When comparing Besiege vs Salt and Sanctuary, the Slant community recommends Salt and Sanctuary for most people. In the question“What are the best indie games on Steam?” Salt and Sanctuary is ranked 46th while Besiege is ranked 54th. The most important reason people chose Salt and Sanctuary is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Beautiful design
Each level takes place on a stage of blank white, giving the users unlimited space to test machines. The destruction of machines, buildings, and NPCs in this game is graphic and hilarious.
Pro Encourages creativity
In each level, the player is given an objective. The objective can be reached in any way. Players are able to build a huge variety of custom weapons and vehicles. Potential vehicles include airplanes and helicopters, tanks, catapults, hot air balloons, and more.
Pro Active community
There are loads of forums where you can discuss stuff about the game, share creations and ideas and look for servers you can play on.
Pro Sandbox Mode and Multiverse (multiplayer and level editor)
Remember, it's not just levels! In the Sandbox you can test your machines which is neat. The Multiverse has a lot to offer as well: the multiplayer function and the Level Editor. You can upload your levels to the Steam Workshop (Steam only).
Pro Community Workshop (Steam only)
In the Workshop, you can post your creations for other users to use and you can download other people's creations.
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 Another one of them games forever stuck in Early Access
Con Still in alpha testing
Some of the best features of this game are still in development. The final version isn't said to be released until mid 2016.
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.