Lords of the Fallen (2023)
Lords of the Fallen introduces an all-new, epic RPG adventure in a vast, interconnected world more than five times larger than the original game.After an age of the cruellest tyranny, the demon God, Adyr, was finally defeated. But Gods… do not fall forever. Now, aeons later, Adyr’s resurrection draws nigh. As one of the fabled Dark Crusaders, journey through both the realms of the living and the dead in this expansive RPG experience, featuring colossal boss battles, fast challenging combat, thrilling character encounters, and deep, immersive storytelling. Will your legend be one of light… or one of darkness?Dare to Hope.
Explore A Vast, Interconnected World
Journey across two expansive, parallel worlds in your epic quest to overthrow Adyr. While the living realm presents its own brutal challenges, untold terrors lurk in the nightmarish realm of the dead.
Define Your Own Legend
Fully customise your character’s appearance from a wide array of visual options, before selecting one of nine character classes. Whichever starting path you take, develop your character to your own playstyle by upgrading stats, weapons, armour and spells.
Master Fast, Challenging Fluid Tactical Combat
Only those that master the deep, tactical combat can hope to survive. Choose from 100s of uniquely brutal weapons, or forgo metal for magic with devastating attacks of the arcane.
Unite or Fight in Online Multiplayer
Experience the expansive, single player campaign alone, or unite with other lampbearers in online co-op. You are free to journey together for as long as you or they desire, collecting vigor (xp) and any weapons or gear enemies drop, ready to bring them back to your own world. Key items and quest progression won’t be transferred, to retain the integrity of your own tale. For those playing online, be warned, as heroes from other realms can, and will invade.
Wield a Device of Ungodly Power
Your lantern possesses the ungodly power to cross between worlds. Use this dark art to reach forgotten places, unearth fabled treasures, and even manipulate the very soul of your foe.
Rise from Death
Fall in the world of the living, and rise again… in the world of the dead. You now have one final chance to return to your living state, as all manner of hellish creature descends upon you.Key Features:
- Embark upon two vast, parallel worlds – that of the living… and the dead
- Master a fast, fluid and challenging combat system
- Overcome epic and colossal boss battles
- Wield devastating magic attacks and character buffs
- Invite a second player to join your campaign in uninterrupted, online multiplayer (only host saves world progress)
- Encounter a wide array of characters, eager to offer a dubious hand…
- Fully customise your own unique character
- Choose from 9 starting character classes, including Knight, Rogue and Fire Apprentice
Steam User 4237
Having issues with performance?
Change both Reflection & Global Illumination quality to Medium.
On settings High and above, the game introduces Ray Tracing.
You're welcome! :)
Steam User 717
This is a 'Souls-Like' through and through, if you are willing to take a leap of faith and do your best to tackle the game despite its flaws it will be guaranteed good time.
However it is not a 'Souls' game and lacks the tight and nearly perfect execution that Fromsoftware is known for, this has led to the game receiving more negative reviews then it should have as the expectations are set to the same standards we've come to expect from Fromsoftware.
The team that created this game have poured alot of effort and are really taking the communities input to heart. This game is miles above the failed imitation that the 2014 game was, in every aspect story, visuals, game play, and level design are quite good. Massive props to the developers for their hard work I hope they know it paid off.
This game is definitely one for those who want to try a game that is 'like' the Souls series, but it is probably not for those who are only interested in only the 'Souls' games.
If you're itching for a souls-like - Get it
If you're interested but skeptical - Get it on sale
If you're a die hard souls fan - Get it only if you are willing to try something new but similar
Steam User 358
I went into this game with middling expectations because of the Mixed reviews it has, but I really liked it. Right before playing it, I had just finished my 2nd replay of all 3 DS games and I was looking for more, and this game delivered 100%.
My opinion of it might be favorable because I encountered zero performance issues, no in-game bugs, and only a single crash over my ~50 hours of gameplay. If those things had been present, I'd probably have less positive a reaction to it.
I've seen a lot of people complain that the 'difficulty' in this game rarely felt fair compared to other games in the genre and I'm pretty confused as to what they're comparing it to. DS3 is littered with ganks, things shooting at you from higher altitudes, tandem fights that are hard if you don't have the right tools or approach to deal with them, and this game is largely the same.
Graphics-wise, it's great. Challenge-wise, it's not that hard. Maybe DS2 Sins level. But the world exploration was fun, the visuals and ambiance wonderfully dark and Gothic, and the playtime really satisfying for a full game purchase.
If you find yourself wanting more DS, this is the closest thing to it I've played. If you find that idea unappealing, then this is probably not for you.
Steam User 947
Giving this a positive review because it's genuinely great but also because of how fast the devs are pumping out patches fixing the issues many are plagued with which is unheard of for modern gaming.
