So Salt and Sacrifice is the sequel to Salt and Sanctuary, A game that largely answered the question of what would happen if you mixed your Dark Souls with your Castlevania in a generally succesful way (if with rather a bit of indie scope issues being a one-man production). Salt and Sacrifice has upped to a two man production (the second one mostly adding the games multiplayer functionality), and expands on its formula by... well, pulling in more games. Most notably in the new era pulling from Monster Hunter and Mega Man.
The tl;dr. if you liked the first one, there's a reasonable expectation you'll like this one. You can actively even ignore the new stuff (beyond fighting some of the mages to get a quota of "devoured mage hearts" to unlock some doors, you never have to engage with the newer systems and can proceed on fighting the games non-repeating bosses and just generally doing the original schtick. It will certainly be easier, and yoi'll have more tools if you do the former though (see the aforementioned Mega Man note).
So whats new?
Well, we have on new traversal tool, which is the grapple. Its not super-interesting. Grapple points are all pre-defined so it feels like a fairly arbitrary gate. Occasionally it does do some acrobatics where you have to grapple up then do a direction change on the same point, but its never really a free flowing affair. It is also used when you poise break enemies to do some aerial super attacks but again thats just a pre-render animation by pushing R2 and you don't actually have to even grapple to do it, it looks cooler then the ground one.
One of the more divisive changes is that your checkpoints refill your flasks, but only if you have sufficient consumables. Again these reads back to Monster Hunter, but was also in Bloodborne. But yes, you do have to have 1 red berry for each flask charge. Charges are still limited by your upgrade level on your flask too. This also applies to Resolve (mana) flasks, along with ammo (generic ammo is used for several things), and various throwable firepots and such, along with poison antidotes. All of which operate on the same logic. You can carry an upgradable amount of each at once, refill at checkpoints by using resources. (Ammo can be crafted on the fly though using ore that can both be mined and drops incredibly frequently from enemies)
Speaking of, Ranged combat is much more heavily integrated, and is always present as a secondary attack. There are various categpries of this (throwing, bows, channeling rods) and every class starts with one in addition to whatever melees. Following along with the Souls own evolutiion (or in tandem, since SnS was announced before Elden Ring ever had gamepplay), every weapon has Arts of some kind. Ranging from 1-3 options. These include Arts used with Rage, which is built up by succesful hits and greatly by perfect counters), or Glyphs which us Resolve, which functions as mana and is restored by potions (or some items enable other ways). Glyphs come in your divine and arcane favors which have individual unlock paths on the class tree and different scaling stats. This is where your Mega Man comes in too, as the bulk of available weapons straight up give you the attacks of the Mage enemies you craft them from.
Which brings us to Mages, who represent the Monsters in the Monster Hunter gimmicks. They are all humanoid, but they do come in some oddball flavors and quirkiness. It does feel like a little variety was lost (And with some of the standard bosses also being large humans, can feel a bit mundane)", and there some obvious picks mixed in with more interesting ideas. The mages do feel a a bit hit and miss and sometimes at odds with the game. While the regular bosses are your telegraphed, mostly melee centric Souls fare, and pretty measured pace. Mages lean into the Mega Man (or Shovel Knight for you kids), style a lot more. With some approaching near bullet hell and a lot more jumping and sometimes ranged combat being of significant use in their fights. You will likely have a very rough itme if you simply try to melee/dodge/parrry your way through. Though there is some balance to be found as most of the spammier mages also have garbage poise, so your melee will often stagger them for those crits.
What I would say is perhaps the most problematic issue with the Mages is that you don't really get a solid confrontation with your mage until you've beaten them back to their designated final chamber, when that health bar and the name flashes up for the proper fight. Prior to that you fight them in the open wild, and they flee semi-constantly and not entirely seeming based on any particular action. They do carry their health into the final fight, and you can use traps or other enemies (including other wandering mages) to deal large scale damage to soften them up for you. But sometimes they just feel overflighty and like a lot of chase is involved (particularly in platforming heavy sections. They also always have summons you have to deal with, which in some cases can punish you more reliably then the mage themselves, often because the summons fall into the main combat style and you're trying to use jumps and range on the mage and get caught out.
