Loose Sticks and Sticky Swings
First button press tells you almost everything you need to know about an action game. Satarichi: Heroes De Caelum wants to be a frantic real-time beat 'em up RPG, but the actual controller response feels heavy right out of the gate. Your attacks do not snap into position. When you throw a standard swing, your character stays committed to that direction and animation long after the sprite connects, making simple turnarounds feel like steering through wet clay.
That sluggish turnaround hurts the moment enemies surround you. The game gives you cast members like Asmodeus and Mc Manor to tackle King Lux and his reptilian army, but neither feels particularly nimble when swarmed. You press attack, the swing comes out with a slight visual drag, and getting out of the way relies on wide spacing rather than clean twitch reactions. If you miss, you take a hit simply because the recovery window refuses to let you guard or reposition in time.
Tabletop Ambition in a Side-Scroller
The background lore comes straight out of the 2025 novel Satarichi: Los Mercenarios De Caelum, tracing back to a 2012 tabletop project by jlm.Saitam. You can tell the creator cares deeply about this world. There are human sacrifices, an invading reptile regime, town services, and a functioning banking system where you deposit your cash between brawls.
Putting that much story into a fourteen-dollar brawler just clashes with the action. You walk through environments meant to show off Caelum, talk to NPCs, and buy weapons or spells from vendors. Yet the pacing stalls between dialogue boxes and slow walks across flat hubs. The lore is detailed. But the game keeps cutting your momentum for text dumps when you just want to swing your new blade in a clean fight.
Sloppy Boxes and Local Chaos
Four-player local support and Steam Remote Play Together are easily the strongest selling points here. Getting a friend on the couch masks some of the stiffness because you can stagger your hits and lock reptilian grunts into place. Magic helps too. Casting projectile spells keeps you out of dangerous close-quarters trades where the hitboxes become completely unpredictable.
Solo play is where those hitboxes fall apart. Enemy reptiles have forward lunges where the active hit zone seems to extend past their weapon tips, tagging your hurtbox while your own blade whiffs from what looks like clean contact distance. It turns basic encounters into defensive baiting. Instead of weaving through attacks with tight timing, you walk backward, wait for the enemy recovery animation, run in, hit twice, and run away. That is tedious action design.
Rough Around the Edges
Sata Indie Games pushed out updates leading up to the late October launch, but the baseline performance still has odd hitches. Screen transitions occasionally drop frames for a second before the next wave of monsters spawns. Audio cues on weapon impacts also lack weight, sounding more like dull thuds than sharp iron striking scaled armor.
At $13.99, it is an earnest indie passion project that clearly took years of worldbuilding to reach Steam. But passion does not fix floaty hit registration or unresponsive inputs. When an action RPG asks you to grind gold, buy weapons, and fight through dozens of reptilian waves, the moment-to-moment combat needs to feel crisp. Right now, it just feels tired.
Comments 13
BestNewest★ Best comments
played a ton and cleared most of the achievements. the loose hitboxes are actually exploitable once you learn enemy spawn patterns. review completely overlooks the town services and magic vendors, magic builds get crazy good later on. four player local is chaotic on a shared screen, but the ceiling here is higher than a 5.1.
runs alright on deck for solo brawling, though you definitely feel the frame drops during screen transitions and wave spawns. remote play together works fine if your connection is solid. four player local gets pretty choppy when everyone is on screen fighting through the hitches.
the stuttering during wave spawns and screen transitions happens, but the stiff attack recovery is just how the combat was designed. four player local runs into frame drops on crowded screens, sure, but calling the whole combat broken over loose hitboxes ignores that you have to stick to bait and punish loops instead of mashing.
tried it on deck 20 mins stiff recovery kills flow hitboxes feel off magic vendors ok but not worth 14 rn refunding until they patch it
31 minutes and refunded. not paying $13.99 for this. the stiff recovery kills any flow and enemy lunges have awful hitboxes. hard pass.
the stiff recovery animations and cheap enemy lunges make this really rough if you have motor issues. you can't just react in time when hitboxes are this inconsistent and your attack recovery locks you down for so long, especially during those wave spawn lag spikes. really wish the combat timing was way more forgiving.
thirteen ninety nine for a digital only release with no physical cartridge or disc option means this is a rental license not a purchase the steam store page does not clarify if the game data installs fully offline or requires an initial handshake the review mentions RPG progression systems but if the servers shut down your character builds vanish this is the reality of modern indie distribution
@columbo's raincoatat least four-player local co-op works with steam remote play together. easy couch multiplayer setup. town magic vendors and the banking system are neat.
clock hit 47 mins and i hit refund the dodge feels like moving through mud vertical hitboxes miss half the time not worth thirteen bucks when vampire survivors exists
@Andy P.played a ton and cleared most of the achievements. the loose hitboxes are actually exploitable once you learn enemy spawn patterns. review completely overlooks the town services and magic vendors, magic builds get crazy good later on. four player local is chaotic on a shared screen, but the ceiling here is higher than a 5.1.
runs alright on deck for solo brawling, though you definitely feel the frame drops during screen transitions and wave spawns. remote play together works fine if your connection is solid. four player local gets pretty choppy when everyone is on screen fighting through the hitches.
the review hits on real problems with stiff recovery and weird hitboxes, but couch co-op makes it way more playable. magic vendors in town help you work around the sluggish melee strikes, and running it in four player local or through remote play together takes some sting out of the slow recovery animations. don't give up on it right away if you enjoy tabletop lore and brawlers.
skill issue ngl the dodge frames are fine git gud
@toastruns on a 7900 XTX at 3440x1440 240hz and the 1% lows during four player local are completely unacceptable input queue feels like 8 to 10 frames on dodge recovery vertical hurtbox alignment is broken on the z axis tested with frame counter overlay the animation lock on heavy attacks prevents any meaningful cancel window this is not a skill issue this is bad frame delivery
@onion dipthe stuttering during wave spawns and screen transitions happens, but the stiff attack recovery is just how the combat was designed. four player local runs into frame drops on crowded screens, sure, but calling the whole combat broken over loose hitboxes ignores that you have to stick to bait and punish loops instead of mashing.
@onion dipgit gud fr the deck runs it fine at 800p