Recent reviews by TheBarbaryGhost

About 80% through the current content, so it's time for me to write some thoughts (hate leaving reviews until I have some actual legit game time on a product). Wishlisted this one after the Next-Fest demo. Even though I never finished that, because it was crazy hard, I still picked up the EA release to see what else this clever team had in store.

TL;DR:
This is 100% an Immersive-Sim, with elements of other game genres fused to it. And I highly recommend it to any fans of classic ImSims, like the Deus Ex series. The level of interactivity is also pretty astounding at times.

There's all kind of dumb things you can do to harm yourself too (like eating glue lol). Probably my favorite thing about this game is the customizable difficulty. I wanted my game to be a little more relaxed, so I cranked outgoing enemy damage down quite a bit, and my outgoing damage up a bit. And it made my experience just the right amount of fun, while still offering plenty of challenge. But if you like it rough and hard, you can crank all of that ish up to 11 and have yourself a proper challenge.

Controls: Surprisingly the controls and fluidity of movement are so well done in this. Your character can do all the parkour shiz, (wall run, wall jump, slide, mantle objects). You can also peak around corners and utilize stealth, and there is an entire melee combat system with different combos. I really love the subtle touch of if you start running and suddenly veer off in one direction and juke back the other way, how your pov sort of sways, back and forth. It feels very realistic and adds to the immersive feel.

Writing: The writing is decent-ish I guess. Im about 8 hours in, and so far I know very little about the main character, or their backstory. And there are literally no other characters that you interact with outside of the handler, the AI assistant and the mysterious guide in the tutorial.

Graphics: I mean, it's pretty much emulating the look of FPS games from the 1992-1995 era of games. After Doom, before Quake. Build engine look basically. 2D sprites and assets, with 3D environments. The general visual design is nice and makes you feel like you are running around a huge space station.

Sound: SFX are all pretty bog-standard Boomer Shooter style, with slightly lower fidelity to match the retro feel of everything else. I see a lot of praise towards the music. But for me, it felt so repetitive, I had to mute it after a few hours. Maybe I haven't entered an area with different music yet, but it feels like the same track plays all across the space station.

Negatives/Cons: Not a lot so far really! Probably the biggest issue I have noticed is how brain-dead the enemy AI can be, when you are head shotting one, as long as you aren't in view, no alarm goes off. Even if someone else sees their friend get their brains plastered all over the wall. While that def made the game way less stressful, it also kind of killed some of the immersion. Still a very minor complaint.

When I wrap up the current campaign content (which is one large interconnected space station, that takes roughly 9-10 hours to finish) I'm defintely going to try out that Next-Fest demo again and see if I can get through it with my newly gleaned knowledge of this game and its mechanics. Can't wait for more episodes to drop! Fortune's Run is definitely one of my most anticipated 1.0 releases in the near future.

Warning: Buy on sale. This game is incredibly short. If you pay over $20 you're going to feel a little ripped off.

With that said, this game is really really fun! If you are familiar with classic Swashbuckling adventure stories like The Three Musketeers, Zorro, Robin Hood (or for you youngsters, Antonio Banderas Puss n' Boots adaptations) , then you are going to probably find a lot to love here. There's a decent amount of replay value for a game with only 4 stages. (three of which are pretty lengthy), thanks mostly to the unlockable challenges/secrets and the core combat mechanics. Which are simple and addictive but also kind of complex as you get more used to them. Probably my favorite thing about the mechanics is all of the "Panache" moves you can pull off. Drop a chandelier on some dudes for an insta-kill. Kick barrels, tables, explosives, and all other manner of objects at dudes too. Do a flip over someone for some extra panache. Kick fools off of cliffs. There's dozens of things you can do in combat.

Writing is also really fun and clever, with some excellent voice acting all around. The script is genuinely laugh out loud funny at times (especially if you have a familiarity with the swashbuckling genre).

Music is straight-up on fire! Their composer 1000% nails the Spanish swashbuckling aesthetic with a mix of frantic flamenco guitars, baroque harpsichords, lush strings and other sounds that all fit perfectly in this fantasy Spanish setting.

However, I feel like this game is only 3/4 of the way done. When I saw "Final Chapter" pop up after only a few hours of play, I felt a little defeated and sad. Like this game wraps up, just as it is getting going! And that is a damn shame. They could easily fir another 2-3 stages, and have a much more complete experience. Also Adalia seriously needs new player skins! I read the devs have no interest in DLC or expanding the game, which is also very disappointing to hear. Hopefully they will reconsider, because I could easily sink 20+ hours into this world.

