Sancticide is a new third-person action RPG set in the apocalypse based on the Bible. Read on to learn everything we know about the plot, gameplay, release date, our early access impressions, and more.
Everything We Know About Sancticide
Sancticide Plot
Play as Ezechiel, a fresh recruit to the Sin Collectors, where he explores the world set in the biblical Apocalypse. The tale follows his experience in service to Them at the Top, and his job is to destroy those who sin against God.
Sancticide Gameplay
Sancticide is a third-person action RPG with roguelike and Souls-like elements. The game emphasizes a melee-focused experience on tactical duels with a mix of different melee weapons ranging from swords, axes, and katanas and the inclusion of modern-day firearms like pistols and rifles.
Sancticide Release Date
The game was released in Early Access on February 13, 2025 and will stay that way for at least five to ten months. According to the developers, this period may change depending on player feedback and their assessment of the game’s status.
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 Steam |
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| $16.99 | |||||
Sancticide Review (Early Access)
Not Everything Needs to Be a Soulslike
In an age where roguelikes and soulslikes are a common commodity, many games have tried to emulate their success. While there are varying results to how good they are, some have floundered trying to capture what makes these action RPGs worth playing. One example of failing to capture the genre’s satisfying gameplay is Sancticide. With its themes of religion and brutality, one might expect a gory mess of a game—and to some degree, one might be right about it. It definitely is a mess.
Lack of Thematic Cohesion
To start off, the theme of the game is pretty good. The game is set in the End Times, as described in the Bible. The main character, Ezechiel, is employed by a central religious faction called Them at the Top as a Sin Collector. Sin Collectors are described to be similar to a crusader in olden times, where their duty is to eradicate sinners and all those against Him.
In truth, I quite like the theme. It’s something akin to franchises like Warhammer and Shin Megami Tensei, where a collective group takes things to an extreme. In this case, Them at the Top is heavily implied to be the biggest faction in the game’s world, and all the non-believers are either heretics or sinners.
However, the theme is let down by its aesthetic and dialogue. First, the game’s main hub, the Citadel, has a Roman aesthetic. Not that there’s anything wrong with it; it just gives Caesar’s Legion from Fallout: New Vegas vibes with how they dress up. In addition to this, it feels off that the main weapon of choice that the Sin Collectors use is swords instead of guns, which are even included in the game. So it’s not surprising to see Ezechiel all dressed up in Roman armor with a katana and an AK-47 strapped to his back.
Several Immersion Breakers
Aside from the looks, there are several instances where the dialogue and other external factors are immersion-breaking. The constant swearing paired with the game’s lackluster voice acting makes everything sound like a joke. The developers have made it clear that the game has A.I. involved in its voice acting, and it’s obvious from its first interactions.
Paired with the voice acting is the game’s tutorial. Tutorials for action RPGs normally use the tried and true method of teaching the player by doing, which is to let a player explore the controls in a fight or other situations. The problem with Sancticide’s tutorial is that it has a mix of both—unskippable prompts and letting the player do the action themselves.
The parts of the tutorial where the player is put into combat while they have to do certain actions to proceed are nothing wrong; it’s the other part of the tutorials that makes it immersion-breaking. An example of this is the prompts that show up with the text-to-speech telling you either what you can do or what just happened. This part, in particular, makes the gameplay jarring since it puts everything to an abrupt stop just to tell you to press the A button.
It may have been better off to just have floating text tell the player what they can do instead of slowing everything down just to tell them to press a button to open a chest.
Problematic Controls and Combat
Immersion breakers aren’t the only problems, however. The gameplay itself is problematic. For starters, the controls are unresponsive. For an action RPG, it’s important that the controls are convenient enough to give the player agency. In a game where enemies are aggressive, the player shouldn’t be fighting against the controls as well. An example of this would be not being able to dodge or block after getting hit, leading to unwanted damage being taken.
This also aggravates the game’s extremely clunky combat. It’s a basic action RPG where you can attack, block, roll, and have a few special powers. It has a stamina system where you want to break the enemy’s guard to be able to attack them. The main problem is that the enemy doesn’t seem to follow these rules.
Parrying and blocking seem useless since they don’t give you a big enough opening to be able to attack. Part of this is also because the game’s combat animations are slow. In addition to this, fighting multiple enemies is frustrating, as you can get stun-locked to death when they decide to swing at you at certain intervals. It doesn’t help that certain weapons feel useless, as they don’t seem to have correct hitboxes when trying to attack as well.
Lastly, bosses are even worse to fight against. They have attacks that cannot be blocked, and the game just decides not to tell you that. Another problem is that some bosses’ models are large enough to take up the game’s camera field of view where you can’t see their HP anymore. This adds to the frustration because all of these issues result in an action RPG that has unsatisfying and punishing combat that doesn’t reward the player at all.
Dying Feels Even Worse
One of the things that the game advertises is that it's roguelike. Now, this is where it gets worse. Dying in Sancticide makes you lose everything that you currently have aside from those in your Save Slots. By everything, I mean everything. Items, weapons, and even experience points are lost when you die. After getting through the tutorial, you can return to your dead body and pick up the remains from the game’s overworld system.
However, this isn’t implemented in the tutorial. So dying in the tutorial makes you lose all of the things that you’ve taken since and will constantly reset you back to level one. This, in conjunction with the game’s horrible combat mechanics, makes it just a frustrating mess to play.
Polish Isn’t the Only Thing It Needs
Without mincing words, Sancticide is a mess, specifically on the gameplay aspect. The game is still in early access, and there are still other things yet to be added. However, the gameplay experience needs a big improvement with the way things currently are, starting with an overhaul of the controls and fixes to the game’s combat. It’s unacceptable that the controls are bad in conjunction with combat that’s looking to punish you for getting hit, especially in an action RPG.
There is a silver lining though, since the developers seem keen to improve on the game little by little. There’s potential with the apocalyptic theme, but they have their work cut out for them with all of these little things that make everything frustrating and bad. After all, how can you cleanse sin if you can’t even handle a few heretics with these controls?
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Sancticide Product Information
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| Title | SANCTICIDE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | February 13, 2025 |
| Developer | Red Square Games, Sylen Studio |
| Publisher | Red Square Games, Sylen Studio |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Action, RPG, Soulslike |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | T |
| Official Website | Sancticide Official Website |
