Glad to hear the boss fights continue to be challenging. This is one of the games I feel like I'm trying to beat out of pure spite. Does anyone else feel that way? There are some enjoyable moments but they feel rare. I just made it to the mother of mothers area and am trying to push through.

It's quite different than Sanctuary. I was disappointed to find that they took steps backwards, instead of improving on what they had. I won't spoil anything but the overall vibe is not that of a sequel. It feels clunky and disjointed and almost not finished. A friend and I played online co-op (PS5) and although it was nice to have a friend to fight bosses with, it only added to the clunkiness. There are moments where you can queue up in other random people's instances or ask them to join yours but unfortunately the player base is not big enough on each platform to avoid an insanely long or never ending "searching" for party queue. I wouldn't recommend paying full price for it, but maybe buy it when it's on sale if you're curious.

Yes, tense is a good way to put it. Salt and Sanctuary was one of the first games I ran to after beating hollow knight to scratch that itch. It can be frustratingly difficult at times, (like all good metroidvanias IMO) but revealing the gigantic world, discovering more of the story, finding new items, beating the insane bosses, etc. was all so rewarding to me.

Now Salt and Sacrifice... That's an entirely different vibe.