Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege Review – Review
If you miss biting your NES controller in anger, have I got a game for you.
Surely I’m not the only one whose childhood NES controllers took an absolute beating during sessions of Ninja Gaiden 2, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, and Ghosts ‘N Goblins. Should you find yourself in search of such classic challenges, look no further than Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege, a game that looks and plays like it’s straight outta the ‘80s. Choose any of the aforementioned titles and throw in a dash of Castlevania and you’ll know exactly what to expect from this stage-based action-platformer, but some frustrating design choices make it as much sacrilege as saint.
As former soldier Rudiger, your gore-soaked mission is to save the Holy Roman Empire from Father Pacer, a man wholly consumed by corruption. Across 21 side-scrolling levels, you disembowel and dismember all manner of cursed creatures and spirits, with Rudiger gradually upgrading the titular spear and his physical abilities. The slow walking speed and stiff jump mechanics can make traversal and platforming harder than it needs to be, and this problem is compounded by the fact that the stages have no checkpoints and death sends you all the way back to the beginning of the level.
The largely melee-focused combat feels good, and after gaining the ability to throw your spear, you can pick up power-ups to change its effect as a projectile. What’s less enjoyable is that you only get three tosses until you find a rare item to increase this limit, and so unlike in a Castlevania where you can rack up dozens of hearts to fuel your sub-weapon-centric dreams, you’ll more often want to hang on to your spear toss charges for tougher enemies or bosses. That said, I did appreciate how plentiful the health pickups were, because boy did I need them.
Saint Slayer never gets too close to the notoriously punishing Silver Surfer for NES, but there were moments when I experienced comparable feelings of rage at some of the obstacles. The boss fights are a cake walk compared to the different environmental hazards, narrow jumps, and randomly appearing enemies. Because the bosses are their own stage, it’s great to be able to quickly retry them when you lose a life, or via the in-game password menu, but only a couple were memorable, like a librarian that protected herself with books in a fight reminiscent of Mega Man’s Yellow Devil. Some more novel moments included an entire level where you need to propel a gondola forward by striking its gear, all the while fending off airborne foes on both sides.
A baffling element of Saint Slayer is a merchant and her tent that appear in every non-boss stage, something normally seen as a very welcome sight. Instead, from very early on, you realize that the currency the shop requires is incredibly rare, such that spending it on purchases like health or even a continue would be wasteful compared to a hint for the game’s collectible artifacts or an increase to your life or spear stamina meters. I ended up never using the shop once but can see how it would be more helpful on return playthroughs as you work towards unlocking the game’s multiple endings.
A couple of aesthetic aspects hit hard in terms of blending nostalgia with more contemporary vibrancy. Nods to the aforementioned NES games and others show reverence but also play with those classic conventions. It’s clear that Saint Slayer is having fun with our expectations of the genre. One specific example is in the rotten fish that can pop out of breakable torches, causing Rudiger to puke his guts out and lose a point of HP. Another is in the way your old corpse can appear right where you gave up the ghost, both taunting you and perhaps reminding you to tread more carefully. The map screen that pops up every few stages is a clear homage to Ghosts ‘N Goblins, and I’m a sucker for all of it.
Pushing through some of the more devious sections, I felt a sound sense of accomplishment in rolling credits on Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege, in all its alliterative glory. In more ways than one, it’s not for the faint of heart, but those seeking a retro-style challenge in 8-bit packaging will very likely enjoy the ride. While not all of its design choices land flush, the overall journey makes for a fun afternoon. A co-op mode made me wonder whom I might subject to this punishing experience, but once through was enough for me to hit my cursing quota for the year.