I was really expecting to love the hell out of this game. On paper it sounds like a dream come true. Immersive-Sim meets Metroidvaia, with light Soulslike combat mechanics and set in a Post-Apocalyptic sumerin fantasy world? Sign me up! But man the actual game frustrated me so much I had to get a refund before my 2 hour refund window. It's just really slow and clunky, and the parrying is a pain in the ass to time. Maybe I'm just used to games like Sekiro that have masterful parry timing. This really reminded me of the cheap deaths and traps present in classic Cinematic Platformers like Flashback/Out of This World, and I hated them in those games too. Still, I love the premise and setting, so I think I'll at least check out a let's play walk through soon.

I'm still really early into this game. I just want to share some thoughts coming from a player that isn't a hardcore fan of this type of genre, and was more drawn to this out of curiosity. I've been eyeing this title since it first hit EA, but the initial reviews were so mixed and off-putting, I just decided t wait for a deep sale, and $25 is a pretty deep sale. So here we are.

To get to the point, this game slaps. I think the biggest challenge for a new player is simply learning the ropes. But I watched about an hour or so of beginner's guides and that helped so much, I was able to make great progress in my first day. I'll try to revise this review much later, after I have a few hundred more hours clocked. But so far so good, and these devs have earned themselves a new fan.

Needs more wall turkeys.

But in all seriousness, The Last Faith has been a serious roller coaster ride of emotions for me so far. There are a lot of nice "highs", but way more nasty "lows". Let's get the good stuff out of the way first:

+ Positives +
* Great art design - invokes Classicvania vibes. I don't think it looks like a rip-off of Blasphemous, like a lot of reviews are saying. It looks inspired by that entire Gothic-Horror platforming style of game that has been around for over 30 years at this point.

* Cool weapon and item selection. I only really messed with a few weapons so far, but they all worked well enough. Bonus points for including whips!

* Nice enemy and boss designs.

* Nice story? I'm not really sure about this one, because I'm only 50% through the game, but I do dig the lore and backstory I've been able to piece together so far. Oh and the character art during conversations is so dope!

* Nice environmental designs, and a wide variety of environments to explore.

Now onto the:

- Negatives -
* Abysmal tutorial and instructions. The devs don't even bother explaining how the focus meter works, or what stats increase what. I'm still not sure what stat improves focus? That is bad game design.

* Really poorly explained game progression route. Like, ok I don't need a giant glowing arrow to point out where I should go next. I appreciate the obtuseness of soulslikes guidance as far as game route goes, but at least have the NPC's give your dude basic directions, or landmarks to look for. It's way too easy t get lost aimlessly wandering around this huge game world.

* Wonky combat mechanics. I don't even understand how they programmed this, but sometimes I can dodge and jump away from incoming attacks, sometimes I can't. Sometimes, I dodge an attack, without even pressing a single button. Sometimes I get hit by attacks I can't even see. It's so unpredictable at times.

* Farmable healing items. So this one isn't a huge deal as these things only cost 50 exp per vial. But it is 2023, and games should not be doing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like this anymore. Just give the player a set amount of vials upon death. Don't force your player to farm healing items. ugggh.

* So many places where the trash mobs can easily stun-lock you and take you out, not due to your lack of skill, but due to the AI being cheap ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

* The music. This might seem like a little thing to most of you. But as a musician myself, I find the soundtrack of a Gothic-Horror platformer to be a very important aspect, and The Last Faith just kind of dropped the ball in this department. I eventually just shut off the music, because it was so repetitive and boring. I get that the low, slow tremolo cello and meandering piano is a standard sound on these types of soundtracks, but not every single area needs to have music that sounds the same. Where's the variety? Ended up throwing on my hand-curated Darksynthvania mix on Spotify instead lol.

All in all, I would recommend this title if you don't mind a little frustration in your gaming experience. But you might be better served waiting to pick this up after the wiki guides and walk through's are up, so you can keep yourself from getting hopelessly lost like I did.

How can anyone in this day and age, release a PC adventure game (even in EA) without proper save/load functionality? The game claims it has a quicksave (it does not). What it has is a button that will save your current progress in leveling up your various skills and stats, But it DOES NOT save your progress on the map. All it does is set a respawn point for you all the way back at your camp. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is insanely frustrating to push through a map, find a dungeon, enter said dungeon, adventure through a bit, die, and reload clear across the map. With every single enemy respawned. This isn't a soulslike game. Give players a legit quicksave + quickload option.

It's really too bad, because everything else about this game is truly remarkable. And the dev has a lot of very cool original ideas. But if the very basic ability to save and load is not present the whole game is pretty pointless to play. I won't refund it, I will hold out hope the dev fixes this and I can then write a proper review.

I've played this thing for 166 hours and I'm only like in the very beginning of the last act. I don't really think I need to say much else. I'm not quite ready to write a full review yet. Maybe in a few hundred more hours?

On paper this game should be my GOTY... 90's throwback platformer (I was 13 when Sonic came out, this is totally my vibe), play as a cat (I absolutely adore cats), vibrant colorful pixel-art... but I don't know, I put about 30 minutes into this one, cleared around 7 stages, w/out so much as a Boss or any real challenge present. And I was done. Too many other titles vying for my time right now.

