Lords of the Fallen (2023)

This game has ups and downs, but damn, do the devs care about this game. Since day 1 they have updated this game non stop with new content. Hats off to them. Just fix coop so players can roam around uninterrupted and that we share loot found in Mournested.

If you already played enough of the popular souls games (that we all know) and looking for a new one, this is a good choice.
7.6/10 .
I tried to understand why this game gets a high amount of hate and figured that the haters can be divided into 3 groups:
- performance issues group (much justified). It ran fine for me so i hope it's now patched and fixed for everyone else.
- the group of people who complains about the game cramming too much enemies, justified but i never felt that, so i think the devs listened and patched this earlier or these people are wrong.
- the group of people who compares every little detail of this game to FromSoftware games. These are stupid people and their long BS filled reviews aren't even worth considering.

Listen, I know you're feeling daunted by the "Mixed" & "Mostly Positive" reviews. I was in your shoes at one point.
I'm the kind of person that hyper-fixates on the negatives, and I can always find something to be critical of if I need to. I very rarely go back to games that didn't manage to scratch an itch in just the right way, as I've been gaming a majority of my life, and I'm not lenient with my opinions. I'm a massive pain the ass to satisfy. It's not something I'm proud of, but we all have things we don't like about ourselves.
Having said that:
Lords of the Fallen is one of the most engaging souls-like experiences I have had since I first played Dark Souls.
POTENTIAL DEALBREAKERS:
If you can handle:

Occasional janky targeting
Weapon types sharing movesets (i.e. short swords share lights and heavies, but may have special moves unique to the item)
Low-difficulty bosses (a few exceptions/build & playstyle dependent)
Mini-bosses that become normal enemies shortly after facing them
Mediocre PvP implementation
Below-average enemy variety
Then you will likely love this game, just as I do. This list describes the only reasons I could imagine someone being put off from this game. It executes absurdly well on every other aspect.
Exploration:
LotF has level design that rivals Dark Souls in its presentation. The interweaving shortcuts, the vistas revealing places you will eventually arrive to explore in-person, and the NPC quests that don't require turning over every single pebble on the map (looking at you Elden Ring.)
I truly cannot express how many times I would take an elevator, open a locked door, or drop a ladder only to find myself thinking, "Holy shit, this connects back to THERE?"
Stepping into the Umbral feels great, as they did not skimp on the level design unique to the second dimension. You will find yourself scaling skeletal mountains and platforming through precarious eyeball-ridden purple hellscapes.
I have not enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny of a game in a long time, as I tend to get anxious thinking I'll miss something, or I get caught up knowing I'm running out of time before my weekend is over. LotF manages to make exploration rewarding enough that I never feel stressed about unlocking and discovering each new secret.
Weapons & Builds:
The reason LotF has managed to make exploration so rewarding, is due to how flexible their build system is. Unlike Soulsborne games, where being a mage requires thumbing through your list of spells and items like you're playing old-school Monhun games, you have assignable hotkeys! Michael Zaki eat your heart out.
You equip a catalyst separate from your sword, shield, bigger sword, double shield, or whatever else you heathens come up with. You have a dedicated ranged slot that allows you to be a scrappy throwable build, archer build, or spellcaster, without sacrificing your ability to engage in melee combat. You can slot runes into your gear to allow them to scale better with certain stats, creating abominations of cross-stat weaponry. Throwables regenerate upon resting, so you don't need to constantly restock them just to have a viable build.
You want to be a true paladin that casts auras and face-tanks bosses, while chucking giant spears of lightning, beating them down with oversized hammers and a wall of a shield? You can do it.
You want to fling literal ball-peen hammers into the faces of your enemies, stunning them, only to run up and ram your fist through the back of their spine? You can do it.
You want to tap into the Eldritch Mother-being of All Creation and melt the vitality from your foes, as they gaze into a never ending abyss that you have brought forward for them to face in their final moments? You can do it.
When you see an enemy use a spell, there is a VERY high chance that you can unlock that spell for yourself. There is no end to the items I found that had me thinking of trying an entirely new build.
The best part? The game has built-in modifiers for new playthroughs. Want to randomize all non-key items? Go for it. Want them to only drop as their fully upgraded versions? Yep. Want to randomize all the enemies? Yep.
Story & NPCs:
It is genuinely impressive to me that HEXWORKS managed to create a generic storyline and world, along with many of the usual cliches, and still have me feel invested in the development of the characters and their world. I truly wanted to unsurface the deeper mysteries taking place. I wanted to understand the chaos they faced, where it came from, and if I could actually break them free of its unending torture.
You are constantly meeting new people, finding old faces in new places, and stumbling your way through their respective questlines only hoping that you are doing the right thing. Everyone you meet is such a character, and even those that feel campy are a breath of fresh air among all the unending seriousness.
The three different endings give you objectives to strive for, and more than enough reason outside of the modifiers, NPC quests, and builds options to replay the game.
TL;DR: LotF is easily one of the best souls-likes for people looking to return to what made Demon's Souls & Dark Souls feel so special. You won't find nail-bitingly difficult bosses, or ultra-twitchy input-reading combo spammers like in Elden Ring, but you do find some of the best locales and level designs in the Souls-like genre (the Soulsborne series included.)
The potential for builds is unrivaled, the story is generic, but greatly enjoyable, and the world is so clearly, deeply loved by the devs. Please give this game a chance, and take your time going through it. It really deserves it.

