Release Date: October 14, 2014
Platform: PS4(Reviewed), PC, PS3, X360, XB1
Developer: Deck 13 Interactive/CI Games
Publisher: Square Enix/CI Games
Genre: Action RPG
Price: $49.99(PC), ₹3,999(PS4, XB1)
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Ode to Dark Souls:
I’m sure you’ve lived your bit of the 90’s, swinging to Nirvana, raging to Stone Temple Pilots; but the question is, who are the Pixies? Most of the people would know them from Fight Club, kudos to that, some may be less unfortunate to recall the band. Pixies are one of the key reasons why rock and roll has gone a complete makeover, with grunge like distortion defining the motive of rock ballads. Thanks to their lack of advertising skills, they aren’t celebrated like Nirvana. Dark Souls is just like Pixies, and even though Demon’s Souls’ extremely punishing scheme put off a lot of gamers, it spurred an entire genre of fighting-dying-roleplaying games for our generation. Just when the next gen consoles were collecting more dust than usual, while we were happy grinding for exotic weapons, Lords of the Fallen made me fall in love with that genre again.
The Backdrop of Lords of the Fallen:
When a group of Lords raged at the mortals they were supposed to protect, all hell broke loose. That’s how CI Games/Deck 13’s Lords of the Fallen opens. Unlike other RPGs where you can create your own character, LOTF puts you in the shoes of a convict, outcast, sinner – Harkyn. Tomasz Gop, the creator of this new breed of hack and slash RPG series, was once leading Witcher 2. He brings in a lot of expertise and replenishes one of the best practices of the genre to provide a game that is so “tight” in gameplay mechanism. In terms of the story, this isn’t something completely new, insert Gods, insert convict, insert bald protagonist, rename Kratos. Moreover, the pace of the story ruined my faith on the LOTF lore, and it seemed like an obligation for the developers to add an extra layer of storytelling to an amazing tale of sword fighting. While Dark Souls champions the cause of Narrative Design, LOTF falls way short of narrating a great story within a great game. It introduces a very Mass Effect style narrative choice during dialogues that later have an effect on Harkyn’s journey. But thanks to the off timed, and sometimes glitchy, character body language within narration, it is nothing but a mega laugh riot! Whoever thought of getting away with that must be seriously living in the 90’s. My advice? Don’t zoom into a character if you have problems motion capturing their body language, preferably set it up in a dark room so that no one can notice the negativities, like Dark Souls.
Fist Fights and Levelling Up:
If you can excuse the story and poor attempt at setting up an unheard lore, considering its CI’s first action game, you may want to relive the game through one of its highlight features. The game brings out the warrior in you, and the gameplay progression that is at par with the challenges, that excellently adds to your appetite. It seems that the creators of LOTF wanted you to fist fight your way through the Rhogars, instead of ranged spell casting your way out, and therefore combines the best of attacking, reflexes and magic in creating three major classes – Warrior, Raider and Cleric, that is further subclassed based on your magika preference into – Outlaw, Brawler, Raider, Executioner, Paladin and Ranger. Using a combination of warrior like build and rogue like stealth magika, I beat the game as a pure Raider. The game can be beaten (with all your deaths and misfortunes combined) in under 30 hours, I know what you think, that’s when Dark Souls start loving you back.
The first thing that hits you in Lords of the Fallen is its connected world of Keystone, that instantly takes you back to those days in Lordran. The whole game spans out on a decent sized map, each intertwined with some corner of Keystone’s Monastery. You fight your way through monsters and Lords and unlock each area, which hosts some of the most jaw dropping items within the game. Some areas remain locked until you beat a boss and return later on the game, so expect a little backtracking. Lords of the Fallen maintains a safe distance from spoon feeding you with information, and each revelation becomes a sudden game changer. If you find it irrationally hard to go past an enemy horde, you may be certainly missing some item. Aside from the regular combat, the game introduces some challenge modes, (horde mode, survive and scavenge mode) that are accessible through portals. Just like Dark Souls, you must traverse through a new area or find a save point to save your game. Getting killed within a session leaves your bag of XP lying at the spot, as a ghost that you must retrieve before it fades away. To raise the challenge bar, the game introduces a risk system. A bonus multiplier raises your XP gained per kill, based on the number of enemies you kill without saving your game. You may choose to tread without saving your progress, or die trying. After a certain point of time within the game, Keystone turns from being Lordran to Majula, and the circular arrangement of areas turn into a linear alignment.
