Lords of the Fallen - Dark Souls clone from City Interactive

[DramaticPopcorn]

This game has no MP, correct?
Thinking of getting extended demo for it, maybe I'll buy it if its gud

 

[GrainWetski]

Decided to try it. It's, as expected, a homeless man's Souls game.

Why is this marked as decline?

Because it's basically a dumbed down version of a Souls game?

 

[MicoSelva]

More reviews.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun, scoreless.

There is apparently a 5GB patch incoming for Lords of the Fallen, which may make a difference, but at this point I’d advise steering well clear unless you’re rocking an absolutely monster rig. Even then, is it worth it? From the not-inconsiderable amount I’ve played of LotF it feels like a game that lacks the finesse and precision of its inspiration, lacking any kind of multiplayer element and offering only a Diablo-esque quantity of loot to keep you coming back. Presuming that the game is patched to a workable state RPS will return to take another look in a week or so’s time – but until then, you’d be better-served replaying the Souls games.

GamesRadar, 3/5.

Taken on its own this is a sophisticated fantasy RPG executed with consideration and thought, but Lords of the Fallen never really escapes the spectre of Souls, and it can only blame itself .

Trusted Reviews, 7/10.

It might be a cover version of Dark Souls, but at least it’s a good cover version, with solid mechanics, gripping combat and a few twists that make it slightly more approachable to newbies. Lords of the Fallen suffers from a forgettable story and some generic art, and could be a fair bit tighter, technically speaking, but if you like your Souls and want a slightly different take, it’s a decent buy.

Videogamer.com, 6/10.

While Lords of the Fallen can be fun in spells, its inconsistency, poor pacing and muddied conveyance mean it stands in the shadows of its competitors. It’s a shame, as there is an interesting world and setup here, and the game certainly gets stronger towards its conclusion, but it just never quite reaches the heights of what else is on offer.

Metro, 7/10.

There seems likely to be two types of people that will be interested in Lords Of The Fallen, the first being veterans of Dark Souls keen for more of the same. As long as they understand the game’s goals and limitations they should be perfectly entertained by the experience, at least as a stop-gap until Bloodborne arrives and whatever else From Software is planning.

The other group are new players intimidated or frustrated by the real Dark Souls, and who are looking for something easier and more accessible. They also should be well satisfied, and if they do then graduate to the real thing they’ll have an even greater appreciation for how intricately designed and carefully balanced it is. Because even the best copy is never as good as the original.

Digital Spy, 3/5.

If you're hankering for a bit more Souls-shaped entertainment in your life, Lords of the Fallen can fill a gap. It can kill some time, provide some entertainment for a few hours.

But its lack of subtlety in its mechanics, it's rather clunky nature and its somewhat dull, basic setting mean it will never be more than a decent distraction: a game to play in between other games, or while you wait until Bloodborne early next year.

NowGamer, 7/10.

More than once there were issues with hit-detection, and in an RPG where skill is as important as the stats powering your character that’s just not on. One particularly infuriating issue saw the frame rate drop to a consistently low count, making combat against one of the game’s bosses unfairly difficult.

After rage-quitting and returning later the frame rate had, mystically, resolved itself and the boss was downed in the first attempt, highlighting just how much of an issue this really is.

It’s these technical faults that really ruin what could have otherwise been a very solid RPG, albeit one that pays homage a little too closely to Dark Souls (damn it, so close).

GameZone, 7/10.

Throughout the game you’re going to know where you should be going but getting there isn’t always as simple; after the second boss the difficulty ramps up. Yet while Lords can be difficult, it’s not as punishing as say Dark Souls. Boss fights are near the save points, the area where you died heals you, there is a potion to restore your death EXP without having to pick it back up, banking EXP also takes the pressure off of dying, and there is nothing stopping you from grinding. If you’re looking for something to fill that exact void in your heart of Dark Souls (not Dark Souls II), this game is probably not it. If you’re looking for a challenging, new action RPG, that borrows concepts from other successful fantasy studios while producing something new – it's certainly worthwhile to give it a look. Take the training wheels off Harkyn, die a bunch of times to horrific monsters, and embark on a familiar yet new adventure.

GameRevolution, 3.0/5.

