The Last Faith is a gloomy gothic 2D Metroidvania action game developed by Kumi Souls Games and drawing strong influence from the old 2D Castlevania titles along with a hearty helping of Bloodborne for good measure. The game boasts some solid art and decent combat and is overall not a bad time, but otherwise doesn’t do a whole lot to make itself stand out in an increasingly crowded market.

In The Last Faith, you play as Eryk, a gruff amnesiac sporting a cool coat and very high collar, who is on a quest to cure himself of the mysterious curse that is sapping away at his mind and morality. Aside from that general setup, the plot takes a backseat and is communicated very vaguely through letters hidden off the beaten path or via cryptic conversations with NPCs and boss encounters. Eryk himself isn’t a silent protagonist in the vein of many Soulslikes, but he (and the other NPCs that he encounters on his journey) don’t seem keen on clearly communicating what anyone’s goals are, what the stakes are, or what exactly is going on.

So despite the plot and cast mostly feeling like a random assortment of elements assembled from Bloodborne, Blasphemous and Castlevania, that doesn’t mean The Last Faith can’t at least look nice while doing it. The game has some gorgeously fluid pixel art animations, from the gorey execution moves when Eryk downs a weakened enemy to the colossal and terrifying boss enemies. The boss fights themselves also can’t be understated, with them generally having a decent level of challenge and being usually quite fun to fight once you get into the traditional Soulslike rhythm of memorising their attack patterns and getting into a good groove. The locations Eryk visits throughout the game are also beautifully depicted, with each gothic cathedral, crumbling snow-covered town and elegant Victorian city brimming with background detail.

The combat and general gameplay of The Last Faith will feel very familiar to fans of 2D Metroidvania/Soulslike platformers. Combat is a mostly hack-and-slash affair, with Eryk being able to equip a variety of melee weapons including swords, whips and scythes, along with some guns and magic spells for ranged options. While it lacks Bloodborne’s specific gun-centric Visceral Attack feature, it does include a (somewhat unreliable) parry maneuver which, when successfully executed, can restore Eryk’s health and mana points. Defeating enemies rewards the player with Nycrux, which can be invested in improving Eryk’s stats or spent on new items or weapon upgrades.

Healing Injections, the game’s main healing item, don’t restore when you rest at a save point. They instead must be purchased from a vendor like any other consumable, in a similar fashion to how Bloodborne did it. Although the vendors have an unlimited supply and Healing Injections don’t inflate in price very much as the game progresses, they aren’t dropped very often by enemies, resulting in a frequent and annoying commute back to the hub area to restock. Perhaps even worse is the mindless grinding in between attempts at a tough boss just to afford healing items again for the next time. In addition, status effects such as Burning and Frozen are debilitating and potential death sentences depending on when you get infected by a trap or enemy attack, and the healing items for those are dropped infrequently and sold in only limited supply by the main vendor. This made enemies who could inflict these status effects far more irritating and challenging than they needed to be.

The platforming in The Last Faith also felt noticeably uneven. How close Eryk needed to be to a ledge in order to grab it felt inconsistent, leading to many, many death falls inches from a ledge that he looked close enough to rub his nose on. Furthermore, whether a pit is the entrance to a new area or a bottomless void sending you back to your last checkpoint is not clearly indicated at all. Even the map sometimes misleadingly makes it seem like one area flows into another vertically, or makes it seem like a pit should land in a different area rather than killing you.

I at least appreciated the game’s many incentives to venture off the beaten path. The Last Faith boasts many hidden weapons, spells and sidequests for those keen to explore. While you can expect the guidance for precisely where to go next or what to do with many of the game’s optional collectables to be obfuscated behind The Last Faith’s trademark vague storytelling, I did appreciate the ability to annotate the game map with icons of your choice to identify the locations of bosses, key NPCs and other objectives as a way for players to assist in orienting themselves throughout the experience.