Step closer, kin of our kin, for we have gospel to share. Having delivered the One Free Man to safety, Father Grigori, Archangel of Ravenholm, must now make his final exodus - and bury the town he once held so dear beneath ash.
NOTE: The performance issues I mentioned in previous version of this review should be fixed in latest v1.1 release. It's all in the changelog, so make the judgement yourself.
The "Meh":
If you haven't had enough of Ravenholm in "Raising The Bar: Redux" then this mod is for you. But don't expect much from it, as it's mostly the same recycled Ravenholm levels from RTB:R (with some alterations here and there, for story reasons). You basically play Ravenholm chapter in reverse. The "schizo-flashbacks" that Grigori is experiencing at certain points of the story look very out of place. This simply feels out of character for Grigori, imho.
The Okay:
I should mention that you get a couple new "features" in form of a kick attack ported from Entropy Zero 2 and a reskinned S.L.A.M. (these "nail bombs" work exactly the same way - you throw it and then detonate the thing with "+attack2").
You also get to use Grigori's rifle "Annabelle" more than in RTB:R, so that's nice I guess.
The Good:
For the good things I will point out the atmosphere (but like I said earlier, this is just Ravenholm from RTB:R).
The voice acting is tolerable, close enough to "temp" voice acting from the 2003 leak.
Overall, it's not bad, but nothing special. Just a short adventure for an hour or two. You can squeeze a couple extra hours by challenging yourself to beat it in one go on "Deathless" difficulty, if you really want to.
The Bad:
My main issue with this mod is the 6 GB of dependency bloat (you can't install it as a standalone mod, you need original RTB:R installed first). I'm not a fan of this approach to releasing mods like this. It should've been released as an update to original RTB:R in form of a bonus chapter instead. There is no excuse for it to be released like this, aside from engagement farming on ModDB.
I understand that a lot of time and effort was put into this mod, but you could do better than releasing a glorified "DLC" as a standalone mod.
Replayed this mod after the patch and it's way better than the last time I played. Compared to the original release, it feels way more rewarding to explore and find stuff instead of just finding strangely detailed dead ends. Some sectons are still a bit unfair if you don't know what's coming, like tha baby headcrab hallway and the final section but the rest of the mod feels a lot more balanced now. Solid mod if you're looking for something a bit less power trip-y than typical Half Life 2 gameplay.
(p.s. make sure to check the difficulty when you start, the default is hard for whatever reason)
Raising the Bar: Salvation absolutely wrecked me, and that's perfectly fine. This is a high-difficulty mod, and with it's short length, absolutely rewards replays. After my second playthrough, I'd trained myself to make every bullet count, and to pick my encounters carefully.
Salvation felt like not only a love letter to things like Return to Ravenholm, but to Father Grigori's character as a whole. You see the town through his eyes, you see his frail grip on reality, and you experience all of this through an atmospheric & high intensity onslaught through the burning wreckage of Ravenholm. I've walked away with a greater appreciation for him as a character then I ever had before.
Would absolutely recommend for anybody looking for a challenge, and for more insight on RTBR's take on Ravenholm. Wonderful job!
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
Incredibly, INCREDIBLY difficult. I almost ragequit a few times when playing this! However, once you get past that (and you should, lest you miss out), this is an incredible little side piece to RTBR; Amicus, as well as the rest of the team that worked on this, have made something truly special here.
Maybe next time I'll be able to do a kick-only run.
Previously rated it 7/10, and now that 1.1 came out and better balanced the mod for all difficulties and did further tweaks, I think it's deserving of an 8/10.
It's still not 100% for me personally, but I would doubtlessly recommend any RTBR fans to at least play through this once.
It's a small and quick (canon, for those that care) romp through Ravenholm right after Gordon escapes it. It's focus is on survival horror-like mechanics, harking back to the very concept of the place.
I am a Ravenholm fanatic. I love Grigori as a character, and Ravenholm as a place. I have a few problems with this mod however. It starts me on hard if I am not mistaken. I didn't realize this and I was struggling to get past normal headcrabs. I expected a lot more traps, but I got next to none. I also expected to have way more health kits and ammo. I had to kick my way through a lot of it because of the fact that I realized ammo is very scarce. The atmosphere is incredible however. Love the idea and concepts. I tried to explore every area, but I got no reward. Only death because there was a random zombie waiting to one shot me. I was low on health for a majority of it.
Interesting concept, good voice acting and solid visuals however that is all the good I can say. Everything else is either mediocre or just bad. I don't like being overly negative but it is very clear that in some places this mod was rushed and not properly optimized. One of the main issues I had with this mod was how unbalanced it was. While I am aware that this was meant to be hard I think that the lack of ammo and the overabundance of enemies just made the entire experience very uninteresting and boring. Also the gunplay is really mediocre and unsatisfying which is why I just rushed through the mod.
From what I can see this is just a bad attempt at recreating what Cry of Fear did much better with their doctor mod. Sure it was hard but the gunplay and the enemies were unique and actually interesting to kill. Every time you'd die you would be excited to see how far you'd get to next time. Here it's unfortunately not the case. The mod is fairly short though so it doesn't really waste too much of your time.
Headcrabs....headcrabs everywere...
First of all I'm not a relly fan of survival in general so the rating will be lower. Secondly, I expected more new places more than just getting back where gordon came from to escape, I'm not againt visiting places again but it was almost 100% similar than Raising the bar so it's a shame.
To finish, I know it's part of the survival style game again but the game need more health and ammo in my opinion. Not a bad MOD but not very fun and repetitive for me.