Reviews - Kayoshie

RTB: Salvation introduces us to a fully voiced protagonist that helps to ground ourselves in the setting and get immersed in the narrative presented.

Off the bat, it achieves this - the voice acting for Grigori and Annabelle is great and the writing is thematically fitting and emotionally convincing for the set pieces and story points conveyed.

Grigori's troubled thoughts are spoken with conviction which makes you believe he is dedicated to his personal crusade - and in certain moments, he expresses grief and regret over those he lost. These two distinct emotional writing styles combined create a believable character the player both roots for and also has fun playing as - the signature cues of the character are still present, his maniacal laughs of triumph and all.

Annabelle is used as an effective writing tool for exploring Grigori's mind. We see his trauma on full display. We understand why he pushes on, Grigori exists in his own personal hell he desires to escape. Annabelle efficiently serves as the yin to Grigori's yang. Grigori tries to stand firm in his faith, Annabelle pushes that faith to a breaking point. Grigori desperately convinces himself he has done all he can, Annabelle taunts and reminds him of everyone he has failed - including her.

I thoroughly love Salvation's OST. It is thematically different from RTBR's score and it is localised perfectly for fitting the emotional tone, narration and atmosphere of Salvation. The composer excelled at using music not only for telling the story of Salvation but using music as a form of writing to further flesh out Father Grigori.

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The gameplay side of things has a mix-mash of good, mixed and bad - like most things.

THE GOOD:
Salvation takes cues from both survival horror and psychological horror genres of games - both of which I enjoy. This is apparent in the presentation of level layouts, themes, sparse health and limited ammo for your very small arsenal of only two weapons. (and Grigori's mighty kick.)

Sound design and animations are engaging - if you enjoyed how RTBR handled, then Salvation is just more of the same in a good way.

Graphics wise, it's a Source game - but Salvation, just like RTBR, superbly uses the Source engine's simple HDR/bloom, lighting and shadows to full effect (also seen in RTBR:Division 2) - the colour palette is defined by the bleak blues and ghastly greys of the night sky, accompanied with dangerous- yet beautiful- orange thick fires that burn around you. The level designers clearly knew what they were doing, and this choice of colours (intentional or not) deserves praise.

THE MIXED:
The length of Salvation is definitely notable. Whilst I understand people feel Salvation should have not been a new mod, I disagree. I believe Salvation can still be used as a platform to test out more content set within the premise of Salvation. If the foundation is already there, then why not build off it?

Continuing from the above statement, I was disappointed the mod was more re-treading than new exploration. I really hope more areas are conceptualised for possible updates in the future.

Whilst the mod does produce lovely feels-good moments for discovering ammo and health - I do believe the mod can be unfun, but not unfair (mostly). Enemy placements can feel cheap and not engaging. I feel distributing health and ammo together in more spots could easily negate this issue. (I believe the Hard difficulty is the intended canon difficulty, so my comments are for such.)

THE BAD:
Thankfully there isn't much that qualifies as objectively bad, which is why I included the mixed category.

However, I do believe the finale segment to Salvation is not well executed and rather poor, not only from a gameplay perspective but narratively too.

The finale feels like an identity crisis and goes against the rules Salvation wants you to play by. Salvation feels like a survival horror where avoiding enemies will be necessary, ammo is limited and health even more so - it wants you to play it slow and very careful - but the finale goes against all of this.

If 90% of Salvation is survival horror, then the final 10% is action horror. The near infinite spawning enemies accompanied with limited ammo and very limited health, placed into an arena that is not suited for such a combat sequence at all, equals a very bad time because fundamentally Salvation is suddenly trying to become something it is not.

For a future revision, I really hope this finale undergoes a rework because in its current state, I do not feel it is enjoyable and it has personally put me off trying to attempt a Deathless run.

Salvation WANTS you to master it, but the finale does not play by the rules Salvation introduced - thus it is creatively conflicting, unfair and very unrewarding.

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In-conclusion, I've exhausted the fuggin' character limit so overall - GAME IS COOL AND GOOD, more content will always be welcomed from these lovely devs. <3