Lords of the Fallen Is Annoying (Review)

I never played the original Lords of the Fallen when it released back in 2014 I wasn't even playing any Souls games back then but apparently I didn't miss much the community memd on the game back then for its clunky or heavy feeling gameplay that most Gamers back then obviously did not enjoy since then this game has faced quite the development Journey shifting between Studios and eventually being put on hold as a mere concept for a couple of years it wasn't until hexor Studio stepped in to take on the project initially they were faced with the daunting challenge of creating a game that virtually nobody was interested in Lords of the fallen 2 however as time passed they made the Bold decision to not pursue a sequel or a remake but instead embarked on a full reboot of the original the trailer they released last year was incredibly impressive and it guarded widespread attention and excitement mainly because it looked nothing like the original aside from the name of it of course every everyone was eagerly anticipating the releasee of another game in the soulslike genre especially considering that many gamers had just recently hopped off the Elden ring hype train at the time apparently this Lords of the Fallen was basically using all of the same lore and Dark Fantasy World traits of the original while bringing in a few new gameplay ideas to build off of after clocking in about 25 hours and completing the game I don't know how to feel other than mixed on Lords of the Fallen honestly I didn't have have that much fun playing this game artistically this game is pretty it's a good look game and the art Direction utilizes the new Unreal Engine 5 to its full capabilities there's not an inch of this game's world that isn't detailed from its vast Landscapes and beautiful architecture they basically had to design Two Worlds in one throughout the entire game since the player can willingly peer through and walk through the realm of the living and the dead being able to develop something like this could not have been easy it's a unique gameplay mechanic mechanic that can be considered honestly a technical Marvel and is the main difference between the original and this reboot needless to say I had many moments throughout my playthrough where I had to stop and look at the beautiful art Direction I was experiencing it's amazing looking however this is pretty much where my pros of the game begin and end I shouldn't say that quite yet because I did find the combat in game play to be somewhat fun at times but was ultimately outweighed by to put it bluntly Jank [ __ ] my biggest gripe with Lords of the Fallen is the level design every single level in this game never failed to just confuse me with its Labyrinth of doors ladders staircases and dead ends that just don't look or feel like they should be dead ends especially when you're required at points to switch between worlds that can change the layout of a level completely I would find myself getting lost on a regular basis it's possible that some may enjoy this aspect as it leads to a bunch of time being allocated to just exploring every inch of every level but for me it just felt frustrating this frustration could be due to the insane level of complexity of just getting any progress through each level from its sparse amount of checkpoints that just lead to annoying runbacks to where you just died in hopes of finding a shortcut that'll make that next run back easier in regards to the combat it's it's fine it's okay obviously it's going to feel familiar to those who played any other game in the souls like genre but for me because of my experience with Souls games this game's combat just felt like a worse version there's just something missing here whether it's the animations or audio design I'd say the issues I have lean way more toward the audio design just being not not very good there were so many moments during combat cutcenes or just running around where I noticed a lack of audio not just poor quality audio sound effects but just a complete lack of any sound at all it works the combat is functional obviously except for the camera I think the camera needs a complete overhaul it feels just as weighty as your attacks and movement do because it feels like whenever you dodge roll or go from locking on to one enemy to the next it lags behind a little bit too much to a point where it's noticeably annoying for me enemy design is just lacking you'll be fighting the same looking enemies 30 hours in as you were in your first hour it seems the difficulty of enemies and frankly the difficulty overall in the game is just from how many worthless two or three hit enemies they just jamack or spawn into these levels the encounters with these enemies also seem to be placed and programmed in ways to be just as annoying as possible tight corridors with multiple enemies hiding behind boxes with long range enemies way out in the distance shooting tracking arrows or whatever at you while a dog sprays fire at the same time then later on they just use all of these same enemies in different levels and raise their health bar substantially the bosses are not just disappointing but are downright bad aside from some interesting spectacle bosses that have different issues apart from its design like I said this game is stunningly atmospheric and the bosses are no exception to this but it's when you're actually playing in this beautiful world and fighting these bosses that you'll start to notice all of these annoying flaws I'm using the word annoying pretty often in this video because it just perfectly illustrates my feelings on this game I'm sure I'll use it in the title or thumbnail the bosses have insanely telegraphed and limited move sets that after just a couple of attempts you'll look like a god gamer to anyone oblivious to how easy these bosses can be there's also a lack of story context with these bosses where it feels as though the developers just slapped the boss on a small Bridge or in a dark room to fill up time and space just for them to put these bosses as regular enemies in the next area or sometimes in the same level you fought them in I also really dislike the way they provide some lore beats for the main bosses where you'll see a ghostly figure and you'll use your lamp to get a still ghostly frame of an event that happened in this area or some dialogue that I just simply did not care about I feel like I need to calm down here and and mention that I don't think Lords of the Fallen is a bad game there's definitely some charm to this game that had me coming back to it on a daily basis until I beat it I could be wrong here but there are some major Vibes of Dark Souls 2 in this game that I just couldn't shake for my entire playthrough so if you enjoyed DS2 you'll definitely like this game developing a great Souls light game has got to feel like an almost impossible task when you're guaranteed to be compared to games developed by from software who invented the genre altogether that raises the the bar of what is expected from your game and while I think hex works just didn't quite hit the mark they were going for with this game this is not a bad game and could be worth checking out for yourself it's just a game I did not enjoy playing plain and simple the story for Lords of the Fallen is honestly there's not much going on here for me the game is set a thousand years after the events of the original and