At the end of my review for the first Faith I said that I was worried that the sequels would lean further into the issues I took with the combat in that game, which seemed like the most obvious way one might “go bigger” in a more expansive sequel to a surprise indie hit. Chapter II does, in fact, have way more fights and they are, in fact almost all terrible. It also has a lot more screens, multiple locations, scripted events, much more text, and, most tantalizingly, significantly more of that sweet sweet rotoscoped animation that everybody loved so much.
I don’t think that these things automatically disqualify this game from being a good time. I try to meet games where they’re at rather than where I wish they were and Faith: Chapter 2 is certainly striking a different tone than its predecessor. It’s not just that there’s more stuff crammed into the framework of the previous game, there’s an expansion of scope in the story and with it comes a shift in the overall tone. Although we’re still in hardline horror territory, and the player character is still haunted by what he perceives to be his past mistakes which are used to attack him spiritually and mentally to a more extreme degree than before, your role has shifted. Rather than pursuing one exorcism and finding yourself prey to greater forces, ones that are essentially unstoppable, you are the hunter now.
You go to the church, the cemetery, you fight those terrible battles against the demonic bosses that haunt it, you’re pursuing the end to a looming apocalypse coming from a cult that is retroactively responsible for the events of the first game too (something that was once cheekily implied by one of the many endings in chapter one, now made the explicit crux of the plot). The uptick in schlock and violence and narrative stake making lends the whole thing a vibe more akin to low budget ACTION horror movies where guys blast vampires and zombies and demons with shotguns and shit than straight up catholic themed giallo or something but it works, I think!
It is just a shame that it’s all attached to some truly dire fights. The initial batch is maybe on par with the fight from the end of the first game, but the final boss in this game is beyond the pale, absolutely torching the substantial good will that the final sequence had otherwise built up for me with its oblique puzzles, slower atmosphere, and multiple genuinely inventive monster designs (ones that were never dependent on the DIRE combat mechanics, always other unique ones instead), things that had been lacking to this point. To squander that by asking me and my also one-hit-and-he’s-dead AI companion to survive a multi-phase, multi-enemy fight with all the same problems with perfect response times and necessary but randomized pattern memorization sucks ass man, it took me I’m not kidding, must have been thirty tries.
AND YET these games have hooked me enough to play the third one still, I’m all in, I really liked the monster that kills you if you move and it has a scary tentacle face.
I don’t think that these things automatically disqualify this game from being a good time. I try to meet games where they’re at rather than where I wish they were and Faith: Chapter 2 is certainly striking a different tone than its predecessor. It’s not just that there’s more stuff crammed into the framework of the previous game, there’s an expansion of scope in the story and with it comes a shift in the overall tone. Although we’re still in hardline horror territory, and the player character is still haunted by what he perceives to be his past mistakes which are used to attack him spiritually and mentally to a more extreme degree than before, your role has shifted. Rather than pursuing one exorcism and finding yourself prey to greater forces, ones that are essentially unstoppable, you are the hunter now.
You go to the church, the cemetery, you fight those terrible battles against the demonic bosses that haunt it, you’re pursuing the end to a looming apocalypse coming from a cult that is retroactively responsible for the events of the first game too (something that was once cheekily implied by one of the many endings in chapter one, now made the explicit crux of the plot). The uptick in schlock and violence and narrative stake making lends the whole thing a vibe more akin to low budget ACTION horror movies where guys blast vampires and zombies and demons with shotguns and shit than straight up catholic themed giallo or something but it works, I think!
It is just a shame that it’s all attached to some truly dire fights. The initial batch is maybe on par with the fight from the end of the first game, but the final boss in this game is beyond the pale, absolutely torching the substantial good will that the final sequence had otherwise built up for me with its oblique puzzles, slower atmosphere, and multiple genuinely inventive monster designs (ones that were never dependent on the DIRE combat mechanics, always other unique ones instead), things that had been lacking to this point. To squander that by asking me and my also one-hit-and-he’s-dead AI companion to survive a multi-phase, multi-enemy fight with all the same problems with perfect response times and necessary but randomized pattern memorization sucks ass man, it took me I’m not kidding, must have been thirty tries.
AND YET these games have hooked me enough to play the third one still, I’m all in, I really liked the monster that kills you if you move and it has a scary tentacle face.