I bounced off this so hard.
Credit to them for nailing the Bloodborne aesthetic (for better or worse in some cases) -- it's clearly what they were aiming for, even down to that sound you'd hear when arriving in a new area in Bloodborne...which gets really old when you're fast traveling all the time in The Last Faith.
People mention the boss fights as being solid in this game and for me, they were just rather run-of-the-mill experiences, with maybe the exception of Edwyn (which felt like a fun dance) or the Yegor & Leena fight.
People also mention that generic enemies get pretty old and that group battles are a pain and I'm fully inclined to agree -- especially in regard to challenge rooms and a particular icy area of the game. Challenge rooms are supposed to make you deal with threats you've mostly disposed of by themselves in unwieldy groups...which could be fun tactically, but ends up just feeling more annoying than anything. That is, until they decide to add in enemies you've never encountered up to that point, who often will surprise you while you're disposing of the ones you're already familiar with. There's a very "gotcha!" feel to some challenge room fights because it feels like they wanted to take the idea of enemies besting you because you're not aware of your surroundings and then cram it into a 2D game that doesn't give you the ability to really look around quickly when you're dodging enemies (a little more on this later). What should be an "Oh, I should have paid attention to that!" moment often turns into a "How was I supposed to be remotely prepared for that?" moment instead and it gets old.
I mentioned a particular icy area because there are hazards throughout the game that love to deal contact damage to you and you've got that Castlevania knockback going on where you might as well go grab a coffee while you wait to get up, it feels that long. Some of these hazards will be set up to knock you into pits to create an instakill moment (yes, there are pits, but the map is usually good about identifying them, unlike with some specific cases with Blasphemous). Some of these hazards are set up to just bounce you directly into enemies and happen to be on a path of sheets of ice that make you slide everywhere, making the whole trip a cumbersome experience.
The biggest offender for combat, however, is the lack of invincibility frames. If an enemy hits you and you're starting to get knocked back and two other enemies decide to hit you at the same time, you eat all three hits immediately. You can be juggled by an enemy group if you're unlucky and it feels like you just got invited to a mid-tier Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 match, except your lifebar will generally dissipate in 3-4 hits, depending on whether you've been upgrading your Vitality stat at all. One note -- there is a boss that combo juggles you and does significantly less damage during these juggles if they catch you off guard, and I did kind of enjoy seeing it in this respect, as it felt like the potential for what you also should be capable of, but generally aren't. The fact is, most regular enemies die to just slash-spam if you're upgrading weapons at regular intervals, so they become nuisances that drop the usual Soulslike currency when they're not just being challenge room pains.
I think Bloodborne's system works really well for Bloodborne, but shoving the limited storage system into The Last Faith feels just excessive, especially when they decided to forego some of the solid design decisions for Bloodborne in the process. Aggressive combat to promote getting your health back? Not present. Abysmally slow healing that makes Dark Souls II healing look like a speedrun? Yeah, The Last Faith has that in spades. Gun parrying? Nah, just a singular ability that you can try and tick off that doesn't feel as intuitive as it should, but hey, we've got guns still!
Even the exploration feels frustrating because this is a game that absolutely wants to take the Bloodborne concept and shove it into a Metroidvania, so finding explorable places off the beaten path usually doesn't amount to much because you're often going to need an upgrade that you get from traversing the main path of gating bosses that grant you those abilities. I can't imagine how much worse Bloodborne would have felt if every new area you found had the equivalent of a roadblock that asked you to basically go back to the main story for several more hours if you wanted to come back and explore again.
Nearly every aspect of this game is frustrating to me -- even the story, which pretty much everyone mentions as being so very front and center while conveying almost nothing useful about why you're so corrupted, but we're definitely going to let you know that you're corrupted every single chance we get!
I don't see myself ever going back to finish this, and that's disappointing because I was really looking forward to it. It feels, at best, like a middling Metroidvania just wearing Bloodborne's clothing awkwardly and I can't abide by that because it's just not a good fit.
