And when I ask that, I am talking in general, but also compared to the Souls series. As some may have seen, I am currently going through the Souls games. I just finished Dark Souls earlier today, and want to go get Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin on PS4 as well as Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 tomorrow. I actually got Lords of Fallen in the nick of time on Gold when it was free. Just wondering what peoples take on it was. I am on a Souls high, if you will, and I wasn't planning on trying this out until I finished all of the Souls games and Bloodborne, but since it's on the One, and I don't yet have those other games, I may just try it out. That said, I'm still wondering what you all think. Maybe I'll go play it...

It's pretty good, has some cool mechanics. Play Rogue. It's worse than Salt and Sanctuary which is worse than Demon's Souls; but it's still an interesting experience.

Starts off as a sorta promising arcadey version of Dark Souls. Got pretty tedious when it started throwing obnoxious shield guys at me.

I just started playing, so still at the beginning. I like it quite a bit. It is very Dark Souls just by how it controls, almost identical, though the way animations are differs greatly, and I find it faster to attack enemies. Music plays as you roam, which is not like in the Souls games, and there seems to be some mission structure, where Souls isn't like that as it leaves you to decide where to go and figure things out. I would otherwise totally get into this, but I don't think I'll spend too much time getting into it because I want to finish the other games first.

It's bad. It doesn't get far enough away from Souls to stand on its own but doesn't replicate Souls particularly well. It controls poorly, the camera might be even worse than Souls, the environments all look the same and the story is terrible (and might not even make sense depending on the order you take the areas).

If you're looking for a Souls fix that isn't Souls, play Salt and Sanctuary. It isn't as good as Souls, but it's solid, and a good bit more enjoyable than LotF.

@ntm: I really enjoyed it. It was my first foray into the souls style games. Eventually led me to Bloodborne. Overall, it's a solid game that I finished and enjoyed the whole way through.

I just beat the first boss. I like this so far. It is very Souls, but it has some different aspects. For instance, the story is way more in your face than the Souls games, through cutscenes and pick ups. The pick ups though aren't that interesting to me as I don't have much context. I'd say it's little more interesting than what's in Diablo 3, which isn't much of interest. I actually like the more lenient feeling to it. The powerful thrust move, where you push forward with the heavy attack is very auto targeted onto enemies, and he lunges far. I think this game looks great, almost reminds me of Unreal's elemental tech demo, but a part of it lacks polish I think. The flames that came out of the bosses attack as it spread across the floor towards me kind of looked plain, and some frame rate and screen tearing during cutscenes was unappealing. Darn, I could totally get into this game if it weren't for Souls right now. Also, I don't like the button mapping for attack/block; it should be flipped from RT and RB and what have you. I like that sprint is mapped to L3.

I played right up to the next-to-last boss. I enjoyed the first half quite a bit, but I feel like it went steadily downhill from there to the point that I decided it just wasn't worth it and uninstalled it. I couldn't tell you a single thing about the world or the story at this point.

The things that really bugged me were the homing, flying, infinite poise/stamina enemies, and the boring+cheap bosses.

There are several existing "How is this game" topics here in this forum, did you read through those yet? You'll probably see a lot of different responses from people who were actually playing this when it was recently released.

@mike: I don't see any of the same question, no. I was going to say sorry about this, but I don't actually see any. I guess the yay or nay one. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I had made one in the past of the same thing myself, so I checked for that. I didn't go into other ones (until you asked me), but the yay or nay one is all I see. I suppose 'This is making me want to play Dark Souls' is another. Some ones are with spoilers, and some are more specific, like whether they should use a keyboard or mouse, or where their experience points are after they died. None of them seem like they have many posts on them either... I don't know, it seems justified, though if you don't think so, then that's okay. Do what you have to do.

I quite liked the game, there are a few cool secrets in it as well.

It was fine, but the extreme frame rate drop when using my spell damn near ruined the game for me. Mechanics were solid and the art was nice. Not as good as a Souls game, but definitely not bad.

First impression was bad, but I restarted with a new class and it made a world of difference.

An interesting take on souls game that ultimately fails spectacularly.

I thought the game was perfectly fine. It has a very bad reputation for some reason, but I don't really understand why. It's not as deep as a Dark Souls game, but as an action game that has a Souls-like control scheme and mechanics, it is totally serviceable.

It's not good.

It's just like Dark Souls. Except it completely lacks the style, care, balance, and responsiveness that makes Dark Souls so special.

I made it past the third boss before abandoning the game entirely.

