Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption Reviews
Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption has a few clever new ideas, but it doesn't quite feel like a complete package.
Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption is a bonafide boss rush buffet with an inventive twist, though its aesthetic presentation quickly grows dull.
Unfortunately, it is let down by some of the design choices and difficulty that will you feeling unfulfilled. There will be some who love this game despite this, but it crosses over the line from challenging to unfair and sets up shop there. It is hard to recommend a game that doesn't even feel like it wants to be played.
A weak try to get a "Souls" style that doesn't work in many senses. A game in which we face eight enormous enemies, hard and cruel... and basically, that's all. Technically poor and with a unstable playability.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A hardcore boss rush game with a Dark Souls flavour.
A series of interesting boss fights clashes with the general treatment of the Chinese indie game, lowering the quality to the point of not doing it justice. Nevertheless the challenge offered brings with it great intuitions.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Sinner: Sacrifice For Redemption eliminates the campaign in favor of eight punishing boss fights based on the seven deadly sins. Instead of upgrading your character like a good RPG, the game uses a downgrade system that adds an unwanted wrinkle into the Souls inspired difficulty. The problem is that I couldn't connect enough to the game to care about the fight and was only rewarded with frustration in defeating the bosses.
As a new interpretation of this almost decade-old formula, Sinner asks some great questions. When we strip away the exploration of the dungeon crawl and the tension of the storytelling, what's the core of Dark Souls? Risky, challenging, and rewarding encounters with larger than life baddies. Sinner may not be the final answer, unfortunately. It's too derivative, both in enemy and environment design. Sinner focused and simple, but over-complicates things with the sacrifice experiment. It's a step in a new and right direction, but it's only a half step at best.
While the comparison with Dark Souls is inevitable, this Sinner is a different proposition. Anyone hoping to come across a game like Miyazaki's will be disappointed.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption is a valiant attempt to cut away some action-RPG fat in order to get to the meat of its boss battles, but a lack of consistent quality makes this boss-rush concept a frustrating experience at times (and not for the reasons its developer likely intended). The combat lacks the heft of the series that inspired it, so while Sinner looks much like the Souls games, it never captures (or innovates upon) that familiar combat model. There are some great boss designs to take on here, but this is very much a curio for Souls fans who want something to do in-between playing the vastly superior Dark Souls: Remastered.
While the bosses are truly wonderful monstrosities to behold, the most frightening thing presented in Sinner is a game that's damned to live with few original ideas.
Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption nails its combat but loses ground almost everywhere else. This Souls-like boss battler leans too heavily on its inspiration and has no sense of itself as a result.
Combat against all the bosses is both challenging and rewarding. There's great variation between all enemies in their look, how they fight and how you need to behave with each
While undeniably gorgeous, Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption has a certain appeal to a specific kind of gamer due to its combination of simplicity and brutality, but others will find it lacking for those exact same traits.
Pleasing and genuinely tense a large portion of its core gameplay may be — particularly when it comes to considering which abilities to sacrifice, and when more importantly to enact them — Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption falters from an otherwise lack of context and general purpose in a world that is suggestive on quick glance, but quickly reveals itself as little more than superficial decoration.
Overall, Sinner will start you off without knowing what to do, and it will continue to push you through harder and harder challenges while still not really knowing what it's all for. The game is currently available on Discord, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One for $18.99 USD. Is it worth even that? Maybe it is for someone who wants to play a Dark Souls type game with no levels to go through. It isn't a big cost so it is a little bit more palatable than say a sixty dollar game.
Sacrifice for Redemption offers some very interesting boss fights and introduces an innovative new concept through its "sacrifice" theme, causing you to grow weaker instead of stronger as you progress. While your character may end the game as a weaker version of himself, you'll come out as a stronger player. Only a few unfortunate technical issues hamper it becoming a true indie gem, but in the end, I have no regrets about spending time with this challenging title.
Those who'd like to try a sadistically challenging boss battler, and one that actually gets even more so after the final encounter, will have an enjoyably painful time with this, despite its many, many flaws, and the strokes that it will possibly induce. Of course, Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption is not recommended to just anyone, and certainly not for those in search for a SoulsBourne fix, as this a totally different kind of deal - and that's what makes it so good.
Despite its problems, SINNER: Sacrifice for Redemption remains quite entertaining, especially for fans of the Dark Souls Series, who will surely love the challenges. However, its short duration and lack of content, coupled with its price, may end up driving away those who seek more cost-effective experiences.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption doesn't have the overall polish of an AAA game like Dark Souls, which is understandable since their budgets are completely different, but it is a game that has found a very unique twist to the formula to stand out among other Souls-like experiences. It's a nice game for fans of the genre, but one in which inexperienced players might feel overwhelmed.