The game is an improvement on a lot of games in this genre, it mixes Darksiders, Dark Souls and Castlevania kind of combat to give you a seamless, and honestly, pioneering kind of combat. Each hack and slash feels like it, and every miss leaves you sighing. The different variety of weapons, the axes, hammers, swords and clubs, all have their own timing and impact. Each drain a certain bit of stamina from your bar, so one must choose whether he wants to go for the quick dual handed stabbing or a single piledriving axe blow. Similar to the other action games, you have an option to choose from the normal attack or the slow paced heavy attack, depending on the kind of opening the enemy has left. There are boss drops that range from exotic weapons to shields which upgrade its attack the more you use it. The metal clashing SFX is one of the most amazing features of this action game, and each SFX differs depending on the weapon you are wielding. One of the key highlights of this tactical action play is the roll, dodge animation that makes agility the heart of all action. One of the most pleasing moments from the game is your ability to backstab an enemy after circling him for a while, and drawing the whole health out of him in one animated whip. The Gauntlets is an addition to the hack and slash, with which one can shoot projectiles, drop explosives or simply blast a horde of enemies. Each gauntlet use consumes a bit of mana.
Upgrading System and Progression:
You can upgrade Harkyn as you gain experience points along the game, and he will able to charge fiercer attacks and resist more damage as a matter of fact. Similar to Dark Souls, this new IP leaves you spending XP points on specific character areas like:
Strength: Improves your ability to deal damage with Strength based weapons, and your ability to carry heavier gear.
Vitality: Increases overall health, increases effect of health reviving potions
Faith: Increases overall magic, damage with magic based weapons
Endurance: Increases Stamina/Energy, and your ability to carry heavier gear
Agility: Increases your ability to deal damage with fast build weapons, increases energy
Luck: Improves item drops from enemy kills
If you are a one slash guy, Strength based weapons are your priority. If you roll, parry and strike in numbers, Agility based daggers and double swords are your way in the game. Whichever style suits you, it is vitally important to adapt to it and increase its ranking, by spending XP. There is no harm in mixing a few items to become that heavy sword wielding dodger. Along with specific weapons, there are also special armour sets, like bracelets, headgear, torso guard and leggings. Discover different classes of armour within the areas to use them: a whole new breed of Harmony, Cold Blood, Hot Blood set of gear is waiting there to be picked.
Lords of the Fallen tries its best to fit in a RPG scheme in its relatively small world, it succeeds in keeping you looking out for ways to explore and upgrade yourself. However, these random trips often end with a death or two. While exploring the world, you can also discover empty bottles that increases the number of health potions you can consume without dying. LOTF is honest when it tries to take you through an area, offering you a lot of drops and locked items that can actually up your combat skills.
Overall Challenge and Bosses:
Lords of the Fallen has infamously been tipped as a Diet Dark Souls across Reddit and Twitter, and to a certain extent the game lets you enjoy rather than sulking over the random deaths. As a beginner, who has no clue as to how to combat the different forces, it is an immensely difficult job to manage everything, especially staying alive. In the very first minutes you meet the Monastery Warden, who literally shreds you over when it’s down to its last health phase. However, as you gain XP and spend them to train yourself, besides unlocking better gear, enemies become a little less badass. There will be a time when you can easily breeze through a level and meet the boss, and leaves the challenge seeker a little disheartened. For the folks who are coming straight from Dark Souls (wielding the Zweihander) LOTF will be a tough nut to crack in the initial phases, thanks to the game’s heavy relying on rolling and dodging. But once you crack the code, it becomes your strength.
Enemies range from swordsmen to brawlers to dead corpses who reawaken if you do not kill them quickly, there will also be a lot of annoying archers, dog like creatures and fanged mini-chimera. Enemies that you have killed will return only when you die, which makes it way more accessible than Dark Souls, wherein each bonfire lit is a heartache. Initially it’s fun to combat each type of enemy but ends with “Oh well, it’s them again, let me take them down.” My favourite type of enemy from the game would definitely be the Tyrants, they shoot up the challenge ten times than the normal usual. Tyrants cannot be killed, when they are down to their last breath, they summon their locked away heart (contained in a pot in some distant room) and revive themselves. You must follow the direction of the healing rays, find the heart and steal it (there will be other enemies waiting for you in that room as well) before you even try combatting the Tyrant for his life. The Spell Casters are also to be considered as serious challenge within the game, they draw health from you if you are in eyesight distance with him/her, and explode when they die.
