Lords of the Fallen (2023) – Religion is bad, but also cool

 

Lords of the Fallen is what they call a Soulslike in the gaming industry – a videogame that is mimicking the Fromsoftware approach to action RPGs. These games have a reputation of being difficult and having an obscure story. I have played LotF when it came out last year and I did not have a good time. I also just finished a fresh playthrough. In this post I wish to compare my two experiences as well as give an overall view on the game itself. I have really enjoyed parts of the game, especially the aesthetic – the visual design as well as some of the mythos and characters. What I have not enjoyed however is certain aspects of the gameplay that I felt were just not good enough for a solid experience. While I have Lies of P to thank for finally teaching me how to parry, LotF really just made me want to play other games since there are three main issues with this game. The movement, enemy variety and weapon animations. It is not all bad, however as I certainly loved some other aspects.  

            Like I have already mentioned, LotF is a Soulslike. You will be running around and killing enemies for XP (it is called Vigor here), and if you die twice without retrieving it, you will lose that XP. You also use it purchase items and upgrade weapons. There are questlines with NPCs that are easily missed or ruined, if you do not follow a guide and/or do not know where to go and what to do when exactly. This is standard for Soulslikes and while I have never been much of a fan of this approach to storytelling, eventually I got used to it. This system is designed this way so that you have an incentive to play these games over and over again. Whenever I was not playing LotF, I have been thinking about playing it. Why? Because I love the ideas of this game.

            Lords of the Fallen takes place in a place called Mournstead, which is inspired by a late medieval European period with heavy influences of Abrahamic religions. Long ago, there was a God called Adyr who might have created humanity or at least led them into its golden age (not sure about this one). There were three human rebels who rose up against Adyr’s rule and who wanted humanity to be free of the god’s influence. They sealed Adyr in an alternate dimension and established a new world order and religion. The worship of Adyr was outlawed and its place was took over by the radiant religion of the holy god Orius. Not everyone liked this new order and some were still very fond of Adyr, they practiced their worship in secret and were persecuted for it. Adyr has been trying to break free of their prison for a long time now, he even created the Rhogar, a new race of demon-like entities who were supposed to destroy the church of Orius and help Adyr come back from his prison dimension. Some humans take on the appearance of the Rhogar – demonic horns, protruding bones and blood, lots of blood. What has been shown in great detail in the game is how even a sign of Adyr worship is punished – villages are burned, cities are razed, entire swathes of people are cut down and massacred. The church of Orius knows absolutely no mercy – this is where the religion is bad theme plays its strong hand. Now, I am not here to argue real world religion and politics or even describe them. Personally, I do not need a reminder of the atrocities that were committed in the real world due to religion, one needs to look at the crusades or medieval Europe and you have enough for countless horror stories. I felt like Lords of the Fallen strut a fine line between ridiculous and serious, though. I will make another comparison, this time to the good old game series by Blizzard - Diablo. Specifically, Diablo 2 also had strong emphasis on religion, on a war between angels and demons and how it was the poor people that were caught in between who were the real victims. While the two sides were both pretty bad. Lords of the Fallen falls into a similar category for me.

And I have to say that the visual themes are amazing here. Absolutely beautiful – and I do not mean in a “wow these graphics are so cool” way. While Unreal Engine 5 has a reputation of being unoptimized, it does make things look nice. What I mean is how great the visual storytelling is here. You will be walking through a burning city with various images of demonic worship and crucified citizens and corpses strewn across a street. There will be statues of angelic figures with weeping blood, there will mass graves, etc.

There will be soldiers and warrior of Orius who venerate their god of light by wrapping their hands in barb wire, bleeding themselves in masochistic fashion. One of the schools of magic actually uses exactly this – you channel holy magic by cutting yourself and bleeding. You will see blood flowing from your character whenever you fire a bolt of radiant energy. Various armaments of the church of Orius feature barbed wire extensively. Whether it is on boots, gloves or wrapped around the hilts of swords (instead of the blade). It is absolutely metal in its design and I love every aspect of it.

