Lords of the Fallen is what you’d get if Sam Raimi made Dark Souls II

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SHOULD I PLAY LORDS OF THE FALLEN?

Yeah, you should definitely play Lords of the Fallen, unless you’re not into the difficulty and frustration that comes with Soulslike games. Lords of the Fallen is one of the most fascinating and successful takes on the Dark Souls formula I’ve ever played, and it features a visually dazzling dual world mechanic that made every area I explored doubly spooky and mysterious. I loved the time I spent in this strange world and I can’t wait to jump back in.

TIME PLAYED

I played seven hours of Lords of the Fallen, which was enough time to play up to the first proper boss: Pieta, She of Blessed Renewal, where I got stuck for a couple of hours. When I finally defeated her, I made my way into a derelict cathedral where a mysterious order of knights welcomed me as a new member. However, I also had a chance to explore the first area, unlock several vestiges (the game’s equivalent of Dark Souls’ bonfires), and experience some of the Umbral world: the realm of the dead that I could only see when I died or used my magic lantern to peek through the veil.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT LORDS OF THE FALLEN?

• Great combat. It’s not easy to get Soulslike combat right, and nobody knows that better than Lords of the Fallen developer CI Games, whose original Lords of the Fallen game back in 2014 suffered from chronic sludginess. That’s not the case at all this time around. Characters are nimble and attacks can be swift. I always had the time and speed to dodge out of the way of an incoming attack, or to respond to an opening with an assault of my own, as long as I kept my wits about me. I found the combat notably faster than it is in Dark Souls or Elden Ring, but slower than Nioh 2 or Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. I was constantly discovering new move combinations too: Using a heavy attack while running results in a leaping strike, and it’s possible to switch from a single-handed stance to a two-handed stance mid-combo.

• Umbral. In Lords of the Fallen, my character had the power to walk between two worlds, Axiom and Umbral. Axiom is the one we’re used to, the world of mortals. Umbral is the realm of the dead—it’s like an invisible layer over all of Axiom, and I could see into it by lifting my magical lamp, which also gave me the ability to voluntarily cross into the Umbral world. By stepping through the veil to the other side, I could use paths that were blocked off or simply didn’t exist in Axiom. Umbral looks spooky and amazing, but it’s not a place I ever wanted to stay too long—if I spent too much time there, a terrifying wraith with fiery knives started hunting me.

I cannot stress enough how cool this is. CI Games created two very different versions of the same world, and let me peek through one “layer” and into the other at any point in the game. While the lamp is one way to get there, there’s another route: death. Every time I died, I arose in Umbral, and this effectively gave me one more chance to take down the enemy who felled me, then hope I could scramble to a special totem that allowed me back into Axiom. It’s so cool: Every time you die in Lords of the Fallen, you have to defeat the enemy that killed you and then escape the afterlife.

• Epic boss battles, at least if Pieta is anything to go by. I always find it hard to explain why it’s worthwhile to bash my head against a Souls boss over and over again, failing dozens of times before finally tasting victory. Lords of the Fallen’s first boss activated all those neurons in my brain. Pieta is a tall knight covered in blood, with a crown of thorns around her helmet and covering the hilt of her holy energy sword. After taking a bit of damage, she rose into the air, sprouting magnificent wings covered in red features. She summoned spectral warriors and made it rain swords. I don’t know how many times she kicked my butt, but “dozens” is probably accurate. It was an exciting fight that demanded my full attention and careful study of Pieta’s moves—the exact kind of fight that makes Dark Souls so great. If this is any indication of the quality and spectacle of the boss fights in Lords of the Fallen, we’re in for a good time.

• Gorgeous designs. The art direction in Lords of the Fallen is fantastic, even if it’s slightly over-reliant on the Souls series for guidance. Still, even if cliffside ruins and catacombs are familiar locations for fantasy games, they look fantastic in Lords of the Fallen, and the fact that there was a horrifying ghostly layer hiding just beneath the surface of every place I visited added a ton of visual depth to the game. I’d be looking at a ruined windmill or a crumbling castle, and then lift my lamp and see horrible faceless humanoid husks coiling around each other to create new ghostly architecture on top of the old in Umbral.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT LORDS OF THE FALLEN?

• Thematically it’s a copycat. As much as I enjoyed Lords of the Fallen’s spin on the Soulslike genre, I was frustrated by how slavishly it reproduced specific ideas taken from FromSoftware games, particularly in its script and UI/UX designs. Characters speak in fragmented, portentous semi-verse, item descriptions hint at long-forgotten history, and the menus are black screens with distressed grids that display information like weapon stat scaling and damage resistance to holy, for example. I found this annoying in Lies of P too, because it comes across like either a lack of confidence in the game’s own ideas or a failure to understand why Dark Souls and Elden Ring are so beloved—and for the record, it isn’t for their menu designs.

• Janky character creator. I had a hard time picking options in the Lords of the Fallen character creation menu, which sometimes failed to register my choices and at one point reset all my selections to default without warning. It’s frustrating and could use some attention, although admittedly I’m not all that preoccupied with my character’s tattoos or ear shapes in a game like this. Still, character creation is a mandatory part of the game and there’s no reason for it to be an unpleasant experience.

💬 Will you be taking on the demon god Adyr and seeking out the Lords of the Fallen, or are Soulslike games too frustrating and slow for your taste? What’s your favorite Soulslike? Let me know in the comments!