Lords of the Fallen (2023) Reviews
Missing the elegance of FromSoftware, Lords of the Fallen is let down by Soulslike clichés and performance woes.
Some of the best boss fights in the genre's recent history, riddled with difficulty spikes in all the wrong places.
Lords of the Fallen is an awesome soulslike with a fantastic dual-realities premise, even when performance shortcomings and wimpy bosses crash the party.
An absurdly generic Dark Souls clone whose general competence is all the more frustrating for the fact that it refuses to come up with a single new idea of its own.
Lords of the Fallen just about justifies the return of this forgotten franchise by being basically fine. It has a few clever ideas and a whole bunch of very predictable ones, ultimately resulting in a soulslike experience that won't feel particularly new or fresh, but rarely offends or goes too far wrong.
Despite a solid gameplay foundation, stunning world, and unique two-realm mechanic, by the time I reached credits after 48 hours, I was overjoyed to be done.
While Lords of the Fallen has all the right Souls-like elements, its disjointed pacing and painful checkpoint system make much of the game a slow and frustrating march.
After 30 hours and counting, the world of Lords of the Fallen is one I have enjoyed visiting, but ultimately dread inhabiting. Quality-of-life elements, like the option to create your own checkpoints in designated areas, are often jeopardized by an actual checkpoint found two houses later, after you just used up a rare resource. Magic classes, which are introduced as "advanced" in the character creator, actually seem integral, with item descriptions, weapons, and rather powerful spells demanding a stat commitment that knights or archers simply can't afford. Seamlessly switching between realities, as impressive as it looks in action, isn't new. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and The Medium boasted their SSD-powered tech years prior, while Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver showcased similar ideas to Umbral with its Spectral Realm decades ago.
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.
Despite its many problems, Lords of the Fallen has managed to conquer us by combining the soulslike of always with a mechanic as novel and interesting as the jump between worlds. If they correct their failures, we could be facing one of the great surprises of 2023 and one of the best soulslike of recent years.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
I desperately want to like Lords of the Fallen, but it's the first game all year that's actively annoyed me. I love the Soulslike genre more than any other, but this game took all of the lessons it could have learned since the original Lords of the Fallen and either forgot them entirely, or just misunderstood them so greviously that you'd assume it skipped a class.
As unfairly challenging as I could find Lords of the Fallen to be, I also appreciated its creativity. The Umbral world and mechanics surrounding it made for an extremely compelling and risky adventure where I often rode the line between safety and death. I feel like the game could have done better at making the threat of Umbral more than escalation of foes up to an unkillable pursuer that could one-shot me, but I can’t deny I was tickled by the possibilities and always curious of what was on the other side. Mix its intertwined-worlds mechanics into good melee, magic, and archery in a beautiful gothic setting and 2023’s Lords of the Fallen feels like something I’ll more than remember for what it did right and how it set itself apart. The duality of this game’s settings is both dastardly and dazzling.
Lords of the Fallen is a game of uneven quality. At its best, it offers level design, bosses, and combat that’s generally up there among the best Souls-likes. At its – more often – worst, it leans hard on quantity over quality, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes those games challenging. My issues with its balance and difficulty can improve with patches, and my misgivings about its design pitfalls are the sort of thing that sequels improve on all the time. It’s left me wanting to play Lords of the Fallen 2.
Lords of the Fallen is one of the most interesting souls-like games of recent years, providing new ways to face exploration in the genre, as well as a superb artistic section. Even with its irregular technical section and its roughness at the gameplay level, it is a highly recommended game.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Lords of the Fallen is an enjoyable, challenging game, and the aesthetics are out of this world, but it suffers at times from a lack of focus.
Most of what fans of Soulslikes want are at the maximum: masterclass-level design, unforgettable bosses, and extensive freedom toward build creation. The combat can feel rough at times, and there are way too many enemies in certain levels, but these downfalls don't negate the fact that Lords of the Fallen reaches for a spot in the highest tier among the genre's greats and finds itself right at home.
Lords of the Fallen is a game that wears its passion and love of the genre on its sleeve. A gorgeous world, gripping gameplay, enthralling bosses, and depthless worldbuilding persist in spite of some rough edges and a struggling sense of unique identity.
Lords of the Fallen comes with some big caveats - it's designed to ambush the player in really snide ways, its boss distribution is erratic, and it really needs a proper map. Despite these annoyances, I’ve been utterly entrenched in a beautiful world, hooked on solid gameplay, and inspired by exquisite art direction. The persistent multiplayer is a treat, while the two-sided world makes for some clever navigation. It might be fundamentally unoriginal, but it heaps of ton of stuff onto that foundation.
A Soulslike elevated by a magnificent realm-hopping twist, yet chained down by a host of irritating little flaws.