Between Two Realms

Back when the original Lords of the Fallen released in 2014, it was one of the first high profile souls-like to hit the market and despite it falling well short of the likes of Dark Souls, I enjoyed my time with it overall and when they announced that a sequel was in the works, I was curious to see how they would improve on their initial effort. Unfortunately, the sequel never saw the light of day and 9 years after the fact, a pseudo reboot has been released, sharing the same name as the original.

However, the landscape of the market has changed quite a bit over the years and now there’s an oversaturation of souls-likes, vying for the attention of a growing, but still niche fan base. Lords of the Fallen (2023) would have to be much more than its predecessor to stand out from the crowd.

The art design and visuals are impressive, showcasing some otherworldly vistas.

MSRP: $59.99 (PC) $69.99 (Consoles)
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series
Played on: PC Specs i7 9700K 4.6GHZ/GTX 3080
Steam Deck Status as of 10/11/23: Unknown status but crashed before getting into the world (stable/experimental proton)
Length: 35~ hours

A rude awakening is followed by being unceremoniously enlisted into the ranks of the Dark Crusaders- wielders of a lantern that grants the user immortality and the ability to peer and shift into the world of the dead. With a mission to stop the ascent of the Dark God Adyr, the new Crusader sets out into an unforgiving world.

Despite putting over 35 hours into the game and completing it in full, I have very little idea of what actually transpired during that time. Sure, there were many characters that I encountered during my adventure and giant bosses that I had to slay, but outside of the main goal of cleansing the beacons, I wasn’t able to piece together too many meaningful story elements. A part of this is due to the fact that much of the back story is actually presented within the item/equipment descriptions but they were locked beyond stat checks of Radiant/Inferno. This felt odd as even though I did invest in Radiant to be able to use some magic in my Strength/Radiant Paladin build, I was still unable to view most of the lore within the descriptions which was disappointing.

There were also statue-like figures that I could interact with and while they did work towards painting a picture of certain times and events to some degree, I found them disjointed and difficult to follow for the most part. Luckily, the art design and visuals shined through with some great environmental storytelling which I always appreciate.

Having said that, the story and lore is not the main reason why I enjoy souls-like games, it’s rather the exploration, combat and of course the challenge that I’m such a fan of the genre and it’s here where Lords of the Fallen both managed to impress and disappoint at the same time.

Peering or shifting into the other world can result in some distinct environmental changes.

The main selling point of LotF and the element that sets it apart from its contemporaries is the use of the lantern to be able to look into the world of the dead and even shift into it manually. Separated into the realms of Axiom, the realm of mortals and Umbral, the realm of the dead, it was a simple matter to look at the other realm by shining a light using my trusty lantern. Using this, I was able to see if there were hidden paths, enemies and items that were hiding in plain sight. I had two ways to enter Umbral, by dying or by forcefully triggering a death using the lantern and it became key to traversal. While shifted into Umbral, I was always one death away from being transferred to my last Vestige (bonfire) but there was a risk and reward element where I would be able to get more resources for leveling and find unique items hidden in the world.

Lingering in Umbral for too long would summon a powerful Grim Reaper that would stop my ability to heal normally and with the army of infinitely spawning enemies to contend with, it was often best to run away instead of fight until I became powerful enough to stand my ground. The seamless transition between the realms made for some interesting moments where I was peering into the other world looking for a new path and would get ambushed by an enemy from the other side, forcefully pulling me into that world at once.

While I largely appreciated and enjoyed this two realm mechanic, I found the infinitely spawning enemies more of a hassle to deal with than a real threat later on when I became powerful enough to sweep away the mob of enemies in one or two swings of my Grand Sword.

There nothing new or revolutionary about the combat but it was serviceable and did its job.

In terms of the combat, if you’ve played a souls-like, you more or less know what to expect. Attacking, blocking and dodging all consumes stamina and carefully observing the enemy’s attack patterns for perfectly timed blocks and dodges was the key to victory once more. While I was able to quickly get adjusted to the feel of the movement and attacks in LotF, I never got the sense that it was doing anything new or interesting with it and using the Lantern in combat to briefly stun enemies felt underwhelming and outside of farming for runes, I never really used it.

