Hoo boy what a mess this was

Babylon's Fall is an action RPG developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix that is now inaccessible. So what went wrong here? Well, if you've been keeping up with modern gaming, you know the keywords that can potentially ruin a brand-new video game, and that is the deadly plague called live service games

I heard about this game back in 2019 when it was first shown in the State of Play, and it showed some promise. The gameplay and combat were fast and fluid, and it looked fun to play. Fast-forward to 2021, where we haven't received more information about the game until it was shown again at Square Enix's E3 2021 presentation, and it looked like a completely different game. Instead of a single-player exclusive game like how it was teased in the first trailer, it's now a game heavily focused on co-op online multiplayer. And of course, what killed the game entirely was the announcement of the game being live service. As you can expect, this left a bad taste to many gamers' mouths, including mine. When the game finally released on March 3rd, 2022, the game was instantly dead on arrival, calling it one of the worst games of 2022. Continuing with this trend of mine of playing live service games before they shut down, I decided to give this game a shot. I bought a physical copy for $10 plus tax, and I was ready to be disappointed. But enough personal talk, let's get into the gameplay itself

Now I'm not going to bore with you the main plot of the game because frankly, I forgot about mostly what happened in the story; it was uninteresting to me

Before you start, you have to log in to your Square Enix account and then customize your avatar and choose one of the five classes which are called Factions. I went with Geleilion, which relies heavily on ranged combat. The character models are hideous; they look like they belong in an early PS3 game rather than a 2022 PS5 game, and this can be applied to the unappealing visuals of the entirety of Babylon's Fall

There are seven zones with 29 main stages to complete. There are 4 sections in each stage called chapters, in which you fight a wave of enemies before you progress further on until all chapters are complete. You have access to 4 weapon slots which you can mix and match weapons that can correspond depending on your selected weapons. The weapon types are swords, rods, bows, hammers, shields, and guns. Players can mix and match armor which can help improve certain defensive properties and swapping armor almost every time you clear is crucial to increasing your power level. If some of the gear assets seem similar to you, that's because PlatinumGames borrowed some of the assets from the critically acclaimed MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV

The stages themselves are generic and tedious. 90% of the level design is just straight hallways with big rounded areas representing the chapters. This makes the whole game feel repetitive, and the same can be said with its combat. It feels slow compared to what was previously shown back in 2019 and can be narrowed down to simply button mash to win. The combat itself is serviceable, but comparing it to PlatinumGames' previous entries like NieR:Automata, feels like a downgrade

The pacing in Babylon's Fall leaves a very poor impression when booting up the game for the first time. It's slow and monotonous, and the story doesn't get interesting until like 5 hours into the game, and then again, it's still uninteresting to sit through. I beat the main story in like 15 hours, and I did this all by myself, and it turns out I cleared 1 story quest out of 3. Yes, believe it or not, there were additional story quests added two months after the launch with the third one concluding the whole story. I did do a bit of the second story quest before I decided to just give up and go for the platinum

Now obtaining wasn't all too bad. Sure, there was some grinding I had to do since this is an RPG after all, but for most of the trophies, they were pretty straightforward. Upgrading one of the armor, weapon, or accessory was the final few I needed before I can achieve my 44th platinum. I knew I couldn't do this alone, so after a failed gaming session on PSNProfiles and a Twitter post begging for help, I finally found someone who can help me as we were both close to achieving the platinum. Most of our time spent together was blazing through Skirmishes and side quests, suffering in Duels, and lastly, using our combined manpower to clear Sieges. We persevered through the end, and then on February 28th at 1:13 AM, less than an hour before the servers shut down, I finally achieved the platinum. As you can imagine, this felt really good to me, as the 35 hours of tedium I went through with the assistance of an online partner was over, and I couldn't have achieved this platinum without him

Babylon's Fall is not a good game. While the gameplay was serviceable, the rest of the game was more of a slog to get through. Though I can't deny that I had a bit of fun, more specifically with a partner online. This game could've had potential, but was wasted with it being an online-only live service game. If they wanted to ditch the single-player exclusive gameplay and go for a multiplayer-centric game, fine, I can understand that, but don't make this into a live service game. It's a shame that the servers are shut down now, but it’s probably for the best. While this isn't the worst game I played, it's certainly one of the worst games of 2022

Goodbye Babylon's Fall, you won't be missed

Reviewed on Mar 09, 2023


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