The music, what little there is in the hub and during some of the boss fights is also done exceptionally well. I never felt like it did not belong or was out of place. What was a shame however is that there is no music playing when you are exploring the world – just like in the Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne or other Soulslikes. In Elden Ring though there is ambient music when you explore and I wish we would see this more in these games in the future.

Where in terms of the story does the game begin, though? Well, Mournstead is mostly in ruins when you create your character. What has happened? The church of Orius is represented by the Hallowed Sentinels, which is a military branch of the church that is led by Judge Cleric and apparently, they have gone insane and started exterminating anyone even suspected of being corrupted by Adyr or Rhogar influence. Including innocent people, of course. Those citizens that have been spared the purges died or gone mad from a disease that ravaged the kingdom just before that. A young prodigy in the ranks of the Hallowed Sentinels, Pieta had a suspicion that the plague was spiritual in nature as some of the symptoms were similar to that of the Rhogar mutations. I mentioned that Mournstead is a kingdom, which means there is a king too, right? Of course, his name is Bramis and throughout various flashbacks (these are called stigmas in game) he is shown as being a typical strong but fair ruler who tolerates Judge Cleric – however when the catastrophe falls on Mournstead, he cannot intervene when it comes to the religious purges because he himself is consumed by a familial tragedy. His wife is a secret Adyr worshipper, I think out of necessity, who makes a deal with the devilish god to save their infant child. This of course goes horribly wrong and thus the ruling caste of the kingdom is crippled. As such the land is ravaged by a holy war between the militant arm of the church and the persecuted citizenry that has either turned to Adyr in their hopelessness or because of their nefarious reasons. As if this was not enough, there is another reality, another dimension that is layered on top of what everybody calls Axiom, the real world.

 

This other dimension is called Umbral – I am not entirely sure if it is just another reality or if it is the realm of death. It is called both in the game and the distinction has not been clear to me, not exactly anyway. So, what is Umbral? It is another realm which mirrors the real world and from a gameplay perspective you are transported into it once you “die”. Effectively, when you die in Dark Souls, you reload at the latest bonfire that you have rested at, not so in LotF. Instead, half of your HP is “withered” (which is another mechanic that is somewhat similar in function to the Bloodborne HP mechanic – you recover withered HP by attacking enemies without them hitting you). Umbral is a desolate place, everywhere are creepy eyes that follow you around, spiky tentacles and the sky is full of eldritch horrors. The enemies are these weird husks looking humanoid corpses that have gaping holes where their faces should be and they remind me a lot of Ash Vampires from Morrowind. There are also hooded spectres, pregnant spiky fairies with no jaws and lots of moths. Whenever the threshold between Axiom and Umbral is thin, there are moths. The main color palette is blue. Everything is blue. It is like Hotel Hell season 3 with sad Gordon Ramsey. Which I do not mind, I really love the design of Umbral. You as a player do not want to spend a lot of time in Umbral, because the more you are in it, the more the malignant inhabitants of that world notice you and eventually an enemy will spawn that hunts you and you cannot defeat it (or at least it is very difficult). You have to be in Umbral, however as most level progression is tied behind it with shortcuts, secret ladders, doors that are locked in the real world are opened in Umbral. So, you have to transition between worlds in order to move on and make progress.

There is another god, called the Putrid Mother that is like this awesome, incomprehensible Lovecraftian abomination that wants to devour all and is being very opportunistic regarding the situation around Adyr. The demonic god is trying to shatter the barrier back onto the real world and the Putrid Mother would like to hop along as well, and eat everything. It is truly horrifying – you would not want to live in any of the Dark Souls games, not in Yarnham from Bloodborne or the Lands Between from Elden Ring. The same can be said about Mournstead in Lords of the Fallen.

