Lords of the Fallen Version 2.0 Review

 

 

 

 

 

So, this is actually an update post for a change and not so much an actual revisitation (well it sort of is I guess!) as I take another look at the action RPG, Lords of the Fallen, which I've recently replayed again afters its latest 2.0 version, which has seen a lot of changes since the game's initial release in October 2023.

So, with that said, I will use most of the original review below but add and change a few things as well as I take another look at this RPG and see how it fairs in 2025...

PREMISE

So, rather say anything about the story of the game, which for once I won't I will instead go over the premise of the game. So, the game essentially is similar to Dark Souls in that uses swords and sorceries but the twist here is that you can go between two different worlds, one which is called Axiom, which is the realm of the living and the other is Umbral, the realm of the dead. So, throughout the game your character must traverse between both worlds and fight many dangerous enemies before finally reaching your goals, which will vary depending on which ending of the game you go for.

THOUGHTS

On its initial release, Lords of the Fallen had a lot to live up to the high standards of the Souls games and even its counterpart, Lies of P, which has received much acclaim since its releae. However, Lords of the Fallen has not enjoyed the same level of acclaim and had left many gamers frustrated at its uneven difficulty and its technical issues, which cannot be ignored or denied as the game's performance is pretty stuttering particularly on Xbox but even so on PS5 although it it is a bit better on that console.

That said however, despite the criticisms of the game, Lords of the Fallen has in its latest version 2.0, seen a lot of improvements in terms of its balance of difficulty and enemy placement as well as some quality of life changes. This has made me enjoy the game a lot more this time round as I returned to it with a somewhat renewed sense of vigor (also the currency of the game funnily enough!) as it feels more like the game it should have been on its release.

GAMEPLAY

As for the gameplay, I will split this section into the usual sub-sections as I always do for video game reviews.

COMBAT & WEAPONS

Starting with the combat, Lords of the Fallen uses a third person perspective similar to the Souls games and does the usual mix of regular and strong attacks, along with shield parries and even kicks, plunge attacks and critical attacks, where you can stun an enemy with a strong attack behind, which will allow you to perform a finisher attack. Similar to Bloodborne, you also have a rally system of sorts where when entering Umbral you will lose some health but on attacking enemies you can go get it back as you strike them, however if they attack you, then that white health (or withered health as its known) will disappear and you will need to use a healing item.  

As for the weapons, there is plenty of variety here to choose from as the player has access to the likes of short swords, long swords, axes, spears, halberds, flails, daggers as well as bows and crossbows and you also have the option to dual wield weapons. You will also have access to catalysts that are used for casting spells and come in different varieties for casting the three types of spells of radiance, umbral and inferno, which consists of holy, magic and fire respectively.

AXIOM & UMBRAL REALMS

As for one of the key concepts of the game, it is split into utilising two different worlds, Axion, the realm of the living and Umbral, the realm of the dead, which the player can access the Umbral realm via their umbral lamp. And in order to progress the game, there will be times where you need to swtich between the two different realms to access areas where you might not be able to access in Axiom, you need to switch over to it Umbral to access unseen paths or climbs unseen ladders that will come apparent when you switch.

There will also be what's called umbral entities in the Umbral realm, which you need to destroy as they will block you path otherwise. And although you can enter Umbral whenever you want, you can only exit umbral by finding certain exit points ot reseting yourself at a checkpoint. The Umbral realm will also have its own enemies, which appear as ghostly figures that will attack but as you remain in the realm, the enemies will become more present and stronger, so its dangerous to remain in that realm for too long. Its also worth noting that when you die in Axiom you will be transferred into the umbral realm and when you die there, that's you properly dead and you will lose your souls (or vigor as its known).

