Lords of The Fallen

An Excellent Reboot

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Platform:PS5 Xbox X|S PC

Reviewed on: PC

Developer: HEXWORKS

Publisher: Ci Games

Release: Oct 13, 2023

Time Played: 26 Hours

Genre: Dark Fantasy RPG

ESRB: M

Lords of The Fallen is a reboot of the same titled game released back in 2014, now I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing the original, but from what I hear around the way it was not very good. Hopefully if you did have some bad experiences with the original it didn’t leave a bad taste because this game was a lot of fun, if your into the souls-like genre. So stick around and allow me to give you a decent overview of what you can expect should you play it yourself, and then I’ll rate the game, placing it on one of the lovely shelves behind me.

Where it Starts:

A long time ago, a cruel god known as Adyr was finally defeated and their rain of tyranny was over. But being an all powerful deity, Adyr won’t stay down forever. With Adyr’s resurrection around the corner, it’s up to a Black Crusader to set out into the cruel world and stop it from happening. Equipped with a special lamp that can stave off death, you’ll have to fight your way through enemies in the land of the living, as well as the undead.

Can the kids watch?:

There wasn’t any poor language to worry about and there was a lot of blood while fighting, but most of it isn’t a bright red that stands out, it mostly looks like oil or goo. The only real worry I would have would be the possibility of nightmares from some of the enemies. A few of them are quite disgustingly scary.

Gameplay:

Character Creation

Starting out there was a short character creation section, allowing you to customize how you want your face and body to look. It wasn’t basic, but it wasn’t terribly complicated either, you won’t be spending hours fine tuning every little thing. After that you get to choose a starting class. They each have a specialty with armor and stat points to match so it’s easy to pick one that fits your playstyle. Or there is even an option to grab a job that has nothing, allowing you to decide where every little stat point goes.

Axiom vs. Umbral

The unique mechanic that sets this game apart from the souls-like family, would be the traveling between parallel realms throughout the game. Axiom, the land of the living where you spend most of your time, and Umbral, the land of the dead. Getting through the game would involve exploring both areas for minor differences like a platform only existing for the dead, or iron bars in Axiom disappearing in the Umbral. There were also treasures to be found in both, so it didn’t hurt to look around in the same area twice. Most of the time there was a choice on when to enter the Umbral, but sometimes enemies would decide for you. They can pull you in if you investigate the Umbral for too long with your lamp, or they could kill you. Causing you to rise again in the realm of the dead.

Umbral Lamp

The Umbral Lamp is a key tool used to look or even go into the Umbral. It also had some useful combat abilities, like pulling the soul away from an enemy for you to attack and get a lot of damage done in a fight, but only weaker enemies, the big ones didn’t really care. There were also times an enemy might have a parasite living in the Umbral beefing up their defense, the parasites could be pulled out of existence with the lamp. Umbral Lamp combat was interesting, but I never really used it unless I had to in order to beat an enemy. It never felt worth it to utilize in combat, I just stuck with beating the enemies with weapons.

So Much Gear!

A ton of weapons and armor can be found throughout the land of Mournstead. I found so many and to be honest was a little overwhelmed with all of the options. I found a couple dex weapons early on and stuck with those. And there was some really cool looking armor, I stuck a bell on my head and never took it off. Giving the age old problem of wanting to look cool versus what armor really helps in a fight. I only updated the armor when certain bosses started to really hurt.

Combat

The combat was easy enough to figure out, attack, dodge, and parry all while watching the mechanics of the enemies and the stamina bar. It did feel like everything moved a little slower than I was used to, so the fights didn’t require fast thinking and breakneck moves. I generally go for faster builds that dodge attacks rather than block, and the i-frames while dodging in this game were very generous. The window for dodging an attack was so big, it was easy to keep out of the way of most attacks, after I learned what was coming anyway.

Enemies

There were quite a few different enemies in the game, but a lot of them were re-used. Usually reskinned, maybe a little stronger, and using a different element to attack with, but still basically the same. Enemies in the Axiom will show up in the Umbral, but Umbral enemies only live there. It was best to try and take out enemies in Axiom before checking out the Umbral so as not to be overwhelmed, enemies in the Umbral will constantly be spawning, the longer your there the more dangerous things get.

Exploration

I was surprised to find how big this game ended up being. It seemed everywhere I went had branching paths that go for a long time before finding out it was a dead end. And with the use of Axiom and Umbral it gets to be twice as big, in a sense. I liked the fact that most of the time going down a branching path that wasn’t the way, I still felt rewarded with different gear or items found at the end. I only got lost a couple of times and that was due to missing a doorway or a lever. It did kind of suck having to check both Axiom and Umbral to see any differences in the land to move forward, but I eventually found my way.

Difficulty

I would say Lords of The Fallen was a pretty easy souls-like game to get through. The biggest problems didn’t necessarily have anything to do with a tough enemy or mechanics. The toughest parts of the game were when I was overwhelmed by enemies all attacking at different times, making it impossible to avoid getting hit. I found myself running through a lot of areas instead of properly searching due to the sheer number of ruthless enemies around.

Gameplay Issues:

Lords of The Fallen brought some new interesting mechanics into the genre, I really enjoyed jumping between the parallels to hunt for new loot and explore new areas. There were a few times it felt very overwhelming with enemies constantly spawning in the Umbral on top of what was already naturally occurring, I ended up exploring at a fast pace running everywhere. I usually like the challenge that a souls-like brings with the unforgiving mechanics when you don’t move just right, but in a lot of cases when it came to this game I just couldn’t wrap my head around how to take on so many enemies at once, each attacking at a different pace making it impossible to dodge or block attacks. Perhaps there may have been some AoE options if I decided to go with magic, but I hardly ever play with magic.

I also had an issue with the tracking system. There were situations where I would try and move away from an enemy to get some breathing room and start fighting. While moving if I tried to target them the camera would zoom behind me, not target the enemy sitting in the middle of my camera. Other oddities would be targeting an enemy at the back of a mob, far out of range instead of the enemy right in front of me, no idea why it would think I want to fight that guy all the way over there, but it did.

Conclusion:

Those were really the only big issues I had when playing, still overall I liked the game, it was fun and feels like a good addition to the souls-like family. The developers have been hard at work nearly every day since release to patch any big issues players are having so some of the main gripes people have may be gone soon. So, without further ado, let’s get these ratings underway.

The game looked alright, it was fascinating to see how much the world changed when in the Umbral with the various undead vines traveling everywhere and the freaky eyes sticking out of the walls. Most of the enemies ended up looking the same, but with different abilities, I wasn’t very impressed with that, I’m giving it a three.

The story was a little convoluted, I could sort of follow it through conversations and listening to memories. It was an interesting world to discover and playthrough, I’m going with another three.

The ability to travel from Axiom to the Umbral was very cool and well done, but like I said earlier some of the tracking issues I had and seemingly unfair fights against to many foes really bugs me, I’m giving it a two.

I had a hard time deciding how replayable this game is, there are choices to be made changing story and stuff, but the game is so freaking big! Not that that is a problem, I just don’t see myself going through everything again just to experience the differences, so I’m going with another two.

I had some fun, when I was exploring new areas and figuring out new bosses, but I did get lost a few times, wasting maybe a total of two hours of my playtime, I’d say I feel pretty mid overall, so that’s a three.

Giving Lords of The Fallen an average score of two point six. Placing it on the Midshelf. If your into souls-like I would say it’s a pretty good game to try out. The issues I had are easily dealt with they didn’t impede my game much.