Lords of the Fallen (2023) Reviews
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.
Missing the elegance of FromSoftware, Lords of the Fallen is let down by Soulslike clichés and performance woes.
Lords of the Fallen feels like a passionless soulslike, relying on the same old tricks to make its experience "difficult" all the while failing to lean on its most innovative ideas.
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.
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 (2023) is a competent soulsborne game with everything it needs to have to be considered an instant classic. Unfortunately, some very bad game design choices and execution of most basic game mechanics hampers the experience considerably.
after all this waiting and the beautiful early showing of the game, Lords of The Fallen the hope was on it to provide something unique and successful . Despite the beautiful design of the worlds and the use of some tools, it failed to establish the game in the genre it is based on and provide good bosses, in addition to that are the major technical failure that plagues the game. All of this makes it one of the most frustrating games of the year.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
As you can see, Lords of the Fallen won't be one of our Games of the Year in 2023. While the title is still an improvement on what it offered us in 2014, we're not there yet. Yes, Axiom and Umbral are beautiful and make the game intriguing. But we quickly discover all the game's negative points, and they're far too present to make the overall experience enjoyable. The combat can be excellent or mediocre, the level design disappointing and the story uninteresting. Perhaps we'll be treated to a third attempt in the future? As far as I'm concerned, I'll be missing out this time...
Review in French | Read full review
While it addresses many aspects lacking during the franchise’s first outing, the overall experience still misses the high-water mark it aims for, with a glut of gameplay systems and wonky mechanics rearing their ugly heads each time a measure of success is achieved elsewhere. It outpaces its predecessor in terms of quality, to be sure, but not enough to make for an emphatic recommendation.
For a title with such a troubled development process, to some extent the mere fact that Lords of the Fallen (2023) was released in such a state is in itself a small achievement.
Review in Greek | Read full review
...some will fall in love with its inventive mechanics and rich lore, while others might find themselves tripped up by its shortcomings “Lords of the Fallen” is a game that will undoubtedly find its niche audience, those who can overlook its flaws for the sake of its innovations.
While the Umbral Lantern was a creative and fun mechanic, it was not enough to look past the sluggish boss fights and complicated level design. Lords of the Fallen failed to bring anything different or better in the bloated Soulslike market
Review in Arabic | Read full review
I am quite sure that some people will absolutely love the intensity of the horror and dark fantasy that infuses Lords of the Fallen. As cartoonishly silly as it comes across by trying so hard, it is technically impressive. Similarly, the game is perfectly solid mechanically, and while it does have some issues with pacing and the design of some boss battles, it is, for the most part, very playable. I had more fun with this than I think it deserved, and while I’m not sure whether I was laughing with it or at it most of the time, I was definitely laughing and having fun with it. Who knows? Perhaps satirising the self-seriousness of dark fantasy was the entire creative point and if so, bravo developers, you nailed it.
Lords of the Fallen's shameless copy-paste approach to Dark Souls undermines its great level design and the potential evident in some of its boss encounters.
While this iteration of Lords of the Fallen sheds many of the flaws that plagued its predecessor, it also brings its own baggage. Excellent systems related to the dual realms of Axiom and Umbral alongside fantastic art direction are held back by middling combat and uneventful boss encounters. There are some definite highlights in Lords of the Fallen, but it struggles in the areas that matter most.
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
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.
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.
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 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.