By now most of you would’ve seen reviews for Lords of the Fallen and heard the words “Dark Souls clone” more times than you can shake a stick at. Well, I am here to tell you not to put that stick away just yet, as “Dark Souls clone” really is a great way of describing this game, but is that a bad thing? Well no, not if you like the Souls series, or at the very least the idea of them. Lords of the Fallen starts you off with little explanation as to what is happening, much like the Souls games.

As you push on you will encounter various enemies and will probably die a few times. Eventually, you will figure out their attack patterns and know how to fight them. After that, you will encounter a boss, and you will die, then you will study them, learn how to beat them, do that, continue and then die. This is fine. This is part of the learning… although unfortunately dying is also counterintuitive to your levelling, so it’s probably best to not do that.  Right? Got it? Good!

The opening few hours of Lords of the Fallen can definitely be frustrating, especially if you try to push on to areas with Harkyn before you have levelled your character to a decent level, as is the nature with these games, but you will quickly learn not to go to those places until you can. Once you and the game become one you will find yourself steamrolling through parts of it. Unlike the games, it holds so much in common with, Lords of the Fallen feels like it cuts you a bit of slack sometimes, although having this mindset can see you pointlessly dying as you try to bite off more than you chew.

The story told through audio scrolls and badly acted cut scenes, is your standard old school fantasy kind of tale. A criminal that just so happens to be wicked at destroying dudes is set free so he can destroy bad dudes, he destroys them whilst encountering various people on the way, all with their different motives. It did little to grip me, but luckily the gameplay did.

 

As the game pushes on, you get used to timing your attack manoeuvres, which are hard to judge straight away, and the game stops holding your hand as much, leaving you to explore and find your own paths. With the game opening up it also makes items like the gauntlets, which offer basic magic, far more useful, as you can equip various runes to make them far more powerful. Combine this with being able to customise weapons and armour too and the game becomes much more enjoyable, it’s just a shame it takes a while to get to this point, but this does make New Game+ feel worthwhile if you decide to playthrough it again.

Due to the game only having a few areas, you open up shortcuts as the game progresses; you quickly grow used to routes, knowing what kind of enemies will be in certain areas and what direction is the best way to run to get to the next checkpoint or to do a grind run. In terms of grinding the game is quite odd with what it does. Each enemy you kill adds to a multiplier, meaning the longer you go without dying or banking the XP (which you can only do at checkpoints), the further your XP multiplier will increase. This means you will frequently be trying to figure out whether or not it is worth banking at a checkpoint or pushing on. The issue with pushing on, at least on PlayStation 4, is it’s not the most stable of games at the time of reviewing.

I encountered several crashes and glitches that required a restart whilst playing and, due to the game only auto-saving at checkpoints, I had lost up to 30 minutes of progress on one occasion. Luckily knowledge is just as important a currency in Lords of the Fallen, so knowing what awaits down certain routes, means you can play it all a bit smarter. Due to not having much courage in my skill anyway, I found myself banking XP each time I had the opportunity, and still levelled my character to the level that I wanted them to be by the end of the game. If you do die before you’ve had a chance to bank XP you will then have to go and collect your experience, which appears where you died, very much like Dark Souls. The catch is that the longer it takes you to get there, the percentage of that XP will decrease over time, as a timer counts down from 100 to 0.

 

That’s not too bad though right, you’ve killed all those enemies so you can easily run back to where you had progressed? Right? Wrong! All enemies, much like Dark Souls, respawn on death, meaning you will have to fight back through all of those enemies once more, or at least try and run around them. Luckily there is a ghost merge shard that brings your experience straight to you, although these are limited. They’re handy to use if you’ve had a solid run without hitting a checkpoint and want all of that experience back, or if you hit a boss fight without expecting it, as once you enter a boss area you can’t escape it until you defeat that boss, and that isn’t always an easy task.

Lords of the Fallen is at its strongest, and most frustrating when you get stuck. I encountered this at its most beautiful in a boss fight late in the game. After spending hours failing at defeating the boss, I changed my tactics and, with just a slither of health left, I dealt the tactical blow that won me the bout. It was an exhilarating feeling that not everyone will encounter, due to weapon drops, armour drops and runes being random at times, but it was something that I was glad to experience, as it helped me truly understand and appreciate the game. (You can view the battle here. Please note however that this boss fight is a spoiler for late in the game).

All in all the game offers a good 15 – 20 hours of gameplay on your first run with a New Game+ option and various side-quests that makes repeated playthroughs enticing. The combat is addictive and even though the cutscenes are awful, the voice acting and story are cheesy and, graphically, it will not blow you away, there is something wonderful about Lords of the Fallen. It’s a game with a lot of heart and a lot of promise. It may not have the polish of a AAA game but has the passion to make it a solid experience. If you’re a fan of Dark Souls, action RPGs, or if you like games that offer a challenge then this could be the game for you, as long as you can accept it won’t be an easy ride.

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