An homage to gaming and Dark Souls 1, The Last Hero of Nostalgaia is a souls-like set in the titular Kingdom of Nostalgaia, a rotten, decayed husk of its former glory brought to ruin by the hero’s of time past being unable to let new adventure-ers and stories take the reins and blaze their own paths.

One of the main draws of the game is the remembrance system, it adds in new gameplay importance to the classic souls storytelling convention of learning tidbits about the world through their item descriptions. This usually consists of finding a weapon/armor set based on another video game and going to an area of the overworld that also goes with it, granting a buff to its stats and a cool new awakened 3d form factor. The player also gets small stat buffs from this, and while being a nice addition I don’t think it’s major enough to matter too much if you’re stuck on something.

Speaking of getting stuck, I came along two major roadblocks during my playthrough. The acrobatic, Smough cosplaying moogle named Gnom is probably the hardest thing this game has to throw at the player. With really short windows to punish most of its swings along with longer than normal delay on its big attacks, it really felt like I was fighting something taken straight out of Elden Ring. While it is a bit of a design curveball from the rest of what the game has, looking back on it there’s a lot of fun to be had in learning its patterns and finding out how to get that big hit in.

Enemies are varied and run the standard souls gamut of creepy creatures, husk men, and monsters. They all feel like they would inhabit this world and actually dwell here and rot while I'm not around. The sheer number of enemies between each respite from combat can be a tad too much at some points and the amount of times you’ll get ganked can feel like ds2 at points, but at no point did the enemy placement feel straight up unfair. The other boss fights in this game really do give more of a normal dark souls vibe and I enjoyed each of them quite a bit.

On the other hand, the level design can be just a little too confusing sometimes and lead to confusion on where you need to go to progress. There were multiple times where the way forward is very easy to miss and led to me spending a bit too much time being lost. That’s not to say the level design is bad though. You can tell the team really put a lot of love and effort into making these areas and having them “feel like dark souls”. From the snowy hamlet beneath the castle, to the soft blue glow of the forest area, these areas look great and I appreciate the detail put into each one. They also did a great job of interlocking their areas together and the thought out placement of bonfires results in the game giving the feeling of having a couple mini hubs that everything kind of branches from. The lack of free fast travel is supposed to highlight this, but the long trips to and from each zone is still too long for most players probably. The alternative for this is that the player can tether themselves to one bonfire and teleport there from others but it's a one way warp and not useful enough to take away from backtracking tedium.

Even with the games’ faults, I couldn’t help but want to boot back in each time excited to see what fun reference or cool boss they had in store next. The Last Hero of Nostalgaia is a genuine and heartfelt love letter to the genre and an experience worth having.

and please remember to max your endowment for my sake. We need more boobs in this world.

[incomplete review, may not finish it because i'm not motivated playing this game]

Nearly a waste of money. Underwhelming other than being a subpar attempt at trying to make an ironic kind of Dark Souls 1. The way the story portrays pixels as "fading memories" seem an interesting concept but i can't get over the fact we got a lame narrator who desperately tries to be so funny as he tries to provoke the player character numerous times. In the end, the player character, which is represented as a headless stick figure (complete with a fake character creation screen), moves on with its glory anyway as if they didn't give a shit about the narrator.

Performance on PS4 (Pro) and PS5 is disappointingly laggy at times due to lack of optimization (i presume).
The gameplay, just like said above, is highly reminiscent of Dark Souls 1, complete with the barebones nature of animations except they are not balanced enough to grant yourself a better escape from multiple enemy attacks, which can be troublesome.

The HUD design is also the most barebones i've ever seen, complete with the use of the 'Press Start 2P' font which does not fare well with a 3D game, and i gotta tell you, Press Start 2P is a font that isn't too good to use in games and it's quite weighty to use in modern games from what i believe.

EDIT (17/10/2023): I bought a PS5 to play with new games, i tried to give a try with both and PS4 and PS5 versions and i can confirm there is slightly no guaranteed performance improvement which is a huge shame. Can't really tell if i should ever continue this game after i got into the mines.

EDIT (22/11/2023): Removed certain Dark Souls comparisons. There was no need of comparing how the animations were structured in the first Dark Souls to this, as i believe this game struggled to design animation timings that are balanced to handle.

You aren't the hero Nostalgaia wants, but you are the one it NEEDS. Uncover the lost memories of gear, objects, and people, until you eventually restore the land back to its un-pixelated state.

Last Hero is actually a pretty decent game. Yes, it does feel like an even clunkier and more janky version of Dark Souls 1, but I imagine that was done mostly on purpose. Thankfully while the game was frustrating at times, the interesting and bizarre story, paired with the funny dialogue and writing, really kept me playing. That, as well as the nonstop references to other videogames, through its equipment and characters. Honestly, I never would've known who Mercucio the Pipelayer was until I ran into him. Funny stuff.
On top of that, their world design is pretty fantastic. It perfectly captures that feeling of immense and unexpected shortcuts, Dark Souls 1 style. The amount of times I would circle back to an area unknowingly and be left stunned after I unlocked the connecting door was absurd. Impeccable job there.
TLDR, if you can deal with the game's boat-like version of Dark Souls combat, this one is a really neat and unique title, so I'd recommend giving it a try. Especially if you're a fan of the first Dark Souls, or quite possibly any of the games in that series. I'd buy it on sale though, but if you really think you'll like it, go ahead and swing for the full price. Just make sure you're ready to commit about 10 hours to that gameplay before you stick with it past the 2 hour Steam refund point.

Definitely worth a try! It's an uncut gem that could just use a little polish.

