Man, was this game development dragged through the mud, again and again. Rebooted twice, name change, rebranding, and then back again. Multiple developers, till they decided to make their own studio to finish the job. Which they did, what was the end result?
I didn't expect this game to really hit it off. Nothing about the new studio struck me as hidden talents that knew they were making a really good Souls-like. A lot of developers have tried, and few failed at where most have succeeded. But hear me out, you don't have to play this game with those kind of expectations. What if I told you Lords of the Fallen is something quite unique?
I swear, I do this to myself, I remember playing the Gothic games, and those were terrible RPGs. God help anyone who've played those. Yet, a deep seated curiosity created by odd European developers have been ingrained in my mind since then. For some reason, this game itches that scratch.
Out of the fancy cutscene that reeks doom and gloom into the most obtuse and pointless character creator. Picking a ranger class, I can dual wield my axe or hold a shield with it by the press of a button. There's also other literal world changing things. Like shifting dual realities.
I played enough souls-like to know that recent games are taking the established formulas from popular releases and somehow creating their own spin on them. And it's clear that as a reboot, this game derives almost everything it could from majority of new releases, and put it on the shell of what the original's combat mechanics was like.
I want to bring up about how gameplay works here, but before that I do need to preface with something; this came out as a broken mess on PC over a week ago. Saves getting corrupted when games crash, horrible performance stability, and the other lot of technical mess.
I chose to play a ranger for an hour and half, and was familiarized with this lamp that highlights the undead world, Umbral. Holding the lamp allows me to go through passages that are locked in the Avion. But what's even crazier, just holding X I can shift to the Umbral realm.
And, it's basically this game's version of hell. Specific areas have the eye, and will slowly summon shadow beings that follow me, I can kill them and even farm for currency because there's a multiplier that increases longer I stay, unfortunately that's also asking for serious trouble. Tougher enemies show up, and they're true definition of absolute torture.
The lamp is important for opening up areas blocked or for puzzle solving, I can also use to soulflay, that basically drags an enemy's soul for a brief moment and as exposed, I can attack it for damage. My health withers as it turns white, but can return that by hitting enemies, or lose it in one hit.
It's not the most grounded game, specifically I can block some of even the strongest attacks, including from bosses, and somehow miraculously dodge attacks with unavoidable hit detection. Combat is meager, kind of standardized casuals souls, up until much later in the game.
Unfortunately, this is where my ranger's journey ended. Because after finishing the first boss, and dying to a story boss, when I was fighting in the village, the power went out and I saw after booting my PC up after a few minutes, my saves were gone. Corrupted as the game says.
This was one of the few big issues of release product. There were others, like wonky animation, dad hit detection, janky controls, and other mechanical complains that shouldn't have been there. Almost convinced the game was done for, and my time was wasted. Lo and behold, they started patching this up like crazy, and by the 19th, I was back.
By this point, I played as a dark crusader with new character, a titular role the game's story went with. After an hour of fast-tracking progress from before, I've gotten to appreciate more of it as it was easier to play. Most of the bugs, technical issues, and mechanical jargon got fixed.
Surprisingly it took them 6 days to do all that. It's not perfect yet, but I've managed to get this running at a solid 60FPS with most of the settings at high. There was also another reason I started to appreciate more of the game, and it had to do with the drop dead gorgeous visuals.
It's one thing to use the absolute latest gaming engine, it's another to create a whole world around it so lush with decrepit details, and blooming effects. And the places it'll take me to, even mountain villages, so wet and sticky. And you bet a UE5 game has ray-tracing. Albeit am kind of unlucky considering that I use an AMD card to run this.
The visuals help to generally evoke the survival horror and gothic atmosphere every time I explore each level, and while the game feels a bit linear with its design, it goes well with the art and doesn't make me think of anything that is wrong with how they layered them.
And speaking of survival horror, that's how I can sum up the gameplay right after my second boss fight. There are passage ways hidden, that require the lamb to be used in order to get through. What gets even trickier, when I fully morphed into the Umbral under a bridge.
Ghouls are hitting me everywhere, I had to interact with an item in order to find a key to this gate that's locked. Next thing I know, these shadows that can hide in the ground and pop up, kills me several times. They scare the daylights out of me. Of course, one fight all I had to do was parry its attacks, and it was easily done for. Soon as I opened the gate, I was relieved.
Then I went to the mountain village, it was night and raining, and full of enemies waiting to surprise me while I also run and climb things. Controls aren't the most fluid, they're fine, but in this game's case, it was aggravating. I died so much exploring here, fell off cliffs, got pushed off, and beaten to pulp, before a boss fight with a lady archer and her dogs really took me out.
Outside the world shifting mechanic, and the part where I suck souls, majority of the game design around combat is easy to approach and accessible, especially with so many different weapons to try out. It's easy to upgrade those, max health, and find better loot. Yet I still haven't gotten to unlocking the second souls slot, over 7hrs in my second playthrough.
The camera is also something am at odds with at times, because I want to shift to different sights as much as I can to maintain area awareness. It also gets tricky during fights. But aside that, mostly fine if tolerable. But I can see certain people will be turned off by this in combat.
The world building, and the characters here aren't anything to push the envelope in games like this, yet it's not so bad on its own. Different people have different agendas, and personalities. It's pretty spread out. They give you errands that take you to interesting places.
The boss fights in this game are hit and miss. I fought off Pieta, who was literally like Joan of Arc grew wings, and turned the field into a bloodbath. Like, serious carnage levels of chaos. Other times like I am fighting this monster I accidentally fell down to, and weirdest thing is, I beat him at first try. They are kind of inconsistent at times in terms of balancing.
Enemies don't have much variety, seen them once within the 5hrs playthrough, they kind of be the same afterwards. Plus, dear god, the way they are hidden in sight, the game tests my patience. But the Umbral realm is where the real fun is at as it gets tougher, especially with friends playing co-op.
It's already popular in Steam, and many issues are patched out. The devs are still in work. I even have to add that this game has brilliant production value overall, including the audio design, and BGM. Surviving the umbral involving using items, and not overstaying really brings different level of fun.
Don't let any mainstream reviewers dissuade you, it's not as strenuous or difficult as they're putting it, it won't win awards or change the paradigm for other action games either. Maybe wait a few more days before the patches fix more issues like UI bugs, and things should be good to go. Plus, in some ways, it is better than the original Lords of the Fallen even if not as good as other releases this year.
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