Lords Of The Fallen PC Review

Disclaimer 1: Lots of people talk about crashing, but I had literally zero problems. I don't know if I'm super lucky or if issues have been patched, but I can't deduct points for problems I didn't have. Just be warned.

Disclaimer 2: This game is not Dark Souls. If you're expecting Dark Souls, you'll be disappointed. If you're hoping for Dark Souls, you'll be disappointed. THAT BEING SAID, I will be doing comparisons to how Dark Souls works since it's probably the frame of reference most people will be coming from.

I liked this game a LOT more than I was expecting to. Reviews for it were pretty terrible at first, and are only mediocre now, but the only thing I can think of to cause that is people coming in here with a mentality of "let's see how different it is from Dark Souls." It's clear from the get-go that the developers were trying to capitalize on a formula made prominent by the Souls games, but please try to judge this game of its own accord rather than compared to the genre juggernauts.

Right off the bat, Souls players should feel comfortable. Combat is mostly focused on patience and energy (stamina) conservation, knowing when to block/dodge/strike, etc. Jumping in and flailing will get you ripped to shreds, and studying your enemies attack patterns = success. Killing enemies gives you experience, which you can use to level up attributes or spells at shards (save points). However, unlike the Souls games, using a shard doesn't respawn enemies in the world (that only happens when you die or leave the zone), but rather resets your experience multiplier. As you kill enemies, your experience multiplier increases, giving you a reward for taking risks and saving less often. When you die, you drop all your experience, and unlike the Souls games, you have a limited amount of time to pick it back up again before it vanishes. I liked the system a lot. It's a mild evolution on a formula, but it introduced just enough to keep things interesting.

There's some frustration with combat, though. It's inconsistent and unreliable what attacks will break an enemy's guard, and even when you do, their shields are back up before you're even mid-swing. Harkyn (you), on the other hand, seems to get stunned for 8 seconds. It's frustrating. Fights with shield enemies are either shoot-from-afar-with-my-gauntlet or block-their-hit-and-hit-back-until-death. Plus, hit detection is not perfect. I had a not-insignificant number of sword swings and gauntlet shots that simply passed right through enemies. It wasn't a rampant problem, but it should NEVER happen.

Story-wise, I actually liked this game a lot more than Dark Souls (I welcome your knee-jerk reaction downvotes). A huge part of Dark Souls' mystique and whatnot comes from a complete lack of communication with the player. Lords of the Fallen is not that game. You have objectives (story quests only), the world is laid out more linearly, and while your hand is never held, the difficulty in the game is in achieving objectives rather than figuring out what to do AND THEN doing it. The story is serviceable, and moves around enough to be interesting, but it's nothing groundbreaking.

I think this game actually serves as a good halfway step between standard RPGs and Dark Souls. The difficulty is more approachable, as is the game world itself. You have a mission objective, but no map or direction markers, and side quests are never tracked at all, so it's up to you to remember where people/things are. I loved it. It still left some of the questing burden on me, but I never got that "oooookay, what do I do now?" feeling. You're told to "fight to the top of the citadel" but then left to your own devices.

Hardcore Souls players might be turned off by that type of gameplay, but I welcomed it. No getting your intestines ripped out through your nostrils right away in the catacombs here. Don't get me wrong, this game is still difficult, but I had an easier time here than in the Souls games. I can't say for sure that it's because Lords of the Fallen is easier, since it's just as likely that playing through Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 2, and then Dark Souls again prepared me for this one. New players be warned, this is not an easy game. You can't really wander into an area you're not supposed to be yet, though, so there is that.

The world itself is not all that large (maybe half the size of Dark Souls), and there's a bit of backtracking, but it never feels all that repetitive. Enemies in certain areas will change and grow stronger as you play through the main story, so the parts where you do have to backtrack are at least interesting again. To be honest, most of the backtracking was due to side quests, which can be completely ignored. Fair warning, too, I did grind a bit (probably 4 or 5 hours' worth), but that's just because I wanted to try higher gear. I can't say for sure that it's necessary, although it did help.

Speaking of gear, this is one of the game's weak points. The armor sets and weapons look beautiful, and they're almost all beefy and chunky, but all of the classes end up being built the same way. I picked the Cleric class (the healing spell is FANTASTIC) and built my character for speed, but could have doubled as a tank. By the end of the game, my regular sword (there's shortswords, swords, then greatswords) did more damage than all but 2 of my great-weapons, and swung faster. I had all but one spell level unlocked (there's 4 spells per class, each with 3 levels), and enough strength/stamina/poise to withstand direct hits from the final boss with no damage. I honestly can't see how building solely as a warrior would have been that much stronger.

I suppose that's another thing I liked about this game, though. In Dark Souls, even though I played as a tanky build, I always felt extremely weak, even right up to the end. In Lords of the Fallen, however, I really got a sense of how strong I became. Maybe it's because it's easier and quicker to backtrack and fight early enemies, but it felt quite a bit more apparent what effect all that leveling up had.

Overall, I legitimately enjoyed my time here. The graphics are fantastic, the game world is beautifully-designed (even if you are in gothic castles 98% of the time), combat is satisfyingly meaty, the enemies are varied and interesting, the bosses are a decent challenge (they all have hidden bonus objectives too), and aside from a few small glitches, the gameplay was rock-solid.

If you come in to this game not expecting it to perfectly fill a Souls-shaped hole in your heart (and you have no crashing issues), you should enjoy it too. I thoroughly did, and I could easily see myself coming back to this game for another playthrough later.

Recommendation - Worth looking at, just don't expect Dark Souls

Minimum Requirements of Lord of The Fallen PC:

OS: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8 (only 64 bit OSs

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz or AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz

Memory: 6 GB RAM

Graphics: GeForce GTX 460 or better

DirectX: Version 11

Storage: 25 GB available space

Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers

Recommended Requirements of Lord of The Fallen PC:

OS: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8 (only 64 bit OSs

Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 @3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 X8 @ 4 GHz