Lords of the Fallen

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Lords of the Fallen review
Jordan Helsley

Review

A Sophomore Effort

When the original Lords of the Fallen released the world was an entirely different place. Think about 2014 for a moment: the ice bucket challenge, everyone was singing Let It Go, we lost comedy legend Robin Williams, and "souls-like" was an undefined nonsense term. To top it all off, it wasn't even a particularly good game. Since then, and amidst the creation and proliferation of an entire subgenre, the follow up ran the gamut of naming conventions (the classic numbering, a numberless subtitle, and the modern, edgy "The" prefix) and saw a couple developer changes. On the other side of all of that struggle comes, well, Lords of the Fallen, but in 2023.

To put it up front: Lords of the Fallen is an exercise in pure frustration. From its confusing name to its unrealized potential, there's a lot of ways to look at this game that are nothing if not maddening. For one, it's gorgeous. Or, it can be, if you can run it. More likely it is another big-ticket Unreal Engine 5 game this year that misses performance targets. While I certainly wasn't running it on the best hardware for the majority of my time with it, my main PC is no slouch. Still, I had to spend an extra hour or so dialing in the settings to avoid the framerate halving itself simply because I was sprinting. Microstutters and general framerate dips were the norm for me, though, until I bottomed out the settings. I have to give DLSS credit for making it look passable at that point, but it shouldn't have been necessary. Even on a brief test on a top of the line gaming rig the performance wasn't what I would consider smooth. It's a shame, because a lot of care was clearly placed into the visuals of this world.

Beautiful Yet Dangerous


Level design is a standout, both in architecture and decoration. Each area feels lovingly crafted and from an exploration standpoint it was splendid. There's this consistency to the art of everything that's both dark and beautiful, sinister and welcoming. Medieval fantasy gothic-type stuff is normally not what I gravitate towards, but the touches of dark underworld and, dare I say, Eldritch inspirations came together gracefully. It has this "high-fantasy H.R. Geiger" feel that is fairly unique, even among its inspirations. This wonder extends to the interconnectedness of the world. There are vistas you can gaze upon and see beacons of light, things you will eventually be cleansing, clear as day, giving you a glimpse into what your future holds. And while the enemies stick to a more familiar high-fantasy style, they fit in with the entire design ethos well enough to make it work.



There's some issues with the enemies, though. As you'd expect, you will run into mini-boss level characters, true tests of wit engaged in a one-on-one fight. Once it's over, you can feel good about yourself and your abilities. Then there's another. Two at a time. Several with some fodder enemies hitting you in the back or sniping at you. Lords of the Fallen doesn't get its pacing right. There are so few moments of coming down from the pressure of the assaults against you that you're likely to get tired of fighting before truly mastering the combat that requires plenty of forgiveness from the player. There's enough about the combat that leads you to feel totally out of control. Attacks in this game have distance, sometimes taking you off a cliff, and a lack of precision, causing you to miss hits completely to the side. The lock-on system constantly targeted the wrong opponent in a sea of bodies, someone in the back or off to a different side. Top it off with enemies that can routinely one-hit you, either up close or at a distance. You're incentivized to run through areas, but you're still susceptible to those one-hit-kills, sticky geometry, and enemies that will chase you seemingly endlessly.

It Came From The Underworld


Lords of the Fallen didn't respect my time. These trials of standard enemies (not bosses, not mini bosses) can take a lot of effort to get through, but your respawn points are spaced out enough to turn them into savage gauntlets. Not much felt good about engaging with enemies along my path, and I got tired of dying for reasons that didn't feel like faults of my own, something its contemporaries get praise for. Other moments of wasted time include having to wait for not one, but two, elevators to come up (then down, of course) on the most direct path between respawn and boss fight, and an unskippable boss intro movie. Both are events that were repeated several times, and actively pushed me away.

The unique mechanics came up short too often, too. The main premise is this: there's a death-world (The Umbral) that exists in parallel to your reality. You can peer into it with your lantern, step into it at any time, and go there when you die. There are only two ways out of The Umbral, death and safe points. It's this element of Soul Reaver that initially had me ready to take on this world. It shows well right up front, and adds an interesting element to your various challenges. In The Umbral, you'll encounter additional enemies that increase in strength the more time you spend there, culminating in a basically unkillable stalker at the end. As your time increases, so does your Vigor (read: Souls) multiplier. This risk/reward mechanic is one of the most successful elements of the game, and feels deliberately pushed upon you as a way to grind out experience.

There's several extended and difficult sections throughout the game that require you to be in The Umbral to progress. Swarmed by enemies and afflicted with Wither (which downs your total health) you're even more of a fragile meatbag than you are in the real world. It's tough, no doubt, but not in a way that feels totally fair when it all comes together. The most disappointing was also the most intriguing mechanic: the element of Vestige Seeds. It works like this: there are flower beds in The Umbral that allow you plant seeds from either realm. When you do you create a respawn point there. You'd be forgiven for thinking when you see one you might want to utilize it, despite the seeds being a very limited resource. I thought it was neat. A bit of a risk/reward when you're working through a tough area. Execution is a struggle though. Respawning in the middle of enemies isn't ideal, nor is finding a flower bed after a tough area or boss fight and planting, only to find I wasted that seed because not 100 feet down the path was a standard "bonfire."



It is frustrating, because there are plenty of elements to like about Lords of the Fallen. The act of stringing light and heavy attacks together while mixing it up with a stance change or a ranged attack feels great. The out of combat movement feels smooth and quick, so much so that I would compare it more to an action game than a soulslike. The aforementioned level designs beg you to explore at your own peril. Bosses usually hit a great balance of design, challenge, and satisfaction. Even the world they've built here, with its dark religious themes, spooky ghost realm, and characters that long for a savior, sustain the story pretty well. These are all things that require bashing your head against a wall unlike any other game of this type and general quality. Maybe if they scaled back the enemy numbers a bit, or if they made your ranged attacks more impactful, or if they allowed you to increase your ranged ammo earlier on, then we'd have another great soulslike, and generally great game, in 2023. Too many of its good parts have a frustrating side, though.

Hard To Recommend


It's tough for me to be hard on Lords of the Fallen. The entire time I played it I wanted to see more, but the game pushed back on me in too many unfortunate ways to find joy in the overall experience. If it wasn't for this review, I likely would have given up before even conquering one of the five macguffins in the game. Instead I took the long hard road through this world, and came away more frustrated than satisfied. Even at the end, having ignored speccing for weapons in favour of more health (something that the design leads me to believe is most important for the developers) and having become accustomed to the combat, I felt no more equipped to handle what the game was throwing at me than fresh out of the character creator. Even as the enemies didn't change a whole lot throughout, the comfortability curve was left behind by the difficulty curve long ago.

I thought maybe it was a skill issue, maybe a levelling issue, but so much of the pushback was out of my hands, leaving me without any logical way to reasonably overcome them using the game's tools. I walked away from my time with Lords of the Fallen feeling defeated even in my victory. It was a tough road, the toughest of all the souls-and-likes in execution and also, at least partially, gameplay. I lost more levels worth of Vigor than maybe all the other games combined, but I didn't feel like I overcame some finely crafted challenge. Most damning of all, though, despite its attempts to differentiate itself with unique mechanics, I never forgot the games that inspired it through the entire runtime.


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5.0

fun score

Pros

Act of stringing attacks together feels great, the unique look and interaction with the underworld is visually appealing and invites investigation.

Cons

Combat feels imprecise, enemy quantity is favored over creative engagements, there’s a general lack of respect for time, and nearly all positive and engaging aspects are overshadowed by their related problems.