Purge the land of Mournstead of heresy, or help that heresy yourself in the name of Adyr in Lords of the Fallen! Read our review to see what the game did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Lords of the Fallen Review Overview
Lords of the Fallen Pros & Cons
| Pros |
|---|
 Game is Packed With Content Beautiful Environments, Armors, and Equipment Fluid and Fast-paced Combat Well-designed Game World |
| Cons |
| Game Barely Gives Enough Space Between Boss Battles Enemy Counts Are Too High in Some Areas Flawed Checkpoint System Bugs and Glitches in PS5 Version |
Lords of the Fallen Overall - 82/100
Lords of the Fallen masterfully encapsulates the ambiance of the Dark Souls franchise, from which it draws inspiration, with its impeccably crafted dark and ominous atmosphere, fluid combat, and an ever-present sense of foreboding, hopelessness, and trepidation as you push deeper into the tainted kingdom of Mournstead. Despite its flaws - from how many enemies it throws at you to fencing off the game’s lore behind character stats you may not need - Lords of the Fallen stands as a strikingly great homage to FromSoftware's seminal game series.
Lords of the Fallen Story - 8/10
As with many other games in the ‘Souls-like’ genre, Lords of the Fallen does not willingly reveal its story to you. Rather, you have to go out of your way to figure out what’s going on in Mournstead aside from the impending return of Adyr, the demon lord. That means talking to NPCs and reading item descriptions, though most item descriptions are gated by an investment into the Radiance stat (the equivalent to "Intelligence" in this game) - which you may or may not need. Still, the game does a fair job of revealing what you should know about the plot to progress, and it’s a fairly good plot that leaves you to grapple with the moral implications of your in-game choices.
Lords of the Fallen Gameplay - 7/10
Combat is some of the best I’ve seen in a Souls-like game. All the enemies have specific ways of attacking, which you can counter if you’re willing to learn. Dodging is fluid, and your character never feels too fast or too slow, resulting in a fight that’s akin to a dance. The problem, however, lies in how the game is paced. Almost all locations are crawling with enemies, forcing you to either spend precious time taking them all out methodically or running through the level instead. There’s also barely enough breathing room between boss battles. We could’ve sworn that Lords of the Fallen was an open-world game with how many bosses we ended up running into during our playthrough.
Lords of the Fallen Visuals - 9/10
Lords of the Fallen was made with Unreal Engine 5, and it shows. All the environments in the game are beautifully detailed - from the cathedral-like spires of Skyrest Bridge to the swamps of the Forsaken Fen, to the burnt-out ruins of Calrath. The various enemies you face all look menacing in their own way, but you’re no slouch either with all the cool-looking armor sets you can get for yourself. This is all tied into the game’s overall dark fantasy aesthetic, and it’s great that it all seems so aesthetically cohesive - nothing looks out of place.
Lords of the Fallen Audio - 8/10
The music in Lords of the Fallen has really strong religious overtones, which matches how the game is presented as a kind of "crusade" against heretics and sinners. War drums, Gregorian chanting, and violins give a sense of urgency, while slithering snakes, ghostly whispers, and sudden, violent creaks evoke a sense of fear and dread. The soundtrack gives every place in Mournstead a very corrupted vibe that has to be purged - or embraced, should you choose to do so. The voice acting, meanwhile, is decently on par with the kind found in many Souls-like games.
Lords of the Fallen Value for Money - 9/10
Lords of the Fallen is a long game. With so many enemies to fight, secrets to discover, and items to loot, you’ll be spending a good amount of time in Mournstead. Also, if you can keep yourself from spoilers on the internet, you’ll spend an even longer time figuring out its story and whether or not you can lead it to alternate conclusions. There’s also the motivation of unlocking new character classes and trying out new playstyles before heading into multiplayer mode and fighting other players online. By the time you’re done with all of this, you’ll see that it’s $70 well-spent.
