Quick Look: Lords of the Fallen

WIPE THE GODDAMN CAMERA

@poobumbutt: I've only beaten the first two which are both humanoid so I'm not really sure what's going to happen later but it seems they will continue to be humanoid? Really don't know. Doesn't seem likely I'll be facing anything as epic as the gaping dragon but the intro video does hint at bigger bosses? Having said that the two bosses so far have been very fun and interesting to fight; not falling far behind the average souls boss fight if at all even if they are both just humanoid a foot or two taller than me. The bosses seem to have 4 different stages with armour being broken off, aggression increasing and tactics/moves changing gradually with each stage corresponding to a marker every fifth of a bosses health bar. Seeing the first warden lose his shield at a fifth health and do the crazy double handed sword swing that keeps coming towards you with embers flying everywhere is definitely epic in a different way to a souls game; apart from anything else it's a lot higher fidelity. The second boss has very different attacks including ranged attacks and moments when he will hide behind a shield and call multiple enemies you have to fight before you can continue fighting him.

They seem pretty manageable so far. I beat the first boss first attempt and second boss second attempt without much trouble. Difficulty is slightly lower than an average souls boss but the fights seem to be a similar length, which is good (bear in mind I've beaten every boss in DS1 and DS2 without help/summoning and am half way through Demons Souls - I only recently bought a PS3 specifically to play it).

If you love Souls this isn't a game you're going to want to skip, I want to talk it up even more but the fact it seems the way to play this is on a beast PC, and the fact the PC version seems to crash quite a bit right now means it might be reasonable to wait for a few more patches to be released.

Picked this game up last night, and have been pretty happy with it so far. It's definitely easier than the Souls games up front, but once you unlock the "The real Lords starts here" achievement, things do get a bit more difficult. Larger distances between checkpoints, more variation in enemy types, and bosses that offer some interesting challenge.

Pretty great game to play before Bloodborne drops, if you're looking for something to tide you over.

You slowly regenerate health near your bloodstain if you don't collect it. Also one of those challenge stone things opens up every time you kill a boss and you can get some good gear in them.

Seek the King...

Woah running in circles dodging large swings with bad hitboxes on a big humanoid enemy? Sure is a souls rip off.

Probably will still play it despite not liking how floaty that roll looks.

The game is just terribly optimized on the PC.

Apart from a huge number of people reporting constant crashes, the framerate on decent rigs is abysmal, constantly dropping below 30, making a game like this unplayable and headache inducing. Nor is it that much of a looker that it would require heavy hardware, when even people with something like a titan are reporting heavy framerate dips. Right now i just can't play it at an average 20 fps that also keeps going up and down and this is on a machine that ran Witcher 2 nearly maxed without ubersampling.

The gfx options they patched in are glitchy as fuck at the moment in and the menu is really bad at saving them or letting you exit while saving.

Personally so far I don't feel the physicality that is such a huge part of the Souls series, at all, neither weapons nor environments nor your interaction with enemies, even using heavier weapons, it all feels cheap and flimsy with none of that tactile Souls feel.

This reminds me: c,mon @vinny. Load Our Last Souls: Dark Souls 2 DLC Edition.

No because that's pretty much the defining characteristic for these types of games

Lords of the Fallen... more like... DARK SOULS 4 KIDZ OHHHHH SHIIII-

Just kidding, calm down, everybody calm down. This game looks kinda cool, like a clunkier but more arcade-esque Dark Souls.

Darkadey Souls

Wow, it's been a while since I've seen one game crib so heavily from another.

And I couldn't be happier! This is how genres begin!

Actually, I think the game is optimized quite well for PC, it's just that it's currently in a sort of buggy state. Now, you may think those two things aren't very different, but you can patch out bugginess, going back to re-optimize a game is rare.

For example, the game can use up to 10 GB of RAM due to a memory leak, which is why some people get degraded performance after a while. (And is also a source of tons of the crashes.) Not acceptable, but easily fixed. Should've been fixed beforehand, but uhh, how do I put this... it's a EuroRPG, this kind of stuff is kind of par for the course. I don't think they have giant QA stations or extended playtesting prior to release, or perhaps they just didn't have a very wide range of available hardware setups.

Not making excuses for it, it is what it is, but if they stick with patching it as they did today, I think it'll be doing great in a week or two.

So glad we got a QL, and it was Vinny. I saw potential in the pre-release playthroughs by ENB/Lobos, but launch-day word of mouth is that it's not very good and that the PC version is pretty rough.

must..... restrain... inner... elitist.

This game does look pretty cool, though.

Sigh. I guess this is as close as I'm ever gonna get to playing my dream Masters of the Universe Ram-Man character-action game...

All versions don't run as well as I would like. Crashes and frame rate problems, less than 30 on consoles, seem to be the norm.

So the Souls games are becoming a genre. Neat.

I wonder what the eventual acronym will be. Doom clones became FPS. DotA clones became MOBA. I'm thinking... SPADER.

