The Bearer & The Last Flame

A last flame carried through five dying kingdoms, a lone developer chasing the shadow of From Software, and a review sample split almost exactly down the middle. The Bearer & The Last Flame is a $9.99 game from developer Dark Reaper Studio, released 6 March 2026. This review draws on the game's full 17-review sample, Mixed at 9 up and 8 down.

An earnest, unmistakable homage

Several reviewers in this review's sample identify the influence immediately, and not always kindly. One German reviewer described it plainly: "Wir habe hier ein Spiel, was stark an Dark Soul angelegt ist," noting the graphics and mechanics are heavily borrowed but arguing that's not inherently a problem. A Simplified Chinese reviewer was blunter, titling their review "对宫崎英高的拙劣模仿" ("a clumsy imitation of Hidetaka Miyazaki") and rating it 4 out of 10 after roughly five hours, unable to continue. What separates this review's more sympathetic reviewers from its harsher ones isn't disagreement about the influence, everyone agrees it's a direct souls-like, but whether the execution earns forgiveness given the scope of a single developer building it alone.

A real bug, reported twice independently

The single most concrete, damaging issue in this review's sample appears twice, from reviewers writing in entirely different languages with no apparent connection. A Simplified Chinese reviewer reported that leveling up caused their character's level to drop into negative numbers, reducing their stats instead of improving them. Separately, an English-language reviewer who disclosed receiving a review copy reported the identical problem in detail: attempting to spend an attribute point sent their level to -48 and reduced all their stats, leaving them unable to progress their character at all and forced to avoid combat entirely to reach the first boss. Two independent reports of the same specific, progression-breaking bug is about as strong a signal as a 17-review sample can produce, and it's a serious one for an RPG built around character growth.

Combat that reviewers found floaty and delayed

Multiple reviewers separately described the actual feel of combat as a weak point. One English-language reviewer wrote that combat "feels floaty and there's not much feedback at all," giving the game 3 out of 10 despite praising its art. A German reviewer went further, reporting that mouse and keyboard inputs registered with roughly a two-second delay, with some keyboard inputs not registering at all, and that controller support failed to work on Xbox or Nintendo Switch controllers they tested directly, a real discrepancy against the store page's own listed DualShock and DualSense controller support categories. For a genre built on precise, readable combat timing, these are foundational complaints rather than surface polish issues.

What the achievement data suggests

This review checked the Steam global achievement API and found a striking early drop-off: the first tracked achievement sits at 85.7%, but the second-most-common sits at just 15.0%, with the rest tapering steadily down to 0.3%. That's a steeper immediate falloff than a typical difficulty curve alone would predict, and it lines up with this review's sample: several reviewers describe quitting within the first few hours specifically because of the bugs and combat issues described above, rather than because the game's later content proved too hard to reach.

A developer patching fast, but not fast enough yet

This review checked the developer's partner-events feed and found genuinely rapid post-launch attention: nine separate patch-notes posts within roughly three weeks of the March 2026 launch, alongside a February demo release and Steam Deck compatibility confirmation. That's a real, active response from a solo developer working quickly. It's worth noting directly, though, that the negative-level bug and combat-feel complaints in this review's sample were posted during and after that patch window, not only at launch, meaning the patches so far haven't fully resolved the issues most likely to sour a new player's first hours.

A zero-flag accessibility profile

This review checked the store's accessibility feature-flag block directly and found zero of nineteen tracked flags true, the third title in this review's coverage this window with no confirmed accessibility accommodations at all. Combined with the reported input-lag and controller issues, that's a meaningfully steeper barrier to entry than most titles this review has covered recently.

Tags that fairly describe the genre, if not the polish

The store's own tag list, "Souls-like," "Dark Fantasy," "Action RPG," "Medieval," and "Demons," accurately signals what this review's sample confirms the game is trying to be, and several reviewers reached for the exact same genre comparison independently. What the tag list can't capture, and what this review's sample makes clear, is the gap between that genre framing and the current state of execution: "Combat" and "Action RPG" imply a level of mechanical reliability that reviewers describing negative-level bugs and two-second input delays didn't actually experience. That's a distinction worth drawing directly, since a shopper skimming the tag list alone would have no way to know how far the current build sits from a typical, functional entry in the genres it's tagged under.

A price point that softens, but doesn't erase, the risk

At $9.99, several of this review's more forgiving reviewers explicitly framed their recommendation around the price rather than the current state of the game, with one Spanish-language reviewer writing simply "Ta bueno. Compren" ("It's good. Buy it") and another asking buyers to give a solo developer's work a chance given the cost. That's a reasonable individual calculation for players specifically interested in supporting small souls-like projects, but this review's own evidence, a corroborated progression-breaking bug and reported control issues, means the low price doesn't fully offset the risk of hitting one of those specific problems firsthand.

Verdict

The Bearer & The Last Flame is a genuinely ambitious solo effort, and this review's sample includes real, sustained goodwill toward that ambition, including at least one reviewer with roughly 81 hours logged who still recommends it. But the evidence for real, currently-unresolved problems is too specific and too independently corroborated to set aside: a progression-breaking leveling bug reported twice, floaty and delayed combat, and controller support that doesn't work as advertised. The developer's rapid patch cadence is a genuine point in its favor for the future, but based on this review's evidence as it stands, this is a title to watch rather than one to buy today.