Morbid: The Lords of Ire – Dark Fantasy Soulslike
Dec. 2, 2023Morbid: The Lords of Ire – Dark Fantasy Soulslike
Morbid: The Lords of Ire is a sequel to the soulslike gameMorbid: The Seven Acolytes, which differs greatly from its predecessor by adopting 3D graphics, departing from the isometric 2D perspective of the previuos soulslike. Morbid: The Lords of Ire endeavors to blend the essence of soulslike gameplay, with a distinct hack-and-slash approach, offering players a combat experience that retains some familiar elements from the soulslike genre while adding its own twist.
As Morbid: The Lords of Ire is a sequel to Morbid: The Seven Acolytes, it will be the continuation of the main heroine’s story after defeating the seven Acolytes in the first game. And a quick recap, in case you didn’t play that game, our heroine is the last survivor of the Strivers of Debrom, and had trained since birth to defeat the 7 Acolytes and the Gahar gods that possessed them. She returns as The Striver, who has been given the duty to purge the world from the evil of the Acolytes, who have returned once again from the second advent of the Gahars in a new land named Ire.
In the gameplay offered from the Demo, I had about 2 hours of playtime in the first region Rimehold, a snowy mountaintop area with grotesque monsters working under the Acolyte Morio, Man-Eater. The full game, however, features 5 main levels with a semi-open world approach, intended for exploration and discovery of secrets. The level design of Morbid: The Lords of Ire is simple, but interesting, with grotesque sights such as a ritual of a skinned human corpse right outside your spawn area.
The new installment of Morbid sees the game make a transition to 3D format, which is more popular with soulslike games, from its predecessor’s 2D approach. There will be familiar elements such as the health and stamina bars located in the top left, and quick items on the bottom left which is where your Stone of Dibrom healing item is located.
You also have your Shrines which act as checkpoints throughout the level, that also allow for fast-travel and the upgrading of your character.
Combat is the main focus in Morbid The Lords of Ire, and it is an uncomplicated affair, with basic and “heavy” attacks, as well as deflecting damage or dodging which all depletes some stamina. Every attack not only diminishes the enemy’s health but also damages their posture bar, and when their posture bar reaches 0, you have an opening to execute a lethal critical attack.
There are however deeper mechanics to explore. Perfect Block, for instance, deflects damage without consuming stamina if you block at the correct time. The Riposte feature allows you to execute a lethal counterattack dealing huge health and posture damage if performed correctly. And you can of course backstab unsuspecting enemies if you sneak up on them.
Interestingly, enemies are resistant and weak against some of these actions, such as the Skin Gatherers who are resistant to Backstabs thanks to the bag of skin on their back. This feature is quite fresh, and gave me a panic attack when the guy I backstabbed took no damage whatsoever and I got clobbered by the rest of the enemies surrounding him. Apart from that, I really enjoyed riposting, as well as the critical attacks with the Rust Knuckles which let me utterly pulverize enemies with a good old punch barrage.
Going back to the heavy attack, it’s not exactly just a bigger basic attack, like you might find in other action games. Instead, it is a Rage Breaker attack which deals no extra damage, but serves the purpose of breaking an enemies enraged state; a state in which they are unstaggerable by normal attacks and attack wildly. The only way to break this state is by hitting them with a Rage Breaker attack, or using your Spectre blaster; a gun which acts as a method of staggering enemies quickly in combat.
All in all, the combat system of Morbid: The Lords of Ire provides a solid foundation for players to be rewarded for using its different systems effectively depending on the enemy posture, resistances and weaknesses. If this remains the case through out the entire game, then that would be an impressive feat to say the least.
