Bleak Faith: Forsaken

The game is frozen after I defeated the boss, and had to restart the fight again.

类魂遗珠，我目前玩到过的 质量与中文声量比值最高的类魂。没有中文是个遗憾，不然能在中国能小卖一波。

When I was reading BLAME!, I kept having the thought that it would make a really cool Soulslike, and then I stumbled upon this game. It definitely delivers on that -- taking in the view and exploring are the best parts of this game. The maps are very well-designed, easy to get lost in and unexpectedly interconnected. In that sense, the exploration evokes the best parts of Dark Souls and Bloodborne. So I cautiously recommend this game as a neat indie project that is fun to explore. I would not however recommend this game from a gameplay perspective. It's very rough around the edges. Whenever I push the boundaries of "expected" exploration, I end up falling through the map. This game doesn't reward clever usage of sprint-jumping; it's too floaty and gives the player too much leverage. This extends to the combat as well, which feels like an awkward combination of Souls and Sekiro injected with too many RPG elements. There's a crafting menu, multiple meta progression elements in skills, specializations, and stat level-ups, a gem system for your armor/weapons, on top of weapon skills and passives. There's a lot going on, but you're also inundated with crafting materials to the points where I can craft hundreds of health flasks without ever needing to craft a single one yet at all. Unfortunately, being able to slot extra health in armor, health leech in weapons, vampirism in specializations, and rings that provide even more health leech rating as well as passive hp regeneration whenever you pick up an item (which happens ALL the time) means that I stopped even using my health flasks most of the time. Cool game, but not one to come into with the expectations that it will compare favorably to other soulslikes in any measure but setting and exploration.