Saga of Sins

My first instinct with Saga of Sins was pure art-direction appreciation: few 2D games commit this hard to a single visual identity, and the Hieronymus Bosch-inspired stained-glass look is genuinely striking. Enemies shatter into glass particles when they die, every level bends its color palette to match its corresponding sin, and the whole thing feels like a medieval illuminated manuscript that learned to run at 60fps. Credit where it is due, Bonus Level Entertainment built a coherent atmosphere that most indie studios twice their size would struggle to pull off. The core conceit is the best thing here. You play Cecil, a cleric returned from the Crusades to find his village of Sinwell rotting under plague and sin. To save it, you literally dive into the minds of afflicted villagers and battle the corruption inside. Those "sinner" levels are themed around each of the seven deadly sins: Fury is dark and lava-soaked, Gluttony packs in oversized swine, Pride unleashes peacocks firing golden eggs, and Sloth actually slows your movement as a mechanical penalty. Innocent-mind levels swap combat for puzzle rooms and skill tests, which breaks the rhythm nicely. Cecil transforms into up to four demonic creatures mid-run - Werewolf, Gargoyle, Griffin, and a fourth form you unlock late - and each carries distinct abilities. The Werewolf's howl shatters cracked glass to reveal secrets, the Gargoyle breathes fire to solve environmental puzzles, and the Griffin climbs vine-covered walls. You swap between them on the fly, and gold dropped by enemies goes toward upgrades at the Madonna statue: more health, extra Power Dash charges, improved projectiles. Here is where the honest conversation starts. The boss fights are genuinely the mechanical highlight - varied enough that one encounter is a straight fight, another a chase sequence where survival is the only objective, and the best ones turn the level itself into the opponent. Outside of bosses, though, the moment-to-moment platforming is Mega Man-adjacent but notably gentler, and not in a satisfying way. Once you have the Griffin form unlocked, the other three become mostly puzzle keys rather than real combat choices. The skill tree is easy to max, hard difficulty does not meaningfully compensate, and a couple of boss fights withhold progress indicators in ways that feel like poor design rather than intentional tension. The story has a mid-game twist and multiple endings to chase, which is exactly my kind of thing, but the narrative payoff is modest - more "decent medieval morality tale" than anything that rewards a re-read. Voice acting is polarizing across reviewers: some praise the immersion, others find specific performances flat. Runtime sits somewhere between six and ten hours depending on how aggressively you hunt treasure chests and chase completionist side content. There is replay incentive in the form of multiple endings and a secondary questline that asks you to revisit every level, but that revisit loop is repetitive by design. For a game wearing an RPG badge, the build variety is thin. The transformation system has the bones of something more expressive, but the Griffin power-creep problem and a straightforward upgrade tree mean you are not making many meaningful decisions past hour three. Platform fans looking for a breezy, visually arresting session - something in the four-to-seven hour range - will get exactly that and leave satisfied. Anyone hoping for deep mechanical systems or a story with genuine moral weight will find the premise more interesting than its execution.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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