Sancticide Review – A Soulslike Sinner in Need of Redemption
Sancticide is one of those games that comes out of nowhere with a concept that grabs your attention immediately — a third-person action RPG set in a biblical apocalypse where you play as a Sin Collector hunting down those who’ve defied God. It’s dark, it’s bold, and it’s not your average religious adaptation. But once you get your hands on it, the cracks start showing fast.
If there’s one thing Sancticide gets right, it’s the atmosphere. The world is drenched in a bleak, oppressive vibe that perfectly sells the whole “apocalypse as divine punishment” setting. The environments are hostile and twisted and carry a heavy religious overtone that sets it apart from your typical post-apocalyptic fare.
That said, the visuals themselves feel unpolished like the assets are one or two passes away from being cohesive. The tone is there, but the execution feels uneven—impressive in one moment, painfully low-budget in the next.
Sancticide clearly doesn’t care about holding your hand. There are almost no cutscenes to lay out the plot, so you’re left piecing together the story through scattered lore bits and awkward dialogue exchanges. That could work if done right — games like Dark Souls built a legacy on environmental storytelling — but here, it feels more like the story just… isn’t really there.
The dialogue is especially rough. It is crude, immersion-breaking, and riddled with jarring swearing that feels more edgy than purposeful. Combined with awkward delivery, it often comes across as unintentionally funny—which is a problem when you’re trying to sell a grim biblical apocalypse.
The voice acting might be Sancticide’s biggest self-inflicted wound. The developers openly admitted they used AI for much of the voice work, and you can tell immediately. Lines are flat, robotic, and lack any real emotional weight. You need characters who feel something in a setting built on divine wrath and desperate survival. Instead, you get performances that sound like they’re reading off a grocery list.
The combat system sounds decent on paper — a blend of melee-focused, Souls-inspired duels with roguelike elements. You’ve got swords, axes, katanas, and even modern firearms thrown into the mix. But the actual execution is a mess. Controls feel unresponsive, which is brutal in a game where timing matters. Dodging and blocking are inconsistent, and you’ll often take hits simply because the game doesn’t register your inputs fast enough. The stamina system — a genre staple — feels oddly pointless when enemies seem to ignore the same rules you’re bound to.
Parrying, which should be a core skill in a game like this, is basically useless. Even if you land it perfectly, the follow-up window is so small it’s barely worth the risk. Combine that with sluggish animations, unreliable hitboxes on certain weapons, and enemies who love to stunlock you into oblivion, and the combat becomes more frustrating than rewarding.
Difficulty in a Souls-like game should feel challenging but fair — a test of skill where you blame yourself when you fail. Sancticide leans more into the “unfair” camp, especially when fighting groups of enemies. Getting stun-locked to death because the enemies’ attack patterns sync up perfectly isn’t good design — it’s just bad luck, and it happens way too often here.
Sancticide had the bones of something genuinely unique — a religious-apocalyptic action RPG with a brutal, uncompromising world and morally ambiguous storytelling. But almost every aspect of its execution works against it, from clunky combat and unreliable controls to awkward dialogue and immersion-breaking AI voice acting.
If you’re curious about the setting and can stomach some dysfunction, there might be something here for you. But if you’re after a polished, rewarding action RPG experience, Sancticide just isn’t ready for prime time.
Score: 5/10
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