UMBRAL LAMP AND SOUL FLAYING

Another key item of the game is your umbral lamp, which will let you character traverse between the two worlds but it also can be used to gain access to platforms or unlock umbral entities that block your  path. You can however also use the lamp for attacking enemies and using a technique called soul flaying, which will force an enemy briefly out of their body allowing you to attack their soul-like form, or you can even pull their form over a cliff, which when the enemy will recover its normal form, they will fall off the cliff, which is alot of fun to do! ;-)

RADIANT, UMBRAL AND INFERNO SPELLS

In the game, it uses three different types of magic for players that want to play as a caster, so you have the choice of radiant, umbral and inferno magic. Starting with radiant spells, they are very similar to miracles in the Souls games, where offensive spells will deal holy damage and resemble lightning and laser like beams, however you also have healing radiant spells that restore your hp. As for the umbral magic, this is more akin to like regular magic in the Souls games which has a blue light to it and is a mix of projectiles, magic weapons and weapon buffs. And lastly are the Inferno spells, which are basically pyromancies from the Souls games and again features mix of offensive projectiles and fire infused weapon buffs or damage buffs.

VESTIGES AND VESTIGE SEEDS

Another key aspect of the game are the use of its checkpoints, which are known as vestiges but they are somewhat sparsely found throughout the game and there will be long stretches of the game before you can reach your next vestige. However, as a way around this, you can use what is called vestige seeds, which you plant in areas known as flowerbeds, which will become visible when you see your umbral lamp glow. The only issue here is though, you can only plant one vestige seed at a time, so you need to be careful with your usage of them.

CHARACTER STATS

As for character stats, they are again quite similar to the Soul games, where your character has six stats to choose from to level up their character. So, the stats are strength, which you can level up to use strength based weapons, agility, which can be used to wield skill based weapons, endurance, which affects your stamina levels and equipment load. The other stats are vitality, which determines the amount of health your character has and also effects your equipment load, Radiance, which is used to increase your ability to use radiant spells and weapons and lastly there is Inferno, which is used to boost pyromancy spells as well as umbral ones. An important secondary stat also worth mentioning is called Mana, which is basically like your focus points bar in the Souls games and determines the amount of spells you can cast at one time, which can be replenished with the use of items called mana stones.

CHARACTER CLASSES

Moving onto the character classes, you will have a similar mixture to what you see in the Souls games of knight classes, warriors, sorcerers, pyromancers, hunters and the most difficult class, the condemned, which starts off with the lowest points of any class. So, you can choose between these different classes when you start the game and you can also later respec your character if you want to rejig your stats to fit your character. There are also four classes that can be unlocked Dark Cursader, Lord, Putrid Child and Radiant Purifier.

XP AND VIGOR

Another aspect of the game is the use of XP (or experience points) which you will gain when you kill enemies, you will gain vigor, which is similar to souls in the Souls games, which is your currency for buying items or leveling up your character. Also similar to the Souls series, if your character dies then they will lose all their vigor and they will need to pick it up afterward they have respawned at the point where they died last, but if they fail to get it and die again, the vigor will be lost forever. Your required vigor level will also go up each time you level up your character but overall the level requirement remains quite low as I get up to 11,000 vigor per level after I had finished my first playthrough but then the vigor gained from enemies is also lower than you find in the Souls games.

ENEMIES AND BOSSES

As for the game's enemies, there is reasonable mixture of humanoid and monster enemies to be found throughout the game, which will vary in challenge from easy to pretty difficult and areas can quite often become overwhelming to deal with as there plenty to be found! As for the bosses, again there is a variety of humanoid and monster bosses to fight and some of them can be very challenging whereas others can be pretty easy although initially the difficulty was inconsistent originally, these bosses in version 2.0 are for the most straight forward with a few exceptions.

THE EMPTY MIRROR

Another new(ish) inclusion, which was actually included in an earlier patch (patch 1.14 I think) is the ability to change your character's appearance. This however isn't as easy as it sounds as you need to obtain four items first, three of which are glass shards and then a reversal dagger, which you can buy from the Umbral merchant, Molhu at the Skyrest bridge. However, once you do get these items, you use them at the mirror founds at Skyrest and then you can change your character's gender, features etc to something different. 