Both the summons and the mage drop 4 parts of their unique "element" of various rarity which are used to craft various Monster Hunter esque gear. Once you've crafted the gear, it is then upgraded with Elemetnal Pyr (Ashpyr is the neutral one), which comes in Fire/Light/Cold/Venom/Dark flavors. Most later mages are combo elements and their gear rotates between different mats as you go up.
The tl;dr. if you liked the first one, there's a reasonable expectation you'll like this one. You can actively even ignore the new stuff (beyond fighting some of the mages to get a quota of "devoured mage hearts" to unlock some doors, you never have to engage with the newer systems and can proceed on fighting the games non-repeating bosses and just generally doing the original schtick. It will certainly be easier, and yoi'll have more tools if you do the former though (see the aforementioned Mega Man note).
So whats new?
Well, we have on new traversal tool, which is the grapple. Its not super-interesting. Grapple points are all pre-defined so it feels like a fairly arbitrary gate. Occasionally it does do some acrobatics where you have to grapple up then do a direction change on the same point, but its never really a free flowing affair. It is also used when you poise break enemies to do some aerial super attacks but again thats just a pre-render animation by pushing R2 and you don't actually have to even grapple to do it, it looks cooler then the ground one.
One of the more divisive changes is that your checkpoints refill your flasks, but only if you have sufficient consumables. Again these reads back to Monster Hunter, but was also in Bloodborne. But yes, you do have to have 1 red berry for each flask charge. Charges are still limited by your upgrade level on your flask too. This also applies to Resolve (mana) flasks, along with ammo (generic ammo is used for several things), and various throwable firepots and such, along with poison antidotes. All of which operate on the same logic. You can carry an upgradable amount of each at once, refill at checkpoints by using resources. (Ammo can be crafted on the fly though using ore that can both be mined and drops incredibly frequently from enemies)
Speaking of, Ranged combat is much more heavily integrated, and is always present as a secondary attack. There are various categpries of this (throwing, bows, channeling rods) and every class starts with one in addition to whatever melees. Following along with the Souls own evolutiion (or in tandem, since SnS was announced before Elden Ring ever had gamepplay), every weapon has Arts of some kind. Ranging from 1-3 options. These include Arts used with Rage, which is built up by succesful hits and greatly by perfect counters), or Glyphs which us Resolve, which functions as mana and is restored by potions (or some items enable other ways). Glyphs come in your divine and arcane favors which have individual unlock paths on the class tree and different scaling stats. This is where your Mega Man comes in too, as the bulk of available weapons straight up give you the attacks of the Mage enemies you craft them from.
Which brings us to Mages, who represent the Monsters in the Monster Hunter gimmicks. They are all humanoid, but they do come in some oddball flavors and quirkiness. It does feel like a little variety was lost (And with some of the standard bosses also being large humans, can feel a bit mundane)", and there some obvious picks mixed in with more interesting ideas. The mages do feel a a bit hit and miss and sometimes at odds with the game. While the regular bosses are your telegraphed, mostly melee centric Souls fare, and pretty measured pace. Mages lean into the Mega Man (or Shovel Knight for you kids), style a lot more. With some approaching near bullet hell and a lot more jumping and sometimes ranged combat being of significant use in their fights. You will likely have a very rough itme if you simply try to melee/dodge/parrry your way through. Though there is some balance to be found as most of the spammier mages also have garbage poise, so your melee will often stagger them for those crits.
What I would say is perhaps the most problematic issue with the Mages is that you don't really get a solid confrontation with your mage until you've beaten them back to their designated final chamber, when that health bar and the name flashes up for the proper fight. Prior to that you fight them in the open wild, and they flee semi-constantly and not entirely seeming based on any particular action. They do carry their health into the final fight, and you can use traps or other enemies (including other wandering mages) to deal large scale damage to soften them up for you. But sometimes they just feel overflighty and like a lot of chase is involved (particularly in platforming heavy sections. They also always have summons you have to deal with, which in some cases can punish you more reliably then the mage themselves, often because the summons fall into the main combat style and you're trying to use jumps and range on the mage and get caught out.
Both the summons and the mage drop 4 parts of their unique "element" of various rarity which are used to craft various Monster Hunter esque gear. Once you've crafted the gear, it is then upgraded with Elemetnal Pyr (Ashpyr is the neutral one), which comes in Fire/Light/Cold/Venom/Dark flavors. Most later mages are combo elements and their gear rotates between different mats as you go up.