Salt and Sacrifice. Basically a 2D mix of Dark Souls and Monster Hunter, while Salt and Sanctuary was a more straightforward 2D take on Dark Souls alone. This is from the perspective of someone who ablolutely loves MH and who enjoyed Sanctuary even more than Hollow Knight.

It’s… fine. There’s basically zero use for the game’s currency, and I think chasing the Mages around the areas feels a bit more like annoying busy work without MH’s in-universe reasons for monsters to flee, especially with how quickly the Mages go down when you finall do catch up with them. Also, having so many different Mage resources dropping randomly doesn’t make as much sense when you can’t damage different parts of the Mages to influence drops like you can in MH.

All in all, I think the whole thing doesn’t quite come together in the end, but I find it hard to criticize indie takes on the Monster Hunter formula when Crapcom has been enshittifying the IP so badly the past few years.

So, give it a try if you like Dark Souls and are craving more of a Monster Hunter-esque experience, but don’t expect it to fully scratch the itch. Hopefully this incentivizes more indie studios to try the MH formula - we desperately need more old-style MH-like experiences with Crapcom’s trend of empowering the players over the monsters to utterly ridiculous levels.