If you’ve ever spent much time with a Souls-like, you’re familiar with some of the tropes and shortcomings that come along with it. From the punishing difficulty to the typical lack of guidance, for everything they get right, they get at least two or four things that could be better; yet we seem to forgive them just as much as we do Bethesda for consistently putting out buggy releases. The Last Hero of Nostalgaia recognizes this and never fails to try to right these wrongs or at the very least, lampoon them for a chuckle.

This title follows the overall design of Elden Ring in almost every facet, placing you in the world of Nostalgaia, a fictional land that is being corrupted by pixelization, and you are the only hero that is capable of saving it. Surprisingly, this is a more cohesive narrative that didn’t have to recruit George R.R. Martin’s help, often hilarious and not afraid to take the backseat, allowing you to explore, level, and take down the many bosses within. The same can be said for the weird cast of NPCs you occasionally find, which still speak in riddles, but are much clearer and less like trying to guess what you did to piss off your girlfriend or wife, which is still my favorite way of explaining the story of FROMsoft’s latest hit.

The trolling begins from the moment you create your character, since there is a rather in-depth character creator that allows you to change the look of your character as well as what class they are… except nothing but the class matters. No matter what you change, you’ll always look like a stick figure. That is until you begin acquiring gear, and even then you’ll still look like a stick figure, just one that is covered in armor. From here you are basically set loose on the world to do normal Souls-like things, with the only major change being that you’re in a very linear world that never hits the same scale as similar games, but it was fleshed out enough that I didn’t particularly care either. There are still plenty of nooks and crannies to loot chests and evade traps. If you were to ask me to compare the world to another game, I would say in scale alone, it’s close to the original Fable. As you progress, you’ll light the typical bonfires that not only un-pixelate the small surrounding area, but allow you to save your game, quick travel, and level up.

From here, you pretty much know what you’re getting into if you’ve played any other Souls-like, it’s essentially become a cookie-cutter outline that has been replicated for years to varied success, but it’s going to be a much easier time. It’s still challenging, but even if you’re not on the git gud level of skill, you could still progress (if not beat) this game with minor frustration. Combat is essentially the same with blocking, parries, and dodges being your friend, while managing your stamina is the biggest obstacle. I made it to the third boss encounter before I died a single time, as my high dexterity dual-wielding character was an expert at getting in and out of combat with ease, usually dispatching my foes with a single flurry of attacks. Needless to say, combat felt great, with the only major issue being that every time an enemy would land a hit on me, the game would kind of stutter just long enough that I found it difficult to regain my composure to escape and recalibrate before getting back into the fray. I am not sure if this was a style decision or a bug, but either way, I was not a huge fan of it as it’s one of my few complaints. If we’re being honest, you’re not supposed to get hit playing these types of games anyways.

Outside of this small annoyance, the game runs fairly well and never crashed or glitched in a game-breaking way; however, I have some issues with some obvious omissions that kept this game at being just shy of perfection for me. First off, there is no map. None, nothing whatsoever, and in turn, this makes quick traveling a bit awkward as you’ll have to mark a specific bonfire as your destination point, and then you can travel back to this one location from any other bonfire until you opt to replace it. Additionally, you cannot jump, which would’ve made exploration a bit more enjoyable.

Despite these issues, I really loved my time with this title, largely due to the presentation that manages to seamlessly incorporate a vast array of enemies and locations that each have their own look and feel, despite looking like they were cut and pasted together from a few dozen titles in a freakish Frankenstein-like manner. One moment I was fighting some low-rez bandits that looked like they jumped out of Fable, only to be flanked by the creepy-looking crawler creatures from the sewers of Silent Hill a few moments later. Don’t let the stick figure protagonist fool you, this is a stunning-looking game when it wants to be, which is mostly when you unlock a new save point, but beauty can be found if you know where to look for it.

If you’ve paid attention to the social media campaign for The Last Hero of Nostalgaia, you’ll notice a trend where they keep saying “Souls-like done right,” which is a bit of a stretch since this alludes to doing it better. With this being said, they have made some minor improvements to the tried and true formula, one of which is the addition of a much more user-friendly co-op setup. In Elden Ring, you must pick a specific location, throw down a symbol, and hope that someone else finds said symbol, and then is only available until you beat the next boss. Here, you essentially just select “Co-Op” and then invite someone. It’s that easy. Why can’t FROMsoftware make it this easy? Why do Reese’s Cups make my ass look huge? These are the important questions, and unfortunately, no one will ever know. I just wish the option for matchmaking had been a thing during my time with this pre-release, since everyone in my family suffers PTSD from my attempts at roping them in to play one of the previous cooperative Souls-likes in the past, but I love that the option is there for those who can take advantage of it.

Outside of this major change, I can’t say that The Last Hero of Nostalgaia changes the formula enough to be a game changer, but it is a worthy addition to the growing catalog of Souls-like games on the market, especially if you can find the humor in some of the worst aspects of them.

9 out of 10

Pros

• A Unique Style that Blends Themes and Ideas that Span Gaming
• A Fun Elden Ring Clone
• Co-Op Done Right
• An Accessible Challenge

Cons

• Combat Freezes When You’re Hit
• No Map or Jumping
• Wonky Quick Travel

The Last Hero of Nostalgaia was developed by Over The Moon and published by Coatsink. It is available on PC, X1 and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of The Last Hero of Nostalgaia, check out the game’s official site.

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

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