I'm thinking about picking this game up, cause it's pretty cheap nowadays. Did they ever fix the game breaking bugs that people complained about? I know a friend of mine encountered one where an NPC just stood walking in place and the game refused to proceed.

It was ok - a step in the right direction that I'd really like to see more devs try. I'm not saying straight souls clones, but more games that attempt the gameplay with their own twists. My biggest problem with this one was the inventory, enemy variety and overall aesthetic. I was surprised at how competent the gameplay was, and somewhat challenging bosses, though.

It even has an interconnected world with shortcuts like Dark Souls 1.

I thought it started off really good. But then got really weird.

I never played any souls games (although watched too many speedruns etc) and I thought Lords of the Fallen was pretty good, especially if bought on sale. Graphics are great, combat is tough. Graveyard boss impossible to beat with heavy build.

My framerate was something like 80-100fps on a gtx970, no crashes etc.

I don't know about that particular example, but having played Lords of the Fallen within the last month, I can confirm the game is still riddled with bugs of varying sizes. I've seen bosses lock in place, enemies lose their textures; I've experienced severe delay between inputs and actions on-screen, even outside of combat. The game hard crashes fairly frequently. It's all a mess. And that isn't making any mention of the often dodgy framerate or screen tearing.

I liked it at first, but the backtracking and a boss bugging out on me so that I couldn't kill it made me stop after about 10 hours; never finished it.

I love the soulsborne games to death, and even Salt and Sanctuary was pretty close. I was fully prepared to like or even love Lords of the Fallen, hoping a western dev could take the style of game to new heights. But it turned out to be pretty lame, and I got really bored of it after 5-10 hours... and I don't remember a thing about it except for a vague memory of the first boss in a cathedral I think...

I just played through this game this week! I think it was a lot of fun, had some interesting differences from a Souls game. I hands down think it's the best game to start off with if you're interested in the Souls type of experience. It's also a good cheap game if you want to scratch your souls itch, which is what I got it for.

@mike: i feel whenever you want to bump an older existing thread to start up new discussion it's always a crapshoot whether it'll get locked or not. Maybe im wrong but it's the feeling i get.

It's not a bad game by all means. It has some interesting mechanics and the few kinks I'm sure will be poilished out in their next release (if they release a successor or another souls like game).

I enjoyed my time with it.

It depends on what you're bumping. If you are bumping a topic about a game with a relevant reason then it's probably fine. If you are bumping a shitpost with another shitpost it's probably going to get locked.

Well, I am back at this game again. I beat the other Souls games. I got to the final boss of Dark Souls 3 a while back, but died twice, and didn't really care to move on. I was done with the Souls games. I thought I would play Doom, and I tried it earlier this morning, but I wasn't loving it. There were a few factors behind that; one was that the Xbox One, though it runs smoothly, the dynamic resolution going below 1080p was disappointing, and not great to look at (my brother wanted it on that instead of PS4, to balance out the amount of games we have I think). Another reason is that, as someone that almost always plays on easy first, and hardest second if I enjoy the game enough the first time, this game was a bit too mindless on it. I wasn't having much fun just running through guys, so I might have to play on the hardest available, though that'll probably make it so I don't want to play Nightmare later. Anyways, I started playing this instead of going back to Doom.

I'm more into third person sword based games right now, and I guess this feels different enough from the Souls games that I'm into it. I honestly like this more than DS3 so far. My biggest issue is that the game doesn't have a steady fps, and it has screen tearing; I also think it could use some better anti-aliasing. If those were fixed on the One, it'd be an even more enjoyable game. I'm guessing it's better on PC. As I've stated before, and as a comparison to the Souls games, I like that music plays throughout, and it's all pretty good. I think the game animates well. I think, though I don't find it as challenging (which isn't much of an issue), the bosses are more interesting to me; not in look, but in their move sets, although I've only fought two so far. I also like that the story is more in your face, with cutscenes and logs to pick up for backstory, but so far it's more the idea of it being implemented, than the actual execution.

Also, the upgrading early on seems to go a bit faster than in the Souls games, so being able to utilize a variety of armor and weapons comes faster, and I like that a lot. The voice work could be a bit better. I think if all the aspects that had issues were implemented better, it'd probably be my favorite Souls-like game.

@ntm: Really depends how much you hate the shitty enemies in Salt and Sanctuary (dozen or so worst enemies in the soulsverse), though I'd still go with it over Lords in general; though there's not a massive rift between them in my mind. Or you could hate platformers I suppose.

