Lords of the Fallen

[faetal]

I hesitated before putting this in here, but I figured that this is where it would have the most interest, but do you all know about Lords of the Fallen?

Looks very much like a slightly more mainstream take on Dark Souls. It wears its influence firmly on its sleeve and probably won't be anywhere near as good, but it also seems like it might be worth a second glance:

[Malleus]

I watched some footage and streams of this and the gameplay looked good, but I find the art style very off-putting with all the exaggerated proportions and giant shoulder pads and stuff, like a Blizzard game/Darksiders/Warhammer/whatever. Which I don't like.

The understated art style and almost realistic looks of weapons and armor is one the main reasons I got into DS (and one of the things that makes it unique), and LotF has nothing of that. It's real shame because the world could use more DS clones.

[twisty]

I came across this title a couple of months ago or so and like Malleus I found it hard to get past the Blizzard style graphics. That being said, I'll wait to read some reviews when the game comes out to hear some impressions of the gameplay.

On the one hand, while they've copied so many things from Dark Souls such as the animations (from melee to potion quaffing), consequences of dying ("you acquired your lost experience") and what looks like quasi bonfires, there a a number of significant differences that set it apart from the DS games:

• No multiplayer;
• Pre-defined character and non-ambiguous plot;
• Combos, sneak-attacks and fast-paced battles;
• boundaries/fences to prevent accidental falls ;
• can be completed in less than 20 hours;

While none of these differences are necessarily bad, they are factors that greatly contribute to the uniqueness of the DS games.

While I don't think that this game will scratch the same itch as DS, it might turn out to be a fun, more fast paced DS lite game that I will get around to purchasing at some stage when it goes on sale.

[henke]

I watched some footage and streams of this and the gameplay looked good, but I find the art style very off-putting with all the exaggerated proportions and giant shoulder pads and stuff, like a Blizzard game/Darksiders/Warhammer/whatever. Which I don't like.

Yup. That.

[faetal]

I haven't been put off by it visually, I just know that nothing is likely to feel as quirky and unique as Dark Souls, or have the sense of loneliness and despair to go with it. That said, if it's good and does well, I'd also welcome a few more devs making forays into the style, as there's no pre-written rule that From will be the best at it. Maybe somewhere a few years down the line, someone might out-souls the souls games. I still haven't completed Dark Souls yet though, so I should probably do that and then play the sequel when and if a version is released incorporating the DLC.

[van HellSing]

I'm honestly looking forward to it. I'm not a fan of the art style or direction, but I've been hearing some pretty good stuff about the gameplay, and I'm itching for more Souls-like stuff.

[faetal]

Hmmmmmm.
Possibly a €5 bargain bin job then.

[henke]

Yep. Honestly I'm all Soul'd out after DS2 and the DLCs, and by the time I'll be up for some more Bloodborne will be out. I'm gonna predict I'll spot this cheaply in the next Summer sale and be like "Oh yeah, this game! Why not."

[van HellSing]

Tried it today. Daaamn, is it unoptimised. I'll probably have to wait until I get a new CPU to play this.

[henke]

Started playing this a couple evenings ago, after finding it cheap for PS4.

The controlscheme and moveset is almost an 1:1 recreation of Dark Souls, and it feels as good to move your character, in fact it's perhaps even a bit smoother than DS. The gameplay is close, but not quite as tight as in the Souls games, and when you play this you really get a newfound appreciation for all the little things Dark Souls got right. As difficult as it was, all the action in DS was very clear, and you rarely died because you didn't really understand what was going on on the screen. But in LOTF things are a bit more muddled. It's been ages since I've been frustrated by the camera in a third person game, but LOTF is a return to the bad old days. First off when you target an enemy the camera does not instantly snap behind the player like in DS, instead it slowly rotates into the behind position, often leaving you with a good second when you're not seeing the enemy. Even worse is that sometimes when you are up close to an enemy the camera will bug out and spin 360 degrees around you for seemingly no reason, leaving you with no idea what's going on in front of you. To be fair, this has only happened maybe 2-3 times during my 3 hours with it, and I haven't gotten the latest update file downloaded and installed yet either.

