Shane
Part sequel, part remake, Hexworks’ Lords of the Fallen (2023) is packed with an epic RPG adventure that you make you’re very own.
While the game loosely touches on the prior 2014 game, you needn’t have played that one to get your hands dirty in this iteration.
You start out as a nameless blank canvas of a character that you fully customise.
And here, unfortunately is where the glitches begin too.
During the character build the game would fail to render graphics properly. When you’re making your playable your very own, and adorning tattoos and sculpting face type you don’t really want to see your guy or girl suddenly morph in to a weirdly part hollowed out husk.
In anycase, persevere and get in to the game.
You’re tasked with lighting five beacons spread throughout the world. The beacons, once lit will prevent the return of a dark and evil being called Adyr, who wants to return to the world to ensure chaos.
The story of Lords of the Fallen takes you through crumbling ruins, dark caverns and wild landscapes in Axiom.
But you won’t always stay in Axiom. There’s the un-dead world of Umbral that also awaits if you die.
Getting in to Umbral doesn’t always mean you need to die and untimely death – once you have the Umbral Lamp you can freely explore both worlds. This is done well and stirred up fond memories of the Legacy of Kain games, where you will fluctuate between alternate realities.
And speaking of dying, you will. A lot.
Lords of the Fallen (2023) is a ‘Souls’ game. One where you can expect to be challenged by even the weakest of enemies.
You’ll wield your weapons and collect bits to keep in your inventory, but the melee combat mechanism was too clunky and slowed for my liking. This also gave the game the advantage over you.
Going back to weird graphic anomalies, unfortunately, Lords of the Fallen (2023) has them in abundance.
From environmental pre-loading oddities through to getting myself stuck on what seemed to be an invisible environmental object, happened way too often to ignore.
Lords of the Fallen (2023), like it’s predecessor title of the same name is lost potential, it should have been a legendary epic game that garnered a serious fan base.
The lore is tight, narrative engaging, but it fails on core gameplay.
While the game is super challenging, and made more challenging by weird glitches, Lords of the Fallen (2023) is still a game to consider, once it goes a clearance sale.
Released: October 2023
Rating: R16
Platforms reviewed: PlayStation 5
Genre: RPG
Developer: CI Games
Publisher: Hexworks