after N9 years since the first game launched Lords of the Fallen has been released the first game was universally disliked hence the long gap between games it was the very first Souls like game that's not made by from and it didn't click all that well of players now we have Lords the fallen again a lot of people seem to like this one other YouTubers you watch that are in the souls Community generally have positive things to say about it that's not to imply that everyone loves it of course but the majority of reviews that I have seen are giving the game mostly positive of reviews it seems to be well-liked a lot of people like it except for me I think most of the bosses are flat out terrible and if they're not being overly used in different levels there a slog of waiting around and asking yourself if Elden Beast was really that bad the enemy variety is so poor that you can almost count all of the level enemies on your fingers and that's just the start of my complaints the bonfire system has to be one of the worst iterations I have ever seen and it leaves me scratching my head on how poorly done it is but when I'm not scratching my head I am sitting back in awe on the scope of this world when the game decides to not Ram every single enemy it can into it's kind of cool looking and with a massive scope of this world it nonchalantly links back within itself leaving me with the same feeling I had when I rod down the elevator that goes back to Firelink Shrine I really don't believe a game I don't like that much made me say that so there's kind of a lot of thoughts here more negative than positive and if I failed to make this clear by no means is Lords the Fallen my favorite Souls light game there is so much about this game that annoys me to no end and all of that will be spoken about in detail with this video if I was forced to directly compare this to Liza P I would much prefer lies of P I'll talk a little bit more about Li of p in this video but going back to Lords of the Fallen I have to say it's quite respectable that an IP that was dead in the water for 9 years came back that's not the most common thing to happen and I respect it this video will be negative if you like Lords of the Fallen you will probably disagree with what I have to say in this video I think most people will share my S senent here the main hook that I was interested going in with Lords of the Fallen were how will this game stand with the first game being so disliked and the umbral light and dark mechanic and how will that work with level design and exploration after seeing a few reviews I can say that this game will not be as universally disliked as the first game I seriously have never seen someone like the first game with the second question that's not as easy to be summed up in just one sentence the level design and umbrell are big pieces of this game so this first section of the video will be all about level design umbrell design and the bonfire system with a few things mixed in between there are a lot of factors with levels here mainly because each level you see has two versions the normal version and umbrell if you really want you can say that umbrell levels are the full level because there are certain areas in each level that can be accessed while in umbrell form while you are out of umbrell form you cannot access every part of a level you need to go into umbrell form I have heard a few people people say that they would get confused in Lords of the Fallen levels Austin on skillups channel commented that in his review before I go to my next point I think Austin and Skil up are great and the channel has quality content whether it be from the world or the levels themselves everyone will be confused at one point with Lords of the Fallen the world is where I think most people will get confused and I will touch on that at a later point but there are two ways to judge of being confused is a bad thing or not on one hand if you are confused because the level does not change enough and it's Arc style and everything looks the same and blends together that is a bad form of confusion but if someone is confused because the level itself is large with a lot of branching paths chances are that's the way the level is designed and when you put the map together in your head it can end up being a good thing I would say Lords of the Fallen land somewhere in between unlike most Souls likes this game does not loop back within itself as much within its levels think of when you are playing a Souls game and you see a door that is locked but your bonfire is right next to it you know that that you will link yourself back to the spawn fire in the near future while Lords of the Fallen does do that at times it focuses more on being large in width instead of small and condensed the reason this takes place is because there are so few traditional bonfires within this game most of the time there is only one or two bonfires per level usually placed at the very beginning and near the end of the level itself and while that may sound standard you have to remember that this game does not focus on linking back to itself as much as the other Souls games so across the game are play where you have the option of making your own bonfire on paper it can be a cool gimmick but I would classify this as a complete failure throughout the game you will be making your own bonfires unless you plan on doing a challenge run this game encourages you to make