In any case, the game begins when a small troop of a preacher and his knights arrives in Mournstead from abroad to figure out what is going on. Everyone but the preacher is killed, he finds you and gives you the task to figure things out. He needs to know what happened to the Hallowed Sentinels, what is going with King Bramis, etc. And thus, your task begins.

I love the setup and I love the world. Despite the fact that I am not a fan of the whole religion is bad trope, this is right up my alley.

Let’s talk about the gameplay, which is… not great. Immediately I had this jarring issue with movement. There is a lot of rubber banding – which means that you keep getting stuck on things in the world that you should not be stuck on as well as hitting the walls that are there, as well as those that are not there. This is not the worst, however. No, that is the attack movement. Every time you swing a weapon, your character does an animation which moves him forward or to the side. Which is natural, right? When you attack, you move – even in reality you do not stand in one place. I mean, you can, but unless you are using a thrusting weapon or an overhead attack it is not ideal. In LotF however, you move too much. You ice skate. You swing a weapon and your character zooms forward like that player sprite on icy levels in Pokémon.

 This is infuriating and last year when the game came out, you could actually fall off ledges like this. There are many areas in the game where you are on a cliff or a bridge, or something similar and there are enemies everywhere. You attack an enemy near the ledge, your character ice skates around and falls to his doom. What a terrible design.

Now, to be fair, the developers have since fixed this and while you still ice skate around when attacking like crazy, you cannot fall to your death. Your character now stops near the ledge automatically.

The second major issue is the enemy variety. There are many areas in the game, however there is only one, fairly at the beginning that has unique enemies that are only there. It is a poisoned swamp, no less. Every other area in the game, whether you are in a forest, in some ruins, in a giant burning city, in a monastery or at the king’s castle, you face the same enemies. The only difference is in their stats/scaling. Basically, meaning in the first six hours of the game, you will have seen more than two quarters of what the game has to offer only because the later areas recycle bosses and turn them into mobs. What also makes me angry is the scaling - an enemy you can one shot in an earlier level, one shots you at a later level. And it is the same enemy! He looks the same, has the same attack animation, same weapon. It is incredibly annoying.

The third and final major issue in my opinion is the weapon variety. Not in terms of how many weapons there are. There are lots! Axes, flails, swords, bigger swords, massive swords. You have bows and crossbows. What is really disappointing is that every weapon group has the same animations and same attack patterns. So, the only difference is the stat scaling. Again, this is a major issue since what is the point of finding other weapons? There are also no special arts, moves or anything like that. They added something a kin to these in a patch later down the line, however you have to complete complicated and obtuse quest lines to even unlock them and then you can use these special moves twice, maybe three times, which makes them useless.

I hear the developers are working on a sequel and if they are, I hope that these three issues are addressed, because otherwise it will not be a fun experience.

You have an umbral lamp, which is another plot relevant item that allows you to peer into the horror infested realm and also allows you to travel there by will. As far as combat goes, you can use it to “soulflay” enemies which rips their souls out of their bodies that you can attack for some withered damage, but I rarely used this. In combat there are times, when you have to use the lamp. This is when there is a little floating blue ball that only exists in Umbral (and thus you cannot see it in the real world) that is attached to an enemy – you have to take out your lamp and suck this ball into your lamp, otherwise the enemy it has attached itself onto it is invincible (it has very fast HP recovery). This is super annoying and after forty hours of game, I resented this mechanic. This blue balled enemies will be strategically placed so they can screw you over and the process of taking out your lamp, starting the sucking animation and waiting for it to finish can be interrupted by other enemies. Which again, is not fun. If you want me to start sucking off blue balled enemies in the game, the least you can do is make it fun.

If I were to write about this game last year, when it came out, it would not have been positive at all. The game ran terribly, the performance was more horrifying than the realm of Umbral. Unplayable on the PS5 and on PC it varied. It was also crashing constantly. Furthermore, apart from technical issues there was a very distinct design philosophy that I heavily disliked. The game was unfair – it had that Dark Souls II philosophy, where there was an enemy behind every corner and near every ledge there was a mob ready to push you off to your death. There were exploding barrels, exploding dogs and archers spamming exploding bolts and arrows. When the game worked, which was not very often, it was torture to play. I finished it but I hated almost everything about it and did not want to come back, at all.