Lords of the Fallen Review: Too Many Lords to Fell
Lords of the Fallen is a love letter to FromSoftware’s Dark Souls franchise, with its dark aesthetic, intimidating bosses, and pervading feeling of hopelessness. That’s just the start of it, actually. There’s also the fast, fluid, and (above all else) fair combat, the interconnected map, the lore behind the plot that you’ll have to piece together yourself, and the implications of your actions by the end of the game. By most metrics, Lords of the Fallen could very well be a numbered title in the Dark Souls series.
However, Lords of the Fallen has several flaws that keep me from saying it’s the perfect homage. The most glaring one is pacing - there’s barely any breathing room between bosses. Considering that "boss rush" games are quite popular (Cuphead and Monster Hunter come to mind), this may have been a deliberate design choice. Still, part of Souls-like games is the exploration, and Lords of the Fallen feels like you’re being hurried along from one boss to another. It doesn’t help that most areas are crawling with enemies, forcing you to either spend a lot of time drawing them out one by one, or running through the map like a madman and potentially missing good items and other secrets.
Still, despite this and other shortcomings, Lords of the Fallen does a good job of being both a great homage and a fun game to boot. Playing it can be very satisfying, even if you’re not a big fan of Souls-likes. It could even be your gateway into the genre with how forgiving it can be. Give the game a shot, and bring peace to Mournstead once and for all.
Pros of Lords of the Fallen
| Things Lords of the Fallen Got Right |
|---|
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Game is Packed With Content Beautiful Environments, Armors, and Equipment Fluid and Fast-paced Combat Well-designed Game World |
Game is Packed With Content
The best thing about Lords of the Fallen is how jam-packed the game is. If you take your time beating enemies, taking on all the bosses, and looking for items, you have a game that rivals any of the Dark Souls titles in length. Each location has different sets of enemies and items, and you’ll have to scour them to find valuable weapons, armor sets, throwables, and other things that will help you beat the game.
What expands Lords of the Fallen even further is the Umbral Lantern mechanic. You see, when you die in-game, you are brought to the Umbral - a kind of mirror dimension of death that closely reflects the world of Axiom, the dimension where the game takes place. Die again, and you will be down for good and will have to respawn. However, if you survive, you’ll notice that the Umbral has a few key differences from Axiom. Ladders and stairs will appear in areas that didn’t have them in the realm of the living, giving you access to new locations. Oftentimes, these lead to valuable items, so it pays to occasionally delve into this realm of death to grow stronger.
When you’re done with the main game and collecting items, you can go about hunting down optional bosses, as well as finding out the secrets of the story itself. We don’t want to spoil anything, but the more you play, the more you’ll notice certain signs that lead you to think, "What if…" and the game will allow you to act accordingly. Once you’re done with all that, you can still take your character out to fight other players online.
Lords of the Fallen is a long game, and it can get drawn out at times (as I’ll explain below), but it’s definitely worth every penny.
Beautiful Environments, Armors, and Equipment
The game takes place in the kingdom of Mournstead, which is in the throes of an invasion by Rhogar (basically demons), and a sickness that has driven most of its citizens mad. You’ll see this fact reflected in just how rotten and run-down everything looks - the putrid village you start in is overgrown with roots and signs of decay. When you get to Skyrest Bridge, you’ll be surrounded by intricate Gothic architecture with spires going up to the crimson skies. Everything is covered in religious iconography too - crosses, candles, and Mother Mary-like statues crying blood.
The rest of Mournstead has the same religious motif - crosses and signs of devotion interspersed with dead bodies, ribcages, and other forms of debauchery, showing how bad things have become. Yet, off in the distance, you’ll see the corrupted beacons you’re supposed to cleanse shoot their red beams up to the sky and the mountain ranges in the distance. They can be very breathtaking, just like how Dark Souls can be in its brief periods of silence.
What really takes the cake though is the Umbral - a land of death colored gray and blue. Every wall has the visage of a demented soul stretching out of it, and the land itself is covered in gray and alien fauna. Faceless souls emerge from the void to try and attack you, and off in the distance you won’t just see mountain ranges - but giant skeletons standing still in the distance. Eerie stuff. That’s why I don’t linger too much in the Umbral despite the rewards.
