Conclusion
Lords of the Fallen is a great game, simple as that. It deviates away from the Souls games even though it is kind of similar in its execution. The combat is fast and fun and flows like Kingdoms of Amalur, you have a full story and narration driven cut scenes. From Software didn’t start out with Demons Souls, they honed their craft on their earlier PS1 titles like Kings Field. This is the first Action RPG that CI Games / Deck 13 have released and no doubt if this game gets a sequel it will be even better than this great game.
I have only encountered 1 bug in 15 hours of play so far, during The Commander boss fight. After you damage him enough he drives his sword into the ground and a shield surrounds him while an enemy or two attacks you, the shield then dissipates after you dispatch the enemies. One point during the battle he just stood there allowing me to hit him but the additional enemies appeared. I did die as I thought the game had glitched and while laying into him the additional enemies killed me. Every attempt after that though I did not see this happen again.
At times I have turned the game off in frustration at a boss fight, much like I did with the Souls games. However, I keep going back to it and after learning the pattern of a boss and learning their weaknesses I endured and killed them. There are a few times though where the game is a bit cheap, for example the dual wielding enemies you encounter for the first time in the demonic realm, you have to smash a pot and collect the shard that is inside or he will continuously heal himself once his health gets low and you can’t kill him while he is doing this. Putting heavily armoured foes in narrow passages makes it difficult to see what they are doing as the camera closes right in so you can’t see your character and time a counter move. The 4th boss can also heal itself until you work out the best way to counter the healing and it is something that you find near the start of the game. The thing is though you learn from this and will eventually get past these obstacles presented to you.
There is no Co Op or multiplayer in this game at all, it is a pure single player experience. You can’t summon help to tackle a tough boss, you have to learn, endure and overcome the challenges it throws at you.
There are a few secrets to be found in the game, take out a boss under certain hidden objectives and you will get a better variation of the loot that it drops. There are also NPC’s dotted around the areas that give an extra objective, these NPC’s you will see later in the game if you opt to help them.
You will also see portals open after meeting area requirements; these include a wave based arena fight, a black void with loot and enemies in the darkness and an area that literally just has loot. You can redo these numerous times to get better weapons, runes and armour.
One thing I definitely applaud them for is putting a save point right beside the boss area, it means you don’t have to traverse a large level to get back into the fight. There is usually just one enemy to take out and then back into the boss fight. I hated some of the bonfire locations in Dark Souls 1 & 2, having to redo a large section of a level before you actually got to the boss again.
I have only reached the 5th boss so far after 15 hours of play; you can if you wish just zip through the entire story in around 15 hours, if you take the time to explore though you will find better weapons, armour and audio logs you could be playing for easily around 50 hours. There is a ton of lore in the game which can be accessed through the pause menu and you can also listen to the logs again.
The game scales well across various PC’s with the minimum requirements being the average a few years ago; I think the only thing that may cause an issue for some is the RAM requirement as it is 6Gb and systems a few year back shipped with 4Gb.
Check out more of my pictures on my Steam page.
Lords of the Fallen is released on the following formats:
Important info:
- Publisher: CI Games
- Players: Single Player Only
GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
7.5 8 8 7.5 |
OVERALL | 8 |
Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!