Even though the bosses in the game do not meet you purposefully and are sometimes way too hard or way too easy for the level that you are currently in, they leave behind one of the greatest moments from the game. Each boss battle feels like an arena fight, unlike Dark Souls or Demon Souls for that matter, wherein you had to carry on combatting an enemy ten times your size standing on a mere parapet. It gives you a wide area ready to be used, or some environmental advantage ready to be seized upon. For example, beating the Worshipper required a lot of awareness more than just pure skill or luck. At times, boss fights within the game restricts you from experimenting and are usually led towards beating it. There are other bosses which may seem impossible to beat, unless you alter your tactics and discover something completely new about it. In my first attempt I was almost rammed to my death by the Champion (the famous boss from the E3 footages). And then I left everything behind, allowing free dodge and rolling openings, and voila, it worked! Even though there are majorly 8 bosses, the way you work yourself up to challenging them is fun, and save points are reasonably close to the boss arenas, lessening any chances of needless backtracking. Each boss drops something that can be sharpened to give you that extra bit of luck in the next fight. The variety of ways each boss attacks and responds makes each confrontation as beautiful as fighting off demons in Boleteria. The fact that the game doesn’t allow Co-Op makes you depend on just yourself for the threshold, no Sun Bros for you son!
Visual, Physics and Audio:
Lords of the Fallen makes use of the custom Fledge engine for graphical goodness like no other, and the long desire for a visually polished Dark Souls has been quenched a thousand times over in the title. It surpasses everything before it in terms of visual brilliance and detailing. From the unique tower shield with a skull face to the gauntlet that recharges itself with blue mana, everything is beautifully fascinating. The addition of ancient architecture and snow makes the whole of Keystone a journey through the heart of your most fascinating dream till date. Enemies’ and Harkyn’s movements reflect the dev team’s hard work in getting the basic physics of the game as real as possible. There is huge immersion material in LOTF just waiting to be loved. However, the game made me laugh thanks to the badly written and mo capped cutscenes. A special scene wherein a soldier dies puzzling poor Harkyn is so funny that I actually forgot for a moment that I was destined to slay Lords.
However, what really disappoints the otherwise flawless hack and slash gameplay is the texture pop-ins (even at close range) and the dodgy autolock camera. If you lock on to an enemy, the camera starts misbehaving with you, aligning your sight away from the enemy and getting whacked in the process. The other frustrating bit about Lords of the Fallen is its inability to lock on to targets at times, even if they’re a breath away. In some boss battles, where he summons pawns to charge at you, the camera starts switching from target to target automatically, thereby resulting in a massive facepalm.
The menu music in Lords of the Fallen is one of the most gorgeous soundtracks I’ve heard of it, I had to download the track to suit the desire. The track made it easier for me to stare at the menu theme and do nothing about it. The boss battles usually carry over an epic track and use it over and over again, one cannot overlook that bit. However, the overall audio tracks set that chilly, epic tone to the game. And last but not the least, the game gets the metal vs metal SFX so damn right!
If you are planning to play Lords of the Fallen, you must give it a shot. Considering it is CI’s first attempt at polishing the coveted Souls genre, it is never short of its moments. Great boss battles, side quests, jaw dropping visuals and a hunger to introduce to you a brave new ancient world keeps Lords of the Fallen at pace with its ideal. However a few glitches in, and you may want to save your game and return to something more manageable, not a well written or narrated story anyways. But go for the backstabs, parries and everything it achieves to polish the fighting mechanism of the genre. A polished and longer sequel of the game is what I can crave for at the moment, job done Tomasz Gop!
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What’s iLL?
+Great Visuals
+Magical Menu Theme
+Flawless Combat and Movement
+Smooth Character Progression and less punishing to the newbies
What’s Not?
-Auto lock on target is glitchy
-Texture Pop-ins
-Unbalanced enemies, even the bosses
-Unbalanced story progression
This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4 and PC with a GeForce GTX 770 GPU.
