Sacre Bleu

Once in a while, I’ll play a game that comes achingly oh-so close to greatness yet can’t quite cross that finish line. It’s always a shame, but it especially hurts in the case of Sacre Bleu; as a time trial-orientated side-scrolling action platformer with a unique traversal mechanic, great look, and punchy, satisfying combat, it feels like a game made specifically for me. Unfortunately, a whole suite of technical issues, as well as a lack of cohesion between all of the game’s mechanics, end up dragging down what’s otherwise a great one of these.

You’re a falsely imprisoned musketeer attempting to escape a bastille armed with your rapier, blunderbuss, pistol, and some grenades. All of these weapons are implemented into the gameplay largely how you’d expect, with the exception of the blunderbuss; instead of being a method of direct attack, it actually blasts out a strong burst of air. This action can not only send enemy projectiles back towards their sender (or their hapless buddies) but also serves as your primary platforming verb, as each use of the blunderbuss pushes your character backwards from the direction you fired in. Yes, all of the precarious platforming possibilities that just popped into your head after reading that last sentence are possible, and yes, the game takes full advantage of your extremely dynamic and flexible moveset in the air, thanks to granting you three blasts of the blunderbuss without touching the ground.

While Sacre Bleu starts off friendly, and it never veers into Celeste or Super Meat Boy levels of difficulty, it absolutely doesn’t shy away from a challenge, especially when it comes to its optional challenge levels. I wish I could say that it was always a fair challenge, but I had multiple instances of wonky hit boxes and camera issues throughout a lot of the latter areas of the game. The hit boxes were largely forgivable, albeit still annoying; the biggest offender for me in that area was a flying robot armed with buzzsaws that mimics your every movement, à la Shadow Mario from a handful of 3-D Super Mario platformers. The idea is great, and it’s thrilling to be chased on a restricted two-dimensional plane with a moveset as versatile as the one you have access to here, but I had multiple instances where the robot was able to kill me through a wall, I assume due to hurt boxes being too big. There was also a particularly funny instance of being killed by one while reading dialogue in a text box in an area that the robot wasn’t even supposed to be able to follow me to.

That experience ended up being emblematic of my entire time with Sacre Bleu — it felt like for every good idea or implementation of a mechanic, there was almost always something on the fringes dragging the entire experience down a bit. The combat, I think, perhaps suffers the most from this. Said combat is genuinely really great throughout, and the game gives just the right amount of options to make every encounter fun. You’ve got access to a standard string of sword slashes and a charge attack that can break shields, a pistol for faraway enemies, a limited amount of grenades that can really turn the tides of any battle, the ability to grab most enemies and toss them away or even at other enemies, as well as all of the aforementioned combat utility afforded to you by the blunderbuss. There’s even a grading system here that heavily encourages you to mix up your approach and not just spam your sword attack, to the point where each world’s secret level has to be opened up by achieving an A rank in each of its previous stages. 

I really found it to be a genuinely excellent set of combat verbs, but the game started to deemphasize combat and focus entirely on the platforming in its fourth set of stages, a decision that still puzzles me writing this review days later, as this shift in focus only started to highlight a lot of flaws with the hit boxes and poorly centred camera that I didn’t have as much of an issue with when I had combat encounters to change up the pace. Similarly, though there is a timer constantly running in every level, the grade you receive at the end is entirely based on how well you handle combat encounters. So while the tools are here to let you measure your own speed (there are even online leaderboards!), unless you’re the speedrunning type or have a group of buddies to compare times with, it feels sadly half-baked. Some developer par times to shoot for, à la Neon White, would’ve worked wonders for me here.

It’s also important for me to note here that, at the time of this writing, I haven’t even been able to enter the final stage of the game, as on Switch it hard crashes out to the home menu every time I try. My below review score is reflecting a hypothetical patched version of Sacre Bleu that I hope exists by the time the game is available for purchase, but for now, it’s another (rather large) unfortunate blemish on an extremely solid foundation.