LORDS OF THE FALLEN [2023]

Coming off of the back of the excellent Lies Of P I found myself in the mood for more Soulsborne titles. I even started a fresh run on the original Dark Souls in order to scratch the itch! Lords Of The Fallen just happened to be released at the right time but the signs weren’t good. For all intents and purposes, Lords Of The Fallen should be a total stinker. The original game (this is a semi-sequel/reboot with the same name) was so tedious and middle of the road that this title essentially tries to remove any previous association was a warning sign and, when I finally installed this game and booted it up, it barely worked. Multiple crashes, graphical glitches and piss poor performance had me giving up on it within the first hour or so, potentially throwing it on the ever-growing pile of dead, rubbish Soulsborne knock offs.

For some reason… I came back to it a few days later. I’m not sure why. I ended up completing the whole bloody thing. I really, really enjoyed Lords Of The Fallen.

The developer ended up patching the game in some way pretty much every day for a fortnight, everything from straightforward bug fixes to weapon damage balancing to shutting down exploit loopholes. You can perhaps argue that the game needed a couple of extra weeks in the oven but as I was playing through Lords Of The Fallen, it was quickly whipped into shape as a much more stable, impressive experience. So, with it running a lot better, I began to play through the thing.

It was not a great start.

For some ungodly reason, Lords Of The Fallen essentially BEGINS with its equivalent of Blighttown from Dark Souls. Pilgrim’s Perch, a grim area full of pitfalls, challenging jumps made harder by the fact that the controls don’t really lend themselves to accurate leaping about, drab visuals and performance issues. It is a slog. You fight your way up the cliffside until you reach a cave entrance and head down to an early game boss that is an absolute filter boss of the highest order - Gentle Gaverus, Mistress of Hounds. A boss which can sit at range and fire high damage arrows at you, while seemingly endless packs of dogs are set upon you. It’s a real difficulty spike and, although I personally love a challenge, I can see why some people would bin the game off here, never to return. It’s frontloaded with some serious bullshit.

However, once you get past this section, Lords Of The Fallen improves exponentially. Sure, the next area is a swamp but it is an incredible looking one, nonetheless. The next boss fight is a beast that is equal parts horrific as it is spectacular to look at - The Congregator of Flesh. The areas become more open, showcasing the fantastic graphics. You level up a bit more and start to become more intune with your desired build and choice of weapons, which rounds off some of the combat’s rougher edges. Every area after this has some element to it that is very visually impressive - it is like wandering around a particularly bleak metal album cover. You start to get drawn into the world of Lords Of The Fallen, which for my money is where the game really excels. While Lies Of P comes a ball hair away from nailing From Software’s quality in regards to the actual mechanics of combat and progression, it falls somewhat short when it comes to the variety of areas within the world and the lore that fleshes out the various locales, characters and bosses. Lords Of The Fallen is the total opposite.

The world is split between three deities, each with their own followers, who are basically representations of a ‘holy’ God, what is essentially Satan and a ruler of the Umbral realm, which is some sort of off brand Lovecraftian elder god that isn’t tied to the world’s traditional belief system. Characters and entire areas are dedicated to each one and which is good and evil is far from a clear cut thing. There’s some brilliant details - the followers of Aydr (the one who is ostensibly the devil) cut off the right hands of their enemies, as the right hand is usually linked with holy magic and the left with the dark arts. When you kill another human player after invading their game, you actually use Right Hands as the currency to buy specific items from their shrine. There’s an area later on, a town that has been attacked by some of Aydr’s followers, and as well as being burned to the ground, hands are nailed to any surface left standing. It is an incredible visual and is the sort of thing that Lords Of The Fallen often throws at you. I’m not going to sit here and breakdown every single bit of lore and world-building, but like the best From Software games, it is found in every item, every enemy, every single thing you see usually has a reason behind it.

Lords Of The Fallen’s real unique selling point is the ability to traverse between the real world (axiom) and Umbral realms, a realm that exists just under the surface of reality that looks like H.R. Giger’s worst nightmare, all giant skeletal structures and faceless, seemingly dead giants looming in the distance. It is full of endlessly respawning trash mobs, new pathways across ravines and, if you stick around in there too long, some extra hard ‘hunter’ enemies that come to put an end to you. There are plenty of ways to enter the Umbral realm. Of course, first of all, you can just go there by using your Umbral lantern, which hangs by your character’s side, but also, if you die in Axiom, you’re taken to the Umbral realm, essentially acting as an extra life when this happens. You can peer into the Umbral realm using your lantern, but if one of the many enemies that roam around there hits you, you’re pulled in immediately. The first time this happens is a cracking jumpscare.

Despite the near constant improvements to the game since the piss poor release, there’s some stuff that isn’t going to get fixed. Enemy variety is really disappointing, with a lot of areas simply having the same enemies only with more health. There’s lots of boss reuse as normal enemies and it doesn’t hit as hard as seeing the Capra Demon wandering around Lost Izalith and instead just makes you think “oh, that boss fight was just with a normal enemy after all”, which is really disappointing. Also, despite a lot of the locations you fight your way through being visually very striking and unique, there’s one hell of a lot of CAVES in Lords Of The Fallen! The lock-on system and camera can occasionally get you in a bit of trouble, too. They feel a lot like the early From Software titles and aren’t as refined as they are in say, Sekiro or Elden Ring, which can cause some cheap deaths - the absolute worst thing that can happen to you in this genre.

Ultimately, I think my enjoyment of Lords Of The Fallen is related to how much I love Dark Souls 2. Dark Souls 2 is a weird, slow paced, clunky game with a vast variety of ways you can customise your build or get involved with PVP/PVE stuff and has a bunch of cool bosses. This feels very similar in those regards, which should tell you whether or not this game is for you in a way that is far more effective than all the rambling words in this newsletter.

Not only did I end up really enjoying Lords Of The Fallen, I’m even thinking of doing another playthrough! There’s loads of secrets, different endings, hidden questlines that lead to cool treasures that I didn’t even come close to finding on my first run through the game, so I’d like to try a more completionist approach to a second one. Another cool feature added to the game is the ability to ‘reset’ the current game once you complete it but keep the same stats, allowing you to blast your way through everything with a top level character and complete other achievements and objectives you may have missed without heading into a true NG+ and raising the difficulty substantially. It’s a nice option to have.

Between the lore and world-building in this and the combat and weapons in Lies Of P, you’ve got a genuine contender to any From Software game. No one game has got it all right just yet, but I’m starting to think it might only be a matter of time before someone does. I can’t wait to see From Software’s first truly current gen title because this genre is still offering me so much entertainment.

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