All was not terrible, however as the developers refused to give up on the game and for a year straight decided to patch it every week. First, there were many patches to address the technical issues. Eventually, additional things were added – like new spells, new armor sets, new bosses, new questlines. Things have improved. However, looking back at it now, the game felt like it was in beta for a year. Except, it was being sold for full price and the customers were the QA testers. Which did not do the reviews and especially Steam scores any favors. Score are one thing, however the longevity of a game is also determined by the size of its playerbase – especially if it has multiplayer and LotF does! I will express my opinion on the multiplayer aspect in a second. First impressions are absolutely everything and are very important! Whether these are for people you meet or the experiences you have in your life. And this was no different, of course. After the abysmal launch the game was in, the player base dropped significantly. 

The game has released on 13^th October 2023 and had 43 thousand concurrent players on Steam alone. In a month, the player count has fallen down to 4 thousand. Almost forty thousand players stopped playing the game in a month! This is insane.

I hear that Hexworks is working on a sequel, I am praying that they learn from their mistakes and delay the game if needed, so it does not come out in a state like this.

In any case, what else is there to talk about? Multiplayer? Yeah, the game boasted of having a seamless 1:1 coop where you could play the entire game with a buddy from start to finish – which was not true at launch. And still kind of is not true even to this day, even though the multiplayer connection issues have been mostly ironed out. How it works is that you have a player who has their own world that you yourself can connect to – and you can run around, kill bosses and mobs and also upgrade your character, but you cannot progress questlines. The multiplayer however has been enjoyable to me. I have liked it more than the usual Fromsoftware multiplayer where you need to do a million things as well as a dark ritual and wait for the celestial entities to be in proper alignment if you want to connect to anybody. What I mean by that is that it has always been needlessly complicated to initiate multiplayer in any Fromsoftware game.

I wanted to love Lords of the Fallen so very much. I kind of even do. I would not have finished three playthroughs over the last year if I were not fond of it. I have very high hopes for the sequel and I am hoping that Hexworks does not rush it. You only ever get one first impression. Would I have recommended the game last year? Absolutely not! Can I recommend it now? Yes, but with an asterisk. You need to be aware of some of the negatives up front as well as getting the feeling of the movement. Once you run around the initial area and kill a couple enemies, try the first real boss (not the tutorial boss) and you are ok with ice skating around, then definitely yes. The visual aesthetic as well as the lore of the world is amazing and easily a 10/10. It is bleak and yet vivid. The graphic violence on display is horrifying and yet it belongs. The stories of various NPCs and some of the more involved questlines are fantastic, some are heartfelt, some are scary, most are hopeless and sad in true Soulslike fashion. But the gameplay is lacking and some of the design ideas are not great. There are three very strong negatives I have outlined above and some minor as well. However, when this game is good, it is brilliant, certainly the highs are extremely high. When I put these all on a scale, it comes up as just average, however. When I compare these to other games in the genre, LotF does not compare very well. Competitors have done it better. Sure, Lies of P does not have a world that is as intriguing as this one and you cannot create your own character. But it has crisp gameplay that is unmatched by LotF. So, without turning this into another rant, I give Lords of the Fallen (2023) a 5/10 – an average experience. This is not terrible! This is not an IGN score, where everything below 8 is trash. An average game is just that. Despite everything, I liked my time with Lords of the Fallen. When Hexworks releases the sequel, I will be there, day one, having bought the game and playing it. I will be expecting a better launch than this one.

Please, tell me in the comments below to git gud or how you disagree on everything I have said. Or perhaps how you also had a similar experience while playing the game. How was your first impression with Lords of the Fallen? Did you enjoy it? Or do you hate it?