This is definitely one of my favorite extremely flawed games I've ever played. At its core, Lords of the Fallen is a more than competent souls-like that had me addicted like any other game in the genre would. There is a lot going on in this game, and it is very overwhelming at first, along with just being pretty slow to start, so I would understand why the first part of the game might turn a lot of people off. Once I got going though, getting stronger, building my character how I wanted and discovering some of the later areas, I very quickly got really into the game and pretty much marathon'd it to the end.

The areas are huge, and FULL of secrets, often entire separate areas that you could easily miss that have hours of content and several bosses of their own. The game does not direct you basically ever, with so little explained that I was forced to look up quite a bit due to how easily it is to get lost in progression and have no idea where to go next. The game does fall into the 'don't tell you anything' trap of souls-likes probably more than any I've played, but luckily already there are plenty of resources out there if you get stuck to where I can generally overlook it.

There are several pretty massive flaws with this game, the most obvious and game-ruining being the technical issues that are pretty much always present, at times so bad that it will get you killed in-game. I played on Performance Mode on PS5, and have got to say it's one of the worst optimized games I've ever played on this console. Frame drops happen extremely often, textures do not load currently, sounds cut out, load times are weird, and there are a plethora of glitches and bugs throughout that are very unfortunately noticeable. Frame drops in boss fights were particularly awful, often causing me to miss-time a dodge or parry and get hit or worse. If these technical issues were not present, I can confidently say that the overall opinion on this game would be much more positive.

The game's boss fights are all pretty mediocre as well, with far too many that are just defeating regular enemies but with more health (like Elden Ring mini-bosses but less forgivable), and many that are just either boring are extremely obnoxious to fight. Hexworks also managed to make some of the most obnoxious enemy placements I've ever seen, making me absolutely lose my mind in some areas, particularly due to the seemingly infinite follow range and perfect accuracy from way too far that so many enemies have. The area design itself is really great, and the environments area beautiful, albeit a bit spoiled by the aforementioned technical issues.

Overall, though, Lords of the Fallen kept me extremely engaged from about 25% in to the end. Character upgrades are very satisfying, and once you figure out what everything does you'll see how great and in-depth it can be. Like I said earlier, there is a lot going on in this game, for better or for worse, but for the most part I found the depth to be quite positive and had a ton of fun with the Strength/Inferno build I decided to go for, particularly with the spell that is more or less just Blasphemous Blade's Taker's Flames from Elden Ring. I would very much look forward to playing a sequel or DLC to this game, and hope that as the developers work so hard on patches as they already have, people in the future will be able to enjoy the game even more. I would definitely recommend this to Souls-fans, if you think you'll be able to forgive some of the flaws.

8/10 (very generously, I just had a ton of fun with this game so I can't help it)