REMEDIUM Sentinels is an attempt by Russian developers from Friv2Online Studio to repeat the success of the action roguelike Vampire Survivors. The project was released in early access, I played it and I hasten to share my impressions.
Vampire Survivors is one to envy - with pixelated graphics and simple gameplay, it has become one of the most popular games in 2022. Despite the elementary ideas, it is very difficult to break away from it - even the head of Xbox spent 200 hours on the game in 2 weeks. It is impossible to say the same about REMEDIUM Sentinels yet.
So, the current friv game is an open copy of the ideas of "vampires". Almost everyone, except for the picture, which is three-dimensional, detailed and quite pleasant here, and we are offered to watch the hero and crowds of monsters in an isometric perspective. The setting here is more strict - something like the Victorian era. The plague epidemic has turned people into monsters, and we have to exterminate them.
There are only two heroes to choose from - the Gladiator and the Barbican. You don’t have to think about the choice, since the characters have the same starting weapon, and they differ only in their attack radius and appearance. At the same time, the Barbican loses a lot to the Gladiator, because of the reduced attack range, it feels too weak. REMEDIUM Sentinels is clearly lacking in diverse characters.
The gameplay will be familiar if you've played Vampire Survivors - you need to hold out on the selected location for a while, destroying the monsters. The control of the hero is incomplete, the player only needs to move around the location, and the character attacks on his own. During survival, the fighter becomes stronger, and there are more monsters, and towards the end of the game, a real meat grinder begins to happen on the screen.
In vampires, 30 minutes were allotted for a “run”, here it was only 15. I won’t say that the friv game lost in dynamics - every minute a new phase begins, with which stronger monsters come, and the number of bobbleheads increases significantly.
So far, there are only three locations in REMEDIUM Sentinels - Crossroads, Church, Ruins. All these places turned out to be gloomy - with tombstones, destroyed temples, crypts and other details, because of which there is a feeling that the next part of Diablo is on the screen.
There is also a problem with the variety of monsters - on all three maps the same opponents will be waiting for you, with a difference, perhaps, of one kind: there are zombies, birds (analogous to bats from Vampire Survivors), thick-skinned butchers, an incomprehensible type of monster for five paws. But the enemies have received three-dimensional models and good animations, so fighting them is a pleasure. There are also bosses - a stronger and larger version of those bobbleheads.
As for the survival process itself, everything is similar to Vampire Survivors - experience drops from enemies, and the character picks it up and increases the level. Each new level is an opportunity to choose a weapon or an artifact, or upgrade already found items. The hero's damage, speed, and attack range increase, and with careful survival, he quickly turns into a killing machine.
The map is scattered with bonus boxes that can save even the most hopeless run - by opening them, you can replenish your health, freeze all enemies, blow everything up or get gold coins. The latter are needed for "through" pumping - after death, the player returns to the main menu and can enhance the characteristics for this currency.
In terms of gameplay, there are differences from Vampire Survivors only in the mechanics of weapon evolution. Let me remind you that in the "vampires" for the evolution of weapons (that is, to obtain a significant improved version), you need to have a synergistic passive item in your inventory.
In REMEDIUM Sentinels, the trick is different - you don’t need to select synergies, but during evolution, the elemental damage of the found passive objects (fire, ice, electricity, poison) is taken into account. This gives as many as 4 options for improved weapons - for example, if you choose ice, then the enemies will slow down, but the attack radius will decrease. When lightning is selected, electricity will begin to hit enemies around the hero, and his damage will be doubled.
And here one could stop, saying that there is little content in REMEDIUM Sentinels, and this problem is fixable if it were not for bugs. The friv game literally drowns in non-critical errors and strange moments that do not affect the gameplay, but spoil the impression of it.
For example, chests with bonuses in the Ruins location hang in the air or are in the stone texture. When upgrading weapons with the element of lightning, the effect of electricity turned out to be too bright, eyes get tired of it, and the area next to the hero becomes difficult to see. By the way, at this moment the game lost 15 frames per second and started to lag a lot.
The levels in the menu seem to be locked, but in fact they are all open from the start - you can check this by simply clicking on them. There is an imbalance in weapons - with one trident you can survive the entire match, while circular saws turned out to be useless. There were some problems with localization (the text is not translated everywhere, the inscriptions move out), which is strange, given that the developer is a Russian team.
In REMEDIUM Sentinels, you really feel the passion that Vampire Survivors has - it's interesting to play, you collect various weapons with rapture and crush monsters. Pleasant graphics are pleasing to the eye, which could become an obstacle to studying the phenomenon of the popularity of "vampires". The matches are shorter, but the dynamics are high - literally every minute we are bombarded with enemies.
But for now, the friv game has a number of problems that need to be urgently addressed. There is little content, and it is monotonous - there are especially not enough characters. Well, bugs, poor optimization and other technical problems spoil the gaming experience. REMEDIUM Sentinels has potential, but the developers have a lot of work to do.