Lords Of The Fallen

Dark souls but slower. It's missing the very careful balance that defines the dark souls series, and only has a very basic similarity to those games. Play dark souls instead, you'll get better art, story and gameplay from that series. 

Ultimately, this game just made me want to play more Dark Souls. Pass.

I've heard this one described as 'clunky Souls', and it's true — mechanically it's almost identical to Dark Souls, just much less refined. nowadays it's easy to scoff at the shortcomings of this title, but back when it came out there weren't a whole lot of alternatives for those who craved more Souls, but had already played the original Dark Souls to death. Lords Of The Fallen suffers mainly from two major issues: poor balance and unresponsive controls (hence the 'clunky' reputation). to be more specific: some weapons are clearly superior to others not just in terms of damage output, but also because their attack animations (movesets) are much more practical — swinging faster, reaching further, and/or having quicker recovery. enemies have the same problem, as some of them are extremely fast *and* deal enough damage to kill the player in one hit *and* their attacks are not clearly telegraphed. as one can imagine, this combination of problems can lead to frustration, sometimes for prolonged periods of time. the best thing about Lords Of The Fallen is, without a doubt, it's graphics and visual style. some parts of the game look absolutely gorgeous, making for screenshots that are worth framing and hanging on a wall. all in all, I'd recommend this game only to the fans of the genre — the rest will probably ragequit after an hour.

Slavjank Dark Souls. A very good effort all things considered, I liked that you can use checkpoints without respawning enemies and beating bosses in a certain way would unlock extra stuff. Also, Dex weapons have combos which is pretty neat.

They improved a lot by the time they made The Surge.

On 4/5/2021 at 4:32 AM, Fascist_Grapefruit said:

Slavjank Dark Souls. A very good effort all things considered, I liked that you can use checkpoints without respawning enemies and beating bosses in a certain way would unlock extra stuff. Also, Dex weapons have combos which is pretty neat.

They improved a lot by the time they made The Surge.

speaking of Slavjank — how much of this game was actually made by Deck13, and how much of it was made by CI Games? because the former is a German studio that went on to make The Surge, and the latter is a Polish studio currently developing Lords of the Fallen 2.

Lords of the Fallen (2014) is mediocre, but Lords of the Fallen (2023) is actually really good and solves several endemic problems of the Soulslike genre: ranged and magic builds are generally viable and fun to play, the umbral plane mechanic makes exploration deeper and death less frustrating, and it looks really good too.
People who love Dark Souls mostly for the story will be disappointed by LotF's shallower approach, but other people might find it refreshingly straightforward.