La direction artistique est magnifique, les détails sont extrêmement bien soignés. L'aspect aventure du jeu est très réussie grâce à de nombreuses bonnes idées de gamedesign liés aux deux mondes parallèlement visitables.
Cependant certaines animations en combat sont malheureusement peu lisibles. La densité et la faible variété des mobs apporte une certaine lassitude sur la durée.
Cependant certaines animations en combat sont malheureusement peu lisibles. La densité et la faible variété des mobs apporte une certaine lassitude sur la durée.
T̶h̶e̶ Lords Of The Fallen 2̶ development, almost a decade long, started right after the first as a sequel from the original studio CI Games. Later it was canceled, and continued by Deck 13 with the project scope changed to open-world. After being canceled again, it was lastly revived by Hexworks. All three companies are part of CI Games.
The title, rumored as Lord of the Fallen 2, on PC has the executable called LOTF2, and the final product is 100% a direct sequel. Announced as The Lords of the Fallen, before launch it was renamed to Lords of the Fallen - identical to its 2014 namesake.
The devs clearly love the Souls genre, and with 5 heavy-hitters From Software titles out in the 9 years between the two Lords of Fallen, one would have hoped they learned from them, just like From Software improved their games after each release.
With plenty to choose from, devs took the sequel status and went to town with it getting inspired only by Dark Souls 2, and although I can see some ideas being inspired by later titles, the end result was passed through the same mediocreness and frustrativeness filter before it got into the game.
Fallen "Soul"
Running on UE5, while performance has been not ideal, devs had some good calls like mixing real-time and legacy shaders. Between lumen and nanites, surrounded by a cartoony-looking skybox, the game looks quite detailed and realistic but lacks a strong art direction and sense of style. The level of detail although impressive, ends up being extra noise.
The character creation lacks many sliders and offers little choice with the defaults. It starts by merging three faces to make your own, and not allowing you to customize any of the preset components but the default. Even the eyes, instead of heterochromia the secondary color option is for the pupil, and the same as the eye by default, giving an uncanny look to these already lifeless eyes.
The UI and menus have no consistency in size or function. They're very busy, not properly aligned, and lack basic functions like sorting items, or confirmation before transactions. Lastly, there are maps to find but are just doodles of the areas, and serve no addition to exploration.
The exploration of the world falls short of understanding the format of the game they dared compare to. I could count 2 shortcuts between areas, but nothing even akin to Sekiro, let alone Dark Souls 1. Maps are covered with doors that can't be opened and will offer shortcuts that often save you less than a staircase. Filled with platforming, I was never certain I could make a jump, likely because of the closeness of the camera and lack of FOV options. The character often gets stuck, especially on nanites. The lack of linearity in the exploration is admirable, but the steep difficulty curve and NPC quests breaking from entering a map are not.
Main checkpoints are often far from each other, and although players can make their own in designated spots, a more thought-out experience with normal checkpoints over a superfluous extra mechanic would have been better.
Umbral, although an interesting idea, is entered by dying willingly or not, and only adds tedium with the constant enemy spawn and bland-washing area's aesthetics covering everything with its creepy bones and bits. Just like a Detective Vision, it forces to constantly check if there are secrets, paths in the gaps of the maps where a bridge is missing, or anywhere there is a body of water. Ways to return to the world of the living are not rare, and since it recharges your extra life, it's welcome. When remaining in Umbral too long a "terrifying" reskin of a basic enemy with 20x the health and hyper-armor will hunt you down.
Devs often chose the cheapest way to add difficulty, with perfect snipers at any distance, enemies behind corners at all times with no window to react, and areas filled to the brim with dumb enemies that will overpower you just in quantity over wits. Most of the enemies, of which there is little variety of, can't even understand your placement vertically often falling to their death trying to reach you.
A hidden bar fills when attacking enemies and will grant them hyper-armor allowing them to tank your hits and respond. While hyper-armor is not new to the souls genre, it's frequently given on specific attacks, not assigned at random, especially in a game that does not allow to cancel the animation queue.
