That, of course, is when Bleak Faith isn't glitching out. Glitches Abound In Bleak Faith: Forsaken This insect enemy was the bane of my existence, and not for fun reasons. Giant enemies swing weapons with such effortless ease that they must be made of fiberglass, then recover instantly, making combat engagements inordinately frustrating. The art design is completely wasted on an experience that doesn't know how to use these enemies remotely well. It's all very impressive stuff, and it could have made a solid game incredibly immersive.Īs it stands, it feels like contracting Michelangelo to paint on a prison toilet wall. Huge creatures with trailing strands of hair stalk massive open fields, and frog monsters lurk alongside terrifying scorpion-like insects in dank sewers. It's a smidge ripped off from Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, with a hint of Nier in the almost tragic-looking android figures, but it's strong nonetheless. The creature and enemy design follows suit, too. Often, the art direction here is astonishing. Giant snakes glide beneath the water while skyborne manta rays twirl and dance above you. It's a massive, labyrinthine superstructure full of strange buttresses, apartment blocks, and medieval and futuristic architecture seemingly rubbing shoulders. From the off, the world of the Omnistructure is compelling to look at. The Art Design In Bleak Faith: Forsaken Shows Promise Trust me when I say the art design in Bleak Faith: Forsaken is about all there is to admire.īleak Faith's breathtakingly poor execution is a real shame because the art design shows incredible promise. There is a fast travel system, but it's small comfort in a game where it's totally unclear where you should even begin to explore or why. All of this combined makes it incredibly difficult to feel motivated to keep slogging through Bleak Faith: Forsaken's insipid, endless corridors. The lack of direction means that it is completely impossible to know whether any particular path will take you anywhere useful while there is a single objective marker, it's only visible from the central hub area, and once you start down one of the hub area's three or four paths, you lose sight of it completely. Fodder enemies will pose absolutely no challenge whatsoever, but larger enemies can one-shot you with such alarming ease and regularity that it feels practically impossible to bypass them. That's the setupĪlmost nothing in Bleak Faith: Forsaken feels like it works as it should.įrom there, you will embark on a journey I can only describe as Sisyphean in its pointlessness. You're shown a dialogue-free cutscene that feels like little more than an artsy experiment, then dumped onto a sloping rooftop. Part of that might be because I didn't see Bleak Faith through to its conclusion, but it's also because you are given absolutely zero sense of context or direction at the outset. Normally, this is where we might discuss the plot, but I have absolutely no idea what it is. Even when Bleak Faith's combat is "working as intended", it feels clunky, awkward, and badly-made. It's an open-world Soulslike with a world that is immeasurably tedious and frustrating to trek through, full of depressingly confusing and obtuse level design and enemies with inconsistent and unclear attack patterns. Almost nothing in Bleak Faith: Forsaken feels like it works as it should. Bleak Faith: Forsaken Is A Complete And Utter Mess Looks nice in still image form, doesn't it? Shame it falls apart as soon as it starts moving. Second, Archangel Studios is charging real money for Bleak Faith on Steam, so I think it's important to issue a "caveat emptor" to prevent others from going through what I did. First, I genuinely believe that anyone who makes it all the way through possesses either heroic determination or a self-hatred so strong that it suggests an urgent need for therapy. However, I'd like to put forth my case for still reviewing Bleak Faith: Forsaken despite not experiencing everything it had to offer. You may think that this invalidates the review, and if so, that's fair.
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