Lords of the Fallen will probably annoy just as many Dark Souls fans as it pleases. While it can be recommended to fans of FromSoftware’s series by virtue of its combat system, which places its own spin on top of the Souls franchise, it often feels like you’re simply playing a poor man’s version of a classic game. To those who are looking for another action-RPG fix prior to the release of Bloodborne and can overlook LotF’s derivative nature, then it’s worth a shot. For everyone else, though, there are plenty more games releasing just around the corner to warrant you overlooking this one.

The Independent, scoreless.

Whether you’ll like Lords of the Fallen comes down to whether you’re a masochist or not. It has one foot in the realm of Dark Souls and Demon Souls - a medieval take on a brutal fantasy where strikes from swords, hammers and axes lead to certain death. But there’s an element of the adventure here too, part-Darksiders in its aesthetic as you explore the warren-like worlds on offer. It’s a game about careful planning and certain dying, and that might not be for everyone.

TheGamersHub, 7.5/10.

There’s plenty here for RPG fans to sink their teeth into, you’ve got a New Game + and New Game ++ to run through once done, and decisions you make during the game shape how things unfold later on too. It’s clear that this is ambitious, but despite the weak characters and rather throwaway story, Lords of the Fallen throws up a challenge and can sit up there as a visually impressive and enjoyable skill-based RPG.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'd give it a try but not possible to remove from inventory yet, and I'm not paying full price for a weaksauce Souls knockoff.

 

[Gerrard]

Dark Souls invented 3rd person "RPG"

 

[GrainWetski]

Dark Souls invented 3rd person "RPG"

Next up: You pretending Salt and Sanctuary isn't just a side-scrolling Souls game.

 

[Perkel]

Dark Souls invented 3rd person "RPG"

I remember playing kings quest in 3D that more or less was like DS circa ~2000. Though i don't remember if it was actually kings quest. What i remember though was that it had big swamp and maps were very complex

 

[Athelas]

I'm fairly sure that was supposed to be sarcasm.

 

[MicoSelva]

One more Polish review. They rated it at 7.5/10 and one of the complaints was the length of the game (they used an untranslatable Polish expression which could mean 11 to 19 hours). Also, they say the game is hard, but more forgiving than D.Souls.

Howlongtobeat shows 22 hours for one playthrough at the moment, but that means nothing with only one reporter.

Also, apparently the game has already received a 7GB patch - nice filesystem, guys.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Totally like Dark Souls, just without the things that made Dark Souls good. Makes sense.

 

[Stonewolf]

Well, I bought it yesterday. Some first impressions after playing for ~7 hours:

- pretty much all points from ENB preview are spot on, combat is a clunky brawler and trading hits seems to be encouraged; once I found a really heavy armor and a big two handed axe it started being beneficial to trade hits even with bosses
- art direction of skullz and spikez + story are literally the cancer, it's basically a copypasta of Oblivion "story" and most enemies could easily pass as Daedras
- no complaints about performance (Xeon E3, GTX 760), crashed once; it looks great
- so far I havent died

 

[Perkel]

One more Polish review. They rated it at 7.5/10 and one of the complaints was the length of the game (they used an untranslatable Polish expression which could mean 11 to 19 hours). Also, they say the game is hard, but more forgiving than D.Souls.

Howlongtobeat shows 22 hours for one playthrough at the moment, but that means nothing with only one reporter.

Also, apparently the game has already received a 7GB patch - nice filesystem, guys.

What they said in cons:

- Game should have been longer
- Story filled with tropes
- Ton of tech problems
- wasted potential of main hero (for being awesome hero)

pros:

- interesting world and character design
- satisfying and just combat system
- great boss combat design
- hard level of deficulty but it doesn't frustrate player
- different endings depending on choices made

 

[ghostdog]

Boss fights are near the save points, the area where you died heals you, there is a potion to restore your death EXP without having to pick it back up, banking EXP also takes the pressure off of dying, and there is nothing stopping you from grinding.

Damn, I was hoping for some nice difficulty from the previews. The XP-multiplier and the gradual reduction of your XP until you reach your bloodstain seemed interesting mechanics. Too bad they are made COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT.

