The original Lords of the Fallen was developed by the German studio Deck13 back in 2014 and received fairly mixed reviews. Surprisingly, it was one of the first Souls-like games to be created, as Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne hadn’t even been developed at the time. Since then, a follow-up to the game has gone through a troubled development cycle, with the original developers no longer involved and another studio being dropped after a year of development. Publisher CI Games decided to take matters into their own hands by opening an internal studio named Hexworks to work on a reboot of the game. Announced back in 2022, the game received the title Lords of the Fallen, making it synonymous with the original release.
When you begin the game, you are immediately treated to an action-packed cinematic sequence that ends with an unnamed paladin knight being impaled by a demonic creature on a three-headed dragon. He throws his mysterious lamp, and it chooses you to be its next owner. This reboot takes place a thousand years after the events of the first game, and the demon God Adyr has returned. You take on the role of a lamp bearer, a Dark Crusader, on a journey through Mournstead to put a stop to him once and for all. The game offers ten starting classes, ranging from the Udirangr Warwolf and the Blackfeather Ranger to the Orian Preacher and the Pyric Cultist. There’s also a “Waste of Skin” class called the Condemned for hardcore players.
If I were to describe Lords of the Fallen in just a few words, Dark Souls 4 would suffice. Because of that, I believe combat needs no introduction here. Combat is stamina-based, and you have the option to perform light attacks, heavy attacks, dodge, kick, and parry. Equipping different weapons yields varied movesets, and dual-wielding is possible. Dying results in you dropping your Vigor (formerly Souls) at the place of your death. Bonfires are called Vestiges, Estus flasks are known as Sanguinarix, and the game uses a traditional RPG-based leveling system where you can upgrade various stats like Endurance, Vitality, and Strength, depending on your player’s build.
While there is a posture and stagger system in the game, it doesn’t seem to be fully utilized. The same goes for parrying; you need to press the block button right before an enemy’s attack lands to parry successfully. The timing is a bit tight, but using a shield makes it somewhat easier. Some enemies, especially brutes, require several successful parries before their posture is broken for you to perform a grievous strike. It’s not like Dark Souls, where one successful parry opens enemies up to a visceral attack. Think of it more like deflecting in Sekiro. As for the game’s difficulty, it’s fairly balanced, with a wide variety of enemies and unique boss encounters.
There’s also a system known as withered health, where you lose a temporary portion of your health from blocking an attack or performing a soul flay. This portion can be reclaimed by attacking an enemy without getting hit again, similar to the system in Bloodborne. Once you transport yourself to Umbral (more on that later), half of your health will automatically be converted to withered health, so be mindful of that. Healing is less effective when you are in Umbral since potions heal for a mixture of real and withered health.
If melee combat doesn’t interest you, Lords of the Fallen features various ranged options. You have classic bows and crossbows with different types of arrows and bolts, along with many magic options. The game offers three distinct schools of magic: Rhogar, Radiant, and Umbral. Each type of magic requires an appropriate catalyst to cast spells. Rhogar resembles pyromancy with a lot of fire magic, Radiance features holy magic, and Umbral offers dark magic. The game also employs an ammunition system where you can use various tools like grenades and knives.
What sets Lords of the Fallen apart from its predecessor and inspirations is the Umbral Lamp and the dual-world system. Axiom is the world of the living, where you’ll spend most of your time, while Umbral is the land of the dead. Umbral exists parallel to Axiom and can be accessed at any time thanks to the Umbral Lamp, similar to Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Many secret pathways and treasures are hidden away in Umbral, which requires you to navigate both worlds to discover all of Mournstead’s secrets. When you die in Axiom, you actually resurrect in Umbral, giving you a second chance at life, similar to Sekiro. If you die again in Umbral, then that counts as a real death, and you’ll resurrect at the last Vestige you rested at.
Many puzzles and platforms exist only in the Umbral realm, forcing you to intentionally transition fully into it. Certain shortcuts in Axiom can only be unlocked by visiting Umbral as well. The caveat with staying in Umbral for too long is the onslaught of enemies that spawn the longer you stay in it. Your screen displays a giant eye with a meter around it in the top right-hand corner. The more the meter fills up, the deadlier the enemies that spawn and swarm around you. A multiplier also starts going up the longer you stay, which means you get more Vigor from slaying enemies. This makes the Umbral realm a high-risk, high-reward system that keeps the tension up during gameplay.
In moments that don’t require you to transition to Umbral, you have your handy Umbral Lamp that allows you to peek into the other realm. Sometimes you’ll find an enemy healing up all the damage you’re doing to it. This is because there’s a parasite attached to the enemy in the other realm that you can’t see unless you shine your lamp on it. You must use the lamp to destroy the parasite before you can continue your battle with the enemies in the land of the living. With the Umbral Lamp, you can also perform a Soul Flay, which allows you to pull the soul of your enemy’s body. Hitting the enemy’s soul builds up withered health on them, and if you do enough damage, you can even perform a grievous strike, similar to Illaoi’s E (Test of Spirit) ability from League of Legends.
