The Last Faith review: flying to close to the blood moon
The Last Faith (TLF) is a devout student of Bloodborne. The gothic aesthetic, the religious undertones, the combat, the game mechanics are all well and alive. This time, in 2D side scroller pixel art presentation.
This works wonders in favour of The Last Faith (TLF) because much like Bloodborne brought many fresh ideas to the “Soulsborne genre” TLF brings many fresh ideas to the Metroidvania genre. The problem lies in translating ideas without seemingly questioning if any should be left behind.
The really good bits
Let’s start with what TLF does really well: presentation, combat, exploration, and weapon variety.
I had a genuine good time in what you may the call in between boss fights. You know, when you look a boss fight compilation on youtube that’s only like 5% of the actual playtime so you only experience the rest playing yourself the game.
So yeah the exploration and the combat were really fun. The map is huge, with plenty of variety on the areas and breakable walls hiding plenty of goodies. The backtracking nature of the game works really well here because if you get stuck on the current boss you do have at least two possible routes available at any point of the game. It genuinely made question how much sequence breaking I was indulging in because it is easy move in opposite directions after completing an area thanks to a new ability.
Of course none of that would be fun if combat sucked. The weapon variety is reminiscent of Bloodborne, with scythes, long swords, rapiers, whips, and more on the menu. Better yet, you can spend energy to unleash special combos which can almost give the weapon a second form or unleash tremendously powerful attacks. As usual I went full strength build which was quite fun as I was still quite agile but dealt serious damage with every swing.
You can also use guns as secondary weapons, but they don’t really offer much for combat strategy. Equipping magic on the secondary slots was a lot more impactful as it dealt big damage and helped with crowd control.
The enemy variety is pretty decent too. There are some clear Bloodborne and Lovecraftian inspirations, but the majority fall more toward the humanoid like vampires and mutated humans.
The presentation was a refreshing pixel art inspired by the gothic aesthetic. There was the clear cutthroat atmosphere of something jumping at you in the next corner, and distinctive buildings that invite the curious mind to go inside and uncover its atrocities. Overall I was really impressed to feel a similar atmosphere to Bloodborne in a 2D context.
One thing that stuck with me in this game was the power curve. You know, in metroidvanias there is a really captivating curve of the character going from a barely capable fighter to someone that punch god in the face. Here, because there were always multiple progression routes to take, you could easily become overleveled for dealing with parts of the game. For me it was interesting in the sense that it sort of challenged my completionist nature to do the optional route before the critical path without a clear indication of which was which. But I do have reservations about the implementation of said freedom and how the game manages to remain challenging.
What went wrong
For how much I enjoyed playing this game and now talking about it, I find there is a lot to detract from the experience. These are not necessarily problems with gameplay systems or other broader aspects like presentation or even the story. My gripes are with the technical implementation of the boss fights.
For starters, someone thought it was a good idea to implement instant deaths during gameplay. Falling on spikes is instant death and so is falling off the map. Considering the exploration-heavy aspect of a metroidvania, there is a lot of trial and error to jump across gaps and understand if what’s in front of me is a hole or safe to jump to the lower level. In other words, I died a lot early on with a humble single jump and my curiosity to not miss optional content.
But more problematic really were the boss fights. It was not too noticeable for about the first third of the game, but at that point I started to hit technical issues. Two bosses bugged out and stopped moving mid-fight. Sure they became easy kills but not the experience I’m looking for.
Because you can become too strong and potentially break sequencing due to the open map, you can be overprepared for bosses. I don’t think bosses in TLF are well designed to counter this.
The solution to counter the possibility of the player having too much health and high attack, the bosses use flurries of high-damaging attacks. This does not work in practice for various reasons, namely because you can get get hit almost as soon as you get up leading a to a lost fight then and there, and because boss attacks were not well coded. Most of the time bosses sequenced their attacks in random patterns, which a) caught me off guard even after I had learned how to dodge and b) attacks would be sequenced in patterns that would not allow me to dodge and thus get hit.
It is pure frustration to finally get in the zone against a tough boss only to lose two seconds later thanks to some random attack sequence it happens to use. It is one thing for the boss to be “smart” and include variations in their moveset, but a complete different idea to randomise attacks when they can force the player to take damage and potentially end the fight prematurely.
Closing thoughts
TLF was a fun game to play period. It brings a lot of good ideas from Bloodborne to the metroidvania genre, namely the weapon variety, a large map with multiple pathways available at any point, and some incredible moments like the hydra boss fight.
What detracts from this experience is copying even the bad design choices from Bloodborne and the technical implementation of bosses. Even Blasphemous 2 learned to make spikes non-lethal and no one likes to grind currency to purchase healing items, especially in the middle of trying to kill a difficulty boss. The coding for the bosses’ AI definitely needs more love as picking random attacks is a recipe for player frustration.
All in all, I still recommend people to play The Last Faith. It will be a good time exploring the different areas, testing new weapons, and backtracking with new abilities to find even more cool stuff. It pains me to say this but boss fights should be memorable in these games and they were a painful experience in TLF. If you’re a PC player who wants to play Bloodborne and likes metroidvania, then give TLF a try. I think you’ll dig it but if you get stuck on a boss go somewhere else to level up and upgrade your weapon and then come back to buffer your frustration.
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