My thoughts on The Last Faith

[jacobcapra]

Just finished my first playthrough of The Last Faith, a game I was highly anticipating. I love soulsborne and got into metroidvania games with B1 and B2, which obviously this is modeled after. My file has 60 hours on it but a significant portion of that is AFK, I'd say that a good complete playthrough is likely 40 hours. A decent amount of time for the money.
The good things about The Last Faith in my opinion:
- First off, it ran with zero issues on my desktop that is absolutely not meant for gaming (AMD Ryzen 5 4600G with embedded Radeon graphics, 3700 MHz 6-core, 12GB RAM)
- The graphics/atmosphere are pretty awesome. I haven't played Bloodborne (pc boy) but I imagine it draws heavily from that. The gothic vibe pairs extremely well with the grotesque vibe similar to B1.
- The weapon options are pretty solid. I went with a strength build my first playthrough but ended up finding several weapons that I would like to try using, making a replay more likely and probably enjoyable.
- Generally speaking, the soundtrack quite good. The ominous tracks that play when you're in the more eerie areas of the game fit the setting well, and the boss soundtracks were all at least pretty good.
- Stat scaling and level up costs were all very appropriate which is a surprisingly easy mark to miss in games that have this type of level up system.
- The level design is very solid, with many of the areas feeling very distinct but all of them sharing common themes and having some sort of cohesion.
- The exploration and traversing the world is very fun, with an absolute ton of hidden or out of reach treasures that make you want to revisit areas later in the game. Shortcuts and the way that the levels interconnect also felt like it was done quite well.
- I found that all the boss fights were at least pretty fun and didn't find any of them to be tedious or boring. Yes, they do reuse the same general appearance for several bosses, but it fits inline with the lore (however paper-thin that is) so it gets a pass.

The not so good things about it:
- There was a general lack of polish - often times the soundtrack changes are very abrupt and ruin immersion, as are the screen transitions being just a black screen. Couldn't put my finger on it, but it just felt off. The voice acting is OK at best and I noticed several instances in which the audio did not match with the subtitles, and a couple typos here and there.
- The map certainly could use some work. The way that it is revealed by proximity works decently well, but is especially annoying when trying to find out if there is somewhere below you or above you that you can go. There were also several instances in which I went to an area and it did not get revealed on the map (though they were generally very small and eventually did work). There were also some spots where there appeared to be no floor, or something similar to indicate that there was more of the room/area to explore when in fact there wasn't.
- The combat is actually pretty good, albeit it feels just a little bit clunky compared to something like B1 or B2. Something that significantly trivialized this game is the lack of contact damage. You can simply walk through every single enemy, 99% of the time going unscathed. While it makes exploration easier, it also seriously detracts from the difficulty.
- Speaking of difficulty, I have mixed emotions. I first-tried a majority of the bosses in the game, and usually when I didn't it was because I stumbled into an area I was under-leveled for, or because I unknowingly encountered them. But, to the game's credit, the progression of area exploration tools makes that pretty uncommon. I can only think of one or two areas where you can simply waltz into an area meant for later in the game. The dodge mechanic provides an insane number of I-frames, as do most of your abilities and special moves. If you're used to soulsborne, or beat B1 and B2, you will find this game pretty easy. The casual gamer will find it pretty hard.
- The questlines are pretty paper thin, like the lore - basically all of them are "collect an item that you will probably find naturally while completing the game and bring it to me." Also, the rewards for most quests were lame or straight up just some material you could buy infinitely.
- The achievements do nothing to encourage replayability, with the exception of the very likely possibility that you will lock yourself out of something by accident on your first playthrough. I didn't turn in all of a certain item to a merchant before encountering the penultimate boss, which after defeating made the merchant disappear. Of course, I didn't know this, and missed out on an achievement because I can no longer finish that NPC's questline.

Overall, I give the game an 8/10. Will likely add it to the rotation of games I play periodically once enough time has passed that I don't recall every little secret or boss mechanic.

[Pnume]

40 hours for a playthrought?

Maybe the % isn't linear or something but that seems a lot considering I'm at 70% after 14 hours playing super careless.

[jacobcapra]

Originally posted by Pnume:

40 hours for a playthrought?

Maybe the % isn't linear or something but that seems a lot considering I'm at 70% after 14 hours playing super careless.

Could be I've been more AFK than I thought. The backtracking after fully unlocking map traversing tools does take a while, though.