Review - Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves (PC)

I'm going to start off this review with an apology over its length. I feel it is an injustice to this game if I do not go into a more detailed look into what makes the gameplay so deep and rewarding. Since not everyone will care to read it all, I will be splitting up this review into 2 sections, a broad overview of the game as well as an in-depth look at the gameplay mechanics. If this doesn't seem like the type of game that would interest you, you don't need to read the second part that will be posted separately from this review.

Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves is a strategy/action game set in a small village in Canada. It is hard to classify this game into a genre, as it pulls in many aspects from action, tower defense, and RPG games. While the game has its fair share of faults, the gameplay is unique, complex and very satisfying. You play as one of two brothers who must defend against an onslaught of various accursed and mystical creatures in order to save your sister, the focal point of the story. Each night, the attacks get worse and worse and you will have to use an arsenal of traps, skills, and items in order to survive.

The combat is split up into 2 phases, day and night. During the day, you will be able to allocate skill points earned from leveling up, head to town to purchase consumables and new equipment, and finally plan out the traps you'll need to defend your structures for the upcoming night. Once night fall hits, waves upon waves of monsters descend upon your structures and it's up to you and your traps to kill them all! The game utilizes some great mechanics that add a lot of depth to the game. Many of the traps in the game need to be activated, requiring you to either be there to set them off (by either lighting a fuse, or shooting the trap) or for you to have armed the trap previously. As you advance in the game, you will have more and more structures to protect and you will need to plan out your strategy so that you will have adequate time to travel between your structures. If even one of your structures are destroyed, you fail the night and must repeat it again.

Proper planning is absolutely essential to doing well and surviving each night. Every aspect has to be considered and accounted for, from the type of monsters, how many of each, where they're heading and the distance between their spawn and the structure they're attacking, the way the wind blows, to the time it will take you to prepare for each new wave. When all of this planning is finally done, night falls and it's time to execute the strategy you poured so much time into. Watching things play out the way you expected them to is not only extremely satisfying, it's also a thing of beauty.

The graphics in the game are a bit of a mixed bag. The cutscenes that push forward the storyline are particularly bad, with weak animations, mediocre dialogue and even worse voice acting. In contrast to that, the developers added in some scenes with a 2D hand drawn backdrop, and these were beautiful and reminded me of old school adventure games. I would have preferred if they used static hand-drawn images for all the cutscenes and just didn't bother with animations or the voice acting. The graphics utilized in the gameplay itself are decent. They did a great job with the environment though I found the character models and animations merely adequate.

The overall plot of the story came off a bit ridiculous at times. You play as one of the two O'Carroll brothers, Jacques and Joseph, and your task is to protect your sick sister Josephine from falling into the hands of the Devil. The sound effects aren't really worth mentioning, though the soundtrack is quite good and the opening song played during the loading screen is great.

Despite all of its flaws, at its heart Sang-Froid is a deep and immensely satisfying strategy/action game. You'll spend most of your time planning out where to lay down your traps, the path you'll need to take, the best loadout to take with you, and then as night falls, executing out your strategy. I had a really difficult time writing out this review since I didn't want to touch upon the game's shortcomings as I didn't want to deter people from playing this game. The flaws in the game are really minor in comparison to the great gameplay and I urge everybody who enjoys a good strategy game to pick this one up.

Final Score:
8/10

Please read the second part of this review if you're at all interested in this game.