RESPEC (REBIRTH CHRYSALIS)

You can also respec your character via the use of an item called the rebirth chrysalis, which you can obtain from Molhu at Skyrest bridge. You can then give the chrysalis to Pieta, who will facilitate your respec similar to how she upgrades your Sanguinarix for HP recovery. 

NPCS & SKYREST BRIDGE

And last of all, I will mention the NPCs in the game and there quite a few to be found here and there are some that will have their own quests that you can follow throughout the game. Some of the NPCs you will find are at the central hub of the game, which is known as Skyrest bridge, where you find NPCs such as Exacter Dunmire, who will give you a series of tasks to complete, Pieta, who can boost your character's healing item's potency and number of usages known as a Sanguinarix and Gerlinde, who is a blacksmith, who can upgrade your weapons. There are also other characters, who act as merchants such as Stormund, Theikh Ihir and Winterberry found throughout the game, who also have questlines to follow.

GRAPHICS

As for the graphics, the game itself looks very impressive and it features a good mixture of environments that have plenty of good detail in their surroundings and the game also has a good colour palette as it offers some nice vivid colours in areas, which is a nice welcome to some of the more dreary coloured games out there. The character models are also pretty good in the game although they are not the very best out there as there are better ones but they are still good enough.

The game however does suffer from significant performance issues on console and my Xbox Series X version, has serious frame rate dips at different areas and as the game has been patched, it runs even worse at times than it did when it was first released! So, not sure if that is to do with just poor optimisation or are the Xbox consoles just not up to the task of running this game (which does use the latest Unreal 5 engine). It most likely will be the game is just poorly optimised by its developers, which is a shame as these frame dips are pretty significant and do impact on the game's performance quite badly at times.

Update: as for the PS5 performance, having bought the game for my PS5 recently, the performance is a bit better on this console but there are still some noticable dips that impact performance but not quite as bad. I also had a PS5 Pro for a short time (but couldn't stand its noisy fan!) and on this, LOTF ran pretty well with very few frame dips. Overall though, the game looks pretty good but still has its faults technically speaking, which is a letdown.

MUSIC

As for the game's soundtrack, it was composed by American composer Cris Velasco and Norwegian composer Knut Havenstroup Haugen (who composed the 2014 similarly named game) and overall its great with plenty of variety in its themes. The score definitely does have some standout moments such as the boss fight themes for Pieta, The Hushed Saint, the Skinstealer, the Lightreaper and even the main theme of the game itself is very good. So, overall I was quite impressed with the score's variety of styles and at times it sounded like I was listening to a mix of Souls games, The Matrix and even Doctor Who. So, the score is definitely one of the game's strongest aspects and one of my favourite scores from any video game.

FLAWS

As for faws...yes Lords of the Fallen does have some worth mentioning but some of these issues have been addressed in my update here.

For starters the game's difficulty level is very inconsistent at the best of times and it has to be said this game has hands down one of the HARDEST first main bosses ever in Pieta, as I was stuck on her two or three days alone! I mean this boss is way too hard for the first boss of the game and clearly the developers haven't heard of the concept of progressive difficulty and thought "Sod it! We'll just put a really tough boss first!" to mess with players.

UPDATE: However in Version 2.0, Pieta's difficulty has been greatly reduced and you can now defeat her more easily making the fight more accessible and far easier for the player to progress to the Skyrest bridge hub area. So, this for me was a welcome change given just how brutal she was when the game was originally released.  

The game is also very guilty of having way too many enemy ganks as you try as you often have to resort to running through areas, otherwise you will get massacred by a slew of enemies. And this is particularly bad in the umbral world areas where there are enemies such as reapers that carve you up or ravenous fascinators, which are basically mimics that are invisible and chunk most of your HP (if not all of it!) when try pick up what seems to be an item. So, as the game went on, I did find myself getting frustrated with the endless ganks and it was a game that managed to out Dark Souls II, Dark Souls II in its gankage.