your own bonfires these places to plant a bonfire are everywhere and most of the time when you do place your own bonfire and replenish your healing you will find that if you only went forward a few more steps there would have been a better place to eventually put your bonfire and you can only have one of these down at any given given moment and since traditional bonfires are so rare it discourages you from going back to previous levels for tidbits that you may have missed for example on my first playthrough I was underleveled for this boss here and I decided I would come back to him later when I did decide I wanted to fight him I didn't remember the exact bonfire where he was located and since the world itself is so wide you are going to have a lot of areas you cannot fast travel to so I opened up the list of bonfires and after gawking at the long list of pages to fast travel to and not remembering his exact location this boss fight would have taken longer to find than to beat he's also placed all around the base game anyway because of the poor enemy variety this game presents this is not my only complaint with the bonfire system going back to what I said earlier most of the time the places where you are able to place a bonfire are a term I never thought I would say bonfire bait bonfire bait leads you to waste 2500 souls or making it so your runbacks are longer for example after I beat this Mistress of hounds I placed a bonfire because I was low on resources and lo and behold right around the corner was a real bonfire or in this clip here I was low on resources again and decided to make my bonfire I saw an enemy ahead of me and took the opportunity to make my checkpoint what made this a bad bonfire placement is because there is a boss down that path and another place to put a bonfire and every time I run to that boss I will be hit with an enemy throwing [ __ ] at me leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth I like how the devs are taking a step in a New Direction with making the world far more large than traditional Souls games that aren't SEO or Elden ring and putting their own spin on something that hasn't been changed much since Dark Souls 1 but I can say I believe this bonfire system offers nothing better or fun than the previous systems we have seen it was a system that was not broken and tried to be fixed leading it to crack in a many pieces not only is it annoying that if I want a bonfire I have to go back to the hub and spend 2500 Souls but if I am normally playing the game and I didn't initially realize I didn't have a bond Fire Seed I would automatically be annoyed the chances of a real bonfire being around the corner is rare so it would make me embrace the RPG side of this game and I played it as a marathon runner sprinting through the whole game L3 button on full blast without a care in the world trying to memorize the level or skipping the whole thing in hopes for a real bonfire you may have the comment in your head of using a Homeward bone when you do realize you didn't have a bonfire seed the thing is homeward bones in this game cost 1,500 Souls which is completely overpriced for spending 1,000 more souls I would have what I needed in the Dark Souls games it's quite common to have around 50,000 souls or more in your inventory during the late game from one boss kill just to show you after killing dragon slayer armor in Dark Souls 3 I was granted 64,000 Souls a late game Boss kill in Lords of the Fallen granted me a whole 9,000 Souls so if I really wanted to buy some Homeward bones I would be able to buy six six Homeward bones in Dark Souls 1 and 2 they were a third of the price and I would always have more souls in that game even if we ignore Souls you gain from killing enemies the Dark Souls games drop Soul consumables far far more often if you go a few levels without using them you will have a complete stockpile of them let's also not forget you have true boss souls in the Dark Souls games Lords of the Fallen does not have boss souls for you to use for currency there are boss items that you can buy but they do not Grant you XP or Souls the last points I have about the bonfire system is that 2500 souls in this game isn't an egregious amount but it usually puts a constant debate in your mind of leveling up or buying a bonfire chances are when you level up you won't have a spare 2500 Souls left over so if you do level up you are making that decision knowing that you will have to fast travel back to the hub to buy another bonfire since true bonfires are so far apart the chances are you won't be finding one anytime soon it will lead to a constant back and forth of level up kill enemies return to the hub for a bonfire seed and then you can continue playing the reason I mentioned this is because the enemy variety is so poor but I will get into that later but now let's go into the level design I know that I spoke in large detail about the bondfire system with this game the levels will not be as in- depth I made a Liza P video talking about how the levels are very linear and they take you from point A to point B in a smooth and steady motion whether you agree with that or not Lords of the Fallen is not like that at all it's common to see more than one pathway you are able to take and on top of that when you do choose a path to go you will see even more paths to take at times it would feel overwhelming because I had so much to explore I don't mean that