Nine years ago today, I reviewed Lords of the Fallen (LOTF) on the PS4. Today, I post a review of Lords of the Fallen on PS5. Two totally different games, sharing the same name, and actually sharing a lot of the same results, if you will, and that’s both good and bad. By this I mean that yes, LOTF (2023) is a great game, as was the one in 2014. However, it’s not polished in many ways, and has some important yet-to-be-resolved issues. Not even three weeks since release it’s already had a half dozen patches on PS5, which hey, that’s great they’re working hard apparently, but still. Actually LOTF (2014) also suffered from some major bugs and it had two large patches released to address those. Anyway, on the official reddit, there is confirmation from Hexworks (the developers) of ongoing weekly patching and plans for fixing a lot of different issues for LOTF (2023).
So what kind of bugs are we talking about? Well, they run the gamut, and while I have not personally experienced some of them in my time so far (have had the game for seven days), many users are reporting intense framerate drops and hiccups, game-ending glitches, and other “big deal” problems. Heck, I had a game-breaking bug not twenty minutes in that I fortunately was able to get around by just exiting the game, letting the auto-save reload, and behold, the NPC character I needed to interact with to advance was there this time, but was mysteriously gone the previous time. How’s that for a confidence builder knowing that I’m going into what’s probably a 50 hour slugfest (being a Soulslike)?
But the worst issue I have presently is the lock-on feature for enemies. You’re supposed to be able to press R3 and lock onto foes so that you can focus on them, dodge around them, track them, target them for ranged hits, you know, all the obvious stuff you expect from a working lock-on feature. The way it is right now, this doesn’t work with any kind of consistency. Sometimes, lock-on functions great. Other times, the camera spins me violently away from the enemy that’s “right there!” on screen that I want to lock onto. You can imagine the frustration of trying to play a Soulslike with a janky lock-on, so surely, hopefully, this gets patched before long.
And that’s really the story with Lords of the Fallen right now — lots of great content — from story, characters, bosses, graphics, art design, and on an on — but it’s all held up by a giant asterisk that would demand potential players to proceed with extreme caution. This genre of game — the Soulslike — is hard enough as is — add in technical issues, be they of the game-breaking variety, performance hiccups, or what have you — only make the experience vastly more difficult to become immersed in, invested in, and to have fun in, which is still my number one reason for playing videogames, and I assume probably yours as well. Suffice it to say that right now I don’t feel like it’s particularly “safe” to play LOTF and not risk some kind of trouble, be it minor headaches or potentially far worse. Hopefully Hexworks will continue to bust ass to patch and fix up the experience and make what it should have been at launch.
It’s at least encouraging that Hexworks is firing off patches rapidly, but this is a $70 (or more) game, gents. It’s not on us to suffer through what feels like a beta build, but sometimes that’s exactly what it feels like, and it’s such a shame. This game needed a few more months of dev time before going public, but for reasons we may never know, it’s here and it is what it is. In my time with the game so far — and I have not completed it, nor have I played any of the multiplayer element of it (and have no intention to) — the ride has certainly had some turbulence, some severe and some not too bad, but all due to bugs that it just shouldn’t have had at launch. Nevertheless, despite these woes, the overall experience has been pretty awesome because I really like so many aspects of what the game offers.
I’ve gone a bit about the ugliness of the technical side of this game, but make no mistake, LOTF is a gorgeous game with a lot of upshot both in its presentation, atmosphere, gameplay, and most every other aspect. The experience begins with a cutscene showing how an evil god has been unleashed and basically all hell has broken loose. Afterwards, players are taken to character creation, from which you can choose your character class from nine available ones ranging in appearance, class name, and starting stats. The options were all interesting, though going with the unarmored prisoner was never an option for me; it’s designated as the class for super skilled (or masochistic) players that want an insane challenge. Ultimately, I just went with the “dude on the box” character, the Dark Crusader, who was on a mission from the fictional church of the gameworld to purge the land of evil. This character offered a steady balance of Vitality, Agility, Strength, and so on, while other characters classes were either more tank, more assassin-y, or more magical/ranged. I recall with LOTF (2014) spending several hours in the “wrong” character class and actually restarting that game because I was getting killed so much — after that, things were far, far smoother (obviously, my skill level was at fault there, not the game). So, getting things right here is important, more important for some (like me) than others, probably. That said, for the most part, you’re going to be seeing your character’s back and ideally you will be covered head to toe in armor anyway, so I wouldn’t get too worked up about deciding whether or not you want your character (whom you can name) to have a mustache, scars, tattoos, and quite a few other adjustable settings.
