Lords of the Fallen

🎮 Steam ⏳ 6 hours ⭐⭐ (2/5)

Frustrating First Impressions #

The very first Lords of the Fallen entry tries to capture the dark, methodical combat of the Souls-like genre, but I struggled to get into it. The early hours felt frustrating rather than challenging, with slow pacing and clunky controls that made each encounter more tedious than rewarding. The world design has some interesting moments, but the oppressive atmosphere didn’t quite draw me in. Enemy placement and repeated backtracking made progress feel more like a chore, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the game was trying too hard to mimic its inspirations without adding much of its own.

A Failed Soulslike Attempt #

I’m a Soulslike fan but this one is simply a bad attempt on replicating the formula, the feeling of gameplay is very bad, even when using a controller, the classes are not interesting, neither are the weapons and skills. Overall, I couldn’t make it past the first few hours, the combination of technical hiccups, punishing difficulty spikes, and monotonous gameplay left me feeling more frustrated than engaged. It’s a game I wanted to enjoy, but it just didn’t click for me. I don’t recommend this one, and I heard good things about the reboot, I would advise looking into it instead.

Underwhelming Boss Encounters #

The boss fights, which should have been the highlights, ended up feeling underwhelming and overly predictable. Instead of tense, skill-based encounters that reward patience and mastery, many of them boil down to simple patterns and limited movesets that are easy to exploit once you figure them out. There’s a lack of depth in combat mechanics, and the weighty animations don’t feel satisfying, just sluggish. It often feels like you’re fighting against the controls as much as the enemies, which is never a good sign for a game built around precision and timing.

Ambition Without Polish #

To its credit, the visuals and armor designs have a certain gritty charm, and you can see the ambition behind the project. However, ambition alone isn’t enough to carry a Soulslike. When compared to genre benchmarks like Dark Souls, the differences in polish, level design cohesion, and combat responsiveness become painfully clear. For people deeply invested in the genre, this entry feels more like a rough experiment than a fully realized experience. I’m still curious about the reboot, but this original release is one I can’t personally recommend.