in a bad way because I like having a lot of space to explore it's also common to find a few different layouts that offer some variety this example here is a tall vertical layer which reminds me of crown of the Old King and Dark Souls 2 not only are there a lot of Pathways to explore but you are also forced to use your umbrell lamp for exploration as well all I'll get this out of the way in case anyone else agrees with my statement but something that disappointed me with exploration was that it was rare to find puzzles that forced me to hold my lamp but not fully enter umbrell this example here was the only time I found something that was a little puzzle with umbrell if I fully enter umbrell I am blocked and cannot go under this bridge but if I hold my lamp I can walk on a pathway and drop down I wish this game had more of that I think I can understand why they didn't since players would probably get bored of slow walking so much going back to the levels themselves this is where judging the level design gets a bit tricky if I were to only judge the levels as the pure level that it is just regarding the enemies art and bonfire system I would have to say they aren't bad they're even pretty good they aren't overly linear and they aren't overly spacious I know I don't have all that much to say besides the levels physical space is good where the levels take a hit is almost everything else so I'll get the elephant out of the room now there has been a lot of discussion online about the mob density in this game whether it's too high or not I have not seen this kind of discussion in a long time bringing back some Dark Souls 2 memories for my take I need to State the obvious the amount of mobs and enemies is a feature not an oversight the devs have even addressed this in recent live streams talking about how they don't plan on changing it now that that's out of the way I have to wonder if Dark Souls 2i enjoyers will really like this part of the game to also State my thoughts on Dark Souls 2's mob placement and I don't believe I'm about to say this I don't hate it dark souls I is known for high amounts of mobs every time I play dark Soul 2 I [ __ ] and know about the levels the bosses that I don't like but rarely the mobs I'm also not saying that I want all these trash mobs going forward but I am okay with the change it usually leads me to unlock my camera and take out ranged enemies first since I am a melee only guy although it does annoy the [ __ ] out of me in Lords of the Fallen it's a similar concept but I much prefer Dark Souls I version of this enemy in Lords of the Fallen it's very common for you to be against this fire crossbow [ __ ] that's her name I am okay with having to focus on this enemy first since she is the biggest threat and can do the most damage to me since I can't see her on my screen the reason I dislike this system so much is because this enemy is far far more powerful than the Dark Souls 2 ranged enemies there are times when she is immune to damage making it so you have to pull out your umbrell lamp to destroy her Shield her explosive bolts stun so if you get hit by one of them it's easy to get comboed from other attacks she has a burn effect she can shoot multiple bombs with one shot making it even harder to reliably Dodge her bomb shots and she also doesn't die in one hit it can take two or three I know I just gave a lot of information about one single enemy some of you may write it off as a strong enemy for this area but that's the thing she's everywhere I will talk about this a little later but one of this game's biggest weaknesses is its very small amount of level enemies the amount of enemy variety is very poor so you will be seeing most of the enemies in the tutorial level for the whole game it's also a common thing for there to be ranged enemies throwing bombs or Fireballs at you I don't think the problem is the initial Bur wor of damage you take but how easy it is for it to stack up a burn or freezing effects that take your health down consumables are in this game for a reason but when I am constantly being hit by ranged attacks and dealing with my inventory belt I start to fight with my inventory more than the enemies themselves not only that but ranged enemies can be so far away that killing them grants you literally nothing this is another system that wasn't broke but the devs shattered it into pieces you have to collect your souls in this game when you kill an enemy for Souls an XP they do not automatically go into your inventory you have to physically walk to them so even if I did decide to use ranged abilities to take out some ranged enemies I am not rewarded for killing them I don't understand why this change was made but it only made the game more annoying as it went on continuing with enemy variety there are a large handful of bosses that are thrown into levels it's almost like The devs Wanted players to skip the levels for example this boss here has a healing ability that can be used in his boss fight you will find him later on throughout the levels and this healing ability is still in his move set making it so it's an exaggerated fight in levels he also responds so there isn't a point of killing him he's not a complete pushover either he has an AOE to knock you back a heal and he can occasionally summon his Spirit within the fight still sticking with bosses appearing in normal levels I will show a few more UNC screen while I continue talking