5.6 hours played
Written 29 days ago
If anything, it feels like Boltgun. And I didn't love Boltgun, but feeling like Boltgun is a huge step up from the previous game.
Forgive Me Father is now a narrative shooter, with lovecraftian noir quipping between the main character and the voice in his head. I liked the first game's pseudo-roguelike concept even if I did not like the execution, but here that's scaled way back in favor of more deliberately handcrafted levels and a more intentional narrative. There's even a large route split, although you ultimately play both routes. The controls are smoother and the perk progression is less important.
You do, however, still die SUPER EASILY on normal.
If you're a boomershooter veteran, you've played other titles you thought were hard, you should play this on easy. Enemy hits chunk your health, there's tons of sources of splash damage, and enemy sprites completely fade into the murk of the environment. In a less high octane shooter this wouldn't be a problem, but you spend the first level on normal not being able to see your enemies and then getting rocketed to half health from a single projectile whipping out of the dark.
The first level is also something of a filter. The game feels substantially better once you've gotten the ammo capacity passive, and continues to improve as you go, but I almost uninstalled during 1-1. It feels so like the first game that I assumed I was in for an identical experience. Pleased to be wrong.
In terms of level design, the early few are bland but the offerings get way better as you go. Basement and Botanical Garden are standouts, and there's a stretch of Basement where you're navigating a munitions storage and if you shoot a single red barrel the whole place goes sky high that feels like an all-timer for fps level design. It's tense and atmospheric and forces you to get clever. I was not expecting to see a level like it in a Forgive Me Father.
I'll update again when I clear the game, although I think it's going to be a pretty short campaign. Maybe might get some buyer's remorse if you pick it up at full price, but it's safe to try at 50% and a steal at 75%. I hope this trajectory of improvement continues, and I think Forgive Me Father 3 might really be something special.
Edit: I'ma keep it real with you. I do not think having to find 23 levers in a pyramid is a good level. That said, the game really does come into its own once you dial back the difficulty and get out of the starting stretch. The art is lovely, the music is hitting those Mick Gordon riffs, a lot of the later levels have their own very distinct aesthetics. You could do a lot worse than grabbing this on a sale.
2nd Edit: Found a bug in Ancient City. In the rising column leading out of the arena room towards the end, if you're in the column and rising and the last enemy is one of the flying cherubs and it rushes and explodes on you while you're ascending, you get dropped to the ground and the rising column no longer works, softlocking you.
3rd Edit: Rolled credits. The teleporter maze requiring you to enter the dark tubes doesn't feel super intuitive, especially because the warp point is further down the tube than in the light ones. Also the endboss feels fantastic, but this might be the only place where I'll say that I think it needs 3-4 more phases. Overall, this finishes strong and is such a huge step up from the first game. I'd recommend people start here and only go back to 1 if they're hankering for more.