Forgive Me Father

Is this what being a good Christian is?

I'd give this a neutral review if I could. The aesthetic and setting are great. Weapons and enemies are decent. Level design is atrocious. A large amount of the game has narrow corridors and square arenas, similar to Wolfenstein 3D. An intermediate Doom mapper could probably make something several times more engaging. I also felt like I was shooting at cardboard cutouts sometimes. The pros barely outweigh the cons for me. Worth trying on a sale.

Forgive Me Father is a lovecraftian boomer shooter, which totally nails that vibe and really drags you into the atmosphere where horrific monsters and abominations want to end you as you try to work your way through them.
Pros:
- Looks really good and unique visually
- Runs really great performance wise
- OST is great
- Voice acting is well done
- You can choose between 2 characters at the beginning depending on the playstyle you want. Either aggressive or defensive
- Leveling up system, with each level you get a skill point which you can distribute in a skill tree (Upgrading your character or your weapons)
- Challenging and fast paced
- Boss fights
- Steam achievements and trading cards
Neutral:
- The game has a New Game+ which is neat, but I didn't feel like playing through the entire game again with the other character, maybe one day
- Endless gamemode if you are into that stuff (Unlocks after finishing the game)
- Story is okay, nothing special, for a boomer shooter it's totally great
Cons:
- At Act V When it's an underground map or whatever, is the worst map in the entire game, made me almost scoop my eyeballs out
- There was one or two areas where the performance dropped
8.5/10 Forgive Me Father is an amazing boomer shooter and I can easily recommend it to anyone looking for a great boomer shooter or just for games related to Lovecraftian stuff.

