Horrid short-term memory aside, it’s hard to recount a game in recent years that has caused one’s mood and subsequent thoughts to run so wide a spectrum. To so quickly – let alone wildly – flock from one extreme to another. If one thing is true of Lords of the Fallen (CI Games' second, long-in-development crack of the Souls whip), it’s that it’s perfectly emblematic of one’s continuing love-hate relationship with this particular brand and flavor of action RPG. One minute it’s disappointing, the next surprising. At a moment’s notice, shocking oversight on how said elements could’ve even made it off the drawing board, let alone get approval from QA testing. But in the next: delight at the presence of some small, arguably infinitesimal, but smart inclusions all the same.
But if anything, Lords of the Fallen takes that frantic shift and applies it to way more of its overall design than one initially expects and subsequently desires alike. Beyond simply the sine-wave style roller-coaster of emotions that’s standard for a game of this ilk. A game built around perseverance, beating one’s head against any amount of figurative walls and quite simply applying one’s self to overcome the challenge. Lords of the Fallen in some respect feels contradictory in of itself. As much as its developer has boldly (and maybe to some, naively) claimed intentions to be seen as the second reference point for this genre, alongside FromSoftware, that it tries to offer its own originality from time to time, while at the same time falling back on safe bets to see it through. Mechanically aiming to be all things to all the many brands of Souls fan, yet aesthetically and visually immediately conjures comparisons to some hypothetical halfway point betweenDark Souls 2andDark Souls 3. From’s 2014 and 2016 releases in the trilogy, respectively.
To summarize one’s thoughts as simply as one can: Lords of the Fallen is flawed, at worst, it’s a mess of an attempt to rekindle the highs of From’s legacy. At points, mistaking higher numbers for more nuanced gameplay – quintessentially “hard for hard’s sake” where players aren’t necessarily challenged, more that the game has deemed it fit to throw another eye-rolling roadblock to artificially inflate the run-time. But here’s the crucial detail: a mess sure, but it’s an interesting kind of mess. An enjoyable mess in fact; contradictory that may sound (not least given what’s been addressed up to this point). Hexworks, the studio set up to facilitate this reboot of the prior 2014 effort, have not only done their homework, they’ve applied that to something that can sufficiently stand on its own. Familiar – to the point of tedium – dark fantasy setting and world-building aside.
Even if the game’s less-than-polished exterior (its lack of meaningful feedback and sound effects being the most notable ones) and unfortunate PC performance at release sullies a great deal of its moment-to-moment flow, there’s enough meat to the bones to feel that Lords of the Fallen, far from perfect it may be, is more than a sufficient enough adventure you’ll happily invest anywhere between 40 to 60 hours of your time into. That for all its grievances, faults and issues that stem beyond the usual subjective difficulty rhetoric, that Hexworks can provide another compelling iteration to From’s groundwork may well be (and in all likelihood, will be) a strong enough argument in its favor. In much the same vain as something likeRemnant: From the Asheswas in 2019: a visibly-flawed product, but one with just the right amount of heart, where and when it matters most.
We’ll spare detailing the basics of the gameplay and character progression, as most (if not all) of such aspects in Lords of the Fallen are 1:1 of what you’ll find in any From release. For anyone having played any one of these games prior will be quickly accustomed to the numerous weapon types, skill attributes and avenues one can go down to further customize and tailor your player-character to the preferred fighting style. If anything is of utmost notability here, it’s that being able to mix and match, as well as create “hybrid” builds of sorts, feels a touch more easier in Lords of the Fallen. One’s preferred play-style of going for a mix between [to borrow some Souls lingo here] DEX and INT, while slowly gaining STR proficiency along the way, proved surprisingly quick to apply.
But perhaps the most surprising change to the template is the way in which players are encouraged to apply both short-range and long-range attacking styles in their arsenal. This is accomplished by way of Lords of the Fallen’s slightly-tweaked button layout. With parrying and guarding applied to the same button, the left-over shoulder button (when played with a gamepad) utilizes your throwing weapons, like javelins, knives or simple rocks, as well as catalysts used for magic abilities. That players can even equip numerous throwing objects and/or spells for their desired Catalysts inevitably opens up combat potential even more so. Catalysts in Lords of the Fallen divided into three categories: Radiant, Inferno and Umbral – requiring, much like standard melee weapons and shields, varying player levels to equip. Even with the inclusion of your trustee lamp – which must be selected as the item in focus – though this change in controls can feel unnecessarily complex and cumbersome to begin with, players will quickly adapt to the point it becomes second nature and find the way one’s load-out is assigned, proves to be a smart tweak. Not least because rummaging through inventory items is now directional, assigned to both left and right keys, rather than (as was the case in From’s games) a single button.
Which brings us to the second reason for that left-over button prompt being more focal. As is quickly revealed, the world of Lords of the Fallen is separated into two realms: Axiom, the realm of the living, and Umbral, the world of the dead. Die in Axiom and unlike standard Souls flair where you simply respawn at the last-visited checkpoint with your accumulated Vigor (this game’s equivalent to Souls), in Lords of the Fallen you’re sent to Umbral as a sort of second chance to avoid death – thinkSekiro’s revive mechanic but with grander ramifications. The objective then comes to escape Umbral by way of reaching a designated site that takes you back to Axiom. Simple-enough this may sound, Lords of the Fallen makes sure to apply a reasonable dose of risk and reward. In some cases, voluntarily entering Umbral in the pursuit of higher-value items or simply getting past some obstruction or seemingly impossible gap in one world that appears/disappears in the other. Occasionally tedious some of these mandatory trips to Umbral may be from time to time.
