Lords of the Fallen is my favourite non-FromSoftware Souls-like ever

2023’s Lord of the Fallen is incredibly fun if you enjoy Souls-like gameplay.

As someone who loves games like Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Nioh and the ever-growing list of Souls-likes that have been released in the last 10 years, I couldn’t wait to play Lords of the Fallen, and in most aspects, the game has met my expectations. However, it unfortunately falters in some regards.

It’s worth noting that I haven’t yet finished the game due to time constraints, but I have faced several bosses and sunken about 12-15 hours into the title so far.

First, let’s define Souls-likes. It’s a subgenre of action role-playing games inspired by FromSoftware’s Dark Souls and its spiritual successors that are typically very difficult. They often don’t feature direct storytelling, and there’s a formula for defeating enemies around a checkpoint and getting ‘souls’ or other currency to level up your stats, buy items and more. When resting at these checkpoints, all the enemies return, and you can rinse, wash and repeat until you discover new areas and bosses. It’s worth noting that Lords of the Fallen feels similar to games like Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne regarding difficulty. This means it’s not terribly difficult, but it poses a real challenge, and I’ve died many times.

Hexworks’ 2014 Lords of the Fallen was also a Souls-like, but I couldn’t get into the first game. It was too clunky, the movement was slow, and I didn’t truly fall in love with the Souls-like formula until I played Bloodborne, a much faster-paced take on the genre.

However, 2023’s Lords of the Fallen makes up for where the predecessor faltered. The combat is fun (though there are some issues that I’ll dive into later) and fast-paced, matching the speed of games like Bloodborne and The Surge 2. 

This title also features a cool system that places two worlds on top of each other. There’s the world of the living, ‘Axiom,’ and the world of the dead, ‘Umbral.’ You’ll encounter checkpoints called Vestiges in Axiom. Then, when you die, you’ll enter Umbral, the gothic haunted world that opens new passageways and treasures you don’t have access to in Axiom. While this is cool, Umbral also has a lot more enemies. The enemies in Axiom will also be in Umbral; there are grotesquely defigured human-like enemies, weird human-moth hybrids, spectres and more.

“Magic and other ranged abilities (like bows and crossbows) being on L2 and then mapped to different button inputs is ingenious and something I wish was done in Elden Ring.”

Alongside revealing passageways and treasures, your Vigor multiplier increases the longer you stay in this dark world, making it easier to level up. However, you can’t get too comfortable in Umbral as even more difficult enemies emerge from the woodwork the longer you spend in this dark world. I haven’t spent much of my time with Lords of the Fallen in Umbral, although on one of my trips into this dark, desecrated world, I overstayed my welcome with glowing red enemies hunting me down. I decided that it was time for me to return to the world of the living and spend my Vigor to level up before losing it all in battle. If you don’t want to enter Umbral, your character’s lamp can give you sight into its world, allowing you to peek into the world of the dead to complete certain puzzles. However, if you’re looking into Umbral, enemies from this world can pull you in.

I enjoy exploration in Lords of the Fallen and the dynamic of two overlaying worlds. It brings something new to the oversaturated Souls-like formula. There’s a sense of wonder when new bridges, spine-shaped ladders and passageways previously blocked by a lake open up. However, Vestiges don’t seem as common as some Souls-likes, such as Dark Souls 3 (one of my favourites). Instead, the Lamp Bearer (your character) can plant Vestige Seeds in certain locations, creating a new Vestige for the player to rest, level up and warp to other Vestiges.

I love this aspect of the game, as the idea of creating your own checkpoints is something I find cool. However, Vestige Seeds are a limited resource, and sometimes, the game will trick the player by placing a location where you can plant a seed near a regular Vestige. I’ve encountered so many frustrating experiences where I’ll place a Vestige Seed only to find a regular Vestige just a few feet away or around the corner, essentially wasting a Seed I might need later. It’s maddening, but I do love that aspect of uncertainty of “Should I place this seed here? Do I really need to?”