I don't necessarily have an issue with a boss or two appearing in the levels but when you have such a poor amount of level enemies it becomes more apparent seeing enemies that feel too strong for levels the other issue with the amount of mobs in this game is since the enemy variety is so poor I got to a point within the game to where I was happy with my build had nothing new to fight so I became Lightning McQueen and skipped the entire level without any regret in my mind I have never done this in any other Souls game I was always given a reason to play out the level whether it be because I like the art enemies or the physical design itself but I didn't do that here I didn't care about what I was seeing so I became a speedrunner at the end of the game I am okay with High mob enemies in this game but at times it feels like difficulty for the sake of difficulty Linda services are still available to you if you're not here to spend [ __ ] off when I hear people talk about bosses they are usually a high note for most people when I hear other people talking about these kind of games they usually talk about the relief of beating a boss the challenge or their complex move sets I will not be talking about these positive feelings with Lords the Fallen I have very little in terms of positivity to say about these bosses so let me get this out of the way so I can continue complaining about this section out of the 31 bosses in this game three of them left me satisfied those being Peta the light Reaper and this Duo boss fight here mainly because I like fighting two bosses at once that number 31 I think is the biggest problem let's look at Dark Souls 3 for a second Dark Souls II is known for having some of the best bosses in the series The Base game of Dark Souls II has 19 bosses not every base game Boss is great of course but let's use that number 19 again if we compare that to this game's 31 we see a total of 12 more bosses in this game now there are two ways to interpret this near the end of development the devs think they had too few of bosses so they made some regular enemies that we've seen levels bosses or did the devs put too much time into two bosses and then throw a few into the levels if you force me to guess I would say the first one I really hope it's not the second assumption because the bosses in this game aren't great they're in my eyes the weakest part of the game and when you have 31 boss health bars in this game it screams quantity over quality if we keep using from as an example from had been doing this Souls thing for a while now and they didn't try and shoot for more bosses but try and keep them unique in the base game of Dark Souls 3 bosses did not just appear in levels like they do in Lords of the Fallen the only time I can remember a boss appearing in a level was in the ring City DLC and that was Dragon Slayer armor there's really not much else I could say besides I really wish we would have had fewer bosses that felt better to fight instead of what we got transitioning back to Lords of the Fallen the main thing I can say about the bosses is most of them have limited move sets and as I said in the last section they are in the levels themselves if future titles use the umbrell spirit pool in future games I would like to see it Incorporated in boss battles in a more engaging manner if you are able to use ela's e on a boss it just leads you to getting a bunch of free easy hits for no reason the boss's move sets aren't good enough for me to complain about players missing part of the fight it's just unengaging like the boss themselves there is a boss named hush saint that does not appear in the levels but he kept reminding me of Elden beast in all the ways someone does not want to be reminded of Elden Beast I think the footage should EXP explain itself at times they reminded me of Demon Souls bosses because a few of them rely on heavy gimmicks but when I think of that I start to feel somewhat bad for the game because Demon Souls bosses mind you a game that was released in 2009 has better bosses than this game let that sink in the penetrator in Demon Souls is a pretty good boss if you put the penetrator in this game it would steamroll every other boss that this game has moving on this boss here kind of made me laugh because of his size and it reminded me of Attack on Titan and to end the section on a high note the last boss of the ending that most players will experience is just a bunch of enemies throwing [ __ ] at you I hate it I [ __ ] hate it God damn it that was an Off Script moment sorry this game has some sort of fetish for flexing its enemies that throw [ __ ] at you it's quite obvious that the bosses are terrible in this game but I have to assume this is a lore boss a boss that is here to advance and finalize the story so I will be deeming it a terrible gimmick boss which is what it is speaking of gimmick bosses I would have liked to see a boss fight that keeps forcing me in and out of umbrell and making it more of a puzzle boss similar to folding screen monkeys on SEO when I think back at Liza P I can think of a handful of bosses that were really really good within a month I will have forgotten all about the game's bosses they're really [ __ ] bad something that isn't necessarily terrible is the world design this game presents before I talk about the issues I have with it let me ride home about what it does well Souls veterans that have played this game are