The lamp and dual-world system are impressive and a genuinely refreshing mechanic that advances the genre. One of the main reasons I enjoy games in this genre is their exploration aspect. Lords of the Fallen makes it effortless for me to get lost in its worlds. The level design is exceptional, offering intricate, interconnected areas and shortcuts that encourage exploration and discovery. Each locale is a labyrinthine puzzle, and every step forward feels like an accomplishment.
I have some minor traversal gripes to mention. Firstly, you have so much momentum from sprinting and dodging that it’s very easy to fall off a ledge. There’s also no ledge protection when you’re in the middle of an attack animation. The item pickup button is also mapped to the jump button, so if you’re sprinting and you press that button, you’ll jump instead of picking up the item. Lastly, for some reason, the developers made picking up Souls an entire animation instead of picking them up immediately. So if you’re trying to retrieve your lost souls in a boss fight, be prepared to get hit at least once because that animation is unnecessarily long.
Overall, combat is a significant improvement over the first Lords of the Fallen game, but it still feels a bit awkward. There’s still some delay from when you press a button to when your character actually performs the action. The lack of animation canceling and inconsistent enemy feedback from your attacks contribute to this clunky feeling. It’s not always clear when your attacks will stagger an enemy or not, making combat a disjointed experience. The same goes for dodging; sometimes your immediate dodge registers, and sometimes it doesn’t. This is something you eventually get used to.
The power of Unreal Engine 5 is put on full display here, as Lords of the Fallen is a graphical feast. It makes full use of Nanite, a new and improved virtualized geometry system, and Lumen, a fully dynamic global illumination and reflections system. The dark fantasy world of Mournstead comes to life as you see intricate details of Gothic European architecture in every locale you visit. The foreboding and dreary atmosphere effectively conveys the sense of a fallen world in need of salvation. The character animations and designs are generally smooth, and the use of lighting and particle effects adds to the immersion. Whether exploring the skies of Pilgrim’s Perch or descending into the palms of Skyrest Walkway, each location feels unique and hauntingly beautiful.
That being said, certain attack animations can clutter the screen with so much visual flair that it’s almost impossible to see what’s happening, quickly resulting in your death. For example, I was fighting a mini-boss that emitted tons of fire from the ground, so much so that more than half my screen was bright orangey red, and I couldn’t even pinpoint where my character was. This is partly due to how you control the camera angles, and only occurred a handful of times.
Every Souls-like fan wants cooperative play and PVP in a game, and I’m glad to say that this game offers both. Lords of the Fallen features a seamless 2-player drop-in, drop-out mechanic that allows you to invite a friend or a random player to join your world. You can also choose to invade another player’s world for PVP action. Special currency is awarded upon a successful invasion, along with a generous amount of Vigor. Those who wish to play the game without the stress of being invaded can play offline or purchase certain in-game items to block invasions. At the time of this review, I couldn’t test this feature as the servers weren’t online yet, but I’m excited to try it once the game launches. Fans will be pleased to hear that there is crossplay between PC and consoles, but unfortunately, there is no crossplay between Xbox and PlayStation.
Although this game is priced like all standard triple-A games, it offers a plethora of content that justifies the cost. Many secrets are hidden within the game, requiring dedicated explorers to discover. A playthrough of the game will likely take the average player somewhere between 30 and 40 hours. This doesn’t even include New Game Plus and the three separate endings to achieve. With online play, you can easily pour hundreds of hours into this experience.
Audio design is crucial for any gameplay experience, especially in a Souls-like game where players rely on audio cues during combat. This includes weapon impacts, enemy movement sounds, and boss attack patterns. Unfortunately, during my first few days of reviewing this game, it suffered from a major technical bug, as most of the audio was missing. The only thing that could be heard was ambient background noise and the occasional grunt from the player character. Everything else was mute. This was a jarring experience, but thankfully the developers have been pushing out multiple patches, and this issue has been fixed.
The musical score, composed by Cris Velasco (God Of War, Bloodborne) and Knut Avenstroup Haugen (Conan Exiles, original Lords Of The Fallen), complements the game’s mood perfectly with haunting melodies and epic crescendos. Furthermore, the atmospheric storytelling and intricate world-building are brought to life by a diverse cast of voice actors, with each character conveying heartfelt emotions, personalities, and mystique. The narrative, for the most part, is like the game’s inspirations, cryptic and open to interpretation. For those willing to dive deep into item descriptions and dialogue, the deliberately obscure storytelling rewards you.
On the technical side of things, Lords of the Fallen could use more polishing, but for the most part, it works well enough. Load times are fast on the PlayStation 5, with two modes offered, one favoring graphical fidelity and the other favoring high frame rates. The game struggles to maintain a consistent 60 frames per second, especially when there are many enemies on the screen. I experienced instances where the frames dropped to the single digits, but performance improved after a few patches. There are minor bugs where enemies get stuck in terrain or run in place. Opening and closing menus lack smooth transitions and change abruptly without proper animation. Random spontaneous stuttering also occurred at various moments during my playthrough.
Lords of the Fallen is a reboot done right. The experience as a whole immerses you in its unique dual-world system while capturing the essence of robust customization, challenging combat, and dark fantasy. Despite some technical flaws, this game takes on a challenge of its own as you reluctantly push forward into nightmarish battles. The highly detailed environments encourage you to press on, which is made easier thanks to responsive controls and unique enemy types that test your abilities.