As I mentioned before, I enjoy the quick combat, and it’s awesome there are so many different weapons, fighting styles and types of magic. I love that you can mix the combos in fighting with different inputs, and everything flows and weaves like a dance. My character uses Radiant magic (one of the three spellcasting types), but I also use two short swords. Magic and other ranged abilities (like bows and crossbows) being on L2 and then mapped to different button inputs is ingenious and something I wish was done in Elden Ring. With this method of ranged combat, R1 and R2 are freed up for different moves. And whether you’re using a Great Sword, Short Sword, Mace, Club, two swords, two clubs, one-handing or two-handing any other weapon types, you can mix up the fighting in many ways.

I also like the Bloodborne/Lies of P-esque wither mechanic in Lords of the Fallen. Because my character uses two swords when I block, I use them to protect myself, causing me to suffer wither damage. (If I were using a shield with 100 percent physical protection, this wouldn’t happen). Wither damage will grey sections of your health bar, but you can regain your health by attacking the enemies.

I love this as it encourages you to counterattack quickly to recover some of your lost health. However, if you get hit again and don’t dodge or block, all the grey of your health bar will be gone, and you’ll lose the health from the hit itself, meaning you can quickly die if you’re not careful enough. I like that you can also wither your enemies. You can use your Umbral Lamp (which allows you to enter the Umbral world without dying in battle) to pull out enemies’ souls. You can then hit this soul afterwards, and when it returns to the enemy, it will cause wither damage, which means one more quick hit, and all their greyed-out health will also disappear.

Unfortunately, the most important mechanic, the ability to lock-on, sometimes falters.

Locking-on doesn’t always work with the person in front of you and sometimes attaches to other enemies or even areas on the map you can interact with. It’s frustrating, and while fighting is agile and quick, sometimes you’re literally dancing around the enemy instead of killing them. It isn’t typically the cause of my death, but it has happened a few times during my gameplay.

Another issue I have with the game is how it runs on PlayStation 5. While reviewing the title, I encountered several issues, such as the longer you play it, the more the frames drop, the title falters or it sometimes even crashes. This only happened once, and it’s been fixed in a number of patches, but occasionally, I still run into issues. It’s also worth noting that I’ve only played the game on ‘Performance Mode’ as ‘Picture Quality Mode’ features frustrating frame drops. Typically, I play all games on the highest possible picture quality and let performance dip a bit, but this wasn’t something I could do with Lords of the Fallen. Hexworks seems like it’s diligently working on improving performance, and during the review period, the developers released a number of updates fixing some of these issues.

While I haven’t finished the game yet, I’ve noticed that there aren’t many enemy types — at least so far. Compared to a title like Dark Souls 3 (and especially Elden Ring), I’d have already encountered many different types of enemies by now, but that hasn’t been the case. At one point, I saw a huge, brawling new enemy, which then proceeded to one-shot me. However, this could just be because I need to head further into Axiom.

That said, the bosses have been very cool so far, including winged angels, witches and horsemen; the bosses all feel unique and interesting. However, I hope Lords of the Fallen doesn’t do what Nioh 2 did and make early bosses the main type of enemies in the end game.

As for the narrative aspects, I typically don’t play Souls-likes for their story, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve experienced so far. The game’s narrative contrasts sharply with Dark Souls, where you need to read item lore to understand the story on a deeper level.

Here, you’re the Lamp Bearer, a crusader tasked by an order to light beacons to prevent the return of the dark god Adyr. You can dive deeper into the lore, and there are a lot of interesting story beats, but I’ve mostly been into killing things and using fun spells.

What I like about Lords of the Fallen is that Hexwork Studios has created a game where if you see a creature use a cool spell, there’s a solid possibility you can cast it as well. You can likely farm the enemy and find that weapon if they have fun weapons. You can suffer from wither damage, but so can enemies. Overall, the experience feels pretty fair and balanced. I also enjoy this dark fantasy setting; the cool exploration and putting two worlds on top of each other brings something to the table that no other Souls-like has ever done.

Even though I haven’t finished the game, so far, it’s offered a fun experience and has cemented itself in my mind as one of the best Souls-likes I’ve played yet. Every time I stop playing, I can’t wait to return to the worlds of Axiom and Umbral.

Lords of the Fallen is available on Xbox, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Steam for $89.99.

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