UPDATE: to be fair, in the latest 2.0 update, the enemy ganks are more manageable and they don't chase you to the ends of the earth like they used to, which makes life a lot easier. The game still does feel a bit BS towards the end in the final area of the game, Bramis Castle, in terms of enemy gankage but that aside its not too bad.

Another of course relates to the limit checkpoints in the game as there are very few vestiges to be had in the game with only or two tops in each area. However you can of course use your vestige seeds to plant a seed in an umbral flowerbed and use that as a temporary checkpoint but you can only place one at a time and be careful that you don't run out of any as you progress although they are only 1200 vigor each, so its not too bad in that respect. However, part of the issue I have with this is to do with the HUD display for how many vestige seeds you have, as the number is not clearly displayed and somewhat hidden behind the icon for it, so its easy at times to forget you need to go back and buy another seed.

Another issue I had with the game was the disappearance of the one of the key merchants in the game, Thek-Ihir, who sells cures and resistance balms for different ailments such as poison, bleed, fire or ignite build-up as well as other useful items. However, at a certain point late on in the game (once you fight the boss in the Empyrean area) he will disappear forever and you will never be able to purchase his items ever again!

So, I found this to be a really stupid decision on the developer's behalf, because it means you then need to try and farm these items off specific enemies instead, which is nowhere near as handy or straight forward (although some of the salts can be easily farmed right enough). This forces you to stockpile these items before he effectively disappears and the fact there isn't even an item you can obtain to access his shop items similar to the bell bearings in Elden Ring for merchants, is frankly, a truly dumb decision made by the developers, which they STILL haven't resolved over 18 months later!

Then there are also some frustrating issues to do with the layout of the areas, as you can easily get lost in certain areas after a while and one such area for me was Forsaken Fen, which is a poison area and it took me forever to get through that area alone! I also spent alot of time running around trying to find an entrance into the Revelation Depths area, which you access via the Sunless Skein area but again the access point is far from obvious or easy to find. So, this game is definitely quite frustrating when it comes to navigating its confusing areas.

Further to this previous point, I also found trying to access the Saintly Quintessences a real chore as well, which are used to boost the amount of charges your Sanguinarix can be used to restore your HP, as the game really sends you on a wild goose chase to find them! So, more often than not, you need to enter Umbral and wander around forever to locate them in different areas but in the end, I just wish they made them more accessible to find.

And then we have the issue of the enemy variety as there is simply not enough enemy variety in the game here and you will have seen pretty much the same enemies in each area over and over again as you progress. There are one or two new enemies included in the later areas but overall in the final areas of the game, I was just seeing the same old enemies and its a pity the developers got lazy with their choices here as more variety would have been a good thing.

And lastly there are of course as I mention earlier in the graphics section, the technical issues with the game as it has some horrendous frame rate issues, where the frame rate literally at times slows down to a snailcrawl and even other times, the screen froze completely! And one of the worst glitchy areas in the game for me was the central hub, Skyrest bridge, which was frequently jittery and stuttery and quite frankly there is no excuse for releasing a game in this state and the developers really should have devoted more time to this one rather than put it out as the buggy mess it is and adopt the "we'll patch as we go!" attitude but sadly this game is just one example of a recurring theme these days with new game releases.

UPDATE again with the PS5 version, the stutters aren't as noticable or frequent as the Xbox but they are still there and after all this time, its still pretty frustrating this hasn't been addressed properly by the developers.

So, that's it for the flaws.

SUM UP

So, to sum up, Lords of the Fallen Version 2.0 is a noticeable improvement over the original game and adds better balanced difficulty and more forgiving enemy placement as well some new features, some of which were added in previous versions. There are still some technical issues and yes there are still some issues with the game (like STILL no option to access Theikr Ihir's items after he disappears!). However despite these issues, Lords of the Fallen 2.0 is a much improved version of the game and well worth checking out now if you haven't already.

So, I will rate Lords of the Fallen 2.0:

8.5 out of 10

So, that's it for now guys and I will be back soon with another post.

Until then, its bye for now!