Few words about the game genre:
This game belongs to a subgenre of FPS, the so called boomer shooters or retro style FPS, that are inspired by popular FPS from the 90s. In other words, these are the games that emulate and improve on the feeling you get when playing FPS like DOOM 1 & 2, Quake 1, Duke Nukem 3D, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Hexen 1 & 2, Blood, System Shock and Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders.
If you like(d) playing such 90s FPS, then the modern games inspired by these legendary games just might be your cup of tea. Graphically they give a similar feeling when played, but they in many ways improve the experience by offering a smoother and more modernized gameplay experience.
Some good examples of such retro style (boomer) FPS (beside this game), would be: Dusk, Project Warlock, WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, Dread Templar, Hedon Bloodrite, Ion Fury, AMID EVIL and Immortal Redneck.
The review:
While perhaps not the best FPS ever made and also not among the most popular ones, Forgive Me Father is definitely one of the better indie FPS out there. A hidden gem with:
POSITIVE:
+ Cca 5-13 hours of content (depending on your pacing).
+ Smooth gameplay.
+ Awesome OST, good sound effects and voice acting.
+ Horror elements (got scared countless times).
+ Interesting comic book stylized graphics.
+ A retro FPS vibe.
+ Sufficient variety of enemies - each enemy has different movement and attack patterns and the stronger enemies don't go down after just one shot. I wouldn't say they are bullet sponges - just enough to challenge you. Also the enemy art design is really good.
+ Some RPG elements - by gaining experience you gain skill points, that you can invest in a skill tree.
+ If you are a more casual player or somewhat new to FPS, there is a ''Very Easy'' difficulty, and if you want a REAL challenge, this game has no problem offering some challenge even to the most versed and experienced of gamers with its ''Hard'' and ''Expert'' difficulty. Thanks to the multiple difficulty options, the challenge is there if you want it and as much as you want it. Sadly there is also a big negative concerning the difficulty in this game that needs to be addressed - so don't forget to read the negatives.
NEUTRAL:
+/- There's a Lovecraftian story that slowly reveals itself, mostly through clues and short texts, but this almost doesn't matter, since the way it reveals itself is at times really cryptic and mostly doesn't grab the players attention. That said, the ending of the plot is cool and unexpected.
+/- The game offers you a choice between 2 protagonists, each with their own skill tree. You can either play as a humble pastor or as a brave journalist. The pastor is more suitable for a defensive play style and the journalist is better for a more aggressive approach. The skill tree difference between the two characters isn't huge, but just enough to make them distinct. But I wouldn't really say the game gains much replay value just because of the 2 different characters.
+/- The game also uses a save point system, so you can't save any time you want. In my opinion the save points are well placed - usually just before a bigger challenge and if you die, you can retry as many times as you need.
+/- The variety of weapons isn't mind blowing and the weapon upgrades and perks won't make a huge difference, but they are there and they help.
+/- I strongly disagree with the people saying this game has bad level design - the level design is IMO interesting and varied from level to level... it is made to challenge the player, but I can imagine the way it is designed, that many things, that are fun and challenging on ''Easy difficulty'', become a real NIGHTMARE on the higher difficulty settings.
NEGATIVE:
- The biggest problem with this game IMO, is that the game's descriptions of the difficulty settings are misleading. The games ''Easy difficulty'' isn't really that easy and the games ''Normal difficulty'' is simply TOO HARD for a normal difficulty. I believe, that there are many negative reviews for this game simply because people were mislead and chose the wrong difficulty when they started playing. Some reviews describe this game as ''incredibly hard'' or ''punishing'', or one player wrote ''I die super fast'', and this is true for everything beyond the ''Easy difficulty''. Take this as a personal opinion, but if you are an average gamer (not new to FPS, but also not terribly skilled), I suggest that you play the ''Easy difficulty''. If you are quite skilled in FPS, then try playing the ''Normal difficulty'', and if you want to play the Dark Souls of FPS, then play the ''Expert difficulty''.
- Make sure you chose the right difficulty in the beginning, because you won't be able to change it later.
- Platforming in FPS is almost never fun, this game is no exception. Also there was an inconsistent part of the game where you could walk ''on air'' in certain parts, but fell to your death in the other...
- Upgrading a gun to use another type of ammo isn't always the best choice, because then you have more than one weapon that uses the same ammo - and performs the same ''function''. For example, if you have multiple weapons using explosive ammo, but in some situations explosive weapons are not the best choice. Or if you have multiple weapons using explosive ammo, but you're out of explosive ammo. In such situations you suddenly can't use multiple guns, and your survival chances are decreased.
- Be careful in what upgrades and perks you invest, because there is no way to reset the skill tree.
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TL;DR: A VERY challenging, but also very rewarding and fun FPS. I definitely recommend this game, it's a hidden gem, but be very careful when choosing the difficulty. For an average gamer, I'd suggest playing for the first time on ''Easy difficulty'', because the game is VERY hard, and the games difficulty descriptions are IMO missleading.
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FPS are not my jam, despite that, I am recommending this game for those that do enjoy FPS because it is actually super cool. The art style and atmosphere is awesome with a brilliant retro feel. The story narration style reminds me very much of Geralt in Witcher 3, not so similar that it felt "stolen" but gave the game a sort of journalistic feel to it. The skill tree is neat and the replayability is huge. All up if I wanted to play an FPS, this would be it.
Edit: first time in ages I've played a FPS that didn't give me motion sickness and migraine either.