going to be IM immediately hit with a burst of nostalgia when they see the world designed in Lords of the Fallen not only is this world extremely large but also does what Dark Souls ones first half did and it constantly links back to the hub area in unique and creative ways for example in this clip here I link back to where the first boss takes place which is also the Hub area every time this happened I was impressed and what made it fun in Dark Souls I is I didn't really see it coming the same emotions were evoked here I have wondered if I would care if fromsoft did this system again and after playing Lords of the Fallen I can say the magic hasn't worn off for me every time this happened I was hit with that burst of nostalgia I mentioned earlier what they attempted to do with the world design is great the only problem is that it's extremely easy to turn the game into a checklist of where you can and cannot go anymore or you are just in a frustrating disarray for further explanation throughout the whole game you are going to be cleansing these beacons you see here you can tell which beacons you have or have not cleansed due to their color in the sky red is an uncleansed Beacon and white is a cleansed beacon in the beginning of the game you have so many to choose from making it hard to be lost like I said earlier but during the mid and especially the late game the beacons you have left are either areas that you missed from an earlier level or there is some obtuse way to get there for the very last area of this game there is a rock of some sort blocking the path to go forward and the thing is you've been to this area before by the time I needed to come back here I was playing a checklist game of running through the whole game going from bonfire fire to bonfire trying to find where the hell I need to go I ended up giving up and going to a YouTube video to see where I actually needed to go as I said earlier the game's world is extremely large so getting lost in this game is easy when you have to go to a very very specific area just to progress and if you're stubborn and you choose to not look up a YouTube video you will be fast traveling from bonfire to bonfire looking up at the sky and running towards the red light on full blast in fact I uploaded a video showing people where to go after they beat a certain boss because the game did not make it clear enough that you needed to go up an elevator two times if you only went up one time you will be placed in an area that you've been to before the funny thing is it's not even wrong for people to infer that this is the way they needed to go if you were to keep running straight you will run to this area here and you actually need to unlock this door to progress the game I know that some people may be thinking that fromsoft has areas that are hard and obtuse to reach and most players will require a guide so let me address that a good example here is getting to Arch Dragon Peak and Dark Souls 3 most players will have some sort of help getting here whether it be through a guide or a message on the ground telling them what to do the reason I do not consider this the same as Lords of the Fallen is because this is a completely optional side area that is not part of the main game if you never go here nothing is blocking you from beating the last boss of Dark Souls 3 the same logic applies to kanur Castle and bloodborne The Painted World in Dark Souls 1 millenia's area and Elder ring and so on completely optional side paths those are far more elaborate than simply opening a gate but it goes along with what this section is about confusion I expect that everyone will at one point in time get confused at where to go in this game this isn't a fun form of confusion like not knowing where to go in an open world game because there is so much mass to explore it will lead to people vigorously searching for a guide or flat out wasting their time my final thoughts for the world design with Lords of the Fallen is like a raisin cookie raisins are a chore on a cookie but the cookie isn't bad it has plenty of baggage I like looping back to the main Hub and getting hit with the feeling of not knowing where I'm at to the immediate feeling of a struck when the realization happens of me being back in the hub just like my Firelink Shrine memories if the map system wasn't so [ __ ] I may have not had this complaint but the map system was a chore to look at I just think for how large the world is it's easy to get lost and run through a large amount of time waste of not knowing exactly where to go and this marks the end of the Lords of the Fallen video it's not all bad I really like how this game was not forgotten about and they made it come back after nine whole years of radio Silence from this IP from my knowledge I went through quite a few different developers so they were really dedicated to putting this game out linking back to the hub area is easy brownie points for me because I respect the layout and skill something like that took but that's sadly where my positivity ends I don't like the bosses enemies art style and almost everything else in between I also have a morbid Curiosity on why this game got a reboot after the first one wasn't liked all that much wonder why they kept going with the IP in general I hope in the next game they go for a more quality standpoint instead of quantity as I mentioned with the bosses there is a lot of Lords of the Fallen a lot