Bosses are all forgettable and often have minor enemies with them for added difficulty in arenas that are just flat. Only the second boss, heavily inspired by Malenia from Elden Ring, is worth mentioning for being an unfair wall. Most disappointingly, many mini-bosses become normal enemies right after their fight
Armors look anonymous yet have some strong design choices, like a belt made of severed hands. All suffer from clipping elements even in full sets and the character, with normal proportions, two-handed will oftentimes have the armpit clip out.
Weapon movesets are identical between all weapons of the same family reducing weapon selection down to numbers, with at best 6-hit combos and transition attacks between one and two-handed. Dual-wielding is an option, although limited to 3 movesets.
Combos have no hit-drag, animations are not clear and there's no concept of motion value, instead increase the damage of X on each consecutive hit based on weapon type, i.e. +5 for Greatsword.
Throwables, ranged weapons and casting tools share all the same slot, forcing you to either choose one or constantly switch.
Parries won't open the enemy to an attack, instead will lower their posture, and when broken, a riposte does little to no extra damage. It's not possible to backstab at all.
Using the lantern, enemies can have their soul pulled out for a damage window but will attack immediately once finished. Useful to show them off the edges for when they return to their bodies.
Apparently, devs have listened to the feedback of veteran players on the matter of animations, which somehow led to not even including consistent fall protection when attacking like in Elden Ring, who did not even need it.
Even when it comes to the co-op, the saving grace for me, after bolstering how it had the best co-op system of the souls genre, the only good addition are not being kicked out after a boss, and the shared enemy loot. While it was nice exploring without interruptions, the client has a very tight tether to the host making "seamless" a synonym for a glamourized dark fantasy conga.
Lor-meh
With a world relying on lore, elements must have a reason to exist, and it's important to build the lore with few elements that are deeply connected.
There is no explanation for most of what you'll see, starting from the giant hand-shaped mountain - of which this title never even speaks of - to the permanent eclipse in the game.
The story of the world is told with "memories", stills of a moment, around the map, frequently with no dialogue. NPCs, usually over-acted, talk often of their objectives exclusively, adding nothing about the world they're in.
Most descriptions are locked behind a stat requirement, hiding its content and leaving only the first line available, which is a different wording of the object name. The descriptions I could read often add more to the plate instead of explaining what's there already.
This world is not speaking to you, but the final boss is, and for 5m. Uninterruptedly.
Conclusion
I can see the devs constantly updating the game, improving performance, promising more free content and QOL additions, but that will never change the overall experience.
I left much out because of the character limit, and whereas I know my review focused on the negative, I still find myself suggesting it with my reservations, because it's not bad, it's just...not good.
5.9/10
The title, rumored as Lord of the Fallen 2, on PC has the executable called LOTF2, and the final product is 100% a direct sequel. Announced as The Lords of the Fallen, before launch it was renamed to Lords of the Fallen - identical to its 2014 namesake.
The devs clearly love the Souls genre, and with 5 heavy-hitters From Software titles out in the 9 years between the two Lords of Fallen, one would have hoped they learned from them, just like From Software improved their games after each release.
With plenty to choose from, devs took the sequel status and went to town with it getting inspired only by Dark Souls 2, and although I can see some ideas being inspired by later titles, the end result was passed through the same mediocreness and frustrativeness filter before it got into the game.
Fallen "Soul"
Running on UE5, while performance has been not ideal, devs had some good calls like mixing real-time and legacy shaders. Between lumen and nanites, surrounded by a cartoony-looking skybox, the game looks quite detailed and realistic but lacks a strong art direction and sense of style. The level of detail although impressive, ends up being extra noise.
The character creation lacks many sliders and offers little choice with the defaults. It starts by merging three faces to make your own, and not allowing you to customize any of the preset components but the default. Even the eyes, instead of heterochromia the secondary color option is for the pupil, and the same as the eye by default, giving an uncanny look to these already lifeless eyes.
The UI and menus have no consistency in size or function. They're very busy, not properly aligned, and lack basic functions like sorting items, or confirmation before transactions. Lastly, there are maps to find but are just doodles of the areas, and serve no addition to exploration.
