Lords of the Fallen

[Vovolov]

Couldn't find a thread for this yet, so I figured I would make one...

Lords of the Fallen is basically a Dark Souls copy with some elements built in to make the gameplay less punishing. There's checkpoints and you can often choose to 'save' your experience and use it to level up, or keep it. When you keep your experience, you build up a running combo multiplier that increases your experience gain and item find chance. Interesting mechanic, because you get to set your own challenge, with the rewards becoming higher and higher the more you stand to lose.

It's graphically and aesthetically very pleasing to the eye, I think. Fairly gritty, but with some almost Warcraft-inspired armour and weapon styles going on. Graphical quality seems to be more than decent, certainly surpassing Dark Souls 2, though that probably wasn't much of a challenge anyway.

There's three 'classes' you can choose from at the start of the game, which define the type of magic your character will use. There's the Warrior, the Rogue and the Cleric. Then you get to choose a starting set of armour and weaponry, and as such there are 9 different combinations to start the game with (but from the demo, it seems like you'll find the alternate armours and weapons fairly quickly, so that choice doesn't change the game a whole lot).

I'll just quote the premise:

The game is set in a world where no sin is forgotten. Players take on the role of Harkyn, a convicted criminal whose sins are visible on his face, in the form of runes. The world's rulers are working to banish all evil from humans; it is unclear what exactly this might mean for someone like Harkyn. When an army of long-defeated gods attacks the human realm, Harkyn is released from prison with a chance at redemption. Along with his mentor, Kaslo, the journey to stop the attacks leads to Rhogar, another dimension inhabited by demons. Players can form alliances as they progress, combat enemies of ever-increasing difficulty, and eventually travel to the heart of the demonic realm, in an effort to achieve forgiveness for the anti-hero, Harkyn.

Some screenshots:

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And a several hour-long stream by Lobos Jr, probably best known for his Dark Souls runs:



This should give you a good impression of what the game's like.

It's coming out on the 31st of October in the EU, and the 28th in NA, on PS4, Xbone and PC.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

Oh yeah, I'm massively looking forward to this. Another Souls-style game is definitely a good thing. I'm kind of hoping this style of game becomes an actual genre and we get lots and lots.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Regardless of genre, getting games that are actually difficult back into the mainstream would be nice in and by itself.
"Artificial difficulty" pseudo-debate or not.

 

[Vovolov]

Hrmm. Well, from the demo, it looks to be a sufficiently difficult game to be enjoyable. I'm personally hoping there'll be difficulty modes, because it does look quite a lot easier than Dark Souls. I think it's mentioned briefly in the stream that there is a NG+ mode, so maybe that'll have increased difficulty also. Suppose it all remains to be seen, maybe the demo is toned down to be 'playable' by press. (Who are known to be retarded with games.) Or maybe this is the first zone and the difficulty ramps up further into the game.

 

[Austupaio]

Good god, yes, the games 'journalists' always end up being worse at video games than even TotalBiscuit.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Hey, at least TB admits that he's **** at most games.

隐藏: Unlike some other people...

Gotta give credit where credit is due.

 

[Vovolov]

EpicNameBro's cover on Lords of the Fallen, has some more interesting stuff:



He says you have iFrames in the dodge roll, but from what I've seen and heard from LobosJr, that's not true. There aren't any iFrames, and instead you're supposed to physically roll out of the way of attacks.

Edit: There's no level cap, and on each successive NG+, you can unlock one more of the magic trees. Intredasting...

 

[Vovolov]

VaatiVidya's coverage of the game. Got it pre-ordered and pre-loaded myself; quite looking forward to it coming out tomorrow.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

Pre-ordering video games, huh?

I'm rather bummed that you apparently can't play as a female character. I'm even more bummed by the reason that the executive producer of the game gave for it:

The name, face, body and gender of our main character is set. We had to make a decision here because of storyline, and credibility – we want to make it believable that Harkyn could actually wield all these weapons, wear all this armor, use that powerful magic, etc. It really had to be him.

M-hm. Because everyone knows women are far less capable than men in all respects, and it's impossible for a woman to be strong enough to wear armor or swing a sword. Having a woman doing those things would make this game about killing demons with magic less believable. What a bigoted piece of **** this guy is. I actually felt physically ill when I read that.

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

I think exposure to SJW have numbed me when I was tempted to call you a thin skinned idiot before sitting down with the statement for a minute and realizing that you were being fair.

Personally, I reserve my sex argument on the game's story itself. Though personally I do want to see Geralt being a giant lesbian.

 

[Nahkuri]

Well, I impulse bought it for full price instead of waiting for a sale because I'm an idiot. I've just died to the second boss for the first time. Some random points.

-It's somewhat heavy. It automatically put itself on the highest settings when I started the game, but I had to turn some things down because I wasn't enjoying the ~25fps it sometimes dropped to. My specs:
AMD FX(tm)-6350 Six-Core Processor
8GB DDR3
Radeon HD 7790

-Talking with NPCs is hilarious. You enter a RPG dialogue screen and choose dialogue options. Usual stuff. What makes it funny is that they all twich and flail their limbs around in a very dramatic way when talking, and none of it looks one bit natural. It's like they got an animator for that who has never seen a person gesticulate and they gave him vague descriptions of what it's like.

