Five years ago I played through the OG Lords of the Fallen and was somehow able to finish the whole thing and like on an objective level Lords of the Fallen (2023) is a much better game, but it's still not exactly a good one and I'm not the same man I was five years ago because my tolerance for games I'm not having fun with is completely gone. I used to be able to suffer through something just so I "got my money's worth" and didn't feel like I wasted money, but I'd rather waste my money than waste my time and even just playing this game for 5 hours was too much time wasted for me.
This game is literally just Dark Souls II-II, but nowhere near as polished as that game because at least that was still made by FromSoft. The hitboxes are horrendous and it does the Dark Souls II thing where it has poorly placed enemies and gank squads just to make the game more artificially difficult. Also the whole gimmick of this game, the alternate realities is cool, but could've been done better because having to constantly pull out your lantern during fights to dispel a shield on enemies and bosses is such a horrible mechanic that takes you right out of the gameplay and combat and the exploration and world design still felt very linear even with the layered worlds and the combat and movement somehow feels fast, but at the same time clunky? I don't know how to describe it, but it's like Dark Souls if it was from an alternate reality where everything in the world just feels OFF by a centimeter. The attacks, the parries, the movement, all the animations just feel wrongly timed by a couple seconds.
Don't get me wrong, this is far from one of the worst games or even one of the worst soulslikes. There's things to appreciate here like the depth to build variety, the Legacy of Kain-like two worlds gimmick (Even if it could've been fleshed out better), the emphasis on platform puzzles, the top notch art direction and oppressive and dark world which really captures the souls atmosphere, but when Dark Souls II is already my least fave FromSoft souls game, there's no way I'm going to care about playing through a worse version of that game made by a worse company. I'd only recommend this game to someone if they just want to playthrough every single soulslike out there and especially if they can handle some jank, some ganks and liked Dark Souls II.
This game is literally just Dark Souls II-II, but nowhere near as polished as that game because at least that was still made by FromSoft. The hitboxes are horrendous and it does the Dark Souls II thing where it has poorly placed enemies and gank squads just to make the game more artificially difficult. Also the whole gimmick of this game, the alternate realities is cool, but could've been done better because having to constantly pull out your lantern during fights to dispel a shield on enemies and bosses is such a horrible mechanic that takes you right out of the gameplay and combat and the exploration and world design still felt very linear even with the layered worlds and the combat and movement somehow feels fast, but at the same time clunky? I don't know how to describe it, but it's like Dark Souls if it was from an alternate reality where everything in the world just feels OFF by a centimeter. The attacks, the parries, the movement, all the animations just feel wrongly timed by a couple seconds.
Don't get me wrong, this is far from one of the worst games or even one of the worst soulslikes. There's things to appreciate here like the depth to build variety, the Legacy of Kain-like two worlds gimmick (Even if it could've been fleshed out better), the emphasis on platform puzzles, the top notch art direction and oppressive and dark world which really captures the souls atmosphere, but when Dark Souls II is already my least fave FromSoft souls game, there's no way I'm going to care about playing through a worse version of that game made by a worse company. I'd only recommend this game to someone if they just want to playthrough every single soulslike out there and especially if they can handle some jank, some ganks and liked Dark Souls II.