Saint Kotar Review

Saint Kotar tells the story of Benedek and Nikolay, two troubled godly men in search of their missing relative in an ancient God-devoted town called Sveti Kotar. Unfortunately, an unknown presence preys upon the weak and sways on devil worship and witchcraft. As our two protagonists dig deeper into their investigation, all signs point to their relative being involved with grisly murders and the occult. Can you find out the truth?

Saint Kotar is a point-and-click story-driven horror game where players will have to move around various rooms to inspect them and find clues and interact with other characters. You can either move around an area or with the d-pad, you can select any of the objects that can be interacted with, and by clicking A, have your character move over and inspect it. It’s nice to have both as some players might want to take their time and discover the items while others might want to race through things.

This type of game encourages players to inspect every possible item and even revisit characters or items to get additional dialogue options. For example, early on, you can talk to Nikolay with initial conversational choices. When trying to leave, the door is locked; returning to Nikolay, the conversation will have a new conversational option. And depending on your conversational choices, you can reach one of the game’s multiple endings.

Item management and usage are actually pretty simple. Clicking Y brings up the inventory where you can select a specific item. With the selected item in hand, you can move over and use it on the appropriate interactable item. Additionally, with two protagonists, you can switch between them at certain times. In the bottom left corner, if you see both their pictures, you can press LB and the control will switch over to the other character. Although this feels a bit bugged, because the first few times I tried it, it wouldn’t work and had to reboot the game.

There’s nothing really problematic here. It’s easy to pick up and play, but given that this is a point-and-click game, the genre is not for everyone. While you can freely move around, it does feel a bit slow and requires a bit of patience to get through it as the P&C genre is not that focused on action. The game’s story also has some religious implications, which might not please everyone.

The game looks fine; the visuals look dark, brooding, and atmospheric. The character design looks a bit cartoonish which contradicts the game’s dark settings and themes. The audio side of things is quite hit-and-miss. The soundtrack is a spooky, creepy score creating an unsettling atmosphere. However, the voiceovers are delivered in a dry tone. The protagonists don’t sound that scared or affected by the spooky happenings. Although the actors delivering the lines for the town’s uneasy NPCs do a bit of a better job to amp up the creepiness of the situation.

Saint Kotar is a surprisingly fun and addicting point-and-click adventure. Usually, P&C games do not translate all that well on consoles, but Saint Kotar is definitely a surprise gem. If you can keep up with the slow-paced style of the genre, you’ll find a fun and gripping game set in an unsettling environment. I definitely recommend Saint Kotar.