But even when the camera isn't acting up it can be hard to understand the action. Some of the monster models are abstract to the point where it's hard to tell which side is the front and which is the back, and sometimes their attacks are not telegraphed as clearly as in the Souls games, making combat more about buttonmashing and hoping things turn out ok, than carefully judged swings and blocks. This game is also dark. As dark as we were hoping DS2 would be, and it turns out this is maybe not a great thing since it just makes it harder to tell what's going on.

The world is split into "levels" instead of being one big world. If you were to compare the sizes with DS, from Firelink Shrine there'd be a loading zone at the entrance to the Catacombs, to New Londo Ruins, and about halfway through Undead Burg, maybe just before the bonfire there. Still there's a good bit of interconnected paths and secrets in the levels. The game looks good, though not quite as good as Bloodborne. There's more of a straightforward narrative, and many characters you can talk to.

I'm playing as a Rogue class, and sticking mostly to knives. There are some small interface things LOTF does well, like letting you switch between as many weapons as you wish using Dpad right, instead of just 2. Putting away your shield lets you two-hand big weapons, but if you're holding a knife it gives you a second knife, giving access to a new set of combos. I've unlocked the Prayer, Stab, and Mimic spells and those are fun to use. Press circle button to switch spells, hold down to use. Mana recharges over time. I'm having a good time with this, and would definitely recommend it to other Souls fans, at a discounted price. It's not as good as the Souls games, but it does enough things differently to be interesting. And it's properly hard. Not only because of the afforementioned muddledness, but even when you're fighting a single opponent you really have to stay on your toes. I died maybe 5 times on the first boss fight.

[faetal]

Cool. It's on my wishlist so I'll receive an email whenever it goes for cheap

[henke]

Going through the familiar Souls beats with this one of enjoying it at first, the getting frustrated to the point of nearly giving up when it gets tough, then discovering some item or approach that makes the game much more manageable. In this case it was the discovery of a gigantic magical hammer called The Heirloom in my inventory. This thing makes mince meat of enemies that I'd previously barely managed to put a dent in. Not sure where I picked it up, but I'm glad I have it. I'm making steady progress right now and having a good time with the game.

I read that Warrior class should be easier than Rogue, but I've started the game with Rogue, Warrior and Raider classes, and they're all about the same, difficulty wise. Raider is the one I've stuck with. It's the Warrior equipment set, and Deception Magic set. The spells in this one are really cool. Almost Shadows of Mordor levels of stylishness. I particularly like Stab, which creates a firey clone of yourself which runs up and stabs the targeted enemy. Another good one is Shift, which lets you enter a shadow world, making you invisible to the enemies for a short while, so you to position yourself for a backstab or scope out new areas without getting attacked.

[henke]

Getting close to the end, here's a bunch of screenshots.

[twisty]

Very pretty, and pretty shameless copying of some scenes

[henke]

I'm 19 hours in and I've reached the final boss. The difficulty curve has been all over the place. It started out hard, got harder, then got really easy and stayed easy for most of the game. Now towards the end it suddenly got really hard again. There was a boss fight against 2 bosses at once that I ended up having to really cheese to get through. I mostly just stayed out of range and used the ranged attack of the scythe (seen in the video below at 3:17) and eventually, slowly, made my way through it. The part just after that, the final stretch of non-boss-encounter gameplay was really good, perhaps the best in the game, thanks to the types of enemies you fight there. I'm at the final boss now and he's kicking my ass hard. Had about 10 attempts at him so far but I've only managed to get his health down to half.

A few gameplay clips from the second half of the game:

[faetal]

What Twisty said.
It's almost adorable how heavily it wears its influence on its sleeve.
Does it play like a love letter, or a shameless clone?

[henke]

Dunno if I'd call it a love letter. Clearly the devs have played (and probably loved) Dark Souls to pieces to be able to copy it's gameplay so exactly. But it's not like it directly references Dark Souls in any way, except for an achievement called "The real Lords starts here".