Game is honestly over-hated. It's no Elden Ring, but it is a just solid old school feeling souls game with absolutely immaculate vibes. Mega props to the devs for the post launch support and ironing out all the bugs. Give this one a try for real.

I adore this game, and what it set out to be. Did it miss the mark at launch? Absolutely. Did it take them awhile to recover? Unfortunately yes.

That being said, they never stopped putting out updates until the game is where it is now, extremely fun sous like with some really interesting ideas.

I think the Umbral/Lamp mechanic keeps people away at times. Know that while it's a big part of the game it does become second nature after awhile. That being said I do think the execution leaves something to be desired.

Perhaps if instead of so much in.. out.. in.. out.. in... .you get the point. They just had a few places here and there for secrets, and the big portion of umbral was used to traverse things that no longer existed in the same "state" as they do in the real world, a castle that's partially destroyed becomes somewhat whole, this allowing you to explore umbral when it makes sense. That also allows a more fun mechanic with the vestige seeds, as now you use them as checkpoints to push through this large umbral area, until you finally can get out to an ancient one.

That is an idea, maybe it's good maybe it's bad but either way, don't let Umbral steer you away from the game, the level design, enemy design (even though limited), and combat system are all top tier.

In the end it's a 10/10 idea but an 8/10 execution.

Review in Jan 2025 after finishing a first playthrough of the game which took about 45 hours. TLDR, this is a really solid soulslike game that is absolutely worth playing in 2025. If you are into cool, loopy level design and interesting bosses this game will be your jam. It still gets really frequent updates and is absolutely worth full price, though it is frequently on sale.

The core mechanic that sets this game apart from others is the always present Umbral realm. Essentially at any point in the game you can choose to swap into a lovecraftian version of the same world. The Umbral realm has slightly different geography than the normal world and you will need to take advantage of that to explore. It is populated with special monsters in addition to the ones in the normal world, so it is a little bit more of a challenge when you enter that space. I really enjoyed this mechanic as it really expanded the sense of exploration that this game really nails, despite not being an open world game.

Regarding difficulty, when you die in the normal world you get back up immediately in the Umbral world. In my opinion this makes the game a little more forgiving than a lot of games in this genre, as you essentially get two chances at every attempt. The game also has a fairly forgiving parry experience with small shields and daggers. And its because of those two that I decided early on to play this game as a 1:1 dueling build with poison on my weapons. This is really not recommended as you will be frequently outnumbered, everything cannot be parried, and many of the bosses seem immune to poison. I'm just illustrating that I still made that work.

While the story and setting is dark and bleak (as expected) the game also has a nice, subtle sense of humor too. The developers are absolutely trolling the player. They will absolutely place a monster in umbral right where they know you need to look so that it hits you and pulls you in. Dudes will be waiting right behind barriers to jump out at you. And you need to make sure that the platform you just pulled down does not have a small gap for you to fall through on your way. Its the equivalent of a gaming jump scare or a gotcha moment. There's also one NPC who is so naive that every time I encountered him I wondered how he was still alive.

As for criticism, there were times where I did go to the internet to look up where to go. And almost every time it was, "did you notice that ladder or platform over there". The art style is great but it is so ornate that it sometimes hides what you need to actually do. Also, I found the multiplayer pointless in this game. Unlike the souls series of games there are no messages left by other players. You can summon other players to help, but if you are like me that's sort of killing the fun. So all that is left by multiplayer being on (which it is by default) is other players invading your game to fight you while you are exploring. I don't mind that so much in other games, but in this one it locks you into a sort of small area to fight that player. So if you were pushing out and already in a bad spot, you are likely going to have to fight all the way back there if you die. I just turned multiplayer off after about the 3rd time my level 20 self came in contact with a fully equipped pvp character. Interestingly, turning off multiplayer still allowed me to see the 'dead player lamps' so that I could go avenge them; so pvp and help seems to be the only function of multiplayer.

So in conclusion, if you watched the trailer and thought it looked like fun you will like this game. Its really well done and is actively receiving new content even now from the developer. After my play-through there are two more endings, NPC's I've never met, and game modifiers that I have not even touched to mix things up. It is worth full price, but goes on sale frequently.

I am not sure what the game was like on release, but i it deserves a much better score than mixed.

I went in with a very sceptical mindset but was more than pleasantly surprised, There is jank, sure. There are some excellent ideas as well:
-Ranged combat and spell slinging never felt so smooth and fun in a souls like before. Extremely well done.
-The world is beautiful and very compelling to explore, secrets and shiny objects aplenty
-NG+ modifiers are very cool. Random loot + random enemies for maximum amounts of surprise.

On the negative side of things:
-NG+ inflates boss HP to epic proportions. Truly obscene numbers. You can measure the HP by magnitudes of Midir. Sundered Monarch is like 8 and a half Midirs, if not more. You hit for 6k and the bar barely moves. They hit you twice. you die.
-Melee combat can feel a bit floaty and imprecise. Hit don't register from time to time and when combined with the utterly bizarre little skip forward the character does on weapon swing, you end up feeling barely in control.
-When you are in umbral, you are always on a timer. I don't like that. I never like time restrictions in games.
-Very limited roster of enemies.

I ended up doing 4 playthroughs. One for each ending and one last playthrough just for the kicks.

I give this 8.5
Well worth the time for genre fans and newcomers alike.