Sadame
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Sadame
A fun action RPG with an infernal/feudal Japanese aesthetic and some great ideas, Sadame is a welcome eShop surprise. The core combat can get repetitive, and it lacks the fluid finesse of the best beat-'em-ups, but there's a lot here to love, including a particularly thoughtful implementation of its four-character hook. If you're in the mood for a hack-and-slash alt-history lesson, Sadame can definitely cut it.
In trailers and screenshots, Sadame certainly looks the part of a long-lost SNES classic. It's not. The yearning desire of my inner child to relive those glorious golden years of gaming is in no way satiated by this repetitive adventure. Instead, the radiance of that era is dimmed just a touch as it reminds of the humdrum games from my youth that are usually invisible in the rose-tinted rearview mirror of the mind. And just as I came to forget about those games, so too shall I soon forget about Sadame.
For the majority of the game, the difficulty continues to be a non-existent challenge. Then there’s act 4-4; the last level. Suddenly everything is turned up to 1
There are some elements of Sadame that are done well, but they are completely overwhelmed by the fundamental aspects just being so poor. Monotonous combat, inconsistent difficulty levels, and terrible AI all make for a truly frustrating and disappointing experience. Rising Star have delivered some real gems in the past, but sadly, this isn't one of them. While briefly enjoyable in the short term, it's hard to find a reason to return.
While 'Sadame' isn't a bad game at all, it feels like a particularly hollow one. The game has promise, but it all gets squandered on combat that's too simple and dull for its own good. For $15, the quantity of content is impressive, but despite the good ideas present, 'Sadame' doesn't have nearly enough variety or challenge to ultimately make it feel worthwhile.
What’s left is a competent, but wholly remarkable and uninteresting hack-and-slask JRPG. There’s plenty of loot to reward the grind if you can handle how overwhelmingly generic the experience is, but, I wasn’t really going in for loot. I wanted a game that was like Muramasa: The Demon Blade; a game that would take the aesthetics of classical Japan and really do something with it. Instead, Sadame proves itself to be vapid and uninspired in the extreme, and so very disappointing as a result.
Although I enjoyed my time with Sadame, I frequently felt too restricted, frustrated, and bored to be able to widely recommend it.