Ensuring players are never too far from working out how exactly one is stacked atop the other. So too the dread of getting pulled into it against one’s will/judgment is never too far away. The risk here, is that for as long as you’re in Umbral, a meter will fill up at the side of the screen. On top of an increasing amount of enemies that will spawn in your vicinity, should the meter fill, you’re immediately greeted with higher-level foes where survival seems (at least early on) near-impossible. What’s more, sound a strategy it might be to simply use your lamp to scout out ground to tread so as to bridge a gap, the presence of enemies in Umbral that can drag you into the realm if you’re not careful adds a hint of paranoia as to how curious and/or careful you are with your investigative gazing into the other realm. Though the application of another world to explore isn’t the most sophisticated, Lords of the Fallen applies it in just the right ways that feel neither overly-punishing nor entirely averse to providing that ongoing challenge pushing forward.
Not that peril isn’t already baked into the regular adventure as you gradually (and precariously) push through the locales of the game. Some disappointingly more linear and confined than one would like, but others more satisfyingly labyrinthine and best of all, preying on one’s insecurities on whether or not to push that crucial step further – hoping that a shortcut or a checkpoint will be found to rest at. Needless to say, the relief at discovering how these 3D spaces loop back into themselves, or in some cases, link back to previously-visited regions, shows up a plentiful number of times in Lords of the Fallen. An early-game setting, a shanty town set ablaze, is one of the game’s best instances of betting big and more often than not, being rewarded for such leaps of faith.
As satisfying these treks might be – more so when the level layouts and secrets are eventually revealed – Hexworks' approach to making these ordeals in their own right is not without glaring issues. The most obvious being the sheer amount of hostiles it throws you at one time. And more egregiously, how the attitude can often devolve to making things a slog for no other reason than some shallow pursuit for punishing difficulty. “I see you’re enjoying your time with the game…” it seems to say, “…let’s fix that!” That a lot of regions can find you so quickly surrounded by no less than half a dozen enemies at one time is bad enough. That offering to retreat and avoid these conflicts will end up with enemies continually chasing you for great stretches feels like the dials on the game’s back-end are unfairly skewed in one direction.
To repeat a previous comment: the game’s solution to a greater challenge isn’t better-designed scenarios, simply just throwing more at you, kitchen sink and all. Not least when a death comes by way of an enemy spawning from out-of-shot or getting stun-locked by a group of fodder enemies blocking the only narrow exit out of an area. Ambushes and the like are nothing new and for those elements that can be detected beforehand, the execution is fine. Hexworks' level design, on the basis of pure geometry, is good and facilitates these moments well. Even so, it still finds itself hampered by one or two short-sighted lapses from time to time. Lapses that don’t define the regions they’re associated with, but come across like Hexworks, again, finding any and all way to stretch the run-time.
As alluded to, the other more notable criticism of the game comes in the form of its feedback. How attacks lack the necessary punch or weight at points and at its most bizarre, attacks sound as hard-hitting and as ferocious as a wet cloth. It’s not a universal failing by any means, with the differentiation between guarding and successfully parrying a move offering just enough of an audible cue. Even if an enemy’s stagger meter is confined to a minuscule dot to keep an eye out for, rather than a meter. But these issues on feedback only go to serve a broader concern that the presentation, so far as artistic and graphical detail, isn’t necessarily aiming to please, as it’s doing the bare minimum to appease and move on. An aspect deserved of more criticism given how demanding the PC specs are at release and even with a sufficient set-up, how Lords of the Fallen can still throw up one too many issues to ignore.
To start off with the incidents personally experienced, Lords of the Fallen has crashed no less than half a dozen times during play. Most of which during moments of transitioning between areas using a lift. And while other instances like the game oddly disabling input and backing out of one’s preferred Fullscreen display mode – annoyingly, during a tense enemy encounter – provide more disruption, Lords of the Fallen is also no stranger to a brief clipping instance and examples of enemy AI getting caught up in some technical mishaps. Be it through bad path-finding or merely getting stuck on a raised/elevated part of the environment. Frame-rate too is another area to question; from boss fight introductions to typical enemy encounters, performance varies wildly regardless of graphics preset. What’s more, the game appears to suffer from a decreased overall framerate the longer one plays the game in a single session. For a game you couldn’t necessarily say is groundbreaking or visually demanding, with general lighting too resulting in one too many instances of walking into pitch black scenarios, for said attribute to finally kick in to unnecessarily saturated lengths. A common trait in a lot of AA-esque releases this may be, Lords of the Fallen unfortunately follows the same trend of fumbling on its technical side.
Closing Comments:
A far more confident and competent iteration of the Souls template than what came before, Lords of the Fallen’s all-round impressive design is marred by occasional technical issues and all-too-frequent questions on its very philosophy around challenge. Get past these rough spots, however, and what you’ll find is a game that not only understands the pull and appeal pivotal to this sub-genre, but at times, offers room to add even more nuance to a saturated style of action RPG. It’s these surprisingly-intriguing additions alongside the usual flair of compelling boss fights and environments to carefully get through that does just enough to grant Hexworks a far more positive perception, all things considered. Flawed it may be and guilty of applying the wrong lessons in its design, it may stumble, but Lords of the Fallen does eventually find its stride. Serving up another feature-rich package that will appeal to a large number of Souls veterans.