takes place in more instead after defeating the demon god a deer all those years ago the land is threatened by his return five beacons of radiant light have kept a deer at Bay all this time but his followers have seemingly corrupted the light marking the inevitability of the demon God's return it is your job as a lamp Bearer to travel to all of these corrupted beams of light and restore these beacons to their original holy Radiance the story here isn't exactly obscure how Souls likes usually are where you'll feel confused at first and eventually after mixing and matching some sto story and lore beats together you start to understand what the hell is going on in Lords of the Fallen I really don't know what's going on at any point there's plenty of dialogue to listen to and item descriptions to read but honestly I would just stop listening when it felt like these characters were just saying confusing fantasy mumbo jumbo word vomit to sound profound when it really isn't I see red beacons in the sky and I know I'm supposed to turn them white that's it however none of the NPC characters in your Hub area really seem to even give a [ __ ] about how you're progressing their dialogue doesn't change based on where you've been the bosses you've defeated or the amount of beacons you've cleansed I'd constantly visit the main guy who bestowed on us this incredible task of cleansing the beacons to see if he had anything to add each time I defeated a boss or lit up a beacon to be met with nothing different just the exact same dialogue as he had when I first met him some characters do have interesting things to add to the story and their own interpretations of the world around us and them but for the most part I found the NPCs to be majorly lacking their voice acted well enough although the best way I can describe it is that it feels like I'm listening to a play unfold rather than having a conversation with someone it feels like some of the voice actors are just trying to hard to sound malevolent or fantasy likee if that makes sense the narrative doesn't ever make me feel like I'm doing anything in its world I'm just running to Red beacons and when I light them up it doesn't feel like I made any major impact on the world or the narrative since nobody that I'm supposed to talk to especially in the hub areas they just don't seem to care so it doesn't ever feel like I need to be doing any of the things I am doing there's no sense of urgency no Stakes I don't know who this crazy demon god a deer is and the game never really does a good job of giving me any information on him what was this world like during the Thousand Years of prosperity what exactly am I fighting for I just never got a feeling of influential purpose in this game I knew my objective but that was really it I want to mention the bosses again and how lacking they can really be I'm only going to be showing a few of the first bosses in the early stages of the game so I don't spoil too much for you if you are interested in playing it's not like I'm gassing up this game for you to go buy it anyway but I think enough is here for those who can look past the annoying aspects of the game that I just couldn't not everyone feels or thinks the same when it comes to games so i' never say no one should ever play this game because I hate it that's not what I'm trying to do here but the bosses of souls games are really the major reason that I personally play these games and Lords of the Fallin bosses are just they're just not compelling they are disappointing easier than the levels that lead up to them and most of them require you to stand around and and wait and I mean that in a literal sense as the bosses will just run around or do an attack that you have to run away from and requires you to either be waiting for them to come back and fight you or you running back to them this isn't the case for every boss but for a vast majority of the game My disappointment in the boss has never changed back to some positives I really like the rally system in Lords of the fallen and how it works with the withering mechanic along with blocking and parrying one negative really quick along with these positives is just how unsatisfying the parrying or deflecting or whatever you want to call it feels in this game again this is mainly because of the sound it makes when you pull off a successful Parry the sound is just I don't know lame weak pitiful all of these words work apparently they didn't even have a sound for parrying until right before release which is just baffling to me but as for the health system and blocking incoming damage to create wither which is indicated by the white section of your red health bar and being able to Rally or regain that Health back by staying aggressive and attacking enemies is really well done you could just block forever as long as you're successfully blocking you'll never die but any attack that you don't block will ultimately take away all of that white with Health all at once so there's some challenge to this system some Stakes to the rhythm of blocking attacking playing aggressive or passive at certain moments this part of the game was interesting for me and it's a good Innovation on the rally system we've come to know from bloodborn and more recently lies a p i also enjoyed how casting spells and using items Works in Lords of the Fallen you map a spell or item to a particular button input which is actually a pretty old school way of doing it but it definitely works here most Souls games you have to scroll using the d-pad to a spell or an item you want to use which has never felt quite right but here it's just to press of a button bound to a single trigger that prompts you with whatever button you decide to map to for a particular spell or item it's perfect I honestly can't see that system being done in a better way and Future Souls like games and souls Games should use this exact system it's much more satisfying than scrolling till you find it as for any positives I have on this game that's that's pretty much all I've got to say I desperately want to like Lords of the Fallen but it's the first game all year that's actively annoyed me I love the souls like genre more than any other but this game just isn't it for me like I said you could like it because there is a certain charm that kept me coming back to it but I'd play it for a while and just get annoyed stop playing think about it a little bit later hop on again get annoyed and then get off the game again I had the same feeling when I played Dark Souls 2 I don't think it's a bad game but it's the version of the souls games I enjoy the least so if you like DS2 you you're definitely going to like Lords of the Fallen that's all I've got to say for today I was planning on doing a full-blown critique video for this game just like I did with Liza P but just for me I don't enjoy it enough to keep playing it more than one time which I definitely feel like I have to do if I'm making a full-blown video on it I've beaten Liza four times and I could honestly keep playing it if other games weren't coming out for me to play and make content for so I thought I'd make a video like this one for Lords of the Fallen thanks for watching guys and I'll see you all in the next video take care

Channel: AgtJake

Views: 34,991

Keywords: video, sharing, camera phone, video phone, free, upload

Id: per3zYMRDss

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 21 2023