All of these environments are intricately detailed, and so are your armor and other equipment. There are a lot of great-looking armor sets from the Dark Crusader armor with its intimidating helm and longword, to the Crimson Rector armor with its frayed white fabric covering thick plate armor, and the Angel of the Void set that’s basically the Grim Reaper with a huge ax. Aside from just looking cool, though, all of the armor perfectly fit the game’s dark fantasy aesthetic. With so many good-looking armors, "Lords of the Drip" could very well be the game’s alternate title.
Fluid and Fast-paced Combat
By this time, Souls-like combat is already tried, tested, and standardized. You go up to an enemy, learn their "tells"s; or when they’re about to attack, dodge or parry their attack with perfect timing, then wallop them. Sometimes, you can go up to them with magic or a bow and arrow to shoot them from a distance. But nothing beats just taking a huge sword made of flesh and bone and slamming it into the nearest Rhogar-infected creature you run into.
However, Lords of the Fallen has a few tricks up its sleeve. First is the Umbral Lantern, which you can use as a kind of weapon - especially against bosses. It has a trick called ‘Soulflay,’ which allows you to pull out the physical manifestation of an enemy’s soul, which you can then attack and deal massive damage for a few moments. Some enemies have Umbral Parasites, which will keep them alive until you purge those parasites with your lamp. It kind of feels like Alan Wake in this regard - weaken your enemy with the lamp then start walloping.
Then there’s the little things. Dodging is so great in this game. A light tap of the dodge button allows you to hop a bit to the side, which is just as good at dodging an attack with a shorter recovery period - allowing you to immediately punish anyone who missed you with their blade. All the weapons have decent animations that aren’t too slow, but aren’t too fast either. The enemy "tells" can range from very obvious to somewhat erratic, but none of them enter the realm of being unfair.
This is perhaps the best part of Lords of the Fallen’s combat: It feels fair. As long as you can damage something, you have a reasonable chance of killing it in the end.
Well-designed Game World
Mournstead’s design as a game world is quite like Dark Souls, with how the different areas of the map all revolve around a single point, and how your progression through each area is marked by paths that can bring you to areas you’ve already been to. Of course, if you want to use the Vestiges (the game’s equivalent of Bonfires), you can do so and warp between them instead. But these interconnections go so far as to make Mournstead feel like an open-world experience, even if it’s more like a Metroidvania than anything else.
Even in the individual areas, the great map design is on full display. It never takes too long for you to come across a ladder you can pull down, or a plank you can kick to create a shortcut between you and the vestige you came from, making future treks into the area easier.
Cons of Lords of the Fallen
| Things That Lords of the Fallen Can Improve |
|---|
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Game Barely Gives Enough Space Between Boss Battles Enemy Counts Are Too High in Some Areas Flawed Checkpoint System Bugs and Glitches in PS5 Version |
Game Barely Gives Enough Space Between Boss Battles
The biggest problem Lords of the Fallen has, by far, is how it paces its boss fights. From the area known as Pilgrim’s Perch onward, you’ll be running into a lot of bosses, with the space between them being "a bit long" at best, and literally being the next thing that happens at worst. For example, while heading to an area called Calrath, I got on a bridge where I faced a demon with a shield and ax called a "Ruiner." Once I beat him, I went down to a ruined fort where I faced down some psychopath with a dragon called The Lightreaper. So I took care of him and went into the fort, right? It led me to the slums of Calrath, where I ended up fighting against yet another boss called the Infernal Enchantress. Even if I didn’t face the Lightreaper, I would’ve still run into her fairly quickly after the Ruiner.
I wish Hexworks would’ve given us some time to simply breathe between boss battles. Just let us take in those moments of quiet after frenzy - which is also part of why Dark Souls and other Souls-likes are popular. They balanced the moments of frenzy with moments of exploration, which leads you to take in the scenery of the world you’re in and see just how beautiful it is despite the decay surrounding you. The Lords of the Fallen, it’s quite a shame that with its beautiful environments, there’s barely any space between the bosses to take it all in.