Well, I bought it yesterday. Some first impressions after playing for ~7 hours:
- pretty much all points from ENB preview are spot on, combat is a clunky brawler and trading hits seems to be encouraged; once I found a really heavy armor and a big two handed axe it started being beneficial to trade hits even with bosses
- art direction of skullz and spikez + story are literally the cancer, it's basically a copypasta of Oblivion "story" and most enemies could easily pass as Daedras
- so far I havent died

Fuck this. It's high time I played D:OS and W2 anyway.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Dark Souls invented 3rd person "RPG"

I remember playing kings quest in 3D that more or less was like DS circa ~2000. Though i don't remember if it was actually kings quest. What i remember though was that it had big swamp and maps were very complex

King's Field?

 

[Perkel]

it was third person so no.

 

[StaticSpine]

pros:

- interesting world and character design

 

[Stonewolf]

Finished it today, 14 hours on the clock. Probably could have been 2 hours less if I didn't keep getting lost because of locations looking the same and certain objective being retarded.

Spoiler

I spent like 30 minutes looking for Kaszlo (or whatever) after the first boss fight since I assumed he would be around. How does it make sense that he ran away in random direction after being hit in the fight? Nice support brother, also how exactly did you teleport through all those enemies?

Some more thoughts:
- apart form the last 2 fights, absolutely shit boss design; 4 of the bosses are basically the same guy just with different items/ability
- itemization is horrible: it seems that in the second part of the game all I was getting was faith weapons or occasionally str weapons with insanely high stat requirement; ended up using some one handed sword without sockets because I simply didnt have anything else that had decent damage; crafting system is basically non existant in this game, early weapons just stay shit because of low base damage and newer ones being flat out better/have sockets
- worst offender of all: the backtracking; you're pretty much forced to go through the game backwards to access location previously locked; in Dark Souls you had the Lordvessel so you didnt have to go everywhere on foot, here you have to
- game keeps track of how many attempts you had on a boss and how long it took you to beat him
- one nice mechanic I noticed is that when you have shield on your back it's still active, so getting hit in the back means a hit on the shield; pretty useful when fighting unlocked or against multiple opponents

Overall I'd rate it probably 5 or 6 out of 10, and large part of that score is stunning visuals and good soundtrack.


PS. Devs are playing on stream right now, and the game just crashed twice on stream. Haha.

 

[toro]

Finished it today, 14 hours on the clock. Probably could have been 2 hours less if I didn't keep getting lost because of locations looking the same and certain objective being retarded.

Spoiler

I spent like 30 minutes looking for Kaszlo (or whatever) after the first boss fight since I assumed he would be around. How does it make sense that he ran away in random direction after being hit in the fight? Nice support brother, also how exactly did you teleport through all those enemies?

Some more thoughts:
- apart form the last 2 fights, absolutely shit boss design; 4 of the bosses are basically the same guy just with different items/ability
- itemization is horrible: it seems that in the second part of the game all I was getting was faith weapons or occasionally str weapons with insanely high stat requirement; ended up using some one handed sword without sockets because I simply didnt have anything else that had decent damage; crafting system is basically non existant in this game, early weapons just stay shit because of low base damage and newer ones being flat out better/have sockets
- worst offender of all: the backtracking; you're pretty much forced to go through the game backwards to access location previously locked; in Dark Souls you had the Lordvessel so you didnt have to go everywhere on foot, here you have to
- game keeps track of how many attempts you had on a boss and how long it took you to beat him
- one nice mechanic I noticed is that when you have shield on your back it's still active, so getting hit in the back means a hit on the shield; pretty useful when fighting unlocked or against multiple opponents

Overall I'd rate it probably 5 or 6 out of 10, and large part of that score is stunning visuals and good soundtrack.


PS. Devs are playing on stream right now, and the game just crashed twice on stream. Haha.

One question: If you had to choose between Alien Isolation and this; what would you choose to play?

 

[Stonewolf]

Though if you are not me and TPP melee fighting games isnt your favorite genre, then Alien.

 

[Perkel]

Finished it today, 14 hours on the clock. Probably could have been 2 hours less if I didn't keep getting lost because of locations looking the same and certain objective being retarded.

Spoiler

I spent like 30 minutes looking for Kaszlo (or whatever) after the first boss fight since I assumed he would be around. How does it make sense that he ran away in random direction after being hit in the fight? Nice support brother, also how exactly did you teleport through all those enemies?

