A Lost Soul
HIGH Lots of ways to kill!
LOW The painful lack of innovation.
WTF Are the devs familiar with the concept of a difficulty curve?!?
The Last Faith is a gothic, Bloodborne-inspired 2D metroidvania that follows Erik, a man suffering from a mysterious sickness that plagues the world and turns people into monsters. Set on finding a cure, Erik sets out on a journey to find the cause of the plague and those responsible for it.
The theme and premise of the story are heavily inspired by Blasphemous without much narrative innovation — the focus is on a deadly pandemic and how religious fanatics and politicians exploit people and society for their goals. This is well-trodden territory.
The Last Faith’s gameplay is a blend of soulslike and metroidvania. Erik uses melee weapons to fight off enemies and gathers “Nycrux”, which is used to buy items from NPCs, upgrade weapons, and level up his stats. Upon death, all the Nycrux is lost and must be retrieved just like all the other soulslike
games. Upgrading weapons is pretty straightforward. Erik should bring upgrade materials found across the land to a specific NPC and improve his weapons.
The combat is mostly focused on using a variety of melee weapons including whips, swords, and axes in combination with pistols or ranged spells. Players can also use items in their surroundings such as chairs and rocks as throwable weapons, which is useful as since Erik’s ranged weapons and spells consume ammo and mana that are limited and refilled at bonfire-like checkpoints.
As you might imagine by the number of references and comparisons I’ve already made up to this point, a big issue with The Last Faith is its lack of originality. It is impossible to play it without mentally comparing it to any number of similar titles. While the enemy variety and boss designs are impressive, there’s nothing special about them, and certainly none of them will be remembered a moment after credits rolling.
There are collectibles and sidequests for NPCs, but doing them is usually rewarded with new items or spells and doesn’t have any impact on the narrative or ending.
There is no skill tree, and unlocking new abilities is story-related and happens when the player advances enough in the campaign. In too many ways, The Last Faith sticks to predictable, expected gameplay design choices… except when it comes to difficulty.
A significant issue here is the unbalanced difficulty. Due to its metroidvania design semi-gating progress, many areas in The Last Faith are at least partly accessible in the beginning, and there’s no way to know if a chosen area is the right path to follow. I would imagine that most players will immediately begin the usual cycle of dying, grinding for better gear, and leveling up the character when facing the too-challenging areas early on, which then leads to an overpowered Erik in the late game who ends up blowing past any resistance.
The Last Faith is an experience big enough to keep fans of the material occupied for 15 hours or so — the story is straightforward and the combat is… fine? Unfortunately for it, 2023 has been one of the busiest, richest years for quality game releases, and in light of such competition, The Last Faith doesn’t have much to offer.
Score: 6.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game was developed by Kumi Souls Games and published by Playstack. It is currently available on XBO/X/S, PS4/5, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: The game has been rated M by the ESRB for Blood and Gore, Violence and Nudity. The main character fights humans and monsters, depicted with instances of combat and dismemberment. The nudity is not a major element.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can’t be altered and/or resized. There are no necessary audio cues in the game. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Controls can be remapped.
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