Something that I did notice that I wasn’t a fan of was the game’s overreliance on mob enemy encounters. I was often taking on more than 3-4 enemies at once and the thing about soul-like combat is that it doesn’t work too well when I’m being attacked from all sides. The lock on focuses on one enemy and if I’m being hit from enemies from off screen, there’s no way I can react to that. This is compounded by a legion of different ranged enemies which felt over-tuned where they somehow not only aggroed me from extremely far away but could land shots that did way too much damage.

Homing projectiles, projectiles with AoE effects, HOMING PROJECTILES WITH AOE EFFECTS!

The worst offender was a fire caster that would summon these balls of fire that would appear around me and explode which they gingerly cast through walls, miles away from my location.

I was killed in so many rage-inducing ways due to these ranged enemies that I honestly would have quit in the middle if I wasn’t reviewing the game. I expect that they will be toned down in some future patch but know that I suffered so that you don’t have to.

The annoyance was compounded by the fact that the game purposefully limits standard checkpoints for “Vestiges Seeds” which I could use to create my own checkpoint, which only one can exist at a time.

This generated a sense of tension where I had to decide if I wanted to use a relatively rare resource to create a checkpoint or risk it to see if there was a regular one ahead. While this worked as intended for my first trek through an area, this made having to revisit areas for different paths and missed items an absolute chore as I had to run so far to get to where I wanted to be.

I hate you most of all.

It’s interesting because even though I died many times during my playthrough, I hardly had to take more than a handful of tries at even the most difficult bosses and one shotted most others without any issue. This was good because oftentimes, the run back to a boss could take a long time due to the lack of checkpoints but it also made the boss fights, which should be highlights of the experience, to become a bit of a let down. This is what happens when I’m given a generous invincibility window to my dodges and the bosses don’t have 10 ranged enemies firing at me at once.

As expected, dying meant dropping all my souls-equivalents but instead of just letting me pick them off the ground, it often got picked up by the enemies. It was hard to tell which enemy had my hard-earned resources but I eventually was able to discern them by the soft blue glow, which should honestly be much more pronounced given how important that knowledge is. I’ve also had cases where they were picked up by an enemy on the other side of a wall that I didn’t even know existed, effectively losing them due to a combination of poor game design decision and lack of polish which I wasn’t too keen on.

Having said that, I was still strangely addicted to the game after a certain point and found myself coming back to see the next new area and exploring the environments of both realms for items and equipment. There were over a hundred different types of weapons/armor to find in LotF and even though they all share a moveset based on the weapon type like daggers, short sword, long sword and etc, coming up with builds and adjusting my weight usage for a truly powerful build was quite enjoyable.

Once I finally unlocked Runes that could be slotted into weapons/shield, I was able to create a build so tanky and powerful that I could just face tank bosses without any consequence.

Just laying down some Justice!

In terms of the performance of the game, I was expecting it to run well on my system since it has native support for DLSS and FSR but despite only running the game on medium settings with DLSS on, I noticed that the longer that I played the game, the more laggy it became until finally, it basically became unplayable after about 2~ hours of playtime. I would have to completely shut the game and restart for it to go back to normal.

This was disappointing as while my CPU could certainly use an upgrade, I played through all of Phantom Liberty and Lies of P without any hitches at all on higher settings than I used here. While your mileage may vary based on your PC specs, it leads me to believe that there are necessary improvements to be made to better optimize the game.

There isn’t a map in the game but these journal entries provide a general idea of the critical path.

Lords of the Fallen is a marked improvement over the original and the mechanic of traversing between two realms makes it feel unique among its contemporaries. If not for a handful of questionable design choices and an overall lack of polish, this could have been something special.

Fun Tidbit: I have two hints for those who decide to play the game.

#1. Do not miss the path on the right of this screenshot, there’s a crucial item that you should not miss. I missed it and didn’t unlock a core mechanic to the game for 90% of the game.

#2. If you notice an item on the ground and it seems to be pulsating, do not pick it up. Instead, use Soul Rip at that location.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.