This is my review of The Last Faith in just Four minutes
The Last Faith isn't a hugely original idea but it is told in original ways. Bloodborne but Metroidvania is just guessable enough to make you think 'We've probably seen this before' and we have. However, easy marketing doesn't always make something bad and, in The Last Faith's case, it manages to pay homage to its source material while branching out enough to give something well worth your time.
It is a game all about deception of many kinds: the mind, your body, and the world around you. Eryk, our protagonist wakes up with little recollection of what he is doing in Mythringal, why he wields deadly weapons and why his own mind is beginning to deteriorate. Stricken by an infection of some kind, you rely on what little friendly beings there are around to find out what exactly is going on. To get a cure, you must do the bidding of much grander entities and kill anything that gets in your way.
The story itself isn't immediately engaging but every other part of the game is. The art is wonderfully realised, being textured and detailed enough to make everything out whilst giving enough blur with that more retro style to let your mind wander. The music is fittingly creepy and the gameplay is both tough enough to shock you and deep enough to let you learn its little intricacies. Given the game is on a 2D plane, there is a certain depth it loses out to other soulslikes but it plays far more into the verticality of the world than others. You are constantly jumping to get a quick snapshot in or ducking to avoid oncoming fire.
It helps that bosses, for the most part, are pretty great. They are often engaging, have choreographed attacks, but hit hard enough to scare you into forgetting them. Like Eryk himself, the lumbering monstrosities of this game force me to forget everything I've learned and require me to steady myself and give it another go. It does an excellent job at making that next boss feel impossible on your first death but makes you feel like you can beat it without a hit by your tenth. It is a power fantasy and an acknowledgement of how weak you are.
You do feel quite weak in The Last Faith and this isn't entirely down to its bare mechanics and story. In true soulslike fashion, you are given a currency for beating enemies or smashing certain chests which can be used to buy levels at a central hub or items from one of the game's shopkeepers. You then lose this currency upon death but have one last chance to get it back next time. Levelling up can impact a handful of central places like your damage, health, and The Last Faith's version of mana.
Unfortunately, defence and resistance to certain status effects is dependent on the stats you buff. Where upgrading your strength may make you more resistant to one, upgrading your health will make you more resistant to another. This means that committing to a build leaves you feeling silly as that boss who does darkness damage would be much easier if you pump currency into a stat you will never use just because of its defensive capabilities. This is why games like Dark Souls upgrade almost all resistances regardless of stat upgrade.
It doesn't help that status effects are absolutely killer. The Darkness effect does consistent damage to you and flips your controls upside down, where burn slowly pings you for damage, often cancelling moves. The electricity effect stops you entirely so the second you find yourself cursed by any of this in a boss fight, you might as well restart. Healing items work like Estus in that they restore after every rest but they are limited like blood Vials in BloodBorne. This means that I have occasionally been hit by a status effect near the start of a boss and decided it's not worth wasting my healing items to continue this fight. You do get given a few new boss doors if you are out but it's little enough to disincentivize this approach.
Luckily, that feeling of euphoria you get after beating a boss is only heightened by some truly horrifying visuals and storytelling. Beating them is often accompanied by small cutscenes that are, and I won't spoil any further, gross, visceral, and really makes you wonder if Eryk's quest is worth it to begin with.
The Last Faith has some nice sidequests that play into the gothic macabre theming of the story well, where no one quite feels like they're winning - just surviving a little longer. For a game that touts itself as difficult, the thing that stumped me most was the world exploration itself. For the most part, The Last Faith nails the central elements of a Metroidvania, giving you paths you can't explore, then illuminating them later for greater effect. It also has tonnes of cool secrets and even a totally skippable area. Unfortunately, navigating it can be a little bit of a chore when you aren't entirely sure where to go.
A code was given for the purposes of critique
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