I wouldn't wanna call it a shameless clone either. Between new gameplay crinkles like the spell powers, and the narrative(which honestly isn't that bad!) there's clearly some new ideas here. And between the amount of detail put into the world, characters and animations, and just how well the game plays, it's clear that a lot of effort has been put into it as well. It doesn't feel like the result of someone merely trying to make a quick buck by copying Dark Souls.

I'd say it feels sorta like the first Saints Row game. A solid imitation with a couple ideas of it's own. And just like that series eventually grew enough personality to step out of the shadow of the series it was imitating, I hope Lords manages to do the same, somewhere down the line.

[henke]

I hadn't played Lords for several days and I was almost considering just leaving it unfinished. But today I decided to man up and give that final boss fight one more try. I took about another 5 attempts but I finally got it. Overall the boss fights have been decent enough. The designs of the bosses are all generic as hell, but the process of studying their patterns, learning their weakspots, and timing your attacks is as solid and enjoyable as in the Souls games.

For my final verdict I'm gonna stick with what I said earlier. For Souls fans who have exhausted the From games but still want more more: yeah, give Lords a go!

[Malleus]

I picked this game up on the current Steam sale and started playing it. I see I mentioned earlier in this thread that I didn't like the art style based on the screenshots, but you know, now that I'm playing it, it doesn't really bother me. There are armors and weapons that look stupid, but mostly it's not bad, and the game does have a coherent visual style, and great graphics in general, especially the character animations. The combat is just a joy to watch and play, and I really like this game so far (I just defeated a boss called The Champion). One thing I don't like is the crafting - there's too much randomness involved. I admit, I shamelessly savescummed until I got good enough runes for at least one weapon. But all in all, based on what I've played of it so far, I definitely recommend this to anyone who liked the Souls games.

Btw, I picked Warrior starting gear and Solace (blue) magic, the latter of which is quite overpowered, but whatever. Going for STR build with shields, but still keeping it midroll because fatrolling in this game is obnoxious. I've taken a liking to a weapon called My Axe now, which is a greataxe and it looks great and surprisingly quite beleveable here - basically a mix of a polearm and an axe. Interestingly, I never used greataxes in the Dark Souls games, because there they look retarded.

[twisty]

Fist pump. Lords of the Fallen is one of the free PS4 games on PS Plus this month. I was waiting for it to go on one of the recent Steam sales but free is even better.

[henke]

Yeah I saw that. Lords and Journey are the freebies this month. Good games, alas I own both of them already. :/

[van HellSing]

Ooh, I missed this thread somehow (or, at least, the recent developments). I can offer some insight, I think: Lords was the pet project of Tomasz Gop, formerly CDP RED.

According to him, Gop left CDP since he was being pushed into a PR role leading up to The Witcher 2, while he wanted to have more creative control. He's also one to sing high praises of the Souls games in multiple interviews even before leaving CDP and announcing LotF, so this definitely was a love letter on his part. I've even seen him admit that Souls games require A LOT of balancing to get right, somewhat implying the developers didn't get to do as much on LotF. Gop left CI Games shortly after release, reasons unknown, but I suspect he was dissatisfied with how the publisher treaterd the game - it's pretty obviously rather unfinished. Since then, however, he's back to work on a sequel, and CI's also doing an industrial sci-fi bent on Souls, by the title of The Surge.

[Malleus]

he's back to work on a sequel

Do you have a source for that? I'm pretty sure LotF2 is not happening.

[van HellSing]

I might be out of date on this, but:
http://www.gry-online.pl/S013.asp?ID=97005
http://www.gamezilla.pl/newsy/2016/1...f-the-fallen-2

Both links are from March this year, and they're about Gop returning to CI to work on LotF2.

[Malleus]

Oh, interesting. That's actually newer than the info I remember, which was about Gop leaving CI. Allright then, I certainly wouldn't mind a LotF2 happening!