Credit to them for nailing the Bloodborne aesthetic (for better or worse in some cases) -- it's clearly what they were aiming for, even down to that sound you'd hear when arriving in a new area in Bloodborne...which gets really old when you're fast traveling all the time in The Last Faith.
People mention the boss fights as being solid in this game and for me, they were just rather run-of-the-mill experiences, with maybe the exception of Edwyn (which felt like a fun dance) or the Yegor & Leena fight.
People also mention that generic enemies get pretty old and that group battles are a pain and I'm fully inclined to agree -- especially in regard to challenge rooms and a particular icy area of the game. Challenge rooms are supposed to make you deal with threats you've mostly disposed of by themselves in unwieldy groups...which could be fun tactically, but ends up just feeling more annoying than anything. That is, until they decide to add in enemies you've never encountered up to that point, who often will surprise you while you're disposing of the ones you're already familiar with. There's a very "gotcha!" feel to some challenge room fights because it feels like they wanted to take the idea of enemies besting you because you're not aware of your surroundings and then cram it into a 2D game that doesn't give you the ability to really look around quickly when you're dodging enemies (a little more on this later). What should be an "Oh, I should have paid attention to that!" moment often turns into a "How was I supposed to be remotely prepared for that?" moment instead and it gets old.
I mentioned a particular icy area because there are hazards throughout the game that love to deal contact damage to you and you've got that Castlevania knockback going on where you might as well go grab a coffee while you wait to get up, it feels that long. Some of these hazards will be set up to knock you into pits to create an instakill moment (yes, there are pits, but the map is usually good about identifying them, unlike with some specific cases with Blasphemous). Some of these hazards are set up to just bounce you directly into enemies and happen to be on a path of sheets of ice that make you slide everywhere, making the whole trip a cumbersome experience.
The biggest offender for combat, however, is the lack of invincibility frames. If an enemy hits you and you're starting to get knocked back and two other enemies decide to hit you at the same time, you eat all three hits immediately. You can be juggled by an enemy group if you're unlucky and it feels like you just got invited to a mid-tier Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 match, except your lifebar will generally dissipate in 3-4 hits, depending on whether you've been upgrading your Vitality stat at all. One note -- there is a boss that combo juggles you and does significantly less damage during these juggles if they catch you off guard, and I did kind of enjoy seeing it in this respect, as it felt like the potential for what you also should be capable of, but generally aren't. The fact is, most regular enemies die to just slash-spam if you're upgrading weapons at regular intervals, so they become nuisances that drop the usual Soulslike currency when they're not just being challenge room pains.
I think Bloodborne's system works really well for Bloodborne, but shoving the limited storage system into The Last Faith feels just excessive, especially when they decided to forego some of the solid design decisions for Bloodborne in the process. Aggressive combat to promote getting your health back? Not present. Abysmally slow healing that makes Dark Souls II healing look like a speedrun? Yeah, The Last Faith has that in spades. Gun parrying? Nah, just a singular ability that you can try and tick off that doesn't feel as intuitive as it should, but hey, we've got guns still!
Even the exploration feels frustrating because this is a game that absolutely wants to take the Bloodborne concept and shove it into a Metroidvania, so finding explorable places off the beaten path usually doesn't amount to much because you're often going to need an upgrade that you get from traversing the main path of gating bosses that grant you those abilities. I can't imagine how much worse Bloodborne would have felt if every new area you found had the equivalent of a roadblock that asked you to basically go back to the main story for several more hours if you wanted to come back and explore again.
Nearly every aspect of this game is frustrating to me -- even the story, which pretty much everyone mentions as being so very front and center while conveying almost nothing useful about why you're so corrupted, but we're definitely going to let you know that you're corrupted every single chance we get!
I don't see myself ever going back to finish this, and that's disappointing because I was really looking forward to it. It feels, at best, like a middling Metroidvania just wearing Bloodborne's clothing awkwardly and I can't abide by that because it's just not a good fit.