Review: Lords of the Fallen

At the time of writing my review in progress for Lords of the Fallen, I was a bit torn. When everything is running well, it feels like Lords of the Fallen had the potential to be a landmark Soulslike title. But those situations are few and far between. I had hoped that the back half of LotF would highlight the good. Unfortunately, things got worse, and the final hours of my experience were a slog and, to put it bluntly, just not fun.

Boss fights seemed to get more and more tedious and just outright unfair. And as I progressed, the amount of performance issues and bugs I encountered just kept increasing. There are times when I really had fun with Lords of the Fallen. But those times were far and few between.

Lords of the Fallen (PC, PS5[reviewed], Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Hexworks
Publisher: CI Games
Released: October 13, 2023
MSRP: $59.99

A tale of two realms

Lords of the Fallen is a reboot of the 2014 title of the same name. Like its predecessor, the premise is to take the tried and true Soulslike formula and throw in a couple of new features to try and improve on that formula. From a story perspective, LotF takes place 1,000 years after the original. The tyrannical god Adyr, who the player defeated as the final boss in the original, is being resurrected.

You play as one of about a dozen classes tasked with forging a path through the dark world of Axiom and cleansing the five beacons that are providing power toward his resurrection. As you might expect, these classes are just starter templates for your play style. When you progress and level up your character, you can allocate attribute points however you want to truly mold your character to fit your preferred playstyle.

One of the advertised highlights of Lords of the Fallen is its dual-realm system. You see, Axiom is the realm of the living. Axiom is where those who have not yet fallen to the evil forces at play try to find a way forward through the chaos. But there is also Umbral, the realm of the dead. Those who have fallen in their journey are sent to this realm, including the player. Like many in Lords of the Fallen, this new feature feels like a boon in some ways but half-baked in others.

When you die in Axium, you’re instantly moved into the Umbral realm, where you have a penalty to your max health. If you manage to visit a Vestige while in the Umbral realm, you can resurrect back into the realm of the living. This in itself is a cool feature. You always have “one last chance”, which is a great feature for a Soulslike.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only use of the two realms. Your character has a special lamp that allows you to shine it in a direction to show the Umbral realm. This may sound like a cool feature, too, as you can find secrets and shortcuts that exist only in that realm. But some parts require you to be fully in the Umbral realm to proceed. So, you end up having to intentionally kill yourself to interact with the environment and progress. Which, now you have the health penalty. And now have to fight through a ton of enemies just to get to the next Vestige, where you can resurrect in Axium. The two realms often get in their own way and feel like a hindrance rather than an exciting new feature.

30 bosses, most of which are a pain

I wanted to get the full experience of Lords of the Fallen, so I also sought out and hunted down the optional bosses. Was it worth it? Not really. I understand that bosses are supposed to be difficult in a Soulslike game. After all, that’s the point, right? But in LotF, difficult often just means unfair.

If you’ve played any Dark Souls game or Bloodborne, you may have experienced an issue I’m about to talk about. Every now and then, an enemy might turn around in the middle of an attack animation and hit you, even though you just dodged out of the way correctly. It’s clearly some “bug” in most cases and only happens here and there. It’s annoying, but you go, “Yeah, ok, stupid mob,” and respawn and run back and kill the enemy without the issue occurring again.

But here, it’s a mechanic, not a bug. Bosses not only turn mid-animation, but they also lock onto your character and, in some cases, literally move forward mid-attack so they can reach you. So how are you supposed to play? Even after finishing LotF, I’m really not sure. Usually, in a Soulslike, you time your dodge to perfectly move out of the way or even iFrames through an attack.

Instead, I often find myself essentially spam dodging so I can dodge to the side, then dodge the laser beam focused toward my follow-up attack, and then the final repeat laser beam-focused attack. Because the enemies can step towards you mid-animation, dodging backward away from the boss feels useless. So, I often just dodge roll around the boss in a circular pattern. It just feels weird, unfair, and not fun.

Soulslike games are so popular because you feel accomplished when you learn attack patterns, properly dodge attacks and take down bosses. Here, it feels like there’s really not much learning to be done, but rather, you’ll just have to brute force through it.

A beautiful world…

Graphically, Lords of the Fallen is a masterpiece. The world of Ambral IS beautiful, as is the realm of Umbral. The dark fantasy world is gorgeous, and the lighting is particularly well done. Even though Umbral isn’t always a forced location, there’s still so much intricate detail in the visuals of that realm. It’s cool to see so much detail put into areas that some players may not even see in specific areas.

A lot of the bosses are really cool as well. The Congreagor of Flesh, even though I hated the actual encounter, was pure nightmare fuel, as was Spurned Progeny, which actually was a pretty cool encounter.

The world and level design is pretty spectacular as well. It’s common for Soulslike games to have an intricate layout that connects different areas of the world via shortcuts and unlocking new areas. Lords of the Fallen does this really well. It’s always refreshing to unlock a shortcut and realize where it connects to and go, “Oh wow, THIS is where I am?” I wish there were a way to see a fly-through of the whole world somehow just to see how much everything connects and intricately weaves through each other because it feels pretty impressive on that front as well.

…but a broken one, too

The tedium with Lords of the Fallen is amplified by the fact that there are a lot of bugs, performance issues, and downright broken systems along the way. I usually prefer to solo my way through these kinds of games, as, for the most part, I think that’s how they are intended to be played. But one of the highlighted features of LotF is that co-op is available throughout the entire game.

Unfortunately, even almost a week after release, I’ve yet to be able to utilize this feature successfully. In order to jump into co-op, you need to visit a Vestige—similar to a bonfire—and enable it. However, every time I do, I’m just prompted with the command to Log In to the game servers. Which, after about 30 seconds, times out, and I have to do it again. Over and over.

I also had really bad performance issues for quite a lot of the boss fights, which only added to the frustration. Everything in Lords of the Fallen is very fast-moving, so when you start chugging along at under 30 FPS, it’s not a fun time. Oddly enough, I only seem to have these issues with certain boss encounters. But, if it’s there, it’s there.

For example, I first encountered the FPS drop in one of the earlier bosses, Pieta. As soon as the encounter starts, my FPS noticeably drops. It stays that way throughout the entire encounter until I either die or defeat Pieta. Then, the next boss was fine. There have been several updates, so maybe the Pieta encounter itself no longer has that issue. But some later bosses still have the issue as of the most recent update.

In another world

I hate to sound cliche, but my biggest issue with Lords of the Fallen is that it feels like a lot of missed potential. With just a few minor changes, I could see this being a staple Soulslike title with a much higher score. It’s cool to add new features and systems to a formula. But if they are more often than not making the game less fun, that doesn’t feel like the right choice.

When the FPS isn’t dipping, and bosses aren’t cheesing you every step of the way, LotF feels good. But with myriad performance issues, broken multiplayer, and boss fights that increase difficulty through unfair mechanics as opposed to well-developed ones, it really weighs down on the experience. Lords of the Fallen is indeed a Soulslike. And for some, that’s all they need. But be prepared for a challenge to complete the journey, and not in a good way.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}