@ntm: wow you really played through all those Souls games in a single month and then just stopped at the final boss of the last one? I mean I sort of get it, you pretty much saw everything the game has to offer and clearing that one last hurdle isn't going to get you all that much (the endings are laughably short as always despite this being the last one and all). Still I dunno man..id need that closure. I thought I was done when I beat the final boss but then I kept having this itch about not going through those two optional areas so I went back and finished it up just so I can say I beat every boss in the Souls series.

It's weird really how a lot of my Souls playing revolved around proving something to myself or maybe even to others rather than just the pure joy of playing more. Don't get me wrong I always had fun in varying degrees (the so called best boss in the series was obnoxious as hell for me) but there was also that ridiculous feeling of pressure brought about by the community. Gotta beat this guy solo, don't want to cheese this thing, no I can't summon for this need to be able to say I beat him myself.. I completely hate that attitude surrounding these games yet time and time again I willingly fell prey to it. Super weird.

Anyway, Lords is a game I always wanted to give a shot. Maybe during the slow summer months I will although after DS3 I'm ready for some more arcadey action for a while.

@humanity: Usually, I'd feel that for story based games, but not Souls 3, though especially considering I just went through them all (minus playing Uncharted 4 in the middle). Coincidentally, I said the same thing to my friend who got to the epilogue of Uncharted 4, and stopped there to play Civ 5 on Steam. That is not something I'd be able to do, but for a Souls game, where the story itself isn't the biggest factor, I just don't mind. I actually watched all the endings on YouTube yesterday, and I didn't get the urge, as I sometimes can, to go back and complete it. I did feel the same way you did, but at some point, I just wanted to complete it as I just wasn't having fun because I wanted to move on. It was at that point, just beating it to beat it. What's weird is that I too feel like playing the Souls games is about proving its beatable, and yet it's nonsense, because I think anyone that wanted to get into it, could easily go through it.

The reason I think players feel that way about the Souls games is because we know there are many players that won't, and haven't gone near it because of the supposed challenge, when it really isn't that hard. I constantly thought to myself as I went through them, 'no one should feel like this is a huge achievement'. I stopped playing Lords of the Fallen again to go back to Doom. When it comes to the Souls games, I feel like when you get to a point of seeing everything, even if it wasn't completed, it's good enough. In DS2, I saw everything, but I didn't beat the end bosses of the DLC areas, and in Bloodborne, the same thing happened where I beat everyone except for Kos, and decided to move on and beat the final boss (and that boss was nothing). The reason I moved on, was because all it really took was more grinding/farming, and I didn't want to do that anymore to beat the bosses.

When it came to DS3, I was done, especially with the two phase bosses.

I've been playing this game quite a bit since I got it free on PSN. I cant really describe why but I'm liking it a lot more then all the souls games I've played. I'm not sure if it was patched but on the PS4 anyway I haven't had any of the issues that people complained about -that kept me away- at launch.

I think what I've enjoyed the most is the more rapid progression and character advancement and the weapon choices. I'm not sure why but I find the fast weapons a lot more satisfying to play with in this game. Being able to slowly regenerate your health has been a nice quality of life feature too. Its not fast enough to make you survive any longer in an actual fight... but when it comes to hoarding things in games I'm an absolute mess so its nice to have a renewable source of healing that I don't have to obsess about like in the first Demon Souls. Makes me more eager to explore and helps me be a little more aggressive then my usual paranoid defensive play allows.

The story is pretty trash, and while I enjoy the mystery of the Souls games more I absolutely hate how its implemented so atleast having some kind of tangible goal and characters, even crappy ones, is a plus in my books.

So yeah I cant really argue for this game being better then the souls games but I'm having way more fun which I think is the most important thing at the end of the day.

The game had fatal bugs so I gave up on it. No choice, really. maybe will try again someday.

Salt and Sanctuary, which wears it's tribute on it's sleeve, is the game I favor.

I've just had two crashes in 1.5 playthroughs of this. I actually really enjoy it. Not sure whether it'll act as a gateway to souls as its sort of its own thing. Treat it like an action RPG that's less of an investment. Bosses have simpler patterns to consider and you can take a lot more hits. Failure's got less stakes with checkpoints being fairly close together.

I like how the side stuff's a bit more explicit and incorporated into the story, even if the story itself is arse. Its actually got me looking forward to The Surge.

I tried this game since it was free on PSN this month, but after a couple of hours I already deleted it. This must've been the worst performing game on the PS4 I've played so far. Normally I don't mind a framedrop or 2, but this felt like it went below 20 all the time. Barely playable..

I played the game on consol back when it came out. Can't say I ever had a problem with it.