It doesn’t help that bosses give relatively few experience points considering just how often you’ll have to run into them. If you’re skilled enough, you can go face the bosses without grinding out your character’s stats. For the rest of the player base though, they’ll have to stop in their tracks, find a good place to farm XP, and stop their progression instead of going through the game and seeing new things constantly. Again, this damages the game’s pacing, especially since the mission to cleanse the beacons is made out to be an urgent matter considering how near Adyr is to returning to the mortal realm.
Enemy Counts Are Too High in Some Areas
Adding to the previous point, certain maps are just crawling with enemies, especially Upper and Lower Calrath. This means that if you want to explore these areas thoroughly and find all the loot you want, you’ll have to systematically clear these areas one enemy at a time. This can lead to you wasting precious time in doing so. Of course, clearing areas is part of any Souls-like game, but most games keep the enemy counts at a reasonable level. Here in Lords of the Fallen, certain areas simply overflow with enemies. Very quickly, you’ll realize that facing them all is not worth the effort or the risk of being overwhelmed despite how careful you are. So, some players may just opt to run through the map, ignoring its secrets, until they get to the very end.
So it’s either the player ends up rushing through a map or slogging through it. Whichever of these possibilities happens, it’ll damage the game’s pacing yet again.
Flawed Checkpoint System
In connection with the pacing problems this game has is how its checkpoint system is designed. Instead of having permanent bonfires or vestiges in areas across Mournstead, the powers that be in Lords of the Fallen seem to have taken a shine to charging you for saving your game. Because instead of running across multiple bonfires, you’ll have to go out of your way to find or buy a Vestige Seedling - which plants a temporary Vestige you can rest and respawn at. These items, however, are few and far between, and with how many bosses and dungeons there are in Lords of the Fallen, you’ll need all the Vestige Seedlings you can get.
This leaves you with one option - to buy Vestige Seedlings for 2,500 Vigor (or XP) from Molhu at Skyrest Bridge. In the early game, 1,000 to 2,500 Vigor is one level already. So instead of progressing and leveling up your character, you’ll have to put aside precious Vigor to buy a temporary checkpoint you may end up not even needing. That’s because sometimes, the Umbral Flowerbeds these vestiges can be planted at have a bad habit of being near actual Vestiges. If you made a mistake, then that’s 2,500 Vigor you’ll have to re-earn.
In the end, all this does is damage the game’s pacing even further by making grinding somewhat of a necessity just to have enough Vestige Seedlings on hand when you’re far into a dungeon and don’t want to lose your progress. By the time you’ve gone through 3/4ths of the game, you’ll feel that the unnecessary grinding has drawn the game out quite a bit.
Bugs and Glitches in PS5 Version
We played the PS5 version of Lords of the Fallen, so the bugs I’ll mention here may or may not be exclusive to that version. First off, there’s the slowdown in terms of framerate on the PS5. Even in Performance Mode, the game hits 60 FPS nine times out of ten. Definitely not unplayable, of course, but considering that the PS5 is one of this generation’s most powerful consoles, you’ll have to wonder whether the people at Hexworks are still having trouble developing games on Unreal Engine 5.
Aside from that, there are some graphical glitches. For example, in Calrath (or any other area with lots of fires), you’ll sometimes see that the fire gets pixelated. For a moment, I thought I was playing a Japanese version of the game, but no - the fire really looked like that. Hopefully, that gets patched because the "censored" tend to show up in different places.
Is Lords of the Fallen Worth It?
Definitely A Bang For Your Buck
The length and gameplay quality in Lords of the Fallen should already be enough of a reason to buy it. It’s one of the better triple-A Souls-like games to have come out this year, despite the bad pacing. It’s a bit pricier, too, but you can see that a lot of work went into developing this game. If you’re itching for a "classic" Dark Souls experience in 2023, you can’t go too wrong with buying Lords of the Fallen.