-It looks pretty, from a technical point of view anyway. The cartoonish Blizzard artstyle is still horrible. My dude's wearing some sort of light armour chestpiece and he still dwarfs Iron Tarkus from Dark Souls. Before the second boss I found a heavy armour set wearing which I wouldn't have to be ashamed at all in the middle of space marines from 40k.

-It sounds very pretty. The music is nice and fits the atmosphere, and the sound effects exactly as heavy and meaty as they need to be a for a game that looks and feels like this.

-The combat is pretty much Dark Souls with weights around the ankles and wrists. It feels about right. I like it. The animations are excellent, too. The first boss charging you with his shield will send you flying if he hits, and it all looks and feels natural and weighty.

-only 4 roll directions. What a bother.

-It's probably not as challenging as Dark Souls, but it's a bit hard for me to tell because I've put hundreds and hundreds of hours in those games so I probably have a bit of an advantage in this, too. It's challenging enough to be enjoyable. I died to the first boss 2 times, and there's been a few occasions when I've needed to skedaddle when fighting regular enemies.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

-only 4 roll directions. What a bother.

NOOOOOOO!!

That is devastating news. What about the world? Is it individual levels? Can you go back to already explored areas?

 

[PoisonCourtesan]

The name, face, body and gender of our main character is set. We had to make a decision here because of storyline, and credibility – we want to make it believable that Harkyn could actually wield all these weapons, wear all this armor, use that powerful magic, etc. It really had to be him.

M-hm. Because everyone knows women are far less capable than men in all respects, and it's impossible for a woman to be strong enough to wear armor or swing a sword. Having a woman doing those things would make this game about killing demons with magic less believable. What a bigoted piece of **** this guy is. I actually felt physically ill when I read that.

Erm no. That's not what he said.
That sounds like modern-day tumblr-tier feminism to me.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

You'll heave to explain to me what he meant when he said what he said, then. You know me, I take statements at face value. If it doesn't mean what it says, then it shouldn't ****ing say it. It should say what it means.

 

[PoisonCourtesan]

You'll heave to explain to me what he meant when he said what he said, then. You know me, I take statements at face value. If it doesn't mean what it says, then it shouldn't ****ing say it. It should say what it means.

So you basically want me to read it for you?
Their character is very muscular. He carries big stuff around.

A typical man wouldn't be able to carry those around much less a typical woman.

Those are obvious.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

You'll heave to explain to me what he meant when he said what he said, then. You know me, I take statements at face value. If it doesn't mean what it says, then it shouldn't ****ing say it. It should say what it means.

So you basically want me to read it for you?
Their character is very muscular. He carries big stuff around. Those are obvious.

Yes, they are. I cannot help but notice that your explanation didn't extend to the actual point of his post, the very point that I was objecting to. If you would kindly oblige me...?

A typical man wouldn't be able to carry those around much less a typical woman.

I don't see what 'typical' has to do with anything. The guy didn't say anything about typical this or typical that, and also, as you yourself just pointed out, we are dealing with an atypical individual anyway.

 

[Nahkuri]

That is devastating news. What about the world? Is it individual levels? Can you go back to already explored areas?

I'm unsure yet, but if it is individual levels, they're goddamn huge. My guess would be that it's individual levels, but you can travel back & forth between them. After the second boss there was a huge ass door with the button promt "(A) Leave" but I couldn't open it yet. Aside from that there were two ways to go, plus this bonus area accessed via a portal with loot chests and possibly respawning enemies. One way had this huge tower shield wielding regular enemy who proceeded to shove his entire forearm up my ******* with a single combo and there seemed to be no way for me to get through his shield. That seems to suggest that you can come back and explore places at a higher level when you can actually take a punch.

There's something wonky going on in the game, though. I would recommend waiting for a sale and some patches unless you got the space computer 10k and are really eager to get playing. I turned down post processing and volumetric lightning and the FPS got to an acceptable 30-40. Then I died to that guy I mentioned above, and after the loading screen it inexplicably dropped to like 15 going through the same goddamn area that had run just fine minutes before.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

Thanks for the info. Don't worry, the 4-direction roll thing is enough to make me wait for a sale in and of itself. Going back to DS1 after hundreds of hours of DS2 made it abundantly clear just how big a deal being able to roll in any direction actually is.

 

[Nahkuri]

Yup. It's especially annoying in this since there's a lot of enemies turtling behind tower shields. Rolling past them while they attack would be just the thing for some backstabbing, but you'll likely just end up somersaulting against them.

EDIT:

So far the level design seems pretty nice. Although it's not like Dark Souls where the transitions are (mostly) seamless without loading screens but rather it's got separate areas connected via doorways, the levels themselves are quite large and seem to come with sideways and optional areas. Exploration is certainly an aspect of the game.

You can also cancel attacks which is super nice.