Lords of the Fallen Gameplay & Hands-On Impressions
Aug. 11, 2023Lords of the Fallen Gameplay & Hands-On Impressions
In this Lords of the Fallen article/video I’m going to be talking about myHands-On Gameplay Impressions of Lords of the Fallenand I got to play this game a little over a month ago when I was at Twitchcon Paris. CI Games graciously came over and showed me the game. I got to play with them and ask a lot of questions. I’ve been dying to talk about this game for over a month, so I can’t wait to discuss this game with you guys.
So there are two things I think you’ll notice immediately when looking at the gameplay of Lords of the Fallen and the first is the distinct art style of the game it’s much darker than the original game it has more of a Dark Fantasy tone to it. It kind of reminds me of something likeDark SoulsmeetsDiabloin terms of the brutality, the gruesomeness of the creatures and the environments that you’re in. It’s very very dark, it’s very very grim and things seem like they are going very horribly wrong for the world that you’re in.
Furthermore, it’s not that the original game didn’t have a good art style or good art direction because it did. But I feel like the direction that they’ve gone with the new title is closer to something that I think Souls fans will really really enjoy. I personally enjoy it a little bit better myself.
The next thing you’re obviously going to notice is the visuals of this game, they are stunning to look at. When you look at the game it looks gorgeous, it looks beautiful the detail of the environments have all this subtle detail. You can see things in the background clearly and it’s not like blurred-out stuff like that. The character models are very very detailed. There is just so much detail. With the visuals of this game you can’t help but kind of drop your jaw a little bit.
When you look at it you’re like wow this is absolutely incredible for anAction-RPGin fact the game is so stunning to look at one can’t help but wonder if this game gonna have performance issues on PC? Is it going to have performance issues on consoles?
You’ve seen a lot of titles recently that were gorgeous to look at but they just had a lot of technical problems in terms of performance. You look at this game and you go, “Is it going to have those issues too?” Now I only got to play a couple hours of the game near the beginning and I didn’t experience technical or performance issues during that time. But it still makes me wonder because this is just a small slice of the game that I’ve seen.
I could see how this might be a concern given the things we’ve seen in the gaming industry recently. However if they can manage to pull this off without technical issues on launch, I think Lord of the Fallen will probably be the best-looking ARPG to date.
Talking more about the gameplay you’ll notice here that there are a lot more similarities to souls than the previous game. As well as the way combat is designed with block, parrying, and dodging. To the way the character moves through the world design of the game and how it’s kind of interconnected in their shortcuts.
The fact that there are stats on equipment that resembles that of a souls games. Equipment typically has lore notes. Everything feels like it’s straight out of a souls game and when you look at it you’re going to see the similarities and comparisons almost immediately.
Frankly, I actually feel like this was intentional. I feel like the developers took feedback from the first game and went you know what let’s do this in a way that the souls audience will really appreciate. I think they’ve designed their game intentionally with the souls community in mind to play. They’re going like “hey guys we can make a really good game here that’s something that you really really want to play and we’re going to do that just for you”. That’s kind of what this game feels like.
So far the combat itself feels really good in my opinion it’s very responsive and it’s probably some of the closest you’ll have to the souls games themselves but it’s not as good as souls like you’ll feel the difference immediately when you start playing. However, in my opinion, it’s not so glaring that you’re going to think it’s just not quite as good. I mean Fromsoftware has combat down to a T. Everyone else is still trying to catch up. Lords of the Fallen is as well but they did a pretty good job in my opinion.
But something that’s really caught my attention from seeing some of the gameplay that was sent over and this is not something that I got to see in my game time as I didn’t get far enough to unlock it, is theMagicin the game. The magic looks absolutely outstanding not only from a visual standpoint but also from a mechanics standpoint. It seems very creative, and very interesting. If I had one gripe about theElden Ringand souls games it’s just that the magic isn’t as creative.
It feels like it’s just been using the same spells now for like four games mostly. I’m actually quite excited to use magic that might be a little bit different. That’s not quite the same as it’s always been in one of these types of games and to see how it interacts with the game world.
I did get to fight one boss in my time playing the game and I will say that there is an NPC summoning system. Just like the souls games or Elden Ring where you can summon an NPC from the game world to assist you in boss fights.
I will say I really enjoyed the boss fight it was fun. The mechanics were interesting. The effects and the visual effects of the boss themselves were fantastic. The music was good so I feel like the boss fights in Lords of the Fallen are going to be more memorable than previous Souls-like games. If you look at games likeMortal ShellorThe Surgeand even the oldLords of the Fallengame I don’t think the boss fights in those games were particularly well-designed or memorable in a lot of cases. I think it’s something that 3D souls likes could really work on.
You look at something likeHollow Knight, or some of these other 2D side scrollers likeBlasphemous. Their boss fights are phenomenal for a souls-like 2D games. However 3D souls-like games on the other hand, in my opinion have really struggled with phenomenal boss fights. I think Lords of the Fallen has a really good chance of changing that.