A fun soulslike with more borrowed elements from Bloodborne and a lot of references from past indie games. Has its problems like:
Bad level design, the levels connect to eachother somehow but it's super confusing.
Overstays its welcome, theres like 4 or 5 moments that feel like "okay this is the end" and the game still continues.
Online messages, worse than Elden Ring. Downvote every "Try patience" on sight
After the "I can't believe its not the final boss of Bloodborne" boss fight, the game just gets too confusing with tons of backtracking, backtracking in Souls games suck.

I have to pee so I got nothing else, its a fun game though, maybe stop after the bloodborne boss since the endings are literally nothing. Magic build funny

An incredibly competent and creative souls like. The entire world is incredibly well connected through a series of shortcuts so backtracking is never tedious. The core mechanic of finding the memory of equipment to restore them to an upgraded version of themselves is wonderful, I loved running around trying to solve the clues as to where they were. The way the game plays with tropes and what it means to be a video game is also excellent. My only complaints lie towards the very endgame but it is nothing so drastic as to not recommend the game.

Got it on a whim and unfortunately its just not good. First of all, the framerate on PS5 is all over the place. Sometimes it'll run at a solid 60 for a bit, but most of the time it jitters between 30-50. A game that looks like this shouldn't have these kinds of issues. The gameplay is also severely lacking. The hitboxes are really awful, the weapons dont have great impact, the enemies are dull and boring, and any time you get hit it has a weird freeze effect on your character that just feels awful. The art was pretty okay, i suppose. The story had a kinda interesting beginning, but with the framerate and gameplay being as bad as they are i dont care to see it out. Just stick to souls games or the very few actually good souls likes.

This is pretty much a Dark Souls game but jankyer, but its still really good. It sticks very close to the formula and maganes to use it correctly.

The combat is literally dark souls.

The world design is inspired by the DS1 shortcut heavy style and they pull it off really well. The level design in this game is great, it's very consistent and while none of the stages reaches peak Dark Souls it never reaches its lows either. None of the areas feel bad or annoying, they range from pretty fun to ok.

The bosses were mostly ok (i have not fought the secret bosses though), my favorite by far was the one in Oreshaft Village (third boss i think) since that one was funny, fun to fight AND a decent challenge.

As for the story and tone, it's mostly a comedy and it has a lot of references. The references are mostly in your equipment and areas of the game, they don't hammer you with them in dialogue in case anyone worries about that. I think it's handled very nicely.

The story was better than i expected, it's not mindblowing or anything but it's pretty nice, i liked it.

Also the newly released DLC is good.

If you like Dark Souls and don't NEED it to be dark 24/7, like videogame references (scanning for HDN fans), or like FUN, play it.

I play to revisit it someday to do the secret bosses and hunt the achievments.

Last Hero of Nostalgaia is a pretty close recreation of Dark Souls, while also being a meta commentary of Video Games.

The gameplay is very close to DS1 to me, its kind of clunky, and missing a few things Dark Souls has, but it the closest I've seen from a non-souls game. It has the a great interconnected world just like DS1, every place has multiple meaningful shortcuts. It even does some new stuff, like changing how you interact with reading item descriptions. Most weapons/armours need to be remembered, which involves bringing them to specific places so they can, and they will give a little blurb that hints about this. Once this is done, most weapons will unlock a weapon art, some other bonus, and a damage bonus. I find this mechanic neat because it actively leads you to interact with lore.

This is one of those "I get the reference, I clapped!", but goddamn I love it, I did fucking clap. The game has a bunch of fun references like an area just called "Player Housing", and the big bosses are so neat. Most weapons/armours are just references (i.e one weapon is just the Soul Edge, or you can get Master Chief armour). I'm gonna describe one of the bosses here to the end of the paragraph just so I can describe the fun designs to match the original character, if you dont want that spoiler skip. One of the big bosses is the Moogle from FF6, he backstabbed Terra and Locke because he was greedy. When you go to face him, he looks like Smough with a little moogle head. His boss fight his him dancing around, casting blue magic, and using his Dragoon lance. Other bosses also have very fun interpretations of their origin, just very well put together.

Game does have some stuff I don't really like. I think the weapon hitboxes on Big Weapons either don't last long enough, or the hitboxes are too small, also felt wrong when I missed enemies. You won't get any fast travel ability, this isn't really a fault, since there are a bunch of shortcuts, just be aware of backtracking this involves. The main thing I don't like is this game has Dark Soul quests. Time sensitive quest triggers that if you walk too far into another zone, you are fucked over. I missed all but 1 quest (and missed out on the true final boss) because of that crap. I really just hate that they are time sensitive, it really doesn't make much sense why they are besides emulating the dumb ass Quests in Dark Souls. There isn't even a New Game+ (at the time I wrote) so I can speed through the game again to attempt quests again.

Besides these very minor complaints, I love this shit. Its Dark Souls (I love that game!) and it shows huge love to Video Games (I love Video Games!), hugely recommend to anyone who loves these two things.

I've just finished an extended 10 hour demo of this game. Between Elden Ring, Lies of P and this, we're spoiled this year for soulslikes, and those are just the great ones (too bad thymesia was... Not great).

I've got a really strange relationship with this title. In my previous job I worked doing some of the marketing copy for it before it was announced, now in my new job I'm playing it early for editorial and news content, in a completely unrelated capacity. In both of those roles this game seemed super interesting, with unique visuals with an interesting art mechanic, well-refined soulslike gameplay with its own unique twists, and fun and engaging writing reminiscent of The Stanley Parable.

The great thing is that it has the Mets narrative and commentary about the commodification of nostalgia and IP without sacrificing having the deep world and location-based lore that this genre is known for.

I can't wait to play this game as soon as the full release comes out, and it's one I can easily recommend.