Announced during the Summer Game Fest with a new trailer and a generic 2024 release date, the SacriFire demo went pretty unnoticed. Almost no one talks about it, yet the title Pixelated Milk – those of Warsaw and Regalia of Men – has been in development for years and the problem is that we were about to ignore it too, but it would have been a big mistake because, having tried it, SacriFire has all it has the potential to be one of the RPGs to keep an eye on in the coming months.
The flame of pixel art burns
The SacriFire demo allows us to play as the protagonist, Ezekiel Ridan, a new prelate in the church of Antioch who venerates the god Sheol. On the day of the Ascension, in which he and his friend Zephaniah should be promoted in rank, a catatrac happens: a mysterious hooded figure at the head of a band of heretics breaks into the cathedral and steals the Melkora, an artifact that is said to guard a strong evil. Ezekiel is immediately tasked with catching the thief and that’s where we have it a real taste of gameplay SacriFire Central: Up until that point we had been able to move through a couple of scenarios but the Antioch Cathedral is a real introductory dungeon.
In the trailers we can glimpse Ezekiel’s companions on the battlefield with him, but in the demo we can only play as the protagonist with marginal control over the features provided in the complete code: we cannot change weapons, for example, but we can unlock some abilities by spending Divos earned at each level up.
SacriFire’s advertising slogans mention Vagrant Story and Xenogears but if Pixelated Mik refers to the two very famous titles of the past perhaps in terms of narrative, with a strong esoteric tone in the choice of names and themes, In terms of gameplay, we’re closer to Enix’s Valkyrie Profilethe 2D half-platformer where you jumped into dungeons and solved environmental puzzles and where contact with enemies on the screen loaded the combat into a separate screen: we just described the gameplay of SacriFire.
In the game we move through 2D scenarios, occasionally moving into the background at points that allow the transition, while some passages require a minimum of platforming skillshowever compensated by a double jump and excellent reactivity to inputs. The game runs perfectly, without slowdowns or uncertainties of any kind, which was not at all a given, despite the technical sector.
Then, let’s talk about this technical sector: the work done on the combination of 2D pixel art and 3D scenarios or effects is of extraordinary quality, with meticulous attention to detail and the generous number of sprites on the screen, exceptional fluidity in animations especially in combat and a soundtrack composed in part by Motoi Sakurabawhose contribution is immediately recognizable in the beautiful music we have heard.
The character design leaves a little to be desired, a generic mix of Western and Japanese features, and let’s hope for an Italian localization that works better on texts and dialogues, a little too crude if you consider the narrative: our enemies, in fact, are the demons who are possessing unsuspecting human beings. While the church of Antioch controls information to prevent panic, those like Ezekiel are trained to fight using their supernatural powers: on the battlefield that means learning a hybrid system that mixes real time and turns.
Hybrid Combat
The combat system is a bit complicated to explain: on the battlefield we can move freely in every direction and it is only as we move that time passes. For example, if we stop, the projectiles launched by enemies also stop, allowing us to catch our breath and decide where to move to dodge them. While moving we restore the Action points – which we can also recharge by standing still and holding down a button – with which we can physically attack or cast spells in combination with Zeal points.
Attacking with the equipped weapon – which obviously inflicts different types of damage – consumes Action points but by executing the combos correctly it is possible to score extra hits and restore the shields, practically additional Life Points. Of course, some opponents also have shields and can regenerate them over time; you must therefore choose how and when to attack, preferring undefended targets. While all this is happening, we also have to deal with the enemies, whose range of action is not always visible: the idea is to stay away from them for as long as possible, trying to defeat them before they reach us with a blow we cannot dodge.
This strange hybrid really works: the fights are engaging, especially against the bosses that transform the battlefield into a real bullet hell and that force us to intelligently use not only combos and skills, but also 3D space. Despite being pre-set and not random fights, SacriFire implements an intelligent system that allows us to annihilate enemies on sight, accumulating 80% of the experience points that we would earn by winning a regular fight. We can only do this five times in a row, then redeeming the accumulated bonus experience at the next fight completed normally.
Once we have completed the introductory dungeon after a fun battle against a boss and discovered something more about the threat we are facing, the demo ends but leaves us a fair amount of freedom to explore the city of Ivanstone, open chests and complete some secondary missions, as well as to try the minigame called Moligmaniawhich looks like a card game but is actually something different: the cards are like pawns or caps that we have to pull on a gaming table to push out those of the opponent, each with particular properties that can alter the scenario.
It is clear that the backbone of SacriFire is robust and behind it there is a careful study not only of the most famous old school RPGs but also of the less famous ones but still held in very high regard by great fans of the genre with a few years too many behind them . And despite this attention to the past, the combat system seemed more innovative than usualwhich is really important in a period in which the nostalgia effect is starting to be abused.
SacriFire is a title that we now await with some interest, not only because it is beautiful to see and listen to, but also because the demo really entertained us and filled us with curiosity. Now it will be up to Pixelated Milk to put the same care reserved for the introduction into a complete game which will have to demonstrate variety and complexity not only in the gameplay but also in the narrative.
