Game Information

Lords of the Fallen

Platform: PlayStation 4

Developer: CI Games

Publisher: Bandai Namco

MSRP: $59.99

Released: October 28th, 2014

Lords of the Fallen is the latest game developed within the genre defined by From Software’s Demon’s Souls franchise. It revolves around unrelenting enemies, a steep set of challenging battles, and a difficulty level that would seem punishing to most gamers. Though this may scare many away from the title, the lack of handholding in an industry full of games with extensive tutorials is not only refreshing, but nice to see. It allows gamers to dig right into the action and to experience the many hardships of the title almost immediately. And trust me, there are a lot of them.

Lords of the Fallen follows the story of Harkyn and his journey to redemption of his past transgressions and sins. In order to do this, he must ensure the safety of his kind, rid the world of the Rhogar, and help find a way to banish evil from our existence. Pretty straight forward, right? Let’s dive in.

When you first begin Lords of the Fallen you’ll be tasked with choosing an armor class and a magic class. This will result in the potential creation of one of nine different play styles. Depending on which you choose, your stats will be generated and this will make utilizing certain weapons more advantageous than others. By that, I mean you can always use the armor and weapons from other classes, but they’ll have requirements that are easier to ascertain for their specific character class than your own. By doing this, IC Games has allowed the player to have unlimited freedom in how they want to play the game as they progress despite how they chose to start it.

As expected, heavy weapons such as hammers and two-handed swords will benefit the Warriors while staves, daggers, and short swords are always going to work best for Clerics and Rogues. The armor archetypes also play a bigger role on how well your character can maneuver on your adventure. For example, the more weight your armor has, the slower and more sluggish your character will move. It will also take up more energy to perform simpler tasks. This is where the strategy really comes into play. As a rogue, you want to be quick and agile while also having the ability to make quick strikes, but some enemies are extremely tough and you may need to equip heavier armor to stay alive while forfeiting some of the mobility you originally felt you needed.

Lords of the Fallen utilizes a fantastic death mechanic that creates even more strategy for the player. And honestly, this is a great system that more games should incorporate in some way or another. When you die in Lords of the Fallen, your character’s ethereal remains will continue to exist and will contain all of the XP you had earned prior to death. It’s your objective to get back to your remains in order to reclaim that XP and continue on. However, the longer it takes you to retrieve your prior existence, the less of that previous XP you’ll get back.

Furthering the difficulty of the system is your decision as to whether to bank your XP at save points or not. You see, when you kill enemies, your multiplier grows and your ability to find better loot as well as increased experience increases. If you choose to bank your experience and/or replenish your potions to save your checkpoint, that multiplier resets and things return to normal. So there is quite the bit of strategy and decision making that goes into how you progress through the game. If you choose to bank your XP, you are given two ways to do this. You can either bank your XP into earning attribute points to increase your character’s skill level or you can bank the XP for skill points which allow you to increase your magical abilities. Finding the proper balance will help you create a formidable character that should be able to stand toe-to-toe with many enemies.

When it comes to the Lords of the Fallen’s combat system, it’s kind of similar to Demon’s Souls. You have indicator bars that tell you how much health, energy, and magic you currently have available. You can collect potions that replenish each or speed up how quickly your magic regenerates for a predetermined amount of time. There are also shards and potions that allow you to regain your fallen ethereal immediately as well as magic resistance, physical resistance, etc,. The combat mechanics uses L1/R1 to use lighter attacks with your L/R hand while L2/R2 uses heavy attacks with each hand. You can use X to dodge, roll, and jump (while running). It’s a basic concept and it servers its purpose perfectly. Some people may feel as though the ‘weight’ of the controls is too sluggish for them, but for me, it felt more realistic and ‘right.’

When you swing a big sword trying to land a heavy attack, it feels like you’re putting some weight behind it in order to cause the most damage. This also leaves you vulnerable to quicker attacks as well. It’s quite the give or take. The same takes place for evasion tactics. Your ability to dodge depends on the weight of your gear and this is also something some gamers may not be high on, but I also enjoyed that part of it. A big part of combat is utilizing your magic skills appropriately as well. Utilizing Deceptive magic enables you to create a body double to deceive enemies, launch a double of yourself that will imitate your attacks and damage, launching a shadowed figure forward to attack on its own, and allows you to turn into a shadow in order to create an attack with massive damage.

When you should use each type of magic skill depends on the situation and this is never more clear than with the Rhogar commanders you fight. These big boss battles are extremely tough, but many have patterns you can figure out to get the advantage. They’re very similar to those in Demon’s Souls. By this, I mean that they’re incredibly difficult and you probably will die multiple times before you finally succeed. It can be frustrating, but when you finally take down that big boss, it feels incredibly rewarding.

Defeating bosses also opens up a great opportunity to earn great rewards through locked portals that you come across on your journey. These portals are always locked unless you’ve defeated an incredibly tough enemy and then you’ll have the ability to enter one of them. Some of the portals bring you to a world of riches, where you can defeat enemies on your way to opening chests that contain valuable items to help you on your way. Other portals will bring you to a horde-like arena where you need to survive against scores of enemies in order to earn your rewards. You never really know which portal will lead to where, but the gamble is always worth it.

Sometimes these rewards will result in you earning locked runes. However, you can also find these runes scattered across the game world. When you’re ready to cash in on these runes, you can visit the Smith and he’ll let you unlock them. You have the choice of “betting” your XP on the locked runes in order to gamble on getting a much more powerful rune out of the Smith. I suggest doing this when it comes to attempting to unlock the runes you receive from bosses as you want to have the best shot possible at getting the best rune. These runes can then be added to your gear in order to increase their base stats with bonuses. Don’t worry about making mistakes with your runes though as you can remove and re-add them to your gear as often as you’d like and it costs nothing to do so.

That’s pretty much everything you need to now about the core experience within Lords of the Fallen. Visually, the game is stunning. You can tell this was a title meant for current-gen consoles as the game looks incredible no matter what environment you’re exploring. Every armor set and weapon has its own intricate details that make it unique and enemies look just as great. I was honestly surprised by how great the game looked on my television and it makes me excited to see what CI Games has in its pipeline.

Lords of the Fallen is an incredibly strategic title that gives a lot of control to players within the game world CI Games has created. The difficulty level is a bit more forgiving than Demon’s Souls, but still truly challenging and refreshing for gamers looking for that type of experience. If you’re looking for a change-of-pace title from the shooters and open-world games you’re used to seeing on a yearly basis, then Lords of the Fallen is an excellent choice. I’d recommend this game to anyone, but specifically fans of the genre.