Scar-Lead Salvation

Its repetitive nature holds Scar-Lead Salvation back from being good but it's still enjoyable enough to play whenever you want to wind down.

For all my criticisms here, I do want to see another take at this. There’s absolutely room for an anime Returnal, and the base mechanics are there. Scar-Lead Salvation does play well. It is so achingly close to a good game. It’s just crushed by trying to spread that quality across a very, very long gauntlet.

Scar-Lead Salvation is a roguelike third-person shooter that ultimately misses the mark. While mechanically competent, it lacks the ambition needed to elevate the experience. Its roguelike elements are too basic, causing each run to blur into the next with little variation. There are flashes of creativity, but they’re not enough to sustain momentum. In the end, the game fails to deliver that essential, just one more run thrill that defines the genre.

Scar-Lead Salvation is a third-person roguelike shooter where you play as Willow, an amnesiac soldier trapped in a looping military facility filled with repetitive rooms, basic enemies, and a sarcastic AI guiding you through it all. While it has ideas like weapon upgrades, bullet hell dodging, and roguelike progression, the execution feels shallow, overly repetitive, and undercooked, making the experience wear thin quickly. The salvation of me reaching the end of this game definitely led to some scars.

More akin to playing through a proof of concept than a finished game, Scar-Lead Salvation fails to live up to the pitch of being an anime Returnal.

Scar-Lead Salvation has a lot going for it, but it's far from perfect. It features a bland story, mediocre enemies and passable passive abilities for your character. Many of the in-game animations are floaty, and at times, stiff. Combat animations in particular, such as shooting while moving, look jarringly odd when in motion. Losing clothing while you take damage during your run is unnecessary and doesn’t add anything to the overall gameplay; if anything, it takes away any charm the game could have. There's a lack of enemy variety, making each run through the facility bland and uneventful. What could have been a challenging and interesting new game in the genre falls apart as it becomes a mix of all the wrong mechanics in a singular game.

This game, priced at $60, is not even close to an indie game in terms of visuals, story, gameplay, or even story length. The only positive thing about the game is its boss fights, but it still costs $60, while maybe $10 would be a better price. I do not recommend this game at all, especially at its current price.