Bleak Faith: Forsaken review

Bleak Faith: Forsaken had a really bumpy launch and a lot of negative reviews, but I really enjoyed it. This review is for anyone sitting on the fence about whether the console edition is worth their time.

In short, it’s a flawed but ultimately very enjoyable love letter to FromSoftware’s Souls series. It’s still rough around the edges, and it’s definitely an indie game. But after a terrible launch on PC, it was updated and improved over and over, to the point where its flaws are mostly forgivable.

What’s left favors exploration and atmosphere, with solid combat, lots of build variety, and one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in years. Plenty of it you’ll have seen elsewhere, sometimes done better, but it also brings some new ideas that give it a unique identity.

Not your standard Soulslike

Two big things set it apart:

You don’t lose experience when you die. You just die. You keep your experience and keep leveling up, although your first playthrough is capped at level 25, so you can’t just grind forever. That takes away a big part of the usual Souls stress of protecting your souls until you can rest, which makes it a bit lighter. If you’re a purist, though, there are perks and settings to make it harder, including a ring that stops you earning experience at all. I found one early and didn’t realize I was wearing it.

Healing is crafted, not refilled. There are no ever-growing healing flasks. You craft healing items from materials you find around the world, and you can only carry a set number. They top up when you’re out of combat, but in a boss fight, what you bring is all you get. That keeps the classic Souls feeling of running out of healing, panicking and barely squeaking through.

Builds, perks and parrying

Like every Souls game, there are rest points. In Bleak Faith they’re strange little floating figures that act as fast travel and rest points and reset enemies. At them you level up and apply permanent perks to build anything from magic to strength to stamina, plus some more unusual options.

On my first playthrough I ran a leech build: every hit stole health and stamina from the enemy, turning my character into a tank who could face-tank a lot.

There’s a solid parry system, a bit like Sekiro. You can even spam parry if you’re struggling, then hit back. Parrying sets up a heavy counter that hits harder, and there are perks to make parrying even stronger.

Upgrades are the real build system

There are three armor classes: light, medium and heavy. What makes them unique is that it’s not about finding the best armor. It’s about what you put into it.

Every piece of armor and every weapon can be upgraded five levels by a character found at rest points. You then slot in crystals that change how your weapon hits, how hard it hits and how strong you are, all by percentages. That’s the core of the system beyond leveling. If you don’t invest time in upgrading your gear you’ll struggle, but once it clicks, it creates some really interesting builds.

A world worthy of Dark Souls

The biggest Souls connection is the world design. It’s interconnected on a massive scale: door to door and lift to lift, doubling back on itself, with loads of hidden areas and a whole lot of grandeur and atmosphere.

The zones cover classic Soulslike ground, with some unique twists:

• Crumbling castles and cliffs in the opening area.
• A concrete, cyberpunk central hub that connects most of the game.
• Sewers where it rains constantly, which adds great atmosphere.
• Towers in the clouds full of samurai.
• A flooded underwater city, where you swim deeper and deeper following red lights toward one of the game’s two ultimate objectives.
• Deserts and more.

There are no maps, and there’s no clear path. You have to find your own way, and that’s part of the joy.

The spawn point: my favorite mechanic

Once per rest, you can place your own spawn point. It’s brilliant:

• Split paths: if the road forks and you’re not sure which way to go, drop a spawn point, take one path, and if you die you come back there instead of all the way back.
• Tricky jumps: go for that risky leap toward some shiny loot without losing your progress.
• After a hard boss: if you still haven’t found the next rest point and you’re nervous, drop one down.

Combined with keeping your experience on death, it had me exploring far more than in most Soulslikes: climbing off the beaten path and following side branches, knowing I wouldn’t lose anything.

Bosses

There are fewer than a dozen bosses, and they’re well designed and unique, with one exception: a gimmicky boss in the desert. As long as you can handle the chaos of their later phases, they’re very enjoyable. Some are fantastic, some took me a good hour, and others went down quickly.

Verdict: a flawed but forgivable masterpiece

For a development team of three people, this is an impressive first game. It launched to a lot of excitement, then went off a cliff because of its many problems on PC, and reviews were harsh. I wish those reviewers would give the console edition a try, because it’s much improved.

It’s a must-play for any Dark Souls fan, especially if you loved Elden Ring but felt it was too big and too complex, and missed the intimate, cold, empty, scary feeling of the original Dark Souls. When it launched it was a failed masterpiece. Now it’s a flawed but ultimately forgivable one.

I’m working through my New Game Plus run for the platinum. Give it a shot. And a message to the developers: please give us Bleak Faith 2.