Morbid TLI has a slightly different leveling system to otherRPGs, as you upgrade your character through “blessing slots” instead of stats or attributes. Blessing Slots and Blessings provide 3 distinct passive boosts for your character. You can find up to 8 Blessings in the game that are hidden in tomes scattered throughout the world. For example, you can find the Blessing of the Acrobat in Rimehold, which when equipped will bless you with a larger stamina bar, faster stamina regeneration, and removes stamina downtime.However, to be able to use Blessings to their full potential and activate all 3 passive boosts, you need to spend skill points that you can gain by leveling up to unlock and enhance your Blessing slots. This distinctive approach is very different from the conventional attribute min-maxing in other similar RPGs, introducing a system that provides more noticeable, and tangible upgrades to your character. This might be one of my favorites aspects of Morbid so far.
As you advance in the game, you’ll find a variety of weapons, totaling more than 30 in number, and grouped into 4 categories: One-Handed, Dual-Wielded, Two-Handed and Fist-Worn. Each weapon also has 4 attributes: Agility, determining its stamina consumption, Damage representing its overall damage, Impact reflecting its posture damage, and Speed which is its attack speed.
In order to upgrade these weapons, players can socket special “Runes of Ire” that can change how the weapon performs. Runes can be slotted into weapons to increase one stat drastically while slightly reducing a different stat. You can also permanently infuse runes into a weapon to gain 20% of all positive effects and 10% of all negative effects, and leave the rune slots open for new runes. I can definitely see unique builds being made to max out certain stats on a weapon to make it break the game, like extra speed or impact on a greatsword while retaining most of its original damage.
There is a unique Sanity system that builds upon the sanity system from Morbid: The Seven Acolytes. Your Sanity will play a role in the combat of the game, with enemies resurrecting from the dead as phantoms if you slip too far into insanity by taking too much damage. Meditating at Shrines is therefor a necessity in order to manage this aspect, or not if you want more a challenge.
Understanding and having knowledge behind the events of the first game will remove some of the mystery, but there is still much to be explored in this sequel. Morbid: The Lords of Ire is very much a game where you are left to your own devices to figure the story out. There is no long winded explanation or backstory to sit through at the start of the game, and it is simply in your hands how deep you want to go into the Morbid universe.
Artistically, this game follows the tone set by its predecessor, committing to the “Dark Fantasy” style. Blood and gore is the aesthetic theme of this game, with carcasses and guts littered on the floor, bloody rituals seen around the environment, an NPC you save getting his limbs and skin eaten off and other bloody atrocities. I think this environment fits the lore of the game very well, and is just a good match for a soulslike game in general.
Visually, Morbid: The Lords of Ire is clear with high definition allowing you to see all the details of the environment, though the graphics are by no means the best you will see in gaming. However, its environment is not trying to mimic realism, but instead a specific animation art style that captures the feeling of their previous installment, but now in 3D. I think generally they have succeeded here, and players should be mostly happy with what they see.
Performance wise, I ran into no frame drops or crashes and maintained a constant 120FPS in game with a GeForce RTX 3090 GPU, Ryzen 9 5950X CPU and 16GB of RAM. It probably could go much higher, but there is no way to remove the FPS cap as of now.
Morbid: The Lords of Ire is by no means the best Soulslike that I’ve ever played, but it’s also an indie game and does not cost nearly as much money. So far I like what I’ve seen, and have generally enjoyed my time with the game, even if it wasn’t a long amount of time.
As I mentioned, the Morbid: Lords of Ire demo is free and available on Steam today, and the full game should be coming out soon next year, so if you guys like the look of it, or are just looking for a new soulslike in the upcoming months, the Demo is completely free and you can give it a shot and see if it’s something to keep an eye on.
So what do you guys think of Morbid: The Lords of Ire from the gameplay you’ve seen so far? The previous Morbid game was pretty well received on steam (76%), with a lot of players loving the Morbid game world. The 3D graphics of the new title are definitely a huge change, and one that could really push the franchise to the next level. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Interested in more previews? Don’t missRemnant 2: The Awakened King DLC PreviewandAge of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin Review – A Warhammer RTS with a MOBA Twist.
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
