It rewards you at almost every turn, whether it's with chests crammed with entire gear sets or with the hidden challenge portals that pop up after you defeat a boss, allowing you to fight off three waves of enemies for the promise of a chest crammed with loot. The weapons themselves are fun to use, whether it's a customizable magic gauntlet for ranged combat or impressive-looking weapons like scythes and staves. In fact, on the mandatory first playthrough before the New Game Plus is enabled, encounters seem balanced for people who were scared away from Dark Souls’ unrelenting emphasis on hardcore play.Lords of the Fallen concerns itself more with arcade-quality fun, and it complements this focus with a Diablo-style loot system that drops ever-better weapons and gear from both chests and enemies. They're certainly not pushovers, but neither are they even close in difficulty to the monsters Dark Souls fans are used to. Harkyn also encounters some fascinating creatures along the way, such as vaguely Cthulhu-type figures who breathe fire or giant spiders who spew venom. Blocking attacks and rolling out of harm's way is essential in Lords of the Fallen, at least for the first few hours. (I like to think that it would have been more interesting had the Rhogar world featured something else besides, well, more crumbling castles and snowy peak.) All in all, I was more fascinated by the look of the gear than the landscape the bulky, comic book design of characters and weaponry is less "prepare to die" and more “let’s kick some ass.”Īs it turns out, that attitude doesn’t undermine the joys of combat. It's generally a good looking world, although aside from the welcome lengthy jaunt into the Rhogar homeworld, it’s composed of the usual crumbling castles and snowy peaks. Far more interesting are the audio snippets of lore waiting in scrolls scattered about the world of Keystone, which help Harkyn's world come to life in a way it never manages with the main cast of characters in play. It peppers its cutscenes with choices such as whether to chop a monk's infected arm off or leave it to fester, but significance feels minimal aside from alterations to the final scene after the last boss falls over. The story wants to be something greater, but never quite attains it. When the plot tries for a shocking twist near the end of its roughly 17-hour story, it's hard to care about anyone involved. Even the big bad guy behind it all gets only around three minutes of screen time. We’re never told the nature of his crimes, however, and Lords repeatedly introduces other characters with only a modicum of characterization. Lords of the Fallen’s formulaic story follows Harkyn, a gruff criminal who's pulled from behind bars to save the world from interdimensional monsters called the Rhogar.
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