doesn't seem all that fun to me. I like to make choices when developing a character, not merely become stronger. The same goes for attributes that exist, but just go up on their own as you gain levels, and as such, they're not really worth mentioning.

On the other hand, weapons and armor are pretty important. I was really surprised when at one point I couldn't defeat an enemy before swapping my scimitar for a spear. And as it turned out, both you and your units have different armor types that determine how well certain weapons work against them. It's nice to have that in the game.

If you decide to pick the game up, you'll soon discover these so-called Legacy points. Which brings us to the whole replayability angle. Before starting your adventure, on top of picking your class, you'll be able to choose some bonuses that range from extra companions and resources to unique skills and increased difficulty options that essentially act as a New Game+ mode.

From what I gathered, the game also has a number of secret endings, so if you enjoy your time with Sands of Salzaar, you'll be able to pour a lot of it into the game. And while all of that is nice, I'm not really sure how such a level of replayability works in a sandbox game where a campaign can take quite a while, and just focusing on the main quests with some sprinkling of side stuff can result in a playthrough of around 20 hours.

Technical Information

For a game with a big map and a lot going on at the same time, it's a bit surprising that Sands of Salzaar is using the Unity Engine. What's even more surprising is that for the most part, it works really well. You get some stuttering when something big is happening, but everything mostly works and doesn't use a lot of resources. The game even has a built-in frame limiter that's on by default, which is something every Unity game needs, but not all of them have.

While the game's music is really nice, when it comes to visuals, it actually has three distinct visual styles. The main one you see when moving your units across the map is fairly simplistic, but possesses a certain level of stylized charm. Then, you have the rare story introductions that usually show what the characters are supposed to look like. And once those introductions are over, you're left with the whole visual novel anime thing. Which really makes it apparent that the developers can produce good art, they're just deliberately choosing to go with the anime aesthetic for their characters. I don't get it. But once again, some people seem to like it.

In fact, for an isometric game, the character creation screen, and I'm talking the actual character model here, is surprisingly robust. So if you enjoy creating anime characters, you'll have a lot to work with here.

And while the game worked perfectly fine and never crashed on me, some minor issues I had with it include the fact that you can't just skip dialogue, you can only speed it up, manually, and that there's no dedicated pause button. If you want to pause the action, you can open your inventory, your map, your quest log, just about anything, except actually just pause things.

The game also has a multiplayer option, but it's limited to skirmish-style battles at this point.

One last thing to mention here is that while the game's UI generally became much better in the full release, certain things somehow got worse. For example, previously you could easily see which move set a weapon had, and now you mostly just have to guess, which is especially relevant for swords that come in three different types. Also, it's now much harder to see how all the damage and armor types interact. And, for some reason, mousing over attributes no longer tells you what they do.

Conclusion

While certainly rough around the edges, Sands of Salzaar has something to offer to just about anyone. If you're looking for a sandbox world, some light kingdom management, a computer RPG, or a JRPG, Sands of Salzaar has it all. And considering we don't get a lot of Chinese games in these parts and the game's fairly reasonable price, I say you should give it a go even if you find certain aspects of it somewhat disagreeable.

Because at the very least, the game doesn't hold your hand, neither does it follow some established template, and so it can offer you the very rare these days feeling of actually learning how a game works, and the satisfaction of "beating" it.