The Last Faith Review (Razorhunter)
Absolutely dope little brother of Blasphemous with absolute peak moments and an amazing and gory artstyle.
Just gonna start right into it with the big strenght of TLF which are the bosses. Oh boi i played TONS of soulslikes and the bosses in this title are amazing! Super well balanced, feeling very unique and being designed very immersive. Its that type of gameplay that feels like dancing and doesnt even really tilt you when youre losing time and time again just to better understand some patterns and finally overcome the challenge. The soundtrack overall, but especially in the boss fights, is really well done and creates some good tension in the battles! Props for that. I mean there wasnt really a single boss besides the "tutorial" one that felt annoying and lackluster. Theres also a good mix of bosses teaming up, double phasing or going rage on half life, you got everything on the table. Even tho i explored like crazy to not miss anything it seems that i still didnt see multiple bosses which is crazy.
The general gameplay as well is very well done and absolutely enjoyable. You gather multiple movements and keys throughout the game to progress, they all add mostly great into battles. The weapons are kinda few, but still enough to be interesting to consider which one to pick and most of the stuff just feels very good in your hands. The various weapons got unique, and hefty hit feedback. You really feel like dishing out some serious damage, it just feels good. Most melee weapons also got special attacks that are very different and super lit. Combat overall is precise and fast paced. Nothing wrong there.
When it comes to overall progression and exploration it feels good to get upgrades, strenghtening your char and gathering new equip. I backtracked nearly everything when i got new movements to find some secrets and i had fun doing so.
For the overall map design im not that happy. Like there are LOTS of different bioms offering different tones and theyre solid, some are really good, others mediocre. But my issue is that the levels itself are really big, mostly there are like 3-5 switches or something similar hidden to open the "boss door" or some neat shortcuts. Hidden walls are everywhere and i had fun to check for those but overall you find crappy stuff for 90% of places. Heal, ammo, useless bombs or some weapon enchantments that felt useless as well. Meaning even while i kinda liked to explore all it didnt feel very satisfying at all. The loot variety is simply too small.
--I quickly wanna highlight that theres no basic amount of heal flasks that you got, so you can basically run out of them, but its very easy to gather them via normal gameplay and cheap merchants in the base. At the end i had around 170 or so while constantly consuming them. Its not an issue at all.--
Another con i got is the lore and general immersion. Apart from the boss fights which are absolute peak highlights my vibes toned down quite a lot. The lore seems dull, vague and random to me. It didnt seem very fleshed out and im not sure if you can really get into it and understand whats going on. I tried to and i didnt manage to succeed, maybe its on me idk but i didnt enjoy it. A few biom layouts felt definitely immersive, especially through nice soundtracks or just environmental sounds in general, cool backgrounds and so on but the majority felt empty and soulless for some reason.
The artstyle is very very similar to Blasphemous, which i absolutely enjoy and appreciate, especially after they have changed their animations to some sort of cartoon bs. TLF is just oldschool raw and simplistic BP style, its amazing. Some cool artwork, some cool cutscenes and level backgrounds. Good work here <3
Overall TLF is HEAVILY inspired by Dark Souls, BB, and BP. Some scenes, enemies, soundtracks and gameplay ideas are kinda directly stolen, which didnt issue me personally tho. I love those games and getting a bit more of that is nice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All in all i had a blast playing through, with some letdowns inbetween but even stronger peaks with pretty much every boss fight, especially the late game bosses. I definitely think that BP itself is a better choice, simply for a bigger loot pool and more interesting level exploration. Therefore im not THAT happy with the current price. But thats nitpicking at a very high level. I had lots of fun playing through and i definitely recommend anyone to check this game out that likes good and responsive soul likes with quality bosses and just good gameplay overall!