In this Lords of the Fallen Full Game Impressions, I’m going to be talking about our gameplay impressions of the game as well as give you guys some updates on the way certain mechanics work. If you want more details on how Lords of the Fallen plays, meaning, how different it is from Soulslike games, then this article is for you!
Lords of the Fallen Full Game Impressions
So I’ve played about 30 hours or so of the game up to the fourth boss. Note that we weren’t allowed to go past this for our Preview Impressions so I won’t talk about anything past it. I imagine it would take a normal person about 10-12 hours to do 1 blind playthrough up to this point of the game.
We did play with different playstyles like the Dual Wield, Sword and Shield, magic and non-magic. And so I want to talk about these as well as how the game plays for the first chunk.
Blocking, Dodging, Posture, and Parrying
What you’ll immediately notice while you’re playing Lords of the Fallen is that it has much less of a reliance on blocking than Souls games do. Shields, at the beginning, don’t have a lot of physical protection, usually somewhere between 30 to 40% when you block, which means you’re going to still take some damage. But the developers have made it a little bit more forgiving because essentially what happens when you block now is that you have a Wither Mechanic.
This Wither Mechanic makes your health grayed out and then if you hit enemies, you can regain that before they hit you again, kind of like in Lies of P if you’re familiar with that. Here, when you block and then attack afterward without getting hit, you’ll be able to regain some of your health. So unless you’re very good at getting your health back without being hit, you won’t be blocking as much, and instead, rely on dodge rolling and parrying.
The game has two different dodges – a dodge and a dodge roll. Tapping dodge once does kind of like a sidestep whereas tapping it twice does a dodge roll if you need to roll further or to extend your dodge.
Meanwhile, parrying works similar to the Souls games where if you tap it at the right time, you do some posture damage to the enemy. It doesn’t always guard break them like it would in Dark Souls but the damage you deal lets you kill enemies if you can parry them a couple of times. You can usually stagger them. Targets have a Posture Mechanic not unlike in Sekiro where if you deal enough damage to them or if you parry enough of their attacks, they get staggered when you execute a kick or heavy attack. You can then do a devastating attack on them.
Moveset
Another thing I want to mention is that weapon movesets seem extremely varied in Lords of the Fallen. You have tons of different inputs, you can hit different buttons at the same time to do various attacks such as spinning, running, and rolling with each weapon type. This is incredible, in my opinion.
I wasn’t expecting so many of these and I think it’s something players are going to be impressed with immediately coming from games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls. There are even more inputs they can do here to get more attacks out of their weapon types.
Magic Types
Next are the three different types of magic in Lords of the Fallen. You have Umbral, Inferno and Radiant. Radiant are similar to your miracles. Inferno is like your pyromancy sorceries and then Umbral is like your dark magic. Umbral requires a catalyst that uses both Inferno and Radiant stats. Inferno requires Inferno and Radiant requires Radiant.
These spells can be mapped to different buttons so unlike in Souls where you have to cycle through them as you’re fighting, in this game, you can have up to three or four of these slotted into your catalyst. You’ll then hold the left trigger and press whatever button to cast a particular spell.
Additionally, similar to Souls games, there are different catalysts that are better or worse and are available for each type of magic. You’ll find them throughout your playthrough and upgrade them to have better scaling.
Character Progression and Equipment
Character progression works very similarly to the way it does in Souls games where you gain currency called Vigor by defeating enemies and then use that to buy items. Or you can use it to increase your attributes at vestiges, which are the bonfires version of Lords of the Fallen. You can also upgrade your weapons and armor at the blacksmith in order to make them stronger for your catalyst. You’ll find rings and amulets that go with these. There are two ring slots and an amulet slot in the game to make your character more powerful.
Next is an equip load so your rolling is going to be based on whether you’re light, medium, or heavy. Heavy is obviously fat rolling whereas light has better dodges so you’re going to manage your equipment through this. There’s a little bar on the screen that shows you what that looks like. Also, there aren’t separate weapon sets in the game so you don’t have multiple weapons equipped at the same time. This with your catalyst will be your weight.
Gameplay Loop
The general gameplay loop is very similar to Souls in that you have a world area to explore and there are different ways to go within it. They’re also all interconnected to other areas that connects to sections but at some point, they might come back together in an entirely new part of the map. This is fantastic and exploration in Lords of the Fallen is easily my favorite part because there are always hidden stuff everywhere you go.
The level design is incredible, the shortcuts are very well done. They have a mechanic in the game that I talked a little bit about in a previous video that allows you to jump back and forth between the Umbral Realm and your realm.
Umbral Realm
So what happens is as you’re exploring, you’ll eventually need to shift into the Umbral Realm because you’ll come to a dead end. And then everything will change and you’ll find ways to go that you couldn’t afford to before. You’ll find new loot hidden in different places, etc.
The Umbral Realm is much more unforgiving than the regular realm. As you’re in there, more and more enemies will start coming after you and eventually, if you’re in there for too long, some very, very powerful enemies will attack you so you’ll probably die. You can only stay in there for a limited time and you’re going to be shifting back and forth to keep exploring and finding things you might have missed like weapons and armor.