Unfortunately this game feels more like a team of Zennial/Millennials trying to capture a specific era of gaming, but missing the mark by a wide margin. The fact that it is only $10 is going to make me leave this with a positive recommendation. Because honestly at $10, even if the game is only an hour or two long (which I believe it actually is), they aren't exactly asking for you to break the bank to play their game.

But for me personally I had to check-out after the first (fake) boss fight and get a refund. It was just getting too tedious, and I have Gravity Rush just sitting here begging me to fire it back up. I'll enjoy watching this game on a let's play over lunch at work. But I don't think I'll sit down and play it again. Oh and the soundtrack was so boring. It sounded like someone composed everything in basic midi. And the music rarely fit the theme of the stage.

These devs get a E for effort. But if I can leave them with one tip, PLEASE for the love of god, allow the player to skip lines of dialog! Yeah you can skip the whole cutscene already, but manually skipping dialog lines has been a must feature for these types of games for years!

If you enjoyed the classic PC game Cannon Fodder, or General Chaos on the SEGA Genesis, you'll find a lot to love here. Pretty fun, cheap little cartoonish arcade style real-time, military tactical-sim. Lots of weapons, items, etc to purchase and upgrade for your troops. The whole presentation is very charming, but beware, the gameplay is actually pretty challenging. It's got that whole XCOM thing, where you can have this great veteran warrior in your squad, and one death will make them disappear from your roster forever (although after battles, the game gives you a chance to buy back dead soldiers, but if you are low on special funds, say goodbye to those fallen troops). In addition to open warfare stages, there' also a fair amount of stealth missions, which I personally find to be the most fun.

There's even vehicle combat here, with some fun Helicopter focused levels that feel like I'm playing one of the titles in the classic EA Desert/Jungle/Urban Strike series. There's also Jeeps and Tanks you can control. One suggestion to the devs: Change that music in the recruitment/store/mission prep/etc menus, between levels. It feels really out of place in this game. Needs something with a military feeling to it.

So yeah there's a whole lot of content here, with a lot of fun to be had. Easily worth the asking price. This one is a no-brainer. Just go buy it.

Edit: I found that this is apparently a port of a mobile game. If so, I think it actually plays a lot better with a M&KB, than it would with touch screen controls.

Yeah, this one is pretty fun. But fair warning, this is not an easy game. If you're an older gamer (like me) and remember playing games like Elevator Action, Rolling Thunder, Dark Castle, etc. then you will probably be right at home with this one. Basically combine those kind of games (especially E.A and R.T.), with the intense, twitch gameplay of something like Hotline Miami, and you're coming close to what this game is like. It's almost more of a "puzzle" game than a platformer. Although it's not like there is only one solution to each map (actually, a few maps do have pretty linear solutions). The player can experiment with different tactics on most levels.

The general gameplay loop is something like: "You're dropped into, or in front of a large building or series of buildings. You can use stealth by shutting off lights, or destroying them outright (Protip: throw your knife at lights, you can pick it up again as long as you don't throw it at an enemy unit), and you usually have to assassinate every one of the cyborgs and other enemies on the stage. A few stages have other goals though, to keep things interesting. In each area there are object scattered around you can both use for (crappy) cover, and use as a source of weapons. Most firearms have 3-10 bullets (but limited ammo crates can be found too, to reload with). Then its up to you to sneak around, ambush or lure enemies to their doom (Protip #2: Always try for headshots *herp-a-derp*). After each mission, you drive around in your car and can read emails with tips for the next stage or examine your unlocked weapons, etc.

That's pretty much it. You used to get one hit point, but the devs recently made your dude a little more resilient, and he can now take two direct hits from most weapons (except crazy shiz like grenade launchers, shotguns, etc). This is one of those games where you can start a stage, and not even realize you just spent 3 hours on one level, because when you die, you start the whole level over again. There are zero checkpoints, that's right... you either get in, kill everyone and get out in one piece, or you try again. I'm only about 2 missions into the 2nd Zone, but I definitely think this game is pretty solid (even if the current mission is pissing me the hell off, with these stupid knife-throwing asshats.) and is definitely worth a buy if you enjoy stealth or Hotline Miami style one-life run, games. But once again, I must reiterate, this game is not easy and does not pull any punches. You will die, a whole lot! One final note: Ignore the "Roguelite" tag on the store page, this is definitely not even remotely one. Also before I forget, the music is pretty solid. It's almost all tense Synthwave inspired vibes (very reminiscent of Hotline Miami once again).
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~ I am a former Quality Assurance Lead Tester, with over 20 years in the industry and nearly 40 years of PC and Console gaming experience. ~ Video Games are my lifeblood and I hope my reviews provide potential buyers with ample information to help them make a decision regarding their purchases.