There’s something addictive about slamming your head against a wall, and seeing whether your head, or the wall, breaks first. This is my experience with every ‘Soulslike’ title, and Lords of the Fallen falls into this category neatly. A brutal, unforgiving, and yet, rewarding title, Lords of the Fallen is a massive improvement over the 2014 game of the same name. While that’s admittedly a low bar to clear, it fits right in with the Dark Souls titles in overall polish, epic boss battles, a rich lore-deep world that’s interconnected, and the massive difficulty that comes with it.
Lords of the Fallen begins with a small cutscene introducing the player to the land of Mournstead. As a Dark Crusader, you are one of the last bastions of hope in a desolate world plagued by the near return of the Demon God Adyr. You wield the Umbral Lamp, a powerful relic bestowed on the player by the Church of Orius (the good god) that allows passage between the Axiom (realm of the living) and the Umbral (realm of the dead).
The mission in Lords of the Fallen is to reverse the corruption on five beacons that were used by ancient heroes—called the Judges, then Hallowed Sentinels as guardians—to stop the Demon God Adyr from resurrecting. Unfortunately, because the Hallowed Sentinels were so lousy at their job of maintaining the beacons (some even turning to the dark side), it’s up to the player—and some helpful followers—to clean up the failure of the Sentinels and put Adyr down for good, or choose another path.
Dark Beginnings
After creating a character with literal flowers in his beard I was off to restore beacons and slay enemies. I chose the basic Dark Crusader class as it gave me access to healthy Strength and Radiance stats to cast basic healing magic and swing blunt objects with force.
There are three types of magic in the world of Axiom: Radiant, Umbral, and Rhogar which translates to light, dark, and inferno spells that require different catalysts to perform. It’s not that cut and dry, however, Radiant Magic is performed by the Orius-faithful after self-mutilating. The blood price allows the caster to perform these types of miracles, and like everything else in Lords of the Fallen, the three magic types have deep lore explaining how they’re performed.
Lords of the Fallen gives the player a decent enough tutorial—trust me, you will need it—to perform your duties as a Dark Crusader, and then kicks you into the fire like Patches in a FromSoftware game. One thing is made apparent immediately: Lords of the Fallen might as well be a death simulator. Death is a certainty that will happen many times in Mournstead, and once you die you enter the Umbral realm with a second life and health bar. This is where Lords of the Fallen becomes its own identity aside from being “just another Dark Souls,” the inclusion of the Umbral realm.
I Love Lamp
The Umbral Lamp is the bread and butter of Lords of the Fallen gameplay. The way the Umbral Lamp is hoisted kept giving me the ‘Magic Lamp’ quest in The Witcher 3 vibes due to the similar nature in messing with the undead. This magical device allows the holder to peer into the Umbral realm, and the landscape is MUCH different than Axiom. There are puzzles to solve, hidden creatures to defeat, and most importantly, the way forward in Umbral. To fully enter Umbral the player must lose all their health or just enter it manually.
Dark Crusaders have two lives, the Axiom and Umbral. After your health depletes in Axiom, you are reborn with a blast of Umbral energy. The way Wolf resurrects in Sekiro comes to mind, but you are much more vulnerable in Umbral. There is a timer in the corner of the UI when you enter Umbral in the shape of an eye, and when the eye turns red, an unbeatable reaper chases you and tries to put you down for good. There are also remnants placed throughout Mournstead that the Umbral Lamp can activate, adding juxtaposition to what happened prior to the events of Lords of the Fallen. One resembled the Spartan Kick in the movie 300, and a story was given as to what exactly happened. An intriguing addition.
“One thing is made apparent immediately: Lords of the Fallen might as well be a death simulator.”
The Umbral Lamp can pull things towards you (like enemies) and activate the landscape to fashion a way forward. As I looked around for a way through a particularly jarring burning building, a swarm of moths (signifies a spot where the Umbral Lamp can be used) was arranged in a bridge-like pattern out the window. The player can either enter Umbral to cross or hoist the Lamp and walk across slowly. In areas where the Lamp must be used to manipulate the surroundings, the player must be in Umbral to cross giving a boon for enemies to end your crusade.
I found out you can be pulled into Umbral by getting hit with the Lamp hoisted the hard way and lost one of my lives instantaneously. Lords of the Fallen is a title that will test your mettle and your patience, the same way a toddler presses all the buttons on an elevator.
A reasonably hard puzzle had me enter and exit Umbral multiple times, using points that allow the player to return to Axiom. The only ways to return to Axiom are either Vestiges placed around the landscape (that function similarly to Sites of Grace in Elden Ring) or sorrow-filled dead bodies that only glow when you’re in Umbral, but uses are limited. Hexworks does a superb job with world building, placing these in the right spots to keep the player navigating forward, a hard task that looks effortless in the overarching expanded world of Mournstead. These save points can be fast-travelled to and from immediately after discovering them, one of my favourite design choices present in Lords of the Fallen.
