The Last Faith

The Last Faith doesn't have a hugely original setting, but it’s an atmospheric, thrilling experience throughout.

All in all, The Last Faith is an aggravating, frustrating, and incredibly difficult experience. But it’s gorgeous, delightfully gothic, and finally getting to a new area–or fighting a new boss–is incredibly rewarding. An experienced Soulslike gamer will probably have a great time with this title. And if you’ve never played a Soulslike before, this is a good place to start.

The Last Faith is a grueling metroidvania, leaning into pinnacle souls-like gameplay elements that reward exploration, precision, and patience. Its combat may be simple and fun, but the challenge of mastering its traversal may be too much to handle. Its gorgeous visuals might not be distinct enough to separate itself from the pack of its predecessors, but it’s a great start for those wanting to test the waters of the souls genre.

If you like Castlevania's delightful playability and Bloodborne's gothic design thinking, The Last Faith won't leave you disappointed for a single second.

The Last Faith is the perfect marriage between Bloodborne and a typical metrodvania game. With many secrets, a good difficulty balance and many hours of gameplay, The Last Faith is another gem of this awesome 2023.

The Last Faith appears, at first glance, the son of Blasphemous and Bloodborne. What it really wants to be is a nostalgic trip to the glorious days of Castlevania and Koji Igarashi.

The Last Faith is a very challenging soulsvania game that doesn't bring much innovation to the genre, but as you play you'll realize you don't want to put it down.

The Last Faith is full of rough edges. But Kumi Souls managed to create a very exciting game that motivates you to explore every corner of this mysterious world.

The Last Faith does not pretend to overcome its prior inspirations but impeccably attains a satisfying length and experience. It carefully adopts classic sensations, covering players in some of the genre's finest moments. Thus, in a gaming landscape inundated with overly ambitious Metroidvanias featuring ambitious maps, this game's convincing approach makes it an exciting challenge to complete at least once and a fair experience with increased difficulty for those who seek tougher battles after the initial completion.

The Last Faith, on the whole, is a good game, but without the courage to take flight and make a lasting impression in the imagination of players, already saturated with Victorian horror visions, and perhaps in need of something new, different, more original.

In the end, The Last Faith is good but not great. The weapon variety makes the combat system feel very nice, while the special moves and parrying can be safely ignored by most players. The side-quests feel like unnecessary fluff, but at least the main questline is good enough to keep players engaged. The misuse of classes and lack of the ability to re-spec your character feel like missed opportunities when more modern games in the Soulslike genre have started to adopt this. The obtuseness in various areas gives off unwarranted but pretentious vibes. While it may not be the kind of game you should immediately launch into, The Last Faith is a title that makes for a good time when you want to get into hardier fare between other titles.

The Last Faith is a soulslike metroidvania with many strengths and weaknesses. An experience that oscillates between satisfying and frustrating due to a somewhat lazy level design and, above all, an incorrect balance of the forces in play. Sometimes there are too many enemies in a small space, Bosses who are too resistant, or poorly distributed checkpoints. However, the not too high price, the inspired artistic direction, the many beautiful pixel art models are good incentives to give the game a chance, especially if you are passionate about the genre.

Everything on display here has been seen before, and though it does those things well, its reliance on a tried-and-true formula and its liberal borrowing from Bloodborne in particular work against it, denying it a unique identity. Yet despite the impulse to think that The Last Faith could just be 2D Bloodborne 2, the final product is a great Metroidvania on its own, and - aside from some of the writing - its adaptation of the work that inspired it is very well done. Ultimately, The Last Faith feels sharp, looks great, and it's a lot of fun to play. Playstack clearly loves and understands the genre, and anyone looking to scratch the itch will certainly enjoy this game.

Despite many issues dragging down the experience, I would not say that I had a bad time overall with The Last Faith. The combat is genuinely thrilling and impressively varied when it functions well, and I was impressed with many of the game’s locations, boss fights, puzzles and enemy designs. However, The Last Faith feels like a particularly inelegant mixture of many different elements from popular Metroidvanias and Soulslikes without quite executing them as neatly. With its obtuse-for-the-sake-of-it narrative, occasionally stodgy combat and platforming elements and a lack of its own identity, Metroidvania fans will have an enjoyable enough time with The Last Faith, but there are better examples of what it has attempted to execute out there.

The Last Faith is a strong title with some clear stumbles, but quality still wins out more often than not, and I’m eager to see Kumi Souls Games’ next effort as a result.

If you’ve already played genre leaders like Blasphemous 2 or Bloodstained, then I see no problem spending some time in the dark and largely derivative world of The Last Faith. I don’t think you’ll leave its samey dungeons or lackluster boss fights with a new favorite action game on your list, but navigating the maze of different areas and busting their big ugly masters is challenging and satisfying. The smattering of spells look fun and the collection weapons is genuinely cool with special abilities that are a blast to let loose, I just wish this game gave you more space to experiment without having to trade combat effectiveness. All that said, The Last Faith is not the pinnacle of what this sort of game has to offer by any stretch, and there are plenty of amazing ones I’d recommend that you play before crossing this one off of your list.

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.

This is a great first attempt by Kumi Souls Games, and as long as they continue working on the unpolished parts of the game, and keep the aesthetic approach and good VA, they'll do just fine.

The Last Faith had everything to surprise and it succeeded in its bet. It perpetuates this trend of development studios to mix with Metroidvania the requirements and general atmosphere of FromSoftware games. He manages to offer different ways of playing which are all attractive. However, the game drags itself down because of gameplay that is so punishing... that it is not fun and even frustrating at times. In short, The Last Faith arrives with an interesting proposition that, we can say, no one expected and which has the merit of paving the way for future titles in the genre. Whether for its qualities or for its faults.

Despite its charming gothic aesthetic reminiscent of Bloodborne, The Last Faith, unfortunately, lacks depth in terms of combat and falls short in its platforming aspects.

The Last Faith is a beautiful but inconsistent rehash of older, better games.