Sands of Aura Reviews

Great game.

good game

The camera view is bad. Aside from that, everything seems fun so far.

The game tries very hard to be soulslike but that is not the way you make it. Enemies have extended hitboxes and they can hit you from distance with a weapon shorter than the one you have, while you need to be very close to them to hit them. Their chase distance is huge, they'll chase you nearly through whole map. I managed to get to the church dungeon and it really stopped being fun. Mechanics issues aside - like parry is random timing, block does not block anything, i-frames for 1 SECOND is just a joke, etc, etc - there is a boss to which you get with 0 healing items because all the enemies on the way to the boss hit like a truck, chase you, ambush and have ridiculous range, plus hitting through walls is nothing uncommon (but your character cannot, obviously, hit them through the wall). Overall, it seems devs looked at many soulslikes and thought "hey, so if they hit you harder but you hit like a wet noodle, THAT's how you make soulslike!". Bois, no. Even Dark Souls 2 is better than this one here. Sands of Aura is just a tedious slog through unfair mobs, without any clear guidance as well, and without any joy. I admit, graphics and overall art style are nice but it's not enough to make the game good. Another thing - tanking my rig's temperature is just an instant nope the f out. This game runs hotter than Cyberpunk 2077 on ultra settings, devs, lessons for you ahead on optimization (my machine exceeds recommended reqs like three times), and a lot of them. For now, refunding and never touching this thing again, since it won't be fixed as it looks abandoned.

this is a great souls like game, very fun, great story.

I'm not a souls like fan but this was an incredible journey from start to finish. Tons of ways to replay the game as well with different weapons, optional bosses, rune builds, and more. Also the NG+ was a nice surprise once I completed the game.