An Interconnected World
After (many deaths) arriving at the Skybridge, a feeling of hope fills the player as friendly characters surround you. At first this area is sparse and doesn’t have many companions, but as you continue venturing this area becomes populated with typical NPC fare that adds backstory and intrigue to the deep narrative at play here. Skybridge is the Lords of the Fallen equivalent of the Roundtable Hold.
When the player discovers an item, they can inspect it to read up on how it came to be, and almost always there is a huge chunk of exposition that opens a window into the lore of the world, like the characters in Skybridge do through conversation.
I’ve always thought rewarding the player for finding hidden items with rich world lore is a great incentive, and Lords of the Fallen continues this trend remarkably. Like a cutscene, each item I find adds another puzzle piece to the overarching story and everything continues to make more sense as you venture forward.
Some of the NPCs here like the smith (whom the player discovers later) and Pieta can upgrade your gear. The Estus—I mean the Sanquinarix, can be upgraded to have more charges which equate to more health potions, weapons can be enhanced, and of course, items must be located around the world of Mournstead to make these craftspeople more effective at their jobs.
Notably, throughout my time in Mournstead many of the biomes connect to Skybridge through doors that were once barred. This interconnectivity reminds me of Lordran in Dark Souls, and Hexworks does an impeccable job at making it work in Mournstead.
Death Is Certain
There is a myriad of enemies the Dark Crusader faces in Mournstead. In typical Action RPG fashion, Crusaders wield magic, melee/ranged weaponry, a dodge button, and parries to smite enemies. The Umbral Lamp can also be used to tear the souls out of enemies (called soul-flaying), and upon destroying their souls you are rewarded with more Vigor (the base currency used for levelling and purchasing goods) and a higher drop rate. Some fights require use of the Umbral Lamp, and these enemies can be determined through a blue health bar.
Hexworks really pulled out all the stops on combat with a lamp, and the variety of enemies and how these mechanics are used is diverse enough to incite curiosity in the deftest of Crusaders. Enemy blue metres can be removed by destroying blue floating retina looking appendages, and they can even be found in some massive Boss Fights to help tear them down off their high horse.
“Lords of the Fallen stands out as a beacon of the soulslike genre, adding enough of its own DNA to make a fresh statement in a flooded genre.”
Speaking of, when I faced a boss enemy prior to one of five beacons called The Hushed Saint, I had to dodge attacks, and hoist the Umbral Lamp to explode these blue retinas to knock him off. After getting throttled enough to go to the Umbral realm, the blue retinas were visible without having to hoist the lamp, which helped immensely.
After bringing the Hushed Saint down, using an Umbral Lamp to pull the remnant out of a nearby spectre gave me the “remnant of the Hushed Saint”. This remnant can be used to acquire the boss enemy’s armour, weapons, or spells back at Skybridge. As a bonus, some of the NPCs you have recruited can be brought into boss fights with you, it is dangerous to go alone after all.
Almost every enemy drops what they hold in Lords of the Fallen. My second least favourite enemy in the game (thus far) has a big spiky tube placed on their head and they spam a head smash attack that takes out almost all the Dark Crusader’s health. After soul-flaying the enemy numerous times, he finally dropped the huge spiky helmet. After equipping this cumbersome reverse iron maiden for my head, my excitement increased tenfold when I backed out to the main menu, and the Dark Crusader holding the lamp on the screen had the massive helmet equipped. While Lords of the Fallen is a great time filled with incredibly hard trials around every corner, there are some gripes I had during my time with it.
Lords of the Fallen has the main character attack animations lunge forward with EVERY weapon. Unlike Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and even Fox’s side special from Super Smash Bros., the Dark Crusader spills over the edge easily if you swing too close. The spiky-headed adversary mentioned above populated thin walkways, and often I simply lost footing and slipped off the edge. This has killed me more than every enemy in the game, and it just feels like a cheap mechanic to stop the player’s progress during a hard segment.
When there are 6+ enemies on the screen, this issue is exacerbated by a sluggish frame rate stutter, which almost certainly results in death. Running to a Vestige is also near-impossible, considering the stutter continues to get worse as more entities flood the game.
Permadeath is a cool mechanic for some, and this may be a problem for just me, but on my travels, I came across a petrified mercenary needing help in a bog. Poisonous enemies clouded my vision, and after swinging my two-handed sword around like a maniac, the statue became collateral, and the NPC let out a death sigh. They just stay dead with their story wiped out entirely. This would be forgivable if I didn’t feel the issue lies in bad automatic camera choices, and a poor lock-on mechanic when surrounded.
Lords of the Fallen stands out as a beacon of the soulslike genre, adding enough of its own DNA to make a fresh statement in a flooded genre. Strong combat, deep lore, and a masterfully interconnected world drive the narrative forward, demanding the player to see it through. Although I’ve faced the death screen more times than I’d care to admit, the unstoppable allure of ‘one more try’ pervades the air upon death and Lords of the Fallen deploys a sound enough experience to keep me playing until the credits.