The exploration of the world falls short of understanding the format of the game they dared compare to. I could count 2 shortcuts between areas, but nothing even akin to Sekiro, let alone Dark Souls 1. Maps are covered with doors that can't be opened and will offer shortcuts that often save you less than a staircase. Filled with platforming, I was never certain I could make a jump, likely because of the closeness of the camera and lack of FOV options. The character often gets stuck, especially on nanites. The lack of linearity in the exploration is admirable, but the steep difficulty curve and NPC quests breaking from entering a map are not.
Main checkpoints are often far from each other, and although players can make their own in designated spots, a more thought-out experience with normal checkpoints over a superfluous extra mechanic would have been better.
Umbral, although an interesting idea, is entered by dying willingly or not, and only adds tedium with the constant enemy spawn and bland-washing area's aesthetics covering everything with its creepy bones and bits. Just like a Detective Vision, it forces to constantly check if there are secrets, paths in the gaps of the maps where a bridge is missing, or anywhere there is a body of water. Ways to return to the world of the living are not rare, and since it recharges your extra life, it's welcome. When remaining in Umbral too long a "terrifying" reskin of a basic enemy with 20x the health and hyper-armor will hunt you down.
Devs often chose the cheapest way to add difficulty, with perfect snipers at any distance, enemies behind corners at all times with no window to react, and areas filled to the brim with dumb enemies that will overpower you just in quantity over wits. Most of the enemies, of which there is little variety of, can't even understand your placement vertically often falling to their death trying to reach you.
A hidden bar fills when attacking enemies and will grant them hyper-armor allowing them to tank your hits and respond. While hyper-armor is not new to the souls genre, it's frequently given on specific attacks, not assigned at random, especially in a game that does not allow to cancel the animation queue.
Bosses are all forgettable and often have minor enemies with them for added difficulty in arenas that are just flat. Only the second boss, heavily inspired by Malenia from Elden Ring, is worth mentioning for being an unfair wall. Most disappointingly, many mini-bosses become normal enemies right after their fight
Armors look anonymous yet have some strong design choices, like a belt made of severed hands. All suffer from clipping elements even in full sets and the character, with normal proportions, two-handed will oftentimes have the armpit clip out.
Weapon movesets are identical between all weapons of the same family reducing weapon selection down to numbers, with at best 6-hit combos and transition attacks between one and two-handed. Dual-wielding is an option, although limited to 3 movesets.
Combos have no hit-drag, animations are not clear and there's no concept of motion value, instead increase the damage of X on each consecutive hit based on weapon type, i.e. +5 for Greatsword.
Throwables, ranged weapons and casting tools share all the same slot, forcing you to either choose one or constantly switch.
Parries won't open the enemy to an attack, instead will lower their posture, and when broken, a riposte does little to no extra damage. It's not possible to backstab at all.
Using the lantern, enemies can have their soul pulled out for a damage window but will attack immediately once finished. Useful to show them off the edges for when they return to their bodies.
Apparently, devs have listened to the feedback of veteran players on the matter of animations, which somehow led to not even including consistent fall protection when attacking like in Elden Ring, who did not even need it.
Even when it comes to the co-op, the saving grace for me, after bolstering how it had the best co-op system of the souls genre, the only good addition are not being kicked out after a boss, and the shared enemy loot. While it was nice exploring without interruptions, the client has a very tight tether to the host making "seamless" a synonym for a glamourized dark fantasy conga.
Lor-meh
With a world relying on lore, elements must have a reason to exist, and it's important to build the lore with few elements that are deeply connected.
There is no explanation for most of what you'll see, starting from the giant hand-shaped mountain - of which this title never even speaks of - to the permanent eclipse in the game.
The story of the world is told with "memories", stills of a moment, around the map, frequently with no dialogue. NPCs, usually over-acted, talk often of their objectives exclusively, adding nothing about the world they're in.
Most descriptions are locked behind a stat requirement, hiding its content and leaving only the first line available, which is a different wording of the object name. The descriptions I could read often add more to the plate instead of explaining what's there already.
This world is not speaking to you, but the final boss is, and for 5m. Uninterruptedly.
Conclusion
I can see the devs constantly updating the game, improving performance, promising more free content and QOL additions, but that will never change the overall experience.
I left much out because of the character limit, and whereas I know my review focused on the negative, I still find myself suggesting it with my reservations, because it's not bad, it's just...not good.
5.9/10