Reinventing the soulslike genre for the current generation would be an enormous task for any studio, let alone a small one, but it is exactly what Hexworks’ Lords of the Fallen reboot sets out to do. After a lengthy development period, which saw the game switch hands and get rebooted a handful of times, 2023’s Lords of the Fallen feels like a step up in every way from the original. However, despite some solid sword and board gameplay coupled with a beautiful aesthetic, it seems like Hexworks still has a bit of work to do before Lords of the Fallen can truly shine.
Dense, difficult, and delightfully melancholy, Lords of the Fallen ticks all the right boxes for what fans of Elden Ring or Dark Souls are looking for in an action RPG. Add in a captivating dual-world gameplay mechanic that pushes Lords of the Fallen into next-gen territory, and it seems like Hexworks could be making a serious contender for the soulslike throne. And, by and large, Hexworks' souls-like offering is quite fun for those reasons, but as time with the game progresses, its dirty tricks and disjointed balancing reveal that the game’s best elements are superficial, with not a lot going on under the hood.
Lords of the Fallen is set one thousand years after the events of the original game, making it both a sequel and far enough removed from the original that new players can jump in without missing a beat. Players take on the role of the Dark Crusader and are killed at the start of the game. In classic souls-like fashion, death is not the end for the main character, but it's what the whole game is about. Once back in the land of the living, players can access the realm of the living and the realm of the dead - Axiom and Umbral, respectively - via the use of a supernatural lantern. Following a few NPC interactions that are every bit as obtuse and wordy as every other game in the genre, the player is given their main task of cleansing five beacons throughout the world, lest a great demon be reborn and the world wind up in great peril.
Given the genre, fans can also expect to see the same graceful poke-and-dodge combat mechanics that souls-like games have become known for, along with traditional character leveling attributes like Strength, Agility, Vitality, and so on. While Lords of the Fallen doesn’t do much to iterate on the souls-like blueprint with its RPG stylings and combat mechanics, its main focus is the previously mentioned dual-world mechanics, acting as a second life and separate reality for players to explore. While it could seem like somewhat of a gimmick at first, Lords of the Fallen proves that this back-and-forth between life and death is much more than that.
The Umbral plane is crucial to traversing and discovering everything that Mournstead has to offer, unlocking new doorways, items, and enemies when players die or decide to hop over to Umbral on their own accord. The longer that players stay in Umbral, the more enemies that spawn and the tougher they get. To make the whole trip to the grave worth it, the Umbral plane also boosts how many souls players get by up to a factor of three. Between the new enemies, new locations, new items, and the risk-vs-reward premise of the Umbral plane, Lords of the Fallen’s dual-world system does a great job of adding tons of depth to every corner of Mournstead. If only those corners weren’t so tight all the time.
The first notable issue in Lords of the Fallen is its cramped and crowded level design, which harkens back to some of the worst level designs of early souls-like games. Annoying occurrences like swords slapping against walls due to tight passageways or getting caught in a corner with no way out, or a combination of the two, are on the menu for a significant portion of Lords of the Fallen. Moreover, these levels are designed in ways that are often confusing, as their overlapping and interconnected nature isn’t accompanied by landmarks or reference points to help make Mournstead's various stages easily discernable. Getting lost can be a regular occurrence.
World design woes go hand-in-hand with how mob-heavy Lords of the Fallen is, and they make for a punishing combination. Hexworks throws everything but the kitchen sink at the player at all times, and doubly so in Umbral. Finding a moment’s peace in this game, even just to change a piece of gear, is rare, leading to a sense of exhaustion with the game, especially during lengthy play sessions. It doesn't help that checkpoints are also super scarce, making for frantic situations where it feels like the best option is to run back to the Vestige (LotF's version of bonfires) when things go south and hope that the next go-around is a little smoother. Going back to the drawing board in this manner and so frequently never felt very good and often killed the pace of the game.