Talking a little bit about the different realm mechanics right because there’s something that’s unique to Lords of the Fallen. Where you are not only moving through the game world in the land of the living (Axiom) but you also move through in the land of the dead (Umbral). It’s an interesting concept in my opinion. You can pull out your lantern and you see things that you can’t see in the other world. When you’re watching the gameplay it’s really really impressive to see how they have a world layered on a world.
The way it’s designed is actually extremely creative because they had to think in different dimensions at the same time when they were designing their game world. That has got to be extremely difficult to do. I did have several interactions with this mechanic in the time that I played where I had to pull up my Lantern to reveal a pathway that was not there otherwise.
For example one time I had to go underwater but there was just like a little pond and there was nowhere for my character go. I was like where do I go? I pull up the Lantern and all of a sudden the water disappears and there’s steps going downward which was very cool from an exploration point of view. You’ll use this off and on as you traverse the world. But I didn’t get enough time to really get a sense of how much does it impact the overall gameplay loop of the game.
I could give you one example that was really memorable though. I was fighting an enemy and he was completely immortal. I wondered why I couldn’t kill this guy. So then I pulled out my lantern to reveal that there was a guy from the Umbral realm, that was actually buffing him. I couldn’t kill this guy until I killed the guy in the Umbral realm. It seems really interesting when you say that. You’re like wow that’s really cool in theory but it was also kind of unwieldy. My character didn’t move very well with the lantern out.
There was also a bit of delay from the time you pressed the lantern button to when it actually comes out, so you couldn’t roll through the guy’s attack and then pull the lantern out at a moment’s notice. It didn’t work that fast and I wonder is it more of a gimmicky mechanic or if is it actually going to be something that sets this game apart from other RPGs in this genre. I just don’t know the answer to that yet but the Umbral realm itself is absolutely fascinating when you’re inside of it. It feels darker, it feels colder and you feel more alone. Things are more punishing. It provides a harder experience challenge-wise.
The game itself Lords of the Fallen I would say, is on par with souls games in terms of difficulty. Or at least close to it but then you go into the Umbral realm and it is no joke. In there and I think it’s really interesting because players have a lot of control over when they can go into the Umbral realm and back. So if you wanted to up the challenge of the game for instance you could actually play more in the Umbral realm and less in the regular realm. I think the fact that you have a lot of control over that will make the game a little bit more interesting in itself.
Something that just keeps blowing my mind that I absolutely cannot wrap my head around is that Lords of the Fallen is supposed to be five times longer than the original game. If I remember correctly the original game correctly was somewhere between like 15 to 20 hours for a playthrough. That means this game could be anywhere between 50 to 100 hours. Or somewhere in that range depending on how good of a player you are. How much you explore. Whether you’re co-op or PVP etc.
I mean when you look at how incredible the game looks and the gameplay looks 50-plus hours, it just seems wow. I mean we’re talking about the size of a souls game here. Maybe bigger than a souls game not quite Elden Ring levels obviously. However, you can probably compare it to one of the games in the Dark Souls franchise. If you’re talking about that size or maybe even a little bit larger than that, that’s absolutely unheard of. How many souls-like games have come out that have been anywhere near the size of a soul game? Or even bigger? I can’t think of one. This could be the first one that’s on par with souls in terms of the scope of the game.
As I mentioned the game has co-op and PVP. I mean these are things that were not present in the original game. How many souls-like games have co-op and PVP? It’s a very small list to say the least, I think this is something that was added specifically for the souls community. I think CI games knows what Souls player is like, and figured out a way to implement co-op and PVP. I cannot wait to play co-op through this game. I probably won’t do a ton of PVP but this is a great game to co-op in. It has that dark atmosphere where it’s lonely and you want to have a friend with you. You can play with randoms or you can play with your friends.
I assume there’s going to be a password matching or something like that since they mentioned you could specifically play with your friends. That’s fantastic too if you have either option. Having said those things I am looking forward to Lords of the Fallen more now than I ever have before. Seeing the new gameplay, adding that on top of my gameplay experience, I really enjoyed it. Thinking about playing co-op Fex, all this gets me really really excited for Lords of the Fallen in the fall and I can’t wait to play.
I would just say to those players out there that were not happy with the original title either because they didn’t like the combat. Or there was some issue with the game. Or they felt like it was too heavy. There wasn’t enoughcustomization. Or they didn’t like playingHarkynand they wanted to make their own character. There is character creation in this game and I think you’re gonna find probably what you were looking for in this new rendition.
I mean what a year for gaming right? We’ve gotRemnant 2we’ve gotBaldur’s Gate 3,Starfieldaround the horizon. We’ve hadFinal Fantasy 16,The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the KingdomandHogwarts Legacy. We’ve had so many other games I’m forgetting. It’s been absolutely a bonkers year for action and action role-playing titles. I think this one should be on your list if you don’t already have it on there as something to be excited for. The game looks absolutely incredible and I cannot wait to see more from it.
What do you guys think after seeing the gameplay? Are you more hyped now? Are you absolutely worried about performance? Is that a consideration? Let me know in the comments below.
Lords of the Fallenwill be coming Playstation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on October 13th. Drop by ourLOTF wikifor all the latest.
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
