Bleak Faith: Forsaken console review

Generally speaking, I play a lot of Soulslikes, and I usually rate them by a number of metrics that I won’t go too deeply into here, but two of the main ones are the “flow” of the world and the difficulty of the combat. Obviously, that last one seems obvious and most of you will argue that it’s the harder the better, but my issue with combat difficulty only comes down to one thing: is it difficult because it’s impeccably designed, or is it difficult because it’s too sloppy for nuance? Bleak Faith: Forsaken from Archangel Studios has had me mulling over these two points harder than most in the genre.

First of all that word “flow”. Anyone familiar with the From Software style of world design will understand what I mean. The very idea of navigating such huge, interconnected worlds without a map would have had me petrified before I played Dark Souls – yet somehow it worked, and From only got better at it. That feeling of accomplishment just from unlocking a gate or activating a lift and realising you’re right back at a bonfire and you can rest, level up, and continue on is beaten only by overcoming a boss on the sixth attempt.

Bleak Faith: Forsaken, released on PC last year and making its way to consoles now, attempts to achieve the same sense of exploration and wonder but falls short in a few crucial areas. While there’s little wasted real estate in terms of enemy density and items to find, there are moments where, in trying to connect two areas, the devs have just kind of stuck in a ridiculously long walkway or multiple flights of stairs. It’s obvious every time they do it, and it makes getting around the world occasionally quite tedious.

It doesn’t help that it’s all so sprawling. Last year’s Lies of P did a superb job of making smaller areas feel bigger with multiple elevations, shortcuts, and – essentially – lots of save points. Bleak Faith sticks just one save point in each area, gives you a spare one to drop somewhere else, and requires you to walk or run everywhere else. There are areas where I genuinely began to feel fatigued trying to remember all the optional routes I hadn’t taken. In fact, I missed a huge chunk of the game for ages because I hadn’t seen a set of steps off to the right in the second main area, which has multiple routes branching off from the entrance.

There’s nothing wrong with ambition, but it sometimes feels as though Archangel Studios have taken the wrong lessons from the genre. Another example is the story, which is frankly impenetrable. I read all the documents I picked up, listened to the dialogue of every NPC, and still had no idea what I was doing or why. I had no idea why I had a digital scanner in a fantasy world, no real understanding of what the “Anomaly” is. I couldn’t work out what “Flux” did for the first few hours. I’m all for telling stories through lore and flavour text, but give us something to hang it all on. I struggled to understand any part of Bleak Faith’s story or world, and therefore struggled to care about the plight of any of it.

NPCs are scattered around the place who literally talk to you like you know what’s going on, mentioning characters and proper nouns that have no context or explanation, and unlike the characters in a game like Dark Souls, they don’t feel like they’re moving organically and continuing to exist without you. They just turn up in corners, talk nonsense at you, and then show up later and do the same. It creates a bit of a disconnect with the world, which has Soulslike respawning despite feeling more like a straight action game in other areas. Even the larger enemies respawn. Though, fighting the giants over and over is quite fun, as you get to hamstring them and then climb them like you’re in Dragon’s Dogma, or later, Shadow of the Colossus.

And yet I have enjoyed my time with Bleak Faith: Forsaken, mostly because of Archangel’s refusal to leave any nook or cranny empty. There’s loot, lore, or crafting materials everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. If it looks like there’ll be a collectible on a high ledge or down a side alley, there usually is. Encumbrance doesn’t affect your movement speed by much, only how much stamina you use and how long it takes to refill, and some of the armour sets are great to look at, too.

You can use a bow with multiple arrow types, sword and shield, dual wield, go two-handed, and there are magical weapons that drop from bosses with special abilities or spells attached. You can carry two sets of weaponry at a time, allowing for some diversity. I went dual-wield and bow, with more points in Agility and Constitution for extra stamina and health. There’s a little marketing blurb around Bleak Faith that says you don’t “level up” like traditional Soulslikes, but you absolutely do. The main difference is you can spend Stat, Perk, and Ability points anywhere outside of combat, and you don’t lose XP or items on death.

This makes exploration in Bleak Faith: Forsaken feel more relaxed despite the overall difficulty, although a lot of the difficulty there is comes from a certain level of jank in the tank. Sometimes the lock-on simply won’t work, or you can be facing the opposite direction and an arrow will fly out of the back of your head if you’re locked onto a target. Some enemies are staggered by your attacks, some will strike right through them. There’s also a big jump in some areas between standard enemies that do you barely any harm and others that kill you in one shot. Dying to bosses (particularly optional ones) often necessitates long runs back, which is more infuriating because the bosses can be tricky to read. One optional boss slams the ground with heavy attacks that make it very difficult to even track where it is in the aftermath.

There are different levels of defence, of course, against things like Piercing, Blunt, and Spell damage, but the game doesn’t explain it all that well and nothing you were protects well enough against all the damage types anyway. Also it doesn’t seem to matter how you build, the stamina management is infuriating. Get a couple of hits in and you’re done until it refills, and it takes a few seconds to do so. There’s a timed parry move that can stagger grunts, but I found it just didn’t work against bosses. The effect triggered and the noise sounded, but the bosses were never staggered by it. As a result, I chucked in my shield for another melee weapon very early on.

At certain points you’ll find rare items that let you unlock a perk or an ability, and some of these are outright game-changers. I initially chose a vampiric perk that gave me permanent life-steal on dealing damage, which I further augmented with a ring and by slotting Anomalous Crystals into my weapons. I came out of most fights healed without needing potions. You must upgrade your gear at a special NPC called the Handler, who requires Echoes to level up and increase the services she offers. Interestingly, though, there are a few optional graphics modes such as cel-shaded and 16-bit pixels, or a nightmare and dream mode which make the world darker or shinier respectively.

Graphically, Bleak Faith is a bit of an uneven experience. While some of the character designs are interesting, much of the world is incredibly drab, and I struggled to even see in some areas, even using the items the game gives you, like glowbugs and torches. The world itself is a little uninspired, with a lot of samey fantasy structures mixed in with modern-day cargo crates, glowing red lights, and not a great use of colour or texture.

What Bleak Faith: Forsaken lacks in direction it makes up for with ambition. There’s a lot of heart in it, and you can tell it’s been made with love and passion – and it manages to be more enjoyable and accomplished than titles like Thymesia or Hellpoint, which are arguably in the same range as far as budget and certainly atmosphere are concerned. Ultimately it’s an enjoyable adventure despite some uneven design, and I hope Archangel Studios gets the chance to improve upon the template in the future.