Steam User 550
This game is honestly way better than I originally expected. Aside from the performance issues that has been talked about by everyone and their mothers, the game does a solid job world building and setting itself apart from every other souls-like. The Lamp mechanic is very well executed and feels balanced of both combat and exploration. The story is serviceable not gonna blow anyone's mind. The combat at first felt clunky, but after the first few hours and once you find the right weapon that calls to you, it becomes quite fun and engaging. It's not quite as challenging as some of the other games in the genre, but that's not to say that it's a walk in the park either. Overall i think if you're looking for another souls-like to sink some hours into with decent combat, a beautiful world, and unique and interesting exploration mechanics, this might be the game for you.
Overall Score: 7.5/10
Steam User 392
This game has some of the most incredible vistas I've seen in any video games, and I'm convinced that the world/level designers were holding hands all the way through. What they've delivered is really top notch and I dare even say gives FROM a run for their money. The weapons and armor designs are also fantastic, and I hope to see tincts in more of these games going forward.
Unfortunately this went at the cost of other aspects of the game. Enemy variety is extremely scarce and you've seen nearly all of them in the first few hours of playing. Enemy placement was extremely frustrating and repetitive. Every encounter was one or two big knights supported by ranged enemies that could snipe you from across the continent. If you were unlucky they'd have an umbral parasite attached to them which rendered them immune to damage or healed them. Speaking of which, umbral parasites feel completely unnecessary. They don't add anything to an encounter and only take away from them.
Boss fights were alright. They weren't offensively bad, just not really out there either. On the easier side of Souls games and not too many interesting mechanics surrounding them. A vast bulk of the story bosses had great designs. The non-story bosses were often later reused as regular enemies, which became tiresome really quickly.
Audio design was perfectly alright for the most part, the ambient sounds felt right, hitting enemies felt satisfying. My biggest gripe, - and it's tying back to one of my earlier complaints - projectiles don't have very good sound cues. If you're going to have a trillion enemies shoot at me from every angle, please, at least let me ultra instinct dodge with the help of proper sound cues. The soundtrack was serviceable but not memorable in the slightest.
More importantly, gameplay. The combat feels somewhat floaty and swings have a truckload of forward momentum, often catapulting you forward. Sometimes to your death if you aren't careful. Made it really awkward to fight near ledges especially. Despite this, everything felt very responsive. There's no proper tells on what is/isn't parriable, which made for unnecessary trial and error.
Once you've used a weapon within a certain class for 5 minutes, you've really seen all of it. There's no variety in movesets within a certain weapon class, which made looking forward to finding new weapons not really that exciting. As I started as a pyro, I found some inferno scaling axes at the start of the game and didn't find a proper replacement inferno weapon until nearly halfway through the game. Even when I did, I wouldn't immediately be able to use it because of how scarce upgrade materials could be at times. Often a recurring issue within this genre.
Multiplayer - perhaps more specifically - invading, is a massive letdown. I am pretty passionate about invading, but it's really just not doable in the game's current state. The invader spawns in with missing hp and mana, which left me - a caster with 50 points in inferno - with enough mana to cast a whopping three spells to cast before I had to munch on some mana rocks. Come on.
Then there's the latency issues. I was really getting my hopes up for this one. I really wanted to see FROM's archaic multiplayer systems to get a run for their money, but instead we got a massive downgrade. It's peer-to-peer, but the only thing that matters is what happens on the host's screen. Yes, we're back to Dark Souls 1, but it feels worse for reasons I can't put my finger on. There's a ton of desyncs and rubberbanding to boot.
At the time of writing there's still a lot of crashes going on, but the devs are working diligently to fix them, I won't let that affect my rating on this review, though they were very frustrating.
Overall I think the game is still worth playing for the exploration of its brutal and gorgeous world, but I recommend you wait until all of the crashes have been fixed at least.
Steam User 904
Important PSA:
Make sure to download the latest Nvidia driver (if you have an RTX/GTX graphics card) before you try to play the game. It went from unplayable 20 FPS with lots of stutters to mostly rock-solid 60 FPS for me.
Toggling on Nvidia DLSS and setting it to "Quality" + sharpness at 0.50 also helped.
Good game so far. Coop works flawlessly, but performance definitely needs some fine-tuning. Will update this review once I've gotten further.
EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that Nvidia DLSS is causing issues for some people. If that's the case for you, I'd recommend turning it off. Simple as that.
Also, it turns out that the "seamless coop" mode is only "seamless" in the sense that it lets players join your game easily. The host is the only one who gets to keep any actual progress, plus it places a lot of restrictions on the joining player (less currency gain from killing mobs, fewer item pickups, no interacting with the game world like opening doors and gates, etc.)
Because of this, I've made the decision to add this edit to my original review, and also apply for a refund of the game. This is not because the game itself is inherently bad (it isn't, I had a lot of fun with it in the couple hours I played and so the review stays positive) but the coop mode was THE reason I bought it, and also a huge selling point used in the marketing. So for it to be this stripped-down is quite frankly inexcusable, bordering on false marketing, because they never disclosed any of these restrictions prior to launch.
If you want a single-player soulslike game, it's honestly not a bad pick. But if you want a coop soulslike game (which this one was marketed as) then I'm afraid... this just ain't it chief.