Single Player Action Derived Environmental Rage.

Funny that the jumping works exactly the same as it does in Souls. The way those games handle jumping is so specifically idiosyncratic that I wouldn't even bother trying to ape it if I were a developer. Though guess if you're going to invite Souls comparisons like this game aims to you might as well go all the way.

Anyhoo, the game has captured a bit of my interest. Maybe a Christmas sale purchase for me.

This is probably unfair to the game, but all I can think when I see it is that it's Dark Souls but without the interesting world-building or artstyle. The character designs in particular are unappealing (GIANT WORLD OF WARCRAFT SHOULDERPADS AND GLOWING CRYSTALS)

Also is it just me or do the screenshots look about ten thousand times better than the actual in-game graphics? I know bullshots have unfortunately become the norm, but the difference I'm seeing appears far starker than usual.

@viking_funeral: Soul-like-like, Soul-lite?

That strafing actually made me dizzy. I'm getting old...

Soulslikes. That way, we can all have pointless heated arguments about whether a game really is a soulslike or not.

I actually like the art style. Dark Souls already has the moody, quasi-realistic middle ages look down, I'm good with more games aping on the 40k Art Style. Giant Shoulderpads are silly and whatnot, but for some reason I think they make character look bulkier (in a good way) and stronger, since I associate them with the Ultra Marines of whatever in 40k. (Not a huge 40k fan, just dig how everything looks.)

WoW apes the style but in a less appealing way because of the lack of proper detail since it's so old.

Also I know Warhammer itself also has the big shoulder pads, not just 40k, but this reminds me specifically for 40k despite ironically being fantasy.

@zevvion@poobumbutt I've just finished the 3rd boss, took me around 7 attempts to work out what I was doing wrong then not too hard. Not at souls difficulty but still a fun challenge (as I said before I beat all ds1/2 bosses with no summoning, probably 40% of them on first try).

I've just started to realize the depth of the combat system which I'm liking more and more. Basically you need to listen for the 'woosh' of your attack and that is your cue to hit an attack button again. If you time it right you will hear a ping and your combo will continue. For example with the claw type weapon I'm using on each fist at the moment that's heavy attacks on LT / RT and light attacks on LB / RB. Hitting the timing on the combos allows you to do a variety of elaborate moves and string them all together. It seems very well implemented. I'm glad I went for a fast rogue build with lots of stamina. I'm even tempted to start a second playthrough at the same time as this so I can play two builds at the same time.

On another note I preordered the game on amazon uk for £24.85 and it came with 3 of the 4 pieces of DLC you would have got in the steam pre order version including the quest and the soundtrack on CD which seem to be the only 2 bits worth having, the other two DLC are weapons and armour I had no interest in beyond trying them out. It's still on amazon uk at that price which is less than steam and the DLC is no longer available for the steam version so it's a much better deal. The amazon version has 3 steam keys + a soundtrack cd and 2 game dvds in the box. The 3 cards with the steam keys are postcard size with pretty cool art on the back.

Bear in mind it still seems to crash way too often which is frustrating so as awesome as I think this game is it's probably worth wating for patches.

duders, should I get this on ps4 or xbox one? Which version runs better? I doubt my pc can handle this too well :(

I'm not going to defend this game too hard as it is crashing way too much and that's not acceptable but what you say is misleading. I have a titan and I wouldn't say the framerate dips are that heavy. It does have the odd hitch where it drops below 60 which you do feel because of the way monitor refresh works (it would feel buttery smooth with nvidia GSync if you're lucky enough to have that as the framerate doesn't seem to dip much below 60.) I doubt it has dropped below 50fps once in the 4 hours I've played with maxed settings. If the dips slightly below 60 bother you on totally maxed settings there are lots of things to turn down in the settings.

As for what you say about the feel, have you played it? Because I couldn't disagree more. If anything it feels weightier than souls in terms of the combat/tactility. The environments are much sharper looking than any souls game too even if the world is missing something awsome that demon's/dark souls has. I would still put it on par with dark souls 2 in terms of overall world design (so far after 4 hours) which I felt was a bit weaker and lacking polish.

@theveej: Going by the xb1 version in the quicklook, get the PS4 version.

Another victim of seriously bad black crush? The Xbox brand of black crush is the one that cannot be solved no matter your video settings, TV or monitor, they pumped the gamma the heck up and it only did things to the non-dark parts of the image.

And here I thought I'd never see a Multiplicity reference.

Just have to mention this Spanish RPG from 2001 again. Blade of Darkness:

The developers went on to make Castlevania: Lords of Shadow a decade later.

@vinny Not sure if this has been mentioned, but the audio on the xbox version was clipping a lot (very noticeable when the captain was talking).

Edit: never mind, Vinny changed this later in the quick look.

yeah, I lower the game audio from the menu at some point during the QL to try and solve it. Not the first time I've had Xbox One audio come in really hot.

