Lords of the Fallen (2023) Review

Believe it or not, Lords of the Fallen is back. This unlikely reboot has released almost 10 years after the original game came out, reinventing itself with an even darker fantasy world populated by disfigured monsters and powerful demons.

Originally developed by Deck13, Lords of the Fallen was the first major souls-like to release, coming out in 2014, two years before the Dark Souls franchise wrapped up with its third entry. What followed was a complete shift in the action RPG genre that we are still witnessing today with games like Lies of P, Stellar Blade, Black Myth: Wukong, and so many other upcoming titles.

Despite being one of the first releases to kick off such an impressive movement, 2014’s Lords of the Fallen was poorly received, mostly due to its uninspired and clunky gameplay, as well as generic and confusing level design, which leads us to wonder: Did the reboot fix these things?

Lords of the Fallen
Developer: HEXWORKS
Publisher: CI Games
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: October 13, 2023
Players: 1
Price: $59.99

The new Lords of the Fallen puts us in the shoes of a lampbearer, someone who can cross between the living world and the umbral at will. The umbral is a disfigured and decayed version of reality, housing disgusting creatures that emerge out of cocoons to attack the player.

What the umbral means in terms of gameplay is that Lords of the Fallen has two versions of the world running at all times, which the player can peek through or fully move into with their lantern. The umbral features grotesque structures built of flesh and bone, which overlap with the architecture of the area you are in, sometimes creating pathways or entire new areas.

Lords of the Fallen takes this concept and runs with it as far as it can, not only using it as an exploration mechanic but also turning it into a second life system. If the player loses all of their health, they get taken into the umbral instead of dying, which means that exploring areas that only exist inside the umbral is so much more tense because your safety net is now gone.

Not only is the transition between the living world and the umbral technically impressive, but there are so many minor flourishes that add a lot of charm to this mechanic, like the fact that peeking with your lantern can cause enemies to pull you in, or how staying in the umbral for too long causes a vengeful spirit to start hunting you.

The game also constantly plays with a risk and reward system when it comes to this mechanic as a way to balance out its downsides. The umbral features endlessly spawning enemies who can inflict a damage type called wither upon the player, and as previously mentioned, being in the umbral means your death is final.

Now, why would you want to be in such a difficult version of the world voluntarily? Well, being in the umbral means you are less likely to miss out on secrets, since its structures and items don’t show up in the real world, and it also features a currency multiplier, which increases the amount of vigor you gain from enemies, making it an enticing risk.

The game’s combat feels like a light version of Sekiro, a popular framework that titles like Nioh, Stranger of Paradise, and Wo Long have adopted in the past. Lords of the Fallen is not entirely focused around parrying, since dodging enemies is equally as viable, but it features a posture and riposte system that rewards precise blocks.

One interesting thing is that players aren’t punished when blocking based on damage reduction, instead taking a set amount of wither damage, which can be regained back by attacking. This means that players are not only incentivized to play aggressively, but also even the squishier builds can get up close to the boss and attempt to parry or even panic block if needed.

The game’s combat is quite smooth and even features a system similar to Dark Souls 2‘s powerstancing, which creates new movesets whenever two weapons are equipped at the same time. This is sadly not a good thing, as it showcases how little effort was put into the game’s movesets.

Lords of the Fallen claims to have hundreds of unique weapons, but in reality it has something like eight weapons with different models. Every weapon type shares the same boring moveset, including boss weapons, which means that there is no incentive to try out anything new if its stats aren’t good.

Powerstancing is even worse somehow, as it features maybe four different movesets in total, which is the complete opposite of what the system should achieve. The crazy part is that most of the time you’re better off two-handing one weapon anyway, since it deals more damage. There’s no real reason to powerstance, unless for some reason you want a slightly more awkward moveset.

The game is really afraid of stepping outside of a very tight mold that it set around itself when it comes to combat, not reaching the level of uninspiredness that the previous game achieved, but coming quite close at points with its refusal to take a mechanical risk every once in a while.

Lords of the Fallen kicks off with some amazing boss fights; in fact, most of its “colossal” bosses, as the game calls them, are very entertaining. The issue is that for every colossal fight, there are two bosses that are literally just regular enemies with an inflated health bar.

This starts to become very noticeable about halfway through the game, where you start encountering these bosses with weirdly light movesets. The gap between these bosses being introduced as enemies starts to get shorter and shorter, to the point where the Griefbound is both a boss and a regular enemy in the first area you encounter it.

The game also has quite a few “Skeleton Lords” or “Deacon of the Deep” fights, which are essentially just a room filled with regular enemies. Even a colossal boss, the Hollow Crow, structures its fight like that, which is beyond disappointing.

Lords of the Fallen‘s first half understands what makes a good souls-like and expands upon the formula set by FromSoftware beautifully, and then, halfway through, it takes such a massive nosedive in quality that it starts to resemble the 2014 game a lot more in terms of boss design and exploration.

It makes me wonder why Lords of the Fallen isn’t simply a shorter title. If the developers have to reuse so much content, including turning regular enemies into bosses to fill up space, why make a 30-hour game? There’s no reason not to cut this in half and make a tighter and more polished experience.

It’s disheartening to see how my opinion of the game shifted as I went through, going from recommending it to friends who enjoy souls-likes to essentially forcing myself to finish it after the hollow crow boss fight. For everything Lords of the Fallen does well, it also does something badly in equal measure later on.

The exploration is genuinely creative, but eventually the game’s areas stop flowing into each other as they did previously. The combat is tight and smooth, but all of the weapons are boring. The bosses are fantastic, but about half of them are regular enemies with a big health bar. Everything Lords of the Fallen does comes with a “but,” like a good thing simply can’t exist by itself.

This review could honestly be double its length if I fully went into all of my gripes, like the leveling system feeling meaningless because you just level health and a damage stat, the lack of different magical schools, umbral sections that start and end after climbing a ladder, and much, much more.

Lords of the Fallen is better than its predecessor, mostly because it’s half of a good game instead of an entirely bad one, but it’s quite difficult to recommend it. The amount of work that was put into this reboot is technically impressive, enough to make me interested in trying out its sequel; let’s just hope that one can stick the landing.

Lords of the Fallen was reviewed on Microsoft Windows using a game code