Masochistic Gamers have Found their Next Fix in Lords of the Fallen - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 18 June 2014 / 3,559 Views
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and if that's true then Dark Souls should be blushing right about now because Lords of the Fallen is definitely doing its best to court fans of that series. Now, that might sound like harsh criticism, but an imitation can be better than the original if it allows itself some freedom to veer off from the original formula and forge its own path. The only important question now is if Lords of the Fallen manages to do just that.
Lords of the Fallen is the story of an evil god who is making his return after 8,000 years of being banished. The time in which the evil god was gone was a time of peace, but anyone who decided to stray from the path of righteousness was branded for their sins. Our main character's face is covered with brands, indicating that he's basically done every deadly sin at least twice. So when the evil god comes back, along with his lords, humanity calls upon the baddest of badasses to take them down.
The first thing I noticed about Lords of the Fallen is just how huge your character is. He's built like a tank, and is much more like a space marine from Warhammer 40k than a standard fantasy character. The enemies you'll fight aren't dainty little flowers either; this is a world of giant dudes who must be spending every second they aren't fighting in the gym. This all adds a sense of epicness to the battles that doesn't come in most other games. Deep booming sounds of weapons smashing into shields underpins these visuals and left me feeling like I was watching gods do battle.
You'd honestly probably have to be a god of battle to beat this game too, because this sucker is hard. Enemies do lots of damage, take lots of hits, and are generally difficult to deal with. Fighting head-on isn't always necessary, or even advised, as I found at least one enemy that I could kill using the environment without landing a single blow.
One potential problem is that magic seems to be used as a crutch in Lords of the Fallen. There were a number of enemies that carried shields and it seemed basically impossible to get around them to do some free damage, but if you wait long enough for your spell to be ready you can easily take out these same monsters using magic. It's not as though this dependency on magic requires a distinct playstyle, as every weapon type can use some kind of magic, but I have to wonder if an experienced player could ever defeat those enemies without relying on it.
Similar to the aforementioned Souls games, checkpoints in Lords of the Fallen are few and far between, so expect to die and repeat things quite a bit. Thankfully, experience can be banked, so you don't have to worry about losing a large haul from a simple mistake.
After quite a few runs I managed to make it to the boss and actually had a pretty easy time of it compared to the rest of the demo. Getting hit didn't instantly kill me and his patterns were recognizable. One aspect I did appreciate is that the boss' health bar was clearly divided into three portions, which gave a clue that things would get dicier as I got closer to winning.
Lords of the Fallen could be a fun game for those who like a challenge or are into the Warhammer-like aesthetic style. I appreciated the thought put into the encounters, particularly the one where I had to use more indirect methods in order to progress, and the story sounds interesting. Hopefully Lords of the Fallen lives up to its potential when it releases on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this fall.
