Faith: The Unholy Trinity Review – You Gotta Have Faith

Pick up your crucifix and stand against the forces of darkness in a terrifying story of possession, cults, and fear, now with all three chapters of Faith brought together in one collection.

Faith: The Unholy Trinity
Developer: Airdorf Games
Price: $15
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was provided with a PC code for review.

A few years ago, I played a short horror game called Faith about a priest attempting to exorcise a demon from a young girl at an isolated home. I enjoyed it enough to play the sequel, Faith: Chapter II. Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for the release of Faith: Chapter III, and now it’s finally out as part of the newly-released Faith: The Unholy Trinity, which gathers all three chapters together as a single game.

When you begin, you have the option to either pick one of the three chapters to play or choose Marathon Mode to play all three chapters in succession. Each chapter also has special settings and other bonuses to unlock as you play, such as the option to replay Chapter I with everything covered in darkness. This has the unfortunate effect of requiring you to go through several menus just to start or continue a game, but that’s a minor flaw that makes sense in a collection of three games.

The controls in Faith are simple. You can walk, and you can raise your cross. There are a handful of points that introduce other types of gameplay, but those are the rare exceptions. Holding up your cross lets you exorcise objects in the environment, which will begin to flash until the exorcism is finished. This usually rewards you with a note that helps to expand the backstory and lore. Each chapter has several notes for you to gather. Chapter II and Chapter III also have some puzzles you’ll need to solve, often relying on a riddle or clues in the environment.

Your cross also has another vital purpose: warding off or destroying demons. Numerous demons will attack you, and that cross is your only defense. You can’t walk and hold it up at the same time, adding to the tension as you try to keep a safe distance from the demons. What makes encounters even more tense is that you die in a single hit. This often means encounters start to feel like trial-and-error, and you’re likely to die many, many times. This is frustrating in Chapter I, where the saves are sporadic, but both subsequent chapters save frequently enough to mitigate the frustration.

The graphics have a simple, retro style without a lot of detail. The first chapter in particular uses a limited color palette for most of its areas, which makes the few things in other colors stand out even more. You might think these simple graphics would make it difficult for Faith to have any scary visuals, but it counters that with its use of rotoscoped cutscenes. These scenes are short, but the graphics paired with the fluid motion cause them to have a truly unsettling effect. It also uses its audio to great effect. While I could have done without the computerized voices, which work well when it’s a demon screaming at you but are hard to take seriously when it’s a full conversation, the rest of the sound design and music do wonders to enhance the atmosphere.

Disturbing aesthetics aside, Chapter I mainly achieves horror through its ambiguity. Is there really demonic activity at work here, or did fear cause the priest to misinterpret what he was seeing? While the later chapters still include an element of this ambiguity, they come down much heavier on the occult side of the question. Yes, demons have been summoned and are possessing people, and you need to stop their dark ritual before it’s too late. Chapter II ups the tension with some decidedly creepy moments, and Chapter III surpasses it with well-placed scares and intense encounters that had me sweating.

Faith is a fairly short game, with the first chapter taking an hour or less to beat, the second chapter coming in at 1-2 hours, and the third chapter being the longest at around 3 hours. Chapter III takes place over a series of days, with a different area to investigate each day, allowing for more varied locations than the first two had and a broader view of the story. All three chapters also have multiple endings based on your actions at certain points, so the short playtime helps to encourage replays.

I had a great time returning to Faith. The first two chapters hold up as short, tense horror games despite some trial-and-error gameplay, and the new Faith: Chapter III is an excellent addition and probably the best of the three. Whether you’re a returning fan or a new one, Faith: The Unholy Trinity is a horror game worth checking out.

The Final Word
After all these years, the final chapter of Faith turned out to be worth the wait, and with all three chapters bundled in the Unholy Trinity release, there’s never been a better time to play. The dangerous world of Faith requires some patience, but the unsettling atmosphere and intense demonic encounters make it worthwhile for anyone who loves the horror genre.

MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good