The Last Faith

Despite lacking originality and imitating other games, the highlighted positives include well-designed levels, thoughtful backtracking, satisfying action, impressive pixel art, and noteworthy boss battles, while the negatives encompass a lack of distinct personality, issues with storytelling, design decisions, and readability problems in the environments. Overall, it presents an entertaining and enjoyable adventure within the "soulsvania" genre.

The Last Faith steps into the ambivalence of familiarity: while it fulfills its promise of aptly mixing metroidvania and soulslike, it never really surprises or innovates. Although the campaign is challenging, its good pace of shortcuts, fast travel and leveling up pushes us to advance further and further through its gothic world of beautifully detailed pixel art.

It's a shame it doesn't have more personality, because under all those borrowed ideas there's a really solid metroidvania and an engaging soulslike that fans of both genres will surely love.

The Last Faith is less about revolutionizing the Metroidvania formula and more about staying true to its various elements, putting smooth gameplay and pretty visuals near the top of the list. Combat delivers options for various playstyles, even if the generally even difficulty doesn’t particularly warrant having to go outside of the tried-and-true melee approach. Bosses may not be pushovers, but there’s fun inherent in working out how to best each one, and the game is lengthy enough (and has enough hidden secrets on top of it) to feel a full, satisfying package. While some elements didn’t come off as well as planned — world building and narrative fall flat despite obvious attempts to bring them more into the spotlight, for example — the overall package will still go down a treat for Metroidvania fans, and offers plenty to even bring new followers into the fold.

The Last Faith competently blends the Souls-Like and Metroidvania subgenres, dressing the package in a very compelling gothic Victorian aesthetic, one clearly inspired by Bloodborne.