What is a game? A miserable little pile of beautiful artwork and bugs!
The Last Faith Developer: Kumi Souls Games Publisher: Playstack PC Release Date: 11/15/2023 |
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Quick Verdict: | The Last Faith is a familiar and fun Metroidvania that is held back by some occasionally game-breaking bugs. |
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Cons: |
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Reviewer played on PC. A review code was provided by the publisher. | The Last Faith is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and the Nintendo Switch. |
When the Kickstarter campaign was launched back in 2020 for The Last Faith, I didn’t think that the game could have come out fast enough. What was showcased in its concept trailer had me completely sold on the project. While the three-year wait has honestly felt like an eternity, I feel that the finished product could have been done with just a little more time in the oven.
The Last Faith begins with the story’s protagonist, Eryk, imprisoned in a dungeon of sorts that seems to only be home to people who have lost their humanity and are only mere husks of their former selves. He escapes after killing someone who enters his cell and then embarks on a journey to rid the land of an infection that has taken over and left only corruption and death in its wake.
Eryk’s appearance immediately gave me heavy vibes of the character Julius Belmont from Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Of course, Castlevania wasn’t the only game series that I was thinking of while playing The Last Faith. Bloodborne is deep in this game’s DNA too.
You begin the game with a simple sword and a choice between one of four character classes. Each of these has different names, but they just give you different stats to begin with and not so much that you are stuck with a certain build.
I started with a class that focused more on dexterity. But, after learning the game more, I ended up putting the majority of my skill points into strength instead, due to the weapons I found myself gravitating towards more. Finding a great sword early on with incredible range, explosive damage, and a relatively quick attack speed just kept me hooked on that weapon for most of my playthrough.
Fear the old blood in The Last Faith
There are plenty of different weapons to choose from in The Last Faith, and an abundance of them are efficient as well as easy to get used to. Eryk’s arsenal includes axes, whips, great swords, short swords, katanas, and even gun swords. Not only can you use melee weapons in your right hand, but in Eryk’s left hand you can use spells or guns.
I found the majority of the guns to be underwhelming, but I didn’t get to use all of them. They were limited by randomized bullet pickups and I didn’t really find them to be all that useful compared to just using melee attacks. They do stun enemies, but, oftentimes, so did my giant sword.
Spells come in flavors like bringing down bolts of lightning from the sky, shooting out bursts of flame, or even bringing up shields that can do damage to any enemy within close proximity.
There are also pieces of equipment called Stigmas that are used for actions like creating a shield to block most types of damage or even for parrying. These Stigmas don’t have an infinite use though, so I didn’t really use them as much as I would have liked as a result of that.
One issue I had was that the game’s controls couldn’t be changed and that it didn't really do a great job of explaining how to do tasks like changing which item or weapon Eryk has selected. Both of these are changed with either the D-pad or the left analog stick, depending on which one you aren’t using to move Eryk around. The Last Faith could have used a little more tutorial there.
I don’t like using the analog stick to control characters in 2D games, so any time I get the choice to use the D-pad instead, I’m taking it. However, changing items, spells, and guns with the analog stick just wasn’t fun.
The thing that should not be
Due to this, elemental damage needs to be addressed. If you get hit a few times with an element like electricity or fire, you will enter a state where Eryk is not only taking incremental damage over time but he also will be knocked out of certain actions like healing or attacking.
These states tend to last a dreadfully long time, and you aren’t able to even enter your inventory to make it stop. You’d better hope it’s on your quick item bar, and you’d better hope you don’t fumble around too much while trying to get to it.
I can’t tell you how many times I went to change from my healing item to a powder for curing burning only to change my weapon instead and then take a bunch of damage while trying to fix my mistake. Pain.
I’m only human after all
Thankfully, combat in the game is (for the most part) a lot of fun. Being able to dodge as well as attack without having to manage a stamina bar was a big relief, and being able to cancel an attack into a dodge roll is a thing of beauty.
However, it seems that you can’t string together certain movements or it will cause your input to drop. For instance, if you air dash, you can’t do it again until the animation of dust behind Eryk has dissipated completely. The same thing happens while doing a dodge roll, then jumping, and then trying to air dash. The air dash just won’t come out.
This isn’t too big of a deal once you figure out what they are allowed to do, but these instances can make you feel like your inputs are getting dropped.
As far as bug issues go, I read a player review stating that their weapon just stopped doing damage to enemies at all, near the beginning of the game, and they couldn’t figure out how to fix it. So, watch out for those.
I also read about other players having certain weapons equipped in a particular room causing the game to break and soft-lock. This also happened with a room where someone needed to use a bomb to blow up an ice blockade and it couldn’t be destroyed as intended. So they were stuck and unable to progress.
The only other bugs I personally saw in my playthrough were when my character decided to dash across the screen infinitely and I had to Alt+F4 (i.e. close) the game to stop it since nothing else would work. When I saw an enemy that was supposed to teleport and dash toward me based on where I was standing, it bugged out and leaped straight up in the air for a second because I was jumping when it teleported.
You must be the Belmont
The Last Faith isn’t all doom and gloom when it comes to the gameplay though. The issues that happened to me didn’t happen often enough to break a lot of my enjoyment of the game.
The bosses were a lot of fun to fight (with the exception of one specific one that I absolutely hated, but no spoilers) and they were usually particularly well-designed both visually and during combat. Most of the bosses and enemies in The Last Faith felt very familiar alongside other titles that the devs may be paying homage to, but I found this to be like making a game goulash with a lot of Metroidvania-style titles.
The locales discovered within also bring an even more nostalgic-feeling, yet pleasing, variety. There are lots of cities, caves, crypts, villages, manors, towers, marshes, and cemeteries to explore and they each feel truly different from one another.
The artwork in The Last Faith reminded me a lot of Blasphemous, and that’s for sure not a bad thing at all. Everything from the cutscenes, character models, giant bosses, buildings, and all the way to the layers upon layers during background scenes looked great.
Another aspect that I enjoyed outright was the music. It all has a very haunting and sad tone to it. Usually, it's just a lonely piano lavishing the player with poignant melodies.
Also, that sense of relief you feel when you hear the piano theme for a room that contains a save point is wonderful. It really took me back to the days of classic Resident Evil games with their fantastic save-room themes.
The crypt jam
I really think that if the developers continue to work on The Last Faith and fix some of the issues I mentioned earlier with the button layouts, weapon glitches, and other weird bugs they can get the game up to a much higher quality. I still found it to be good fun overall even though it’s not really bringing anything new to the table in the world of Metroidvanias.
With Kickstarter goals like New Game+ and even a Co-op mode being met back when the game was first announced, I’m hoping that they will keep adding more content. But, I also hope that they don’t abandon squashing the bugs that are holding the game back from true greatness.