CI Games is a company known primarily for their Sniper: Ghost Warrior series, and also the one-off Enemy Front title. In 2014, they released Lords of the Fallen, a game that looks, plays, and feels like a Dark Souls game in nearly every aspect, though priced for the budget-conscious gamer. Upon its release, the game came with fairly useless day one downloadable content that players were none too happy about, but how does the main game fair?
You play as a man named Harkyn, who has been released from his confinement in prison by a mage known as Kaslo. Harkyn has been released for the sole purpose of stopping the Rhogar; they are the invading, demonic forces of Adyr, a god who has long since been defeated before the time that the game is set in. The god was previously defeated by three heroes, who have since become "judges", and they were given a Demigod status as a reward for their actions. Under their judgement, no sin goes unpunished, and runes are carved into the face of wrongdoers.
Overall, the story is flimsy at best; Lords of the Fallen lacks cutscenes and instead relies on the hope that players will scour the maps for audio notes, which barely weave the plot together in a convoluted manner. If an interesting, deep, and well conveyed storyline is what you're after, you're going to want to look elsewhere as this will not be the game for you. Even the few characters that Harkyn meets along his journey are mediocre at best, with no real substance or personality to them. Harkyn himself isn't even well crafted, as he has no backstory to speak of and the sins that he committed are never explained.
The game mechanics are decently crafted, and at the start you have your choice of three different magic types, and three different class types; Rogue, Warrior, and Cleric. However, it's really just the base attributes that are affected by this choice, and you can even wield say Warrior armor and weapon types on a Rogue so long as the base attribute requirements are met. During combat, you can choose between three stances; double-handed weapon (or dual shortswords/daggers for Rogues), one-handed weapon with a shield, or one-handed weapon with the gauntlet, even two-handers will become one-handers for the latter two stances. Each magic type has three spells that can be cast to help dish out hefty damage to foes, although each have their own set cool-down timer. You can also dodge, block, and sprint.
The art direction takes on a heavy gothic tone, similar in style to Diablo and even, to an extent, Devil May Cry. There's plenty of blood to be found on the ground, though none is spilled while you're fighting, though no real gore. The few cutscenes that are within the game are pretty to look at, and the landscapes are vividly detailed. There are tight corridors and chambers, and nice wide open expanses to explore, though when it comes down to it many of the areas feel and look the same after a while.
Lords of the Fallen takes many queues from the Dark Souls franchise, especially when it comes to difficulty, although its difficulty is unremarkable. There's a stamina bar that limits your actions, so if you're a fan of heavy two-handers who hasn't invested your experience points in to stamina, you're going to have a bad time; same with those who prefer magic and don't put enough points into mana. Each enemy you kill gives you experience points and when you visit a save point, which are large red crystals, you can either bank the XP for later and gain an XP multiplier, or distribute it into either Action Points or Spell Points. Action Points can be spent to increase attributes such as strength, stamina, and mana, while Spell Points can be used to purchase the next tier of each of the three spells of the chosen magic type.
In typical Dark Souls fashion, when you die you lose all of your gained XP; unless you're able to make it back to the location of your body without dying again, and then you can reclaim your "soul". What makes this feat all the more difficult is that every time you die, all of the enemies in the world respawn. They also respawn if you leave and area and then come back, or if you use the checkpoint crystal to save your game, or if you quit and reload the game. Likewise, death means death... if you haven't saved in a while, it's all the way back to the checkpoint that you last saved at, with all of your progress lost.
There are relatively few enemy times that will be encountered through Lords of the Fallen, making the gameplay become even more stale and repetitive given how many times you will need to face each enemy; death is ultimately inevitable. The bosses aren't that much more interesting, and their difficulties vary from pathetically easy to controller-breaking hard. The waning and returning difficulty of the game can cause some major frustration in players, as it becomes impossible to predict how far along your character needs to be to advance, which will leave you failing over and over again.
Initially, I was going to give Lords of the Fallen a score of 3.0 plus a thumbs up recommendation, until I encountered all of the lovely game breaking bugs that come towards the latter half of the title; particularly once you hit a certain area called the Cave of Lies. There are faux walls that can be rolled/walked through, leading to death. When you do fall in to a hole or roll off a cliff, the game just goes black and doesn't reload leaving you to manually reinstate your save, and worst of all at a certain point my game would load... but without any visual. This wrecked my entire 10 hour campaign, and has rendered me unable to continue or beat the game; I am not that ambitious to restart the entire process all over again, after having collected so many audio logs, armor sets, and weapons. Yes, that's right, there are no multiple save files for your campaign, just a single one so that if your save becomes screwed, you in turn are also screwed,
I should also take the time to point out a major glitch that happened to me, that wasn't exactly something that was awful, but nonetheless still a major bug. For a huge chunk of the game, enemies did not recognize me. Yes, that's correct, I made it about 8 hours through the game without a single foe attacking me. Of course I took advantage of this opportunity to grind out my XP and collect everything that I could; finally once I came out of one of the Infinite Voids (challenge levels), the AI started to recognize me. This glitch excluded bosses, as they still attacked me just fine.
So what is Lords of the Fallen, really? It's a budgeted Dark Souls-wannabe title filled with bugs, shallow characters, and shoddy story development. The game isn't as hard as any Dark Souls game, but it's also not incredibly easy either... that is, if the enemy AI recognizes you. There are secret rooms, but they're easy to spot thanks to large cracks on the wall, tons of chests to open that have pre-rendered loot in them (mostly for Clerics and Warriors, beware that Rogues are rather ignored). There's a "crafting" system where you unlock runes to put in to sockets on weapons and armor, a fairly lackluster feature at best. And to make matters worse, the soundtrack is just abysmal, it's barely there most of the time. For half the price of Dark Souls II, just don't bother; save your money and get either that, or the first installment.
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