A Brutal Dark Fantasy: The Bearer & The Last Flame PS5 Review

The Bearer & The Last Flame is a dark fantasy action-adventure set in the extinct land of men, where darkness has ravaged every sign of life. You play as a living soul tasked with a holy commission: to carry the last flame into the night and illuminate the five kingdoms overrun by demons and the soulless dead. It is a quest for courage and determination where you must return these abyssal creatures to the shadows and bring a halo of hope back to the mountains of Selender.

Developer: Dark Reaper Studio

Publisher: Meridiem Games

Genre: Action RPG / Dark Fantasy

Release Date: March 6, 2026

Website: Official Site

UK Store: PlayStation Store

Specs & HUD | Gameplay & Mechanics | Performance & Fidelity | Settings & Customisation

The Bearer & The Last Flame PlayStation 5 Review: Specs & HUD

• 22.94GB Download size.
• Platinum trophy available for the hunters.
• Enemies health bars show when you lock into them, and locking in shows a white dot to denote who’s locked in.
• Hide Hud option available in game settings.
• The writing is very small on the few tutorial pop-ups you get, and this also carries over to the item descriptions.
• I like the colour and glow that comes from dead enemies, to say it has a pick up.
• You have a running stats screen that shows playtime, deaths, kills, and the current level of your character.

Gameplay Review & Mechanics Breakdown

The Bearer & The Last Flame is an Action RPG gameplay experience that is Soulslike in many ways, from the atmosphere to the story, and corpse runs. You die and drop everything, and you have one life to return it, and I had to find out the hard way that corpse run is a thing in the game and that you do leave behind a green flame. It uses the you died font and colours from Dark Souls and the bonfire icons, enemy types, etc. You have ten characters to choose from, and it’s more about where they came from, with the village acting as your hub area. You can teleport here from bonfires, and when you are here, you have a shop to buy items and a blacksmith to upgrade weapons and buy new ones. The area is big, and you can explore and find doors and areas to unlock.

Enemies drop items and souls, which are the currency of the game, and you have a stamina system in place that goes down with running and attacking. You have strong and light attacks with melee weapons, where the strong one has a bit of a charge-up time to it. There are breakable objects in the world, and they are illuminated; break them to get materials and resources that you need to upgrade weapons and gear. Upgrading shows materials and resources needed and says green for you have them all and red for what you need. You can find and unlock shortcuts to help with backtracking, and loot chests can be found everywhere. You can imbue weapons with elements onto your weapon like lightning or fire, for the massive boss encounters.

However, it’s in rough shape. I can see glimmers of a game and one I do want to play; it has enough obscurity and intrigue, but the controls, the combat, and all of that are so clumsy and overcomplicated or just bad that I cannot dig in. Lock on is not good; it breaks easily, your character won’t attack in the right direction despite the lock on, and it hardly ever swaps the lock on for multiple attackers. Hit detection is not great, and more often than not, you end up hitting the wall. I did the test, and for the most part, you can run past a lot of enemies, as the combat is not that fun. There are so many materials, resources, and items, and you get no guidance on them. Within like ten minutes, I had a whole page of items. No matter what happens, I take damage when blocking with a shield and healing items seem to just evaporate, and I get respawned with none, and it’s just frustrating. The grind for souls for upgrades and levelling up is real! You have to do so much for so little gain. Sign posting in the game is not great, and with the many routes, it’s not great. Many times, you will see a wall-covered door open into an empty room. No point, it’s just there. In this current state, the game is just not fun to play.

The Bearer & The Last Flame PlayStation 5 Review: Performance & Fidelity

• Decent graphics with worlds that look fantastic and are so vast, sometimes to its detriment, as it’s like a maze full of doors and staircases everywhere.
• Display modes – HDR brightness slider, and graphic detail (performance/native vrr/native/ultra/high).
• The lightning looks good; it’s constantly needed as the world is so dark, and it uses up a hand slot, which sucks, but it looks good.
• Uses the DualSense speaker for sound effects and character noises, and it has slight haptic feedback for the vibrations.
• The performance is not great, with a lot of stuttering and slowdown.
• Pop in happens in certain locations and flames.
• When you walk downstairs, you almost trip over them. It’s very slow.
• The Ai has them walking in circles or getting stuck in a wall or many other things.
• Story elements are nearly all text-based, and so far and few between that I forget about it.

Settings, Customisation & Control Details

• Four save slots and a save and quit option are a nice touch.
• Tutorial pop-ups as you play.
• Third-person view, and you have 360-degree camera controls.
• Volume sliders for voices, SFX, and music sliders.
• Camera settings – Invert axis and sensitivity slider, and something called camera braking smoothness slider.
• Game settings – blood, enable players’ own light, auto select next enemy in lock mode, and mute background music except for boss fights.
• Load out wise you can have two weapons in left and right hands, four armour slots for chest/helm/legs/hands, two rings, ammo, and two magic and faith slots.
• I do like the d-pad shortcuts for changing weapons equipped.

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