Some more thoughts:
- apart form the last 2 fights, absolutely shit boss design; 4 of the bosses are basically the same guy just with different items/ability
- itemization is horrible: it seems that in the second part of the game all I was getting was faith weapons or occasionally str weapons with insanely high stat requirement; ended up using some one handed sword without sockets because I simply didnt have anything else that had decent damage; crafting system is basically non existant in this game, early weapons just stay shit because of low base damage and newer ones being flat out better/have sockets
- worst offender of all: the backtracking; you're pretty much forced to go through the game backwards to access location previously locked; in Dark Souls you had the Lordvessel so you didnt have to go everywhere on foot, here you have to
- game keeps track of how many attempts you had on a boss and how long it took you to beat him
- one nice mechanic I noticed is that when you have shield on your back it's still active, so getting hit in the back means a hit on the shield; pretty useful when fighting unlocked or against multiple opponents

Overall I'd rate it probably 5 or 6 out of 10, and large part of that score is stunning visuals and good soundtrack.


PS. Devs are playing on stream right now, and the game just crashed twice on stream. Haha.

One question: If you had to choose between Alien Isolation and this; what would you choose to play?

Flappy Bird

 

[Renevent]

Well finally got a chance to really sit down and play. I did mess around on release day for a 30 mins or so, didn't have any issues (no crashing, performance issues) but wasn't until yesterday that I actually sat down for a few hours and and dug in. Anyways impressions so far:

Pros:
-Beautiful graphics
-Nice looking levels and environment
-Weapons/armor/items are great looking (if you like exaggerated 40k-esque stuff)
-Combat is mostly solid and pretty much Dark Souls
-Nice amount of secrets and loot
-Decent difficulty...it's not Dark Souls level but I have died a few times
-Good variety of weapons, though again, not on the same level as Dark Souls
-Nice ability to bank souls for later use

Cons:
-While a good effort, combat isn't quite as tight as Dark Souls
-Story/NPC/Dialog stuff in the game is kind of lame. They tried to expand on Dark Souls light, but spooky dialog and present more fleshed out characters and NPCs, but I think this was for the worse.
-Level design is tighter and less ambitious than the souls series
-They do mostly nail Dark Souls combat, but it does feel a bit less compelling. I think this is due to the enemies having less functional variety (mostly shielded enemies/bosses), and enemies themselves having more HP especially the bosses. The second point exacerbates this issue I think, since you have to hit stuff a lot more in Lords.

Basically it is as expected...Dark Souls light. They mostly hit the mark but fall short in other areas. The game to me feels like Dark Souls mixed with Darksiders...two games I love.

7.5/10

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Game performs incredibly poorly on my system. Horrible optimization , cannot play it. There are hundreds of people complaining on steam with same reaction

 

[Stonewolf]

What are your specs?

 

[CaptainCoxwaggle]

Played through 11 hours and around 7 bosses

Lords of the Fallen is Dark Souls if Dark Souls was done by modern Western Arrpeegee devs
1. Storyline spoonfed to you in custscenes and hidden scrolls you find in the game, rather then through atmosphere and encounters
2. Main character is brooding anti-hero who is for some reason is the only motherfucker capable of accomplishing anything
3. C&C mostly revolves around fake choices and choosing to be a oblivious niceguy or snarky douchebag
4. Newer weapons and armour are strictly better then your old shit, bigger numbers > animations
5. Combat is slower, clunkier, but manlier, revolving around exchanging blows and risk management rather then precision timing.
6. Bigsuits of armour with giant pauldrons, that actually protect you beyond not getting oneshot
7. Checkpoints right before bossfights and linear progression. "Secrets" are blitheringly obvious button puzzles

On the other hand you get all the benefits of Western ARPGs, like better graphics, smooth and larger variety of attack animations, loot hoarding, and a story you can follow without analysing the item description of your shoes.

Overall I would recommend as long as you don't compare to Dark Souls and enjoy it as Dark Souls Lite.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

New patch fixed some perfomance issues but it's still pretty terrible.

What are your specs?

I have a fairly old GPU so that may be the culprit but my buddy recently bought GT970 and has same FPS drops as I do