Lords of the Fallen (2023)

The souls games are formulated around an experience and vision. Many souls likes do not understand the vision. This is a good game, but it is fundamentally a copy and paste without understanding the gameplay vision of the genre.

The main problem is that the combat and balance are a little all over the place. Bosses are a little too easy to kill.

The game now is in a good state, compared to it's earlier version. It is very similar to Code Vein in feel and combat design.

It has a very interesting approach to building the character that adds a little more than what fromsoft does. But the lack of weapon specials really hurts the gameplay loop, there are very few special weapon moves.

The magic is really interesting and reminds me of Fable 1.

Meh. Decidedly not great. Just too boring and repetitive. The level design is just too confusing and without proper environmental queues to orient yourself. Add the stupid umbral that changes how thing looks, and I just died and don't know where to go to get my XP back. Enemy AI is very inconsistent, sometimes you can walk past right next to them without aggro, sometimes you can't backstab them because they see you with eyes on the back of their heads. And the backstab also works only some of the time?

If the game had more interesting bosses (at least at the start) and better art design, I might push through, but what I've seen so far is a parade of generic grimdark swamps and not a memorable encounter in sight.

Having played and completed all the FromSoftware soulslike games, was excited to try this.

Was quite fun until Pilgrims Perch. That was it for me. Bad level design, ridiculously annoying enemy design, placement and density. Have to fight a stupid bucket head guy in umbral, mage range-spamming me from afar, 3 extra umbral dudes spawn, target lock is janky, attacking moves my character too much, inevitably fall off an edge to my death. Repeat. No thanks.

Such a pity as the game has great potential.

Gameplay: 6.5/10 (a lower score due to performance issues)

Presentation: 7/10 (a lower score due to performance issues)

Story: 7/10

Overall Score: 6.8/10

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Story= plot, engagement, characters, world-building

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

I'm really sad that the tech performance on this game was so abysmal. I played it on PS5 on release day and played it for probably around 15 or so hours over the course of the week. I decided I would hold off on continuing it because frame lag was so bad. Almost every other attack from certain enemies in certain locations would lag to the point where any perfect timing for blocking or dodging became impossible. Returning to the game a couple of weeks later there were improvements, but it still wasn't perfect. Issues like this completely ruined the experience which if it had not occurred I would probably give this game a 4 out of 5 stars or something more around 8 out of 10.

I really liked the grotesqueness of the Umbral world and the mechanics with the lamp really were cool to use. My initial draw to this game was the art style and it didn't fail to deliver. I do however really like Soulslike games and thought I would also enjoy the gameplay but performance interfered with that. I hope to come back to this game in a year or so maybe and hope to find it vastly improved and maybe I will have the experience I hoped for the first time through.

Lords of the Fallen rips. It's engaging, the lore is interesting, the world is gorgeous, the sound design is remarkable, the combat has weight to it and feels familiar yet dissimilar to previous games, the world is huge with plenty to do, and I don't want to stop playing it. It's a 5 out of 5 to me - I love it.

I don't know if I have much else useful to add other than maybe talking about the support the studio is giving the game. They've released patches around the clock addressing all sorts of issues and they're taking player feedback into account so much so that they changed how NG+ works. That's a real commitment to their playerbase. I can't think of anything within this type of game that compares to that.

Whereas FromSoftware creates as much distance between their playerbase and themselves as possible, Hexworks/CI have been in open dialogue, more or less, with their community. There is a ton of passion in the studio and it shows with this game. It's hard to believe anyone working on this game just saw it as a paycheck. The level of detail in the world alone is wildly impressive and someone spent a lot of time and energy doing it. Add to that the fact that every inch of the world has a second form (Umbral) that also needed detailing and fleshing out.

Another thing that's impressive is that the studio is fully remote. Let this be a lesson to anyone who says this kind of work can't be done without an office. Lords of the Fallen has issues but it's a triumph in most regards. It's an remarkably high-quality game whose outcome likely wouldn't be different whether or not the workforce were in an office.

I'm having a lot of frustration with the PvP right now though. That component of the game needs serious addressing. It's wildly unbalanced. Players are exploiting the hell out of Pieta's Swords - even with the 'nerf' the developers put in a few days ago - and a couple of radiant spells. I'm grinding invasions to get the Severed Hands required to unlock the Knight of Adyr armor set because it looks awesome and I want it. But I fail at invasions probably 19 out of 20 times. Maybe I suck at this game but right now, I can't blame myself because the sheer amount of lag and the unstable connection make it impossible to tell who actually won the fight. Half the time I win, I feel like it was just luck. And as an invader, your connection is at the mercy of the host, who is the invaded party, so they've got the upper hand. Even if you don't fall prey to horrible lag, you'll probably get one- or two-shot by the abused spells. And they can spam those spells as much as they want because they've got a full mana bar whereas the invader starts an invasion with a pathetically small amount of mana that allows you to get off maybe one or two big spells, even if your base game mana bar is maxed out. And if you don't invade a world where the person is already in Umbral form, you're doubly screwed because now you have to kill them twice to win. They only have to kill you once. It just really sucks. If I were smart, I'd stop invading, and I probably will, but it's been a painfully frustrating journey to get to that point. I want that damn armor. I have never really engaged much in PvP in these games but I've seen a lot of discussions about this and most people seem to agree that invaders should be at a disadvantage, and I agree partially, but I think the disadvantage here is egregious. So with all of that said, it feels like there's really no point in trying to invade, even when it works.

There's also the co-op. I like the co-op in that you can go anywhere with your partner. You can play through the whole game with them. But it's a bummer there's no way to ensure you are summoned specifically for boss fights, which is the event that gives you the actual reward for helping. I like helping out players but I also want the armor unlocked by helping defeat bosses. I don't know why they didn't allow for summon signs to be placed before bosses. Maybe they felt it would be too similar to FromSoft's games.

But the dialogue around this game could not be more annoying. Maybe it's just Reddit, but people seem to hate this game or defend it blindly. I think both are superfluous. Toxic positivity is not the way to reward game developers for their efforts, and being dismissively negative without being able to have a balanced perspective of things is even more unacceptable. We should always reinforce passion. It's fair for us as consumers to criticize poor designs or problems and demand more or better, but if we simply say, "Game is trash, devs suck", then it's hard to imagine anyone at that studio giving a shit anymore, and giving a shit is what makes good games good. And Lords of the Fallen is a good game. You don't have to like it. But I sure do.