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Sands of Salzaar is an Open World, Hack and Slash Action RPG where you wander the world with your band of recruited monsters and minions, going on adventures, completing quests, and cutting down a crap ton of bandits!
Sands of Salzaar is sort of like a top down Mount and Blade + Dynasty Warriors, with a bit of Heroes of Might and Magic (HOMM) mixed in as well. Wild!

Mount and Blade + Dynasty Warriors?!
The influences are here, and they are strong.
From Mount and Blade, Sands of Salzaar has the whole strong hero, mercenary company, open world RPG wander and slaughter gameplay, but the combat is top down, and much more flashy and high fantasy.
Your troops lvl up too: you can upgrade troops like in Mount and Blade; nice!
From Dynasty Warriors, Sands of Salzaar takes the above mention super flashy, fantasy combat, where your hero blows piles of enemies down, tearing through waves of them as you get stronger and stronger, though, unlike Dynasty Warriors, you don’t start as a legendary hero here: in Sands of Salzaar, you have to earn it, in true RPG fashion.
Also, the big battles, where you attack bases and larger camps, have you defending your command post as you assault waves of enemy forces leading your troops, much like many of the Dynasty Warriors missions.
So, the Mount and Blade & Dynasty Warriors influences are potent, and strong here in Sands of Salzaar!

Heroes of Might and Magic Too?! Madness!
Not so!
In Sands of Salzaar, you wander the open world, traveling from region to region as you like, and you often come across dwelling huts / locations, much like in the old HOMM games.
These locations might be monster dens, which grant you food once cleared, prisons, where you can rescue troops, if you can defeat their jailors, or merchants like monster pet trainers who will sell you monster troops like wolves for your forces.
These sorts of locations, much like the creature dwelling in HOMM, tend to reset in about a week, with the prison taking 2 weeks or so to fill back up again with your eager recruits.
So, in Sands of Salzaar, we have a game that will take from among the best in ideas, shaping them to fit within its own unique world.

An RPG Open World:
Right at the start, you select your class.
There are 9 classes in the base game, all very different, with 1 to unlock; the nameless.
You can visually customize your appearance, which is good, but what is better is that you can meaningfully customize them!
You start with 60 points to customize your character, picking abilities, troopers you start with, and items; fun!
Every class also has their own skill tree too; nice.
Characters gain exp as they fight in battles; good.

Right at the start, you can take a caravan pretty much where you want, but that might not be a good idea; as there are roaming bands that might hate you, especially if you pick the wrong character!
Be careful where you roam, and with who!
So you wander around the world, battling bandits for exp, having adventures, and tracking down and touching the big, red pillars to gain talent points, which also seem to make your next character a little bit stronger, with a few more points to spend at the start.
These talent points are also used in the talent tree, which is different from the combat focused skill tree; the talents are more about party management and general purpose upgrades.

There are little dungeons you can enter too, that cost some gold depending on their lvl (50g for a low lvl one for supplies), with a boss at the end; good loot; fun!
You can also store your inventory or expand it at certain NPCs; handy if the bags start getting too full.

Anyway, Sands of Salzaar is a fun Open World ARPG that is strongly influenced by both Mount and Blade & Dynasty Warriors, and with a bit of HOMM mixed in as well, and is easily worth a wishlist and a watch.
Watch?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1094520/Sands_of_Salzaar/
#SandsofSalzaar #OpenWorld #RPG