Lords of the Fallen (2023) Reviews
In its current state, however, Lords of the Fallen proves that Hexworks still has a bit to go before it learns the same lessons that many souls-like developers have in terms of quality-of-life adjustments and making sure that it strikes the right balance between challenge and frustration. Right now, it seems like Lords of the Fallen is taking the worst elements of every souls-like game and making those elements its main catalyst for difficulty, which is a bummer because everything else is so good. For the souls-like hardcore, Lords of the Fallen will be a fine conquest, but for the souls-like beginner, there are better entry points to the genre that offer a more well-rounded exploration into what souls-likes are capable of.
While not without its issues, Lords of the Fallen is an entertaining game with many great action RPG elements and challenging but satisfying gameplay.
After nearly a decade since the launch of the original Lords of the Fallen, CI Games and HexWorks deliver a reboot that exceeds all expectations. With responsive, precise, and challenging combat, innovative twists, stellar grimdark presentation, and more, it's one of the best Soulslikes I've ever played.
If you want another new Dark Souls clone, just wait til devs patch up most of the problems. In the meantime, pay attention to the Lies of P.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Lords of the Fallen sets a new benchmark for all Soulslikes out there. It masters what we love about the genre, and adds to it in many ways. It won't get better than this for a while.
Lords of the Fallen does a lot of things right. Its exploration is its strongest point, and jumping from the human and Umbra realms provides unique enemy encounters and secrets. However, while its combat could have been great, it's ultimately marred by poor hitbox detection and a lock-on camera that will get you killed more than it will save you. There is just something about the world that kept me coming back for more. Whether it was the exploration, the great monster and character designs, or the world itself. Lords of the Fallen is a great return to the dark gothic style of these highly difficult titles.
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.
With incredible art design, challenging action, and a very innovative, dual-world mechanic, Lords of the Fallen is probably a must-play for fans of Soulslikes. But it’s hard to ignore the game’s issues, too, from sometimes unrefined movement and clunky combat to its many technical hiccups. While these can be frustrating or worse, ultimately the game’s ambition and dark fantasy vision are at least as compelling as its flaws.
While Lords of the Fallen has a good foundation, what is built upon it often leaves a sour taste, and not all of it can be boiled down to personal preference. Poor optimization, wonky hitboxes, poor enemy variety and a frustrating lock system are only some of the issues we encountered. This is the kind of game that could become great, but it needs patches and updates to get there.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Lords of the Fallen is an exciting kind of Sous-like. Whereas many others aim to perfect the formula, Lords of the Fallen's goal is to innovate. It certainly has its own array of problems, like lacking audio, repetitive enemy types, and combat that could be tightened up a little. However, when the game sinks its claws into you with its thrilling dual world mechanic, you won't be able to get enough of it.
Lords of the Fallen boasts impressive visuals and an interesting story for a soulslike, but unfortunately, that's where the praise ends.
In all though, this is such a comprehensive replica of the Souls formula that a brief glance at the screen will result in most folks thinking that you’re playing a From Software game. Indeed, for the most part, 2023’s Lords of the Fallen is a very well-crafted Soulslike that looks phenomenal, plays really well, and has a deep reverence for the source material it’s inspired by.
Lords of the Fallen is not without its flaws and it sometimes confuses difficulty, vicious level design and total frustration.
Review in French | Read full review
Ultimately, this new incarnation of Lords of the Fallen was only partially able to convince us.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Possibly, we are facing the closest soulslike and almost equal to the Dark Souls saga itself. It has absolutely everything a fan of the franchise could want from this type of game: It is difficult, challenging, but not impossible or unfair, it has many possibilities to approach the adventure, and technically accompanies both sight and ear. Perhaps the story does not become so transcendental, because it is one that we have already seen more than once, but we must not detract from it, because the design of the characters is impressive in many cases, something that also happens with the more than 30 bosses that are in the game, each with its own mechanics, phases and aesthetics.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Umbral is a beautiful dark twisted fantasy, and then there’s all of Axiom to explore as well. The developers have made the most of these realms, layering distinct challenges atop one another. And the result is the best of both worlds: Axiom’s dense, gothic world (and its interconnected twin in Umbral) and a second life with which to better appreciate the masocore combat.
Lords of the Fallen copies Dark Souls so thoroughly it feels like game design plagiarism but, astonishingly, it's indeed worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as FromSoftware's brutal dark fantasy classics. Anyone who's survived Lordran, Drangleic and Lothric will find a lot to love here.
You know at the end of the day, LOTF (2023) has a lot of great aspects, but man these bugs are numerous, significant, and very damaging to the experience. Hexworks is probably going to make this right — I believe they will. If Cyberpunk 2077 can do it, so can these guys and frankly LOTF does not have as far to go to be made right. LOTF could be a great investment of your money and time, but in complete transparency, it’s going to take them some more time to get there. I’d recommend waiting to bite on this one for a few more months until things are really ironed out and tuned. It’s not like we don’t all have a ton of other things to play anyway — but the state of LOTF right now is just too technically unsound to give it a glowing thumbs up. There’s still a great game undernearth all the mess if you can survive the bugginess, but give it a little more time to ripen for now and I think you’ll be glad you did.