When comparing FEZ vs Salt and Sanctuary, the Slant community recommends FEZ for most people. In the question“What are the best indie games on Steam?” FEZ is ranked 13th while Salt and Sanctuary is ranked 46th. The most important reason people chose FEZ is:
The core mechanic of FEZ is the ability to spin the world around in 3D, and then traverse and interact with the resulting terrain in 2D. This allows you to experience navigation puzzles that are rarely found in any other game.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Clever 2D rotation game mechanic
The core mechanic of FEZ is the ability to spin the world around in 3D, and then traverse and interact with the resulting terrain in 2D. This allows you to experience navigation puzzles that are rarely found in any other game.
Pro Brilliant puzzles
Fez has some deviously hard puzzles and mysteries that will require gathering clues from around the world to solve them.
Pro Mysterious world with lots of depth
FEZ goes beyond just being a great puzzle platformer. It also has a very clever storyline and game world with a mysterious bygone civilization that fits perfectly with the mysterious puzzles of the game.
Pro Charming graphics and world
The characters are interesting and expressive and the world they inhabit varies between vibrant forests and villages, foreboding caves, rainy cityscapes, and more.
Pro Great atmospheric soundtrack
Soft synth sounds mixed with chiptunes makes for an enjoyable soundtrack that evokes a feeling of nostalgia while creating a fitting atmosphere that complements the graphics.
Pro Immersive storytelling through exploration
Salt and Sanctuary doesn't tell you much in terms of story, so it's up to you to explore and figure it out. You can do it by talking to NPCs, reading item descriptions, and observing the environment. You'll piece the story together bit by bit, filling in the gaps with your imagination. This makes it feel like you're truly exploring the world of Salt and Sanctuary, finding out what interests you, without having exposition constantly thrown at you.
Pro Deep combat
While the combat may seem simple at first, it's actually quite diverse. A lot of it depends on your equipment, where the weight and reach affects how you can play.
For example, heavy armor will make you slower, but you'll be able to take more hits. This enables a safer playstyle, where you're allowed to make more mistakes. Large weapons have a better reach, but swing slower, so you'll need to have good timing to combat enemies effectively.
During combat, you'll be alternating between a light attack and a hard attack. These can charged to alter the timing and increase the damage of each swing, allowing you to perform very varied combos.
As a result the combat stays exciting for the entirety of the game.
Pro You can make a character that fits your playstyle
Your character has a large skill tree with many branching paths. It contains most abilities you see in a fantasy game, including spells, martial arts moves, and many others. This means you can make a fast mage, a bulky fighter, a mix of the two, or whatever fits your playstyle, making it a more enjoyable experience as a whole.
Pro Creed mechanic keeps subsequent playthroughs interesting
There is a feature in the game called "creeds" that allows you to ally with a faction of NPCs. You can only ally one creed at a time, giving you access to their unique perks, items, quest givers, and access to fast travel points. All of this offers just enough variety to keep subsequent playthroughs interesting.
Cons
Con Minimal direction
The lack of clear direction + the mysteries of the foreign writing alphabet and numeric systems may overwhelm players who got in expecting a simple & cute platformer game about a white dude with a red hat (a traditional Ottoman hat, which is called a "fez").
Con Pen and paper absolutely required for full completion
There is a lot of backtracking and so, you need to keep a pen and paper near you to take notes, because you might need something very important later on. For some people this might be a fun killer.
Con Not metroidvania
Nothing in the form of powerups,. this is a puzzle game - not a metroidvania.
Con Very limited depth
The core gameplay loop of "jump until stuck, then rotate" is boring and repetitive within the first hour. Aside from this perspective-shifting mechanic, the game does not have much to offer.
Con Limited button mapping support on keyboard
FEZ has a couple of preset control schemes to choose from, but the buttons can't have functions assigned individually.
Con Phil Fish made it
Phil Fish has had a long rap sheet of being incredibly arrogant and toxic in his behavior, purchasing this game is an implicit endorsement of this kind of behavior.
Con Guess-and-check instead of intuitive puzzles
Unlike other great puzzle games like Portal or Braid, many of the levels in Fez are unpredictable. You can't just look at the map and predict exactly what to do. You have to guess and check, and not all of the results are intuitive. While guess-and-check puzzles works well for games like The Witness, it's really tedious in a game like Fez.
Con Loads of backtracking
The world is an intertwined maze that rely on specific portals to travel between. Since the entire game revolves around locating cubes -- a minimum of 32 cubes are required to reach the game's ending (64 cubes and "anti-cubes" exist in total). A considerable amount of backtracking is needed to locate the needed cubes; which are intentionally difficult to find and acquire.
Con Slow gameplay
Navigation isn't quick, and each missed jump can make ascending an area feel like a laborious chore.
Con Frequent crashes on PC
PC version of the game has stability issues. Luckily, FEZ autosaves often so no much progress is lost when the game crashes.
Con Difficult to know where you are
There is no map in the game, making navigation quite difficult at times. Most of the locations look very similar, so you can't really use them for orientation either. Sometimes it might even feel like you're running through the same area multiple times. This can be especially confusing if you're backtracking towards a locked area. You might faintly remember it being somewhere, but you won't be exactly sure where, causing you to re-explore everything.
Con May be too niche
The setting of the game is quite morbid and the gameplay is rather difficult. This causes it to be mentally draining even during short play sessions. As a result Salt and Sanctuary won't be very appealing to players looking to relax while playing a game.