The Souls-like formula has been expanded upon throughout modern gaming, and developers big and small have made several attempts to either improve, clone or adapt to it. Bleak Faith: Forsaken, previously released on Windows PC, has recently launched on consoles and has since been improved upon from its mixed PC launch, if ever so slightly. Developed by a team of three people, I can mildly forgive its noticeable flaws but still wonder on what would entice gamers to have repeated playthroughs in this extremely large and obsessively over-designed world.
Dude, Where’s My Bonfire?
My first thoughts when diving into Bleak Faith was based on the absolute gigantic scale of the biomes. The very beginning placed me on top of an immense bridge stretching miles underneath a colossal megastructure with no signs of life. Many inhabitants had been reduced to ashen statues that crumble at the slightest touch, abandoned as the only signs of life are hostile, humanoid creatures that attack the player on sight. Travelling back leads to some hidden items and a dead end as the bridge is broken at the rear, whilst going forwards leads to the main progress path for players. Compared to future biomes, this first level seems smaller, so it wasn’t as easy to get lost in compared to areas that come after.
Bleak Faith doesn’t hold the player’s hand as it rather cuts it from the limb then throws it to the abyss. The game’s level design is near-impossible to make a simple map out of but would be appreciated when travelling on foot. Certain environments look gorgeous from afar, but its intense verticality becomes extremely tedious to traverse through, and more often than not, paths that look accessible are complete dead ends with nothing to reward the player’s curiosity through exploring. Most biomes have been extremely over-designed, and as players can move no faster than a sprint, getting from A to B feels more like trying to slog right to the end of the alphabet in some cases.
Seen It All Before
Bleak Faith’s combat has a control scheme formed as a clone of what most Souls-likes follow: right bumper to attack, B button to dodge, etc. Weapons range from broadswords, axes and halberds to hack away at enemies but are simply designed and offer nothing special visually. There’s a crouch button for absolutely no reason as enemies seem to hear the slightest tip-toe, so combat is always full-frontal. Players can jump but can barely attack from above, plunging attacks seem non-existent, and critical attacks have no place here as developers would rather ask players to time combos to increase damage, displayed as red number values when attacking. The only imaginative mechanic that exists is allowing players to climb atop of large enemies, similar to Dragon’s Dogma, to inflict damage with camera angles that remind me of the old Prince of Persia games, particularly Warrior Within. What’s more, players must do this twice to defeat an enemy as the latter’s shoulders have their own health bars, like they have adopted sentience and must be destroyed equally.
Blinged Out
Gaining strength in Bleak Faith is mainly adopted through base character levelling and finding gear that can be upgraded to aid combat encounters. The player can equip rings and amulets that enhance the protagonist’s abilities, like giving a percentage of chance to apply debilitating status effects to enemies or increase maximum health and stamina. Potions with different effects, like reducing sharp damage, can be assigned to belt slots to navigate to quickly in heated moments. Another unfortunate gripe is that the world-building is particularly boring. NPC characters do very little to offer much bonding between the player and themselves. The only real NPC that offers any sort of usefulness is the upgrade merchant, a lady designed to improve the strength of weapons and armour, like a blacksmith.
Someone Get a Paintbrush
The game world itself is beautiful but in a miserable way. Most areas early on are quite literally bleak and grey, portraying a depressed and decrepit land. These locations slightly improve further into the game as the player will explore different biomes like deserts, but these areas are nothing to get particularly excited about. Upgrading weapons is fine and all, but actually using them feels awfully floaty at times. Audio cues are consistently delayed seconds after a swing, and trying to dodge through an attack is disastrous as invincibility frames do not exist. I feel like I’m always having to constantly cheese by running back and forth out of attack range or forcing myself to parry unforgiving attacks rather than mix between dodging and punishing smoothly.
Final Thoughts
Bleak Faith: Forsaken, unfortunately, fails to spark any interest aside from the fact that it’s another title in a popular sub-genre of video games. Its Souls-like premise cannot save it from its many bugs and mishaps connected to its mechanics, world design and combat. I can only give props towards the game’s three-person team as it cannot be easy to create such a large game environment with such a small team. However, the game holds far too much ambition to be remotely enjoyable.
Developer: Archangel Studios
Publisher: PERP Games
Platforms: Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Windows PC
Release Date: 8th August 2024