Anyway, gameplay begins after a cutscene that shows players being gifted a special lantern that makes gives you the means to see into the realm of the dead and be able to revive yourself upon death. Predictably, you are tasked with repelling the evil, and you’ll do so with your melee, ranged, and magic weapons, and by spending nearly equal time in two realms. Players can block, roll, run, and evade as they traverse not only the living realm known as Axiom, but also Umbral, the realm of the dead. I love the idea of being able to traverse in a seen/physical realm, but all the while a whole other realm is hidden from our sight. To see this realm, you simply access your lantern and hold L2 to raise it up, and then you can move around to see what lies beneath, and the difference between the seen and unseen realms is routinely amazing. You can also sort of “teleport” into Umbral at will using one of the attributes of the lantern, but beware, because once you step into this realm you can only step out at certain points, known as effigies (well, and also vestiges, which are the resting/save spots). Plus, the longer you stay in Umbral, the more the dead become aware, and the creatures with become more and more difficult to slay.
Accessing Umbral is a vital part of the game and is necessary for players to get through areas in Axiom (for example, where no bridge exists in Axiom, perhaps one does exist in Umbral). The realms mix, and it took me a while to get the hang of how things overlap between the realms. Besides the more obvious environmental traversal elements, you also have to watch out for Umbral entities that are boosting the stats of Axiom enemies and manage your health in both realms. This requires a learning curve, and the game is very forthcoming with tutorial information as you play with large text boxes that describe a gameplay element and how it works. Fortunately, you can review this information in the inventory screen, which I did on more than one occasion to get a reminder of how something worked, such as Soulflaying, which is an action that sort of bridges the gap of Umbral and Axiom.
Neither realm ever feels particularly safe unless you have warped back to an older vestige to do a little grinding. Side note, I liked that each resting point, or save point, are uniquely named, I think that helps a lot as well for players describing their location and it just gives the game a tiny bit more robustness and lore, which can lead to it being more memorable and immersive. Anyway, at these vestiges, players can rest and upgrade their characters stats. By resting, you of course respawn all of the enemies again, so do this with some caution. Your Sanguinarix, a cross that you stab yourself with to regain health, also refills here. Vestiges, in my experience so far, are spread out at reasonable intervals and are always a welcomed sight. Anyone who has played this genre for ten minutes knows the sense of relief and accomplishment that comes with seeing a save point, and that’s no different with LOTF. One minor note, I recall being able to bank your souls/vigor points at these save points in LOTF (2014), but you cannot do so here (or in any other Souls games I have played). Personally, I really like the option to store up my points rather than risk losing them all and then hoping I could get back to where I died to reclaim them. LOTF makes things even tougher than the typical, “well, just get back to where you last died and don’t die along the way and you can get your XP back” — no, with LOTF, some enemies actually capture your lost XP, and the only way to get it back is to defeat them. The difficulty jumps here can be a real pain, and that sense of “all or nothing,” especially in the midst of these janky bugs and performance issues, makes the whole affair a lot more harrowing than it should be.
You know at the end of the day, LOTF (2023) has a lot of great aspects, but man these bugs are numerous, significant, and very damaging to the experience. Hexworks is probably going to make this right — I believe they will. If Cyberpunk 2077 can do it, so can these guys and frankly LOTF does not have as far to go to be made right. LOTF could be a great investment of your money and time, but in complete transparency, it’s going to take them some more time to get there. I’d recommend waiting to bite on this one for a few more months until things are really ironed out and tuned. It’s not like we don’t all have a ton of other things to play anyway — but the state of LOTF right now is just too technically unsound to give it a glowing thumbs up. There’s still a great game undernearth all the mess if you can survive the bugginess, but give it a little more time to ripen for now and I think you’ll be glad you did.
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