Lords of the Fallen Overview & Premise
Lords of the Fallen is set eons after vanquishing the demon lord Adyr in the original Lords of the Fallen release back in 2014. Lords seemingly do not fall forever, however, as the resurrection of Adyr draws near, and the realms are bound to experience another age of cruel tyranny. As one of the Dark Crusaders, you must journey through both the realms of the living and the dead and choose to carve a path of either light or dark to overthrow the demon lord.
Lords of the Fallen Player Reviews
We gathered reviews from players across several platforms and found they had these things to say about Lords of the Fallen:
⚫︎ Great Lore, Greater Graphics and World-Design
⚫︎ Too Much of The Same Enemies At All Times
⚫︎ Umbral Mechanics Are A Mixed Bag
⚫︎ Technical Problems Make the Game Unplayable
Great Lore, Greater Graphics and World-Design
While many players were quick to compare the world design and lore of this game to the genre-defining Soulsborne series, most agreed that Lords of the Fallen's detailed and unique lore stands firmly on its own. Reviews have praised the game's distinctive Umbral Realm—more on that later—and the bosses have garnered genuine acclaim for their character designs and combat mechanics. The AAA graphics enhance the game's masterful aesthetics, allowing it to shine without needing comparisons to other greats.
Too Much of The Same Enemies At All Times
One common complaint among Lords of the Fallen’s player reviews is the enemy variety, placement, and frequency. Simply put, the game has too many enemies, and they are often placed in frustrating spots on the map. This criticism extends to the Umbral enemies, which were particularly panned for their annoying placements and overwhelming numbers, even in the earliest parts of the game. In addition to that, enemies are often found on ledges, bridges, and near doors, ready to ambush, a gimmick that many players found overdone.
Similarly, players have expressed frustration with the game's shortcuts and progression system. Despite the general excellence of the stage and world designs, some parts of the map open shortcuts to areas the player rarely needs to revisit, even though unlocking them requires significant fighting and exploration.
Umbral Mechanics Are A Mixed Bag
Elaborating further on the game’s Umbral Realm mechanics, most players found it to be a great addition to an otherwise typical soulslike. Many reviews praised its unique implementation and the extra layer of strategy it brings to platforming, combat, and exploration—quite literally. Unfortunately, an equal number of players voiced concerns about the Umbral Realm’s clunkiness, particularly during combat.
Technical Problems Make the Game Unplayable
Lords of the Fallen’s launch was rough, plagued by several technical problems that caused repeated crashes across multiple platforms. Although these issues have since been patched, they initially led to many negative reviews. Months after the resolution, players have not reported any additional technical difficulties. The game continues to be on the higher end of the graphical benchmark, however, making it inaccessible to low-to-mid-tier setups still.
Lords of the Fallen FAQ
What’s the Best Character Class?
Like in other Souls-like games, there’s really no such thing as a "best" character class - since everyone has different play styles that are suited to different character classes. But if you’re seeking a class with evenly distributed stats, the "Partisan" class will suit you well. If you want to be able to take good amounts of damage and survive, then pick the Hallowed Knight instead.
But if you happened to buy the game’s Deluxe Edition (or already completed a certain questline if you bought the Standard Edition), then the Dark Crusader will be the best class for you to pick because of its balanced stats, as well as above-average Endurance, Vitality, and Strength.
Is Lords of the Fallen Cross-platform?
Yes and no. If you have Lords of the Fallen on a console, you can cross-play with people playing the game on PC and vice versa. However, cross-platform does not work between consoles. So, for example, if you’re playing the game on the PS5, you won’t be able to play with friends who own the game on Xbox.
Lords of the Fallen Trailer
Lords of the Fallen Launch Trailer
Game8 Reviews
Lords of the Fallen Product Information
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| Title | LORDS OF THE FALLEN |
|---|---|
| Release Date | October 13, 2023 |
| Developer | HEXWORKS |
| Publisher | CI Games |
| Supported Platforms | PS5, Xbox Series S/X, PC |
| Genre | Action RPG |
| Number of Players | Single-player; multiplayer |
| ESRB Rating | M |
| Official Website | Lords of the Fallen Website |