@sterling: I would assume so, but I would like someone who has the ps4 copy to confirm it.

between this and bloodborne, It seems like my ps4 is just going to be DS-like game machine with maybe a bit of naughty dog lol

@theveej:

I've played ~1 hour of the PS4 version. Framerate isn't solid either, but it is running at 1080p. I'd choose it over the Xbox version if those two are your only choices.

Was actually really enjoying my time with Lords Of The Fallen but then we had a power surge and, well, my PS4 is dead now. Absence makes the heart grow fonder though so I look forward to getting back into it for sure.

Really tired of all the Demon/Dark Souls references though to be honest. It may be similar but that doesn't mean everyone must point that out at every possible opportunity. We get it people, you played the Souls games and you're seeing similarities: Please shut up.

I wanted to know about the game itself, not how it matches up to your perceived holy grail of gaming boss by boss and scene by scene.

To that end, from what I was able to play before my PS4's early demise: Lords of the Fallen is a third person adventure game that rewards patience and awareness of your surroundings. On the technical side, however, all versions seem to have some issues with slowdown and, occasionally, crashes.

Also

The PC version is having serious issues right now anyway but even the PS4 version had screen tearing and slowdown issues from time to time. The newer patch seemed to help but it isn't running flawlessly on anything yet. Judging by their QL on the X1 and my own brief (about three hours) playtime on the PS4, I'd say go with Sony this time around. It will still have some issues but they seem to be less frequent. Hope that helps you out.

"This is a little different from Dark Souls, these are checkpoints"

*proceeds to explain they do the exact same thing as bonfires in Dark Souls*

This game looks gorgeous.

Soul game seems fine for now.

keep rolling

Man the XONE version looks terrible. I mean it's not at if the image quality of the PC version is unattainable on those machines, just look at something like Sunset Overdrive or inFamous Second Son. Having played Metro Redux on PS4 (which looks near identical to the PC version and runs at a smooth 60) I'm convinced that some studios are just plain bad at optimisation relative to others.

I will name the new genre.

MDRPG - Mortality Driven RPG

I hear Youtube now supports 60FPS videos. Does that affect GB videos in any way?

I got this today. Here's some thoughts.

• Playing on PS4. Image quality is good and graphically the game is quite nice, but the framerate feels sub-30 at times.
• The game is weighty and deliberate and seems to focus more on 1v1 fighting. Any times you fight more than one dude at a time, it gets kind of stupid. I'm sure with practice this will be less of an issue but it also feels like a limitation of the gameplay style itself since the combat seems focused on baiting enemies out from behind their shields.
• AI shows a lot of self-preservation, sometimes to an almost annoying degree? Also lots of dudes with swords and shields, the occasional variation on a dog.
• World seems kind of semi-open. It's mostly pretty linear but there is the potential for exploration. There's areas early that had dudes that were too strong for me that I came back to later that I could finally take on. Not sure how the level design flows on the whole though, I feel as though I'm still in the same area really. Don't know whether it's going to transition to somewhere else later on or what.
• I feel like this game has some REAL issues with directing the player towards objectives. The game is pretty linear but at the same time there's enough different routes you can be taking that it's easy to spend chunks of time trying to find the correct path to push the story forwards, which leads me to my next point.
• The story and atmosphere feel totally secondary, hollow and vapid. Everything looks kind of cool, but I really just... Don't care about any of it? I don't know who I am, what I'm doing, and don't give two shits either. Everything feels totally without context as a result and all of the systems and mechanics kind of reflect that being that they're a mish mash of other games, namely Dark Souls and console Diablo 3, and don't really combine to create any sense of gaming transcendence.
• Having said all of that... I think I really like this game. It has character despite being a mish-mash of pilfered ideas. The gameplay has a nice flow and a nice chunky, rhythmic feeling. Generous iframes, super long wind-ups, seemingly more of a focus on heavier weapons.

The game's good but the PC version is still rough as well. It crashes a lot and to get a solid 60 on my GTX 770 I needed to drop a lot of the graphic settings. That said even with dropped settings it looks way better than the XB1 version Vinny was playing.

While I'm not quite sold on this particular game myself (difficulty and generally obtuse lore/direction both being pretty big selling points for me as far as Souls games go), I'm certainly glad to see this and other games trying to copy the formula.

I feel like certain games and genres are simply better to have 'clone games' in due largely to how the games themselves function. For example, FPS's tend to be focus on the feel of the mechanics and the multiplayer modes, so clones of games in the genre tend to feel more blatantly uninspired as there usually isn't much to balance out against shoddier controls and/or less interesting modes. On the other hand, I think clones of Dark Souls and certain other games (ex: most platformers) generally fair much better because the focus is more on level and enemy design; clones with identical or slightly less polished gameplay can still be extremely enjoyable experiences if the level design and enemy types are interesting and well-utilized.

Of course, too many games which play a whole lot like each other will inevitably create some genre fatigue regardless of what they focus on, but some genres and subgenres definitely are able to last longer than others before feeling stale.