Let’s Talk About Lords of the Fallen
Ho hum. Another week, another excellent Soulslike. Excuse the snark. While games inspired by Dark Souls and its FromSoftware brethren have been piling up over the past several years, two recent ones have changed the landscape. About a month ago, Neowiz dropped its excellent, Pinocchio-meets-Bloodborne game Lies of P. This week, developer HEXWORKS and publisher CI Games gifted us with Lords of the Fallen. Both titles are heads above most Soulslikes. They’ve both studied the FromSoft playbook and it shows.
While Lies of P is a spit-polished, narrowly focused, and linear game, Lords of the Fallen is sprawling, innovative, and a bit technically sloppy. Visually and tonally, it comes much closer to Dark Souls’ dark gothic aesthetic. It’s moody and grim. But there are some annoyances, both in its design and execution. We already gave Lies of P the once over. Time to do the same for Lords of the Fallen. Here are 5 things we’d love to see improved, changed, or literally fixed.
1. Optimization, Frame Rates Across All Platforms
I know that the developers are working on this, with patches appearing with almost daily frequency. However, some gamers on both PC and PS5 are reporting serious framerate drops in certain specific areas of the game. It doesn’t seem to be tied to anything in the environment, like number of enemies. In my PS5 review copy, there was one area before the first boss that would drop into single digit, slideshow-like frame rates. I died on more than one occasion due to performance issues.
On PC, there seems to be a very wide range of experiences. Many streamers and content creators with high-end rigs report no issues. Others were beset by system crashes during their livestreams. AMD graphics cards seem to be more prone to problems, but my Nvidia 2080 couldn’t handle it. Lords of Fallen is still a long way from technical stability on both PC and consoles
2. Balance the Pain
Fans of Soulslikes expect challenge and are disappointed when games are too easy. Lies of P had cakewalk-easy normal enemies but enormous difficulty spikes in elite minibosses and bosses. Lords of the Fallen has the opposite problem, and it might be even more of an issue. There are, frankly, too many enemies. Every area is packed full of melee enemies, magic users and ranged enemies that can hit you from vast distances. All at once. Then you die and enter the Umbral realm, or go there by necessity, and it’s even worse because the enemies just keep spawning.
FromSoftware has mastered the rhythm and pacing of enemy placement, exploration and discovery. HEXWORKS needs to go back to school on this one and make some adjustments. Not every pile of crates needs to hide an ambush. Not every cave needs a convention of mages and warriors just waiting for you to be the guest of honor. Maybe just let me cross an occasional precarious plank without dodging fireballs. By mid-game, it just gets frustrating and tedious to fight for every yard gained.
3. Where the Heck Are We?
Lords of the Fallen is, like Dark Souls, a number of distinct areas often linked to a hub. It isn’t an open world. However, those areas are large and filled with convoluted paths, secrets and shortcuts. Quest givers are vague about objectives and directions and the game’s maps aren’t very useful. It’s far too easy to get lost, waste time wandering and still have no clear idea where to go. Do we need a clear map with objective markers? Maybe. Think about how easy it is to move through Elden Ring’s vast world, knowing clearly where to go yet still making discoveries.
4. I Hate Platforming Even More Now
Games that require platforming and precise jumping, but don’t give you the tools to do it well really annoy me. Lords of the Fallen has an anemic jump mechanic tied to sprinting, and a roll that’s absurdly long. There are long, long stretches of game play that ask for well timed jumps and rolls, most always accompanied by a barrage of enemies and spells determined to knock you off the platform into oblivion.
Running an occasional gauntlet through a precarious platforming section is fun. Doing it for hours on end is not. What’s the solution? For starters, fix both the roll and jump mechanics. Second, give us a way to eliminate the enemies before those sections so we can focus on using the tools more precisely.
5. More is Not Always More
Lords of the Fallen seems to be designed on the principle of more is better. More enemies. More punishment for being in the Umbral realm. Bigger areas with more detail and more challenge, even if they start to lack variety.
I think Lies of P gets this exactly right. Enemies and exploration are balanced, and there’s time to recover. Lords of the Fallen throws a lot of systems and new mechanics at the player. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it needs to be balanced with space somewhere else. I’m not sure there’s a fix for this because it is a design philosophy. But maybe the game’s sequel can address the problem.
Annoyances and issues aside, Lords of the Fallen is an ambitious and engaging action RPG that deserves the attention it’s getting. It’s mostly a good, challenging and rewarding experience. But nothing is perfect, and Lords of the Fallen does have a few issues that hold it back from the top spot among recent Soulslike games.
Thank you for keeping it locked on COGconnected.