The Last Faith (2023)

Honest? I liked the game, the character, the creepy bosses, the skills, all well done, but I can't give it a 4 or 5 stars, because if you can't complete all the side quests, before you kill a certain boss, you won't be able to get the real ENDING, so you'll be forced to replay it from the beginning D:. . .

Looking on youtube, I saw the special and final bosses, which you could have unlocked. I would have liked to be able to face them, but I don't have the desire to start all over again. Sigh. </3

Despite its clunky combat, I was having a good time with the game. But a series of poor design choices, which were particularly annoying during the boss fights, killed the fun for me:

1. The boss fights are generally not well-designed. For example, your positioning is crucial to dodging their attacks, which is not a crazy thing to say, but the problem is that you cannot attack while moving. So, you should either use range attacks, which is way less useful than what you'd imagine, or close in, make a single attack that does absolutely nothing to their health bar, and then move to a better position so that you don't get hit. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun, does it? Also, some of the attacks are physically impossible to dodge. It doesn't happen often, but it shouldn't happen at all.

2. Your consumables don't replenish at spawn points. Suppose you spend all your items trying to kill a boss and you fail. After respawning, you get a few health items and that's it. You tried, you failed, and now you're even less prepared! And you can't buy items either because you buy items with your "souls", all of which you lost to the boss. So, in between your tries to beat that one boss, you have to spend some time grinding to get some items back. That's not my idea of a fun gameplay loop.

3. Instead of the classic "stamina" bar that regenerates over time, you have two different bars, one of which ("focus") does not regenerate. And for some reason that I do not understand, your special attacks use your focus. Also, you have to hold and push two buttons for your special attacks, making them very uncomfortable to use when you're being bombarded with boss attacks, which is exactly when you need them the most.

4. You can get some focus back by using a consumable, but the problem is that there's only one button for all your consumables (health and focus items, bombs, etc.), meaning you have to cycle through them to use them, which is essentially impossible when the boss is spamming their special attacks non-stop.

I understand that the devs were trying to inject some new ideas and not to make another uninspired soulsborne clone, and I appreciate their effort. But unfortunately, in the end, those changes broke the game. Such a shame. This game was very close to greatness, yet at this state, it's so far from it.