The Last Faith

The Last Faith wears its inspirations openly — Bloodborne's gothic dread and Blasphemous's pixel-art grimdark aesthetic are the two reference points nearly every reviewer reaches for first — but reviewers who spend real time with it consistently push back on dismissing it as a simple clone. Cast as a Curse Bearer navigating a plague-ravaged world, players build toward wildly different playstyles across multiple weapon archetypes, attribute scaling paths and spell-melee hybrids, and at least one detailed review who finished the game twice with different builds argues that depth alone sets it meaningfully apart from its most obvious comparison points.

Genuine style and build depth

The pixel art draws essentially unanimous praise, with reviewers rating its gothic, richly detailed area design on par with genre leader Blasphemous — striking given how directly the two invite comparison. Beneath that presentation, the build system draws equally strong praise from reviewers willing to dig into it: dexterity-and-mind spell-blade hybrids, strength-and-instinct melee builds, and gunslinger-leaning firearms builds are all described as genuinely viable, distinct playstyles rather than cosmetic variations on the same underlying strategy. A free DLC expansion, Awakened Ancients, released more than two years after the base game's launch, adds further lore and content for players who return to it. Useful navigation quality-of-life features, including the ability to mark items and doors on the map for later backtracking, draw specific praise for easing exploration across a large, genuinely non-linear world.

Combat that a substantial share of reviewers find sluggish

Set against that praise, this review's research turned up a consistent, specific complaint about how combat actually feels moment to moment. Multiple reviewers describe real input delay and turn-delay issues that make quickly repositioning and attacking in the right direction feel unreliable, and note that attack animations don't transition or combo into each other the way genre peers allow. Aerial combat draws particularly pointed criticism, with reviewers describing the lack of any real air-combo options as forcing repetitive single-hit-and-retreat patterns against airborne enemies. This isn't a universal complaint — reviewers who prioritize build variety and atmosphere over combat fluidity report a much more positive experience — but it recurs across enough independent, detailed accounts to treat as a genuine weak point relative to the game's clearest inspirations rather than a one-off gripe.

A serious bug, and a claim the patch record contradicts

More seriously, this review's research surfaced a specific, credible account of a softlock bug in the mirror shard area: one detailed reviewer reports the game crashing after activating a mirror transport point, and being unable to reactivate it on reload, permanently losing access to the air dash ability needed for further progress after 13 hours of accumulated playtime. That's a real, serious problem for anyone who encounters it, though this review found no indication of how common it is across the wider player base.

Separately, at least one reviewer goes further, accusing the developer of abandoning the game entirely without delivering promised features, including Kickstarter-pledged New Game Plus support. Checking that claim against the public patch record tells a different story: 25 logged updates span from launch through early 2026, including a substantial PC Patch 1.5 adding controller remapping and a full stat respec system, and the free Awakened Ancients DLC released in January 2026, more than two years after launch. Whatever the merits of any individual unmet feature promise — which this review can't verify feature-by-feature — the broad claim of abandonment is directly contradicted by a patch and content-support record longer than most games this lane has covered.

What the completion data suggests

Global achievement figures back up the shape of real friction driving some players away before the end: the achievement most consistent with story completion sits at only about 9.5% of the playerbase, a notably low figure for a metroidvania with this much reviewer praise for its core concept. That's consistent with the combat-feel and bug complaints above contributing to real player drop-off, rather than pointing to any single specific cause on its own.

Weighing the "derivative" complaint fairly

A separate, more subjective criticism recurs across a handful of reviews: the sense that The Last Faith doesn't have "a single idea of its own," borrowing so heavily and specifically from Bloodborne and Blasphemous that its individual contributions feel thin by comparison. This is a fair aesthetic judgment for reviewers who hold genre-defining originality as a top priority, but it sits in direct tension with the build-variety praise covered above — reviewers who dug deeply into the character progression system describe genuinely distinct playstyles that exceed what either inspiration offers individually, even while acknowledging the visual and tonal debt is obvious and undisguised. Both reactions are reasonable responses to the same game; which one lands harder likely depends on whether a player weighs visual and atmospheric originality or mechanical depth more heavily when judging a genre homage.

Where it lands

The Last Faith earns real, substantial praise for its gothic art direction and build depth, and its sustained, multi-year post-launch support — including a 2026 free DLC — reflects a developer genuinely still invested in the project rather than one that walked away, directly contradicting the more inflammatory claims some reviewers make. The combat-feel complaints are real, specific and consistent enough to weigh seriously, and the softlock bug this review found documented is a legitimate risk worth knowing about even if far from universal. For metroidvania and soulslike fans willing to accept combat that trades some fluidity for build variety, this remains a worthwhile, visually striking pickup.