Lords of the Fallen also feels very cheap at times, which is not a term used lightly. For example, Lords of the Fallen’s enemies have sets of tracking attacks that could make Dark Souls 2’s enemies blush. Every mob seems to have the uncanny ability to slip and slide their way into range of the player just when their attack is supposed to hit, despite being a seemingly safe distance away beforehand. Additionally, ranged mobs can track players with supernatural precision and will require a dodge to avoid every time. It’s not that these things don’t have their place in souls-likes; it's just that when every other turn has one of these “gotcha” moments, it becomes difficult to want to pick up the controller and try again.
There are some other more minor design choices, like how recovering souls requires a whole animation or how players can only have one Vestige Seed checkpoint active at a time, or how awfully spongy most larger enemies are, that will wear players down as the game goes on. There is also nothing to break up the pace of each level, leading to the game being very repetitive in structure. The deeper players might get into Lords of the Fallen, the more they may miss some of the more intricate puzzle designs and platforming that other games in the genre deliver in order to give some relief between bouts of fighting. Lords of the Fallen’s only trick for the majority of its run time is to make the player fight and keep fighting, which can get very boring.
In an almost reversal of genre norms, simply traversing Lords of the Fallen’s Mournstead ends up being more difficult and frustrating than the actual boss battles. That is to say, the bosses in this game aren’t very compelling. Disappointingly, a significant portion of main bosses just end up being bigger versions of enemies that players will see later on in the game, making the game lack variety. Additionally, most of the big-bads in Lords of the Fallen are pretty easy to figure out, generally only having three to four moves that they recycle until a mid-health phase change, which adds one or two more moves to keep things fresh. Throughout our playthrough, only a handful of bosses had us trying over and over again, but the vast majority took a few attempts to figure out before it was lights out for them.
However, despite some serious shortcomings, Lords of the Fallen also has some significant strengths. Hexworks has demonstrated that it is a master of world design and atmosphere, building out a delightfully somber and engrossing world with Mournstead, perfect for the souls-like fan with a penchant for the supernatural. Lords of the Fallen’s whole aesthetic is macabre and immersive enough to make us overlook some of its worst elements because we know that just around the corner is going to be something interesting to discover. The game is pretty in the way that a next-gen souls-like should be.
Lords of the Fallen isn’t all rough edges and frustrating design elements; in fact, most of the game is quite solid, if not good. It’s just that Lords of the Fallen likes to pull nasty tricks and overwhelm the player too often for it not to feel repetitive and frustrating from the mid-game onwards. To Hexworks’ credit, the studio has done plenty to fix the game in a very short amount of time, and the team seems eager to continue making Lords of the Fallen the best it can be. Recent fixes have largely benefitted Lords of the Fallen in both technical performance and gameplay quirks, with more to come. There is no doubt that, in time, this will be a far more polished and balanced game.
In its current state, however, Lords of the Fallen proves that Hexworks still has a bit to go before it learns the same lessons that many souls-like developers have in terms of quality-of-life adjustments and making sure that it strikes the right balance between challenge and frustration. Right now, it seems like Lords of the Fallen is taking the worst elements of every souls-like game and making those elements its main catalyst for difficulty, which is a bummer because everything else is so good. For the souls-like hardcore, Lords of the Fallen will be a fine conquest, but for the souls-like beginner, there are better entry points to the genre that offer a more well-rounded exploration into what souls-likes are capable of.
Lords of the Fallen
- Released
- October 13, 2023
WHERE TO PLAY
An epic, dark fantasy action-RPG set in a vast world of shadow and chaos.
Overthrow a resurrected demon god in this all-new adventure set in an interconnected world five times larger than the original game.
In Lords of the Fallen, you play as one of the fabled Dark Crusaders, who must journey through the realms of the living and the dead to disrupt the reign of Adyr, a cruel tyrant who has ushered in a new age of devastation for humanity.
Along the way, you'll endure colossal boss battles and get to grips with a fast and challenging combat system. With nine character classes and hundreds of weapons to choose from, you'll customize your hero and develop your own play style as you set out to defy the gods. Will your legend be one of light... Or one of darkness?
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG
- Dual world mechanic is very cool
- Atmosphere and level design are top notch
- Cramped level design and too mob heavy
- Most boss fights underwhelm
Lords of the Fallen is available now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The Best War Games was provided a PC code for the purposes of this review.