This is a pretty qualified recommendation, which is because the game isn't that good. It is interesting, though. This game is pretty heavily inspired by Painkiller - a horror themed arena FPS with a leveling system and special powers. It's not Painkiller, though, mostly because of lack of polish. What I like about the game outweighs the stuff I don't, and I'm happy I played it, so I'll start with that:
> The game has a lot of charm. It's got some translation problems, but that sort of enhances things, and gives everything a really nice "b-movie" feeling. Lovecraftian horror (and Lovecraftian boomer shooters) are pretty common, but this game has its own twist on stuff that goes beyond "sleepy new england town with tentacle monsters". This has really carried me through.
> The game also (generally) looks very good. Very distinct levels and zones, and something that I really appreciated, which is that it's happy being a video game with levels, and doesn't necessarily try to make everything realistic, even the "real" environments like a city or a ship. I think this is a big benefit to making it feel otherworldly. I've found myself taking screenshots of vistas and environments that I think are cool, and that will probably be one of the main things that sticks with me.
> The weapons are pretty cool. There are some stinkers (which I'll talk about in the negatives), but core weapons like the shotgun, the energy rifle, and the auto-rifle are all very snappy and fun.
> The spritework on the enemies is very, very good. It's an unique style, and there are many nice touches like funny death animations (the Ghoul dropping its own tombstone makes me smile every time), multiple enemy sprites per enemy type, and animation that fits the visual style well.
> When the game is an arena shooter it's a pretty good one. It's not amazing, but you can tell that encounters were designed with intent, and sometimes they are very, very enjoyable to figure out how to handle an enemy onslaught.
With that being said, I can understand negative reviews. There's a lot of stuff that I've had to put aside as I've played, and honestly it's going to be hard to finish (although I'm probably near the end). These are the negatives that made me almost decide to not review at all:
> The bosses suck. The first one, which is basically the cyberdemon fight from DOOM 2016, is OK, and then as you progress it's a bunch of very bad gimmicks that overstay their welcome. I know FPS bosses are hard to design well, but these are generally some of the worst examples I've played. I've nearly quit twice just because I almost didn't feel like doing what the game clearly intended, but then made very difficult and annoying to achieve.
> Some enemies are... very bad. This reminds me of unpatched Build in terms of putting a bunch of fast projectiles at one end of a square and you at the other and then having you take potshots at the enemies as they rain bullets on you. There's also a mimic character that is used for dumb jumpscares, but mostly just takes off your shield and weakens you for an encounter until you retry and shoot it before it wakes up. Way too many enemies have teleports, meaning you have to track them around the arena, which isn't a challenge, it's just annoying. Altogether this gets extremely tiring, especially as the encounters throw more and more of the bad enemies at you to ramp up difficulty.
> The visual style gets in the way of encounter design, as enemies frequently blend into walls, scenery, shrubbery, etc. I guess this is intentional, but it's not very fun.
> Level design is lacking. The game is mostly a key / switch hunt, which is fine, but there also aren't supports to help you find switches, and sometimes there are too many paths that are both branching but redundant. There's also a few levels I just ran through because of...
> The darkness mechanic is a neat idea, but I hate it. I get trying to set up tension with dark areas where you can't use your weapon in favor of a flashlight, but it's just not very well done. Some levels are entirely dark! Have fun with that. I didn't, I just ran past everything to the exit. In fact...
> In general, whenever you're not shooting, the game is sort of bad. Platforming is bad, puzzles (such as they exist) aren't great, and set-pieces that aren't just finding a key are often very wonky and poorly implemented. I appreciate the effort to mix up gameplay, but whenever you're not moving around an arena at 60 MPH shooting something it's just not great.
> Overall, while you have powers, they don't feel very good. You upgrade them, sure, but the guns are way more fun and effective to use, so all of my upgrade points went there. I kind of suspect that the skill tree is one of the things holding this game back. I know that DOOM '16 and Eternal did it, I know painkiller did it, but I would've had more fun with a more linear upgrade system, or maybe no upgrade system at all.
> Speaking of, some guns are just plain bad until you upgrade, and some guns are bad all the way through. The heavy guns seem to suffer especially. They barely do more damage than an upgraded shotgun you can get by map 3, and are pretty finicky and hard to use (the grenade launcher and the rocket launcher especially). I'd compare this unfavorably to Cultic, where every single gun is useful given a situation, and the upgrade mechanics allow you to tailor them to your playstyle.
This probably seems like a negative review overall, but honestly my general impression is positive, I just wish that the game was better. I still don't regret buying or playing it, however the feeling of missed potential lingers on as I'm nearing the end.
I'd say give it a shot if: you really like the art style, you really like Painkiller, or you are interested in jankier "b-movie" games that aren't necessarily polished. I hope the devs do a follow-up with whatever they've learned from this one, because there does seem to be something here that just needs more iteration and refinement.

Start game
Second line of dialogue: "Forgive me father"
10/10