When I first played the game, I wasn’t sure how much of an impact this would have whether it’s just a gimmick or not, and I can confidently say at this point, it’s absolutely phenomenal. The ways it’s designed is incredible because it makes exploration even more interesting due to the added layer of dimension. It’s ingenious how the developers have come up with this because they basically stacked the world on top of another world, both of which are very well done.
Zones, Areas, and Locations
The different zones of the game are exception because of the different environments you get to discover. You have villages, castles, caves, and platforms and each area and enemy feel very distinct. So it helps add to the aspect of exploration that I think is arguably the best part of Lords of the Fallen.
Vestiges and Umbral Flowerbed
While you’re out exploring, you’re going to find vestiges, which as I mentioned earlier, work like bonfires. Each one of these is a remnant of a previous lamp bearer that’s what you are in the game. You’re basically using the lamp to bridge the gap between worlds and each one of these lamp bearers has their own lore and history so you’re following in their footsteps as you progress, which is a nice touch.
You can rest at these vestiges to get your health back and you can upgrade your character if you want to spend your Vigor to make them stronger. You can also fast travel between these points. One really cool thing they’ve done is your ability to use a vestige seed to create a vestige to rest at. But remember that these seeds are only limited initially but you can get some of them from co-op play if you’re helping people out. You’ll then need to decide where you want to put these rest points and how far apart they will be from one another. These are incredibly tough decisions and it adds a little bit of tension that I really like.
Boss Fights
The boss fights of Lords of the Fallen have, so far, been interesting. They’re all different, have unique mechanics, and are a bit challenging. But I think most veterans would say that they’re probably not as difficult as Souls games. Although the difficulty of each boss varies a bit, some are easier while others are harder, it’s going to be tough to say whether it all pans out to be on the same level as Souls games.
As always, if you do have trouble with these, you can summon NPCs to help you. These are characters in the game and you’ll find more and more of them as you progress. Or, you can summon another player as well. If you’re co-oping already, they can just come into the boss area.
NPCs and Skyrest Bridge
NPCs of Lords of the Fallen have their own stories and quests and many of these are very cryptic so you don’t know what’s going to happen. Sometimes, they ask you to give them an item you don’t know what you get in exchange for it. If you don’t receive one on the spot, you’ll eventually get it later on.
There’s a place called Skyrest Bridge, which is similar to Souls game’s Firelink Shrine, where all NPCs usually gather as long as you find, rescue, or help them. Their corresponding voice acting is really good but I feel like some of the voices just don’t match the characters they’re playing or even the theme of the game. For the most part though, they’re very well done and they help to create the setting of Lords of the Fallen to pull you in.
Enemies
If it wasn’t obvious from the gameplay footage, the main enemy is the Rhogar, which makes a return from the previous Lords of the Fallen game. There are also other enemies you’ll fight and they’re not all Rhogar. There are also factions you’ll run into that are bullying each other and have different philosophies so you’ll see all of these a lot throughout the course of the game.
Performance and Bugs
Next is the performance of Lords of the Fallen. I know a lot of people are interested in how games are playing particularly the ones that look as good as this one. I’ve been playing on a 3080 Ti at 1440p on High settings with a pretty good system. This game seems to perform much better in Full Screen than Windowed or Borderless for some reason so if you’re playing it on the upcoming launch, make sure to put it on Full Screen display. I’m also getting somewhere around 100 to 150 FPS, which fluctuates within that range.
I did have a few stutters at the beginning but nothing seriously major, mostly pretty smooth performance across the board. There are a couple of places where it dips but I will say that the further you get into the game, it seems like the performance issues start to ramp up. And one of the things that’s kind of strange is if you play it for a long session and then restart, you get better performance so I’m not sure if there’s a memory leak or what’s going on.
When it comes to crashes, I’ve had one in 30-40 hours of playing. But other than this, the game is very stable. And then in terms of bugs, most of them are minor such as getting summoned yet not with all my health or mana. Another example is clicking on a menu option but it doesn’t do anything, and then the next time I click on the same thing, it’ll simply work. Or you know something’s not working right and you reload the game as if nothing happened. I didn’t experience anything game breaking that was jarring but just a couple of things that usually warrants a restart.
So I do think Lords of the Fallen will have some bugs and performance issues at launch. However, they’ve been releasing patches as we’ve been playing so every day, the build is a bit different. I’m just hoping that these will be fixed at launch. At the moment, it’s not in a very bad state and most people will find it acceptable but not ideal.
Final Thoughts
All in all, I’m even more excited after having played even more since I have a much better understanding of its systems. Seeing the world and the development, I cannot wait to play more of Lords of the Fallen, which we’ll be playing in the next week or so to get ready for launch with guides and the Lords of the Fallen Wiki.
If you’re a Souls fan, you’re going to want to play this new game. It provides you with a feeling of discovery, it has great combat and customization, and all the things we’ve come to know and love from Souls games. Unless there are some drastic departures later on, I think this is going to become a big hit.
So what do you guys thing from seeing all the footage that has been released today? I know a lot of other content creators got to publish some videos as well. What do you think of the game so far? Are you more excited? Are you fairly confident that it’s going to be good? Let me know in the comments!