of space levels and bosses with the amount of space this game presents it leaves very little in terms of enemy variety I know people would have had a lot to say if the base game was too short but I don't see much quality in what the base game delivers if this game does get a DLC pack or a sequel I will look at the trailers but I will not be purchasing it day one it's also no secret that I love these kind of games so hopefully this team continues to improve to make a Souls game that I truly like such as lies of PE on a last note the trailers for this game had me very intrigued and they looked quite good for this section of the video I went back and watched a few of them and I still think they look really good as you can tell there's still some time left in the video and these will be a few loose points I couldn't naturally fit into the script they're really just loose ends sorry okay so for the extra stuff here we have I think the first and second levels I think are just way too dark when you enter umbrell mode the filter itself becomes actually kind of dark so the non umbrell and umbrell parts blend together in my mind these first two areas were also levels that I was quite literally confused on when I was playing coincidence or not I really don't know I also wonder how much Dark Souls 2 fans will enjoy this game this game has life gems just like Dark Souls I this is most likely because of the High mob density because it feels godamn endless I don't feel like life gems in this game are as big of an issue for two reasons they cannot be stacked like Dark Souls 2 and your essence does not feel as [ __ ] to use in this game like it does in Dark Souls 2 dark souls 2's fce doesn't automatically refill your health instead it quickly refills it and takes longer to drink oh Dark Souls 2 I will forever hate you you are missing a screw or two I don't know why a perfect parrying with L1 damages you with the white Health that you can regain if I do something perfectly that is a tight timing I shouldn't be punished even the most minor of ways it even happens on Shields and the most minor of Health I don't see how that made it into the live game when I first started playing Elden ring it took some time to get used to picking up items with trying Le and not X this game has a jump button on X just like Elden ring and I much prefer using triangle to pick up items it was very common to be sprinting towards a door or an item and just to jump over it so that was fun right before I started talking out my script I checked up a few things and it seems like New Game Plus has been changed this part here was going to be me bitching about New Game Plus but now I can no longer do that if you are unaware of what I mean originally New Game Plus had one true bonfire and that was in the hub area the dev seemed to have changed that no rant for you if you have extra souls and don't know what to to do with them you have the option of buying skulls to save your souls the feature I didn't use once because it's an absolute [ __ ] ripoff if you want to spend 3,000 souls for a skull you get 1,600 upon use why would they do that it is a complete waste and you may as well buy a bonfire at that point I never used this feature once and I bet most players won't use it either it's really [ __ ] dumb this is a 2023 game so the performance isn't great and the game needed a few more months to iron that out I guess I don't have as much room to talk because I supported this launch product it also has an $8 DLC you can buy which is a starting class that looks really cool this microtransaction is obviously on the base disc itself it's just allowing you to use it if the game didn't launch in such a [ __ ] State I would still [ __ ] about this but I wouldn't [ __ ] about it as hard sad times I'll throw some more shade at the last boss because I really [ __ ] hate it it feels like this game is laughing at me by having enemies just throw [ __ ] at me because that's what the whole base game feels like it's bad just [ __ ] terrible when the Xbox series X was revealed the Xbox One X sales went up 7 150% because of the similar names I wonder how many people bought the first Lords of the Fallen with the exact same name thinking they were getting this game this isn't as much of an issue on Steam and Xbox because of their refund policy but Sony does not like giving refunds as much because they are [ __ ] last Point here is the longevity in the future this game has First Impressions matter a lot and when someone goes on Steam seeing a mixed review I wonder if they'll just write the game off I also imagine this game won't have as longlasting legs as liip does my prediction is that liip will be played a lot more and looked at more highly in the future over Lords of the Fallen I saw a Reddit post that linked me to an article that said Lords of the Fallen publisher Stocks plummets by 51% after release I don't know jack [ __ ] about stocks but I do know down bad up good this is down down is bad and that's the end of the video all in all I prefer Li of P much more as a Souls like while Li of P isn't perfect because no game is I think Li of p is great Lords of the Fallen I did not like at all I'll be curious to see if this game gets another Sequel and if it does will it take another 9 years I don't know next year we will have the Elden ring DLC and I expect from soft to knock my socks off with that I hope you enjoyed the video have a good day
