Lords of the Fallen (PC, PS4, Xbox One) - Completionist Playthrough, Best Ending
8I recently saw a trailer for Lords of the Fallen 2 which looked very intriguing and remembered that I owned the first game. Time to get it off the backlog and it's also the first souls-like that i played!
The game is a bit controversial with mixed reviews on steam, but that is mostly due to bugs, crashes and the shaky cam as well as Dark Souls purists disliking it. I have not encountered a single crash during regular gameplay on Windows 10. I tried to add a section in the video where all lore audio notes are played back in their proper order for better context, but interacting with that would always crash the game within seconds. The PhysX implementation named "Nvidia Turbulence" adds particle and maybe other effects, but I disabled it for the playthrough since the framerate can drop below 60 fps even on my RTX 3080 in some areas. The bugs I encountered were all very minor, but I agree, the shaky cam is truly awful and it can't be disabled.
As for gameplay, I lack the reference to other similar games, especially Dark Souls itself, but I found this game surprisingly good! The controls are really good. The only problem is that you start the warrior class with full heavy armor which gives you a heavy (i.e. slow) roll. They should have balanced the weight of the starter heavy gear such that it stays within medium roll encumberance and later armor sets can have proper weight. That is easily fixed by removing some armor until you can spec some endurance, but the first impression is that it handles not very well. Bosses are a bit simple, but can be learned quickly even for complete souls-like newcomers like me. It took maybe two hours until it clicked and I became skillful in handling my character, progressing the game and understanding the mechanics.
The other aspects of the game are well executed too. I think the area and difficulty progression is good. The gear upgrades make sense too, but the weapons are not that well balanced. For example, the attack speed stat makes no sense. Why is it rated in percent? Percent of what? What is the base 100%? The actual speed is all over the place, doesn't matter what it shows, you need to swing it to see. The damage stat is absolute too and not damage per second. Nevertheless, you will find your preferred weapon type quickly. Some people seem to like great axes and great swords, I prefer the attack pattern and speed of the polesword. So, overall, the weapon selection works and the rune system to upgrade your gear is ok too, even though you can ignore it on a normal run. There is NG+ and NG++, but not really any extra content except a few audio logs that only exist in NG+.
Graphics, audio, voice acting, character models... are all totally fine! The game is from 2014 and it doesn't look that bad in 2023. I can't complain about the story too. It makes sense, it's not cringe or dumb, the main character is likable and the other NPCs are not annoying.
Is the game worth your time? Absolutely! It may not be the pinnacle of souls-like gaming and I can't even judge that, but fun can be extracted from more than just the top entries of a genre. I had a lot of fun with it and maybe it was a good example of babby's first souls-like to get me into that genre. The sequel is definitely on my radar, but for now, I need to keep digging through the backlog!
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00:00 - Start
00:25 - Intro
02:27 - Game Start - Keystone Monastery
09:13 - Boss: First Warden
21:07 - Outside Keystone
46:52 - Boss: Commander
1:27:28 - Boss: Worshipper
1:35:48 - The Rhogar Temple
2:30:10 - Boss: Infiltrator
2:47:47 - Catacombs
3:14:18 - Boss: Champion
3:32:30 - Keystone Citadel
3:58:06 - Boss: Beast
4:45:21 - The Rogar Temple (Return)
5:00:19 - Altar Ruins
5:10:55 - The Chamber of Lies
5:20:35 - Boss: Guardian
6:43:40 - Boss: Annihilator
6:51:43 - Adyr
7:05:24 - Boss: Lost Brothers
7:38:09 - Boss: Judge
7:40:18 - Ending
7:43:00 - Credits
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