Lords of the Fallen Review

ign.com:

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. While the original Lords of the Fallen from 2014 was one of the earliest to bravely take a stab at recreating FromSoftware’s lightning in a bottle, it didn’t quite hit that high mark. Nearly a decade and about a million soulslike copycats later, there’s perhaps no better time for its follow-up to take a second swipe – and thankfully, this new, confusingly identically named Lords of the Fallen confidently lands its strike. Its world, divided into dual realities, is absolutely awesome to explore, buildcrafting is diverse and complex, and combat is so smooth and satisfying that I’m willing to forgive all the ways it cribs from its contemporaries. Some pretty severe performance issues and bugs as well as disappointingly easy boss fights mean this latest thrust isn’t quite a fatal blow, but even so, I expect to spend many more hours impaling enemies and exploring every nook and cranny of its cleverly split world for secrets.

Lords of the Fallen is yet another entry in the action-RPG soulslike craze, complete with an unsettling fantasy setting, other players invading your game for some co-op or PvP goodness, and, of course, lots of dying. It makes use of the same sort of deadly third-person combat system full of dodge rolling, posture meters, and emoting over fallen enemies as a sign of utmost disrespect. A lot is borrowed from FromSoft classics (in this case, Dark Souls specifically), but there’s also quite a bit of unique stuff to get excited about, too. That includes things like some super cool dual-reality shenanigans, or a nifty magical lamp that lets you flay the souls right out of your enemies.

And look, I know every time I review another one of these things, I always gripe