PC Gamer's Tom Sykes describes the game as, "a streamlined and grind-free take on Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and early Ultima and Things Like That". He goes on further to elaborate that the game is, "an expansive firstpersonish fantasy world you interact with by typing numbers on your keyboard." With regard to the game world itself, he noted that, "Narration and dialogue is playful and pretty funny, while the lack of painstakingly drawn art has allowed the team to imagine outlandish creatures and scenarios to their heart's content." Pearson concluded, "Despite appearances – and despite the whole permadeath thing in Classic mode – Sanctuary is actually fairly streamlined and forgiving, downplaying timesinky stuff like inventory management to ensure that you're always moving forward."
Rock Paper Shotgun's Konstantinos Dimopoulos review of the game states, "Describing SanctuaryRPG as a huge, hilarious and most honorable devourer of free time would be an understatement. Also, a rather vague statement too, as this freeware beauty also happens to be a proper, full-fledged text-based RPG with some terrific ASCII illustrations and outrageous bosses, that lets you fantasize about being anything from a burly barbarian or a pious paladin to a roaming ranger or a wicked wizard."
Destructoid's Patrick Hancock praised the game, stating that "It's got a very old-school vibe thanks to the ASCII graphics and UI, but the combat feels modern and intelligent. It caters to a wide variety of players, even if you don't have any sort of nostalgia for games like Nethack or Zork."
NewEgg's David Sanchez remarked about the gameplay, stating "The stellar blend of roguelike, RPG, dungeon crawler, and text adventure makes for a quest that’s overflowing with variety and practically nonstop entertainment. Throw in a few side quests and the inclusion of six character classes, and you’ve got a diverse retro-themed quest that’s a sheer blast all the way through."
Hardcore Gamer's Jahanzeb Khan especially enjoyed the battle system, noting that "SanctuaryRPG has a fast paced and truly engaging turn based battle system, and you find yourself so swept away by the flow of it that it’s easy to have a split second slip-up and immediately taste defeat after. You sometimes forget how it’s supposed to be turn-based affair and that you can take your time during your turn, because you can’t help but react impulsively out of instinct. Such is its design, and there’s so much going. Spells, combo attacks, character re-positioning, and extravagantly named ultra special attacks, SanctuaryRPG literally has it all."
Gamasutra's Lena LeRay writes "Where the game really shines in terms of gameplay is in promoting player choice in all things and making those choices matter." Remarking on the game's unique and stylistic design choices, she notes "Its blend of modern game design and old-school aesthetic isn't quite like anything I've seen so far." LeRay also makes mention of the game's in-depth system of customizing loot, stating that it is "an extensive crafting system in which the player must balance material durability with increasing progress towards completion and increasing quality."
Kotaku's Logan Booker adds "Despite being drawn with a limited set of colours and characters, it looks quite good and sufficiently adventurous." Booker notes that the game's sizable download size, in lieu of its ASCII art exterior by saying, "Don’t let appearances fool you — the game in its current state weighs in at 93MB. So there’s definitely some meat there."
Softpedia's Alexandru Chirila states that the game is "An RPG with humor that’s sharper than any sword you’ll be using to battle monsters." He also indicates that the game humorously defies logic by stating that "Most of the charm that comes out of SanctuaryRPG is from its witty and unexpectedly logical storytelling of a world that’s populated by vicious beasts, slimy worms that like to be petted and robots that put themselves together after you defeat them."
