More like the Lords of the risen, amirite?
If you don’t succeed at first, try again. While the original Lords of the Fallen was one of the first to bravely attempt to recreate FromSoftware éclair in a bottle, it didn’t quite reach that high level. Almost a decade and about a thousand soul-like imitators after, there may be no superior time for its follow–up to take a second strike – and fortunately, this new Lords of the Fallen, with confusingly identical names, confidently lands its strike. His world divided into two realities is absolutely fantastic to explore, the construction is diverse and complex, and the struggle is so fluid and satisfying that I am ready to forgive all the ways he gets from his contemporaries. Quite serious performance problems and bugs, as well as disappointingly simple boss actions, mean that this last push is not a fatal blow, but I still expect to spend many hours impaling enemies and exploring every corner of his intelligently divided world.secrets.
Lords of the Fallen is another entry in the Soulslike Craze Action RPG, with an unsettling fantasy setting, other players invading your game to experience cooperative or PvP goodness, and of course, dying a lot. It uses the same type of deadly third-person action system, full of dodge rolls, posture knives and emotions on fallen enemies as a sign of extreme disrespect. A lot of it is borrowed from the FromSoft classics (in this matter, Dark Souls in particular), but there are also quite a few unique things to look forward to. This includes things like super cool dual reality gadgets or a nifty magic lamp that allows you to directly skin the souls of your enemies.
And look, I know, every time I review one of these things, I always complain about how this Genre is absolutely inundated with new entries, but it’s really worth repeating. Nowadays there are a lot of such games. Although more than one Genre that I like is not necessarily a bad thing, it has become a little intimidating to open a brand new game and feel like I already know exactly how 90% of it will turn out because everyone uses the same bag of tricks and tropes. It is very strange, for example, that I see a stack of boxes in the distance and think: “Ah, I can’t wait for a monster to jump behind these and action me” or that I reach a swampy area and know, without a doubt, that I am being ambushed by creatures that are trying to virus me. At this point, I started losing track of the healing items in the game called Estus bottles vs dragon hearts vs purple tear bottles vs pulse cells vs healing pumpkins and so on until eternity. If these names all ring a bell, expect a lot more déjà Vu here.
If “Lords of the Fallen” also sounds familiar to you, it’s because it shares its name with the game from developer Deck13 – but as the absence of a “2” or something similar suggests, these Lords of the Fallen are not a sequel, but a complete reboot. Those who have played the Original will certainly hear the NPCs talk about familiar (and sometimes foolish) tuning terms like “the Rhogar” and “Adyr”, or see really cool and recognizable sights like the great outstretched hand of a fallen god in the distance, but the new Hexworks developer used only the most basic elements of the previous version. The good news is that this new story that it tells with renovated and dusty rooms is much superior than its predecessor, and the world feels much more refined.
There are some interesting characters here and there, and some cool lore and world-building that you can enjoy when you come across different factions to work with or against, even if sometimes this stuff can seem buried under a mountain of generic dark Fantasy gibberish (like the super original concept of using “charred fingers” to play with or against), even if sometimes this stuff can seem buried under a mountain of generic dark Fantasy gibberish (like the super original concept of using “charred fingers”
Although Lords of the Fallen certainly borrows a lot from its peers in the genre, its biggest brainchild is also its best: the double realms, in the middle of which you can switch at any time. Axiom, the body world that most people perceive, is based on a ghostly world of dark abominations and scary eyeballs called Umbral, which you can access with a magic lantern. Walking around to finish bosses and kick rocky outcrops, you will have to navigate in both, which offers a truly new way to explore the surroundings. For example, you could fall on a broken bridge in the normal world, but if you dive into Umbral, you can cross it with a flat – organic, gray shape that is only visible and tangible when you enter the scary world of darkness-it kind of reminds me of the scary plane that Frodo enters when he puts on the ring This mechanism has a great impact on almost every aspect of Lords of the Fallen, from action, where usually imperceptible enemies become a major pressure when you enter Umbral, to exploration, because each area basically has two versions that justify several passages in the same section to see what you missed.
Even cooler is the fact that you can interact with the umbral plane without entering it by holding your reliable lamp to see a small piece of it become visible around you. This allows you, for example, to overcome body barriers that do not exist in the other world and get a glimpse of things that could be hidden on the other side before completely tipping over. Exploration is less about running from point A to point B than about taking the time to understand each area and look for secrets while switching in the middle of realities and using your Lamp to illuminate how they differ. It is also very good that if you are ever smaked by the enemy instead of dying, you are involuntarily dragged into the shadows and give yourself one last Chance in life. To return to the real world, you must find hidden Totems in this dark place or return to a checkpoint to rest, but more and more powerful enemies begin to appear endlessly and hunt you the longer you stay.