For months upon months, since the announcement of forthcoming Elden Ring DLC, the hype has been festering amongst the From Software community. Gaming companies have attempted to take advantage: From Software themselves with Armored Core 6, Neowiz Games with Lies of P and, most recently, Hexworks with Lords of the Fallen.

From Software’s Soulsborne series has been such a massive video game phenomenon that it has given birth to its own subgenre. Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen have marketed themselves almost ad nauseum as ‘soulslike’ games. Today’s piece addresses the latter- how has Hexworks’ entry in the gaming world fared?

It has been off to a slow start. As always, let’s assess what went well and what needs or needed work, starting with what the game has done well.

The Tutorial

The game comes out firing on all cylinders. It gives a good, cohesive guide on the controls. They are actually different from From Software’s products in significant ways, and they are displayed here in the most straightforward way possible.

It is here where the player gets introduced to the Umbral in a really cool way. The Umbral essentially functions as an alternate world the player can somewhat freely travel to, and will need to travel to for various reasons. Here, a clever puzzle is hidden behind this mechanic during the tutorial. It does a great job showing the player the ins and outs of the mechanic as a whole.

Finally, the tutorial ends with a well-crafted boss fight against Pieta, She of Blessed Renewal. Pieta is ultimately best viewed as a feminine version of Elden Ring’s Margit the Fell Omen. She is fast with a varied moveset and two phases that open up her capabilities. Nothing absurd by any stretch, but more than just a basic button warmer. When the player defeats Pieta, they will have all the tools they need to competently proceed through the rest of the game.

Co-op Gameplay

Games in the Soulsborne series, even Elden Ring, have drawn criticism over how they’ve handled co-op play. It got to the point where a fanmade mod dubbed “Elden Ring Seamless Co-op” was created, and became extremely popular.

Here, Lords of the Fallen handles co-op play extremely well. Unlike the Souls series, if you or your friend are slain in combat, the connection between you two is not severed. If the “host” is slain, both players are sent back to the host’s last checkpoint. If the cooperator to the host is slain, the host will have the opportunity to revive them and bring them back into play with half the healing resources they had before being defeated.

It doesn’t just help the game function in the event of things going poorly. When defeating a boss, unlike the Souls series, the host and cooperator may simply proceed through the game as if nothing had taken place. The cooperator even gets the same loot for beating the boss as the host does. Juxtaposed to the Souls series, which severs the host from their cooperator(s) when defeating a boss.

It’s a very simple sequence of changes bent around enhancing the game’s quality of life that work really well.

Cutscenes

Cutscenes in this game look and feel really neat to experience for the first time. Though one of the better cutscenes this game has to offer is more or less a rip-off of Dark Souls 3’s Twin Princes boss fight, they’re still generally appealing to watch.

A particular standout would be the voice acting display put on by Eva Savage. Savage voiced the highly complex boss fight in Judge Cleric, the Radiant Sentinel. In particular, her annunciation of the word “blasphemer!” sent chills down my spine the first time I heard it.

Lords of the Fallen has unfortunately experienced its fair share of turmoil. Let’s talk about what it isn’t doing so well.

Optimization for co-op play

While the game gives a nice series of mechanics to make co-op play as seamless as possible, the actual game to play has been balanced fairly horrendously around including a second player. Having a friend along doesn’t just make the game mind-numbingly easy, however, as the game’s general performance also takes a hit when bringing along a buddy.

The only boss for whom having a cooperator doesn’t make a total joke would be the tutorial’s Pieta and the aforementioned Judge Cleric. The very next boss after Pieta, and many to follow, were clearly designed with solo players in mind. As well, areas are very enemy dense- these enemies aren’t necessarily challenging, but moreso irritating to fight solo. Bringing a friend along makes the trek from boss to boss a complete joke.

You can expect a very (un)healthy helping of frame drops along the way with a friend as well. They seem to occur more frequently when performing maneuvers such as jumping from platform to platform or when a lot of enemies spawn at once. But it is unfortunately a frequent thing to deal with.

Additionally, problems with rubber-banding seem to spring up for players gamewide the later into the game they go. Unsurprisingly, these issues seem to stem mostly within players who engage in coop play.

Issues with performance will likely be addressed in the weeks to come, and changes were already made to address enemies between areas. Hopefully, this is an issue that we can all forget about soon. But as is, it’s a massive one that thoroughly undermines all of the quality of life aspects built into the experience.

Boss Fights

There’s no simpler way to put it- boss fights in this game mostly suck. Pieta in the tutorial was a strong showcase, but it seems Hexworks put more time into just Pieta than perhaps the rest of the game combined. Bosses have very small movesets, the boss rooms are very bland and bosses themselves have shifted into being just regular enemies very shortly thereafter.

On top of all of this, these bosses have mostly had no build up or lore to give them any sort of depth whatsoever. Who even is the Hushed Saint? Why should I care about Gentle Gaverus? They didn’t even bother giving The Ruiner or Infernal Enchantress actual names.

Bosses are also center stage when discussing how poorly this game receives co-op gameplay. Bosses like the Scourge Sister Delyph aren’t completely horrible conceptually, but they failed to account for the presence of another player at all. It’s hard for the Scourge Sister’s helper hounds to pose a threat when your buddy can one-shot them in two seconds.

Reused Assets

Yes, From Software loves to reuse bosses too. It would probably take all of five seconds to find someone posting a meme about seeing Erdtree Burial Watchdogs all the time in Elden Ring, or make a funny joke about how the Covetous Demon and especially Smelter Demon were reused in Dark Souls 2’s DLC. The key difference is that Soulsborne games actually have a wide variety of other enemies to contend with. Sure, maybe we fight the Godskin Noble or Apostle half a dozen times, but what do we fight in between them? I bet you could fill a novel.

Here, bosses are frequently reused as early as the very area after they’re introduced in. It gets really embarrassing when talking about the Ruiner in particular, an admittedly fairly decent fight ruined by thorough, needless repetition. In most cases, when bosses get reused, they get reused over and over again alongside enemies who are the same as last area, only slightly stronger. Get prepared to fight the same exact knights, soldiers, hounds and reused bosses around every single corner of this game.

From Software gets away with reusing assets by at least (mostly) being graceful about it. Lords of the Fallen reuses bosses as regular enemies, and regular enemies themselves don’t generally change either. The lack of new enemies to fight makes it difficult to justify replaying this game. Sure, the Abiding Defender Duo boss was pretty cool- why did those enemies need to be reused in the next area over, where we fight six of them? Why would I drag myself through another playthrough of this game when I know going in I’ll be treated to roughly 4-5 genuinely unique encounters on a boss catalog of more than 30?

There are probably more unique enemies found within a single area of, say for example, Bloodborne, than there are unique enemies found throughout the entirety of Lords of the Fallen.

What direction should Hexworks go for this game?

Lords of the Fallen plainly and simply sucks. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Hexworks seems technically proficient with making a Soulslike game- they understood how to structure levels, they did pretty well with the cinematics and they did really well with quality of life enhancements within coop play.

Although unlikely and difficult, Hexworks would likely be best suited patching the game for hotfixes, but otherwise leaving it as is. This game is too thoroughly riddled with errors for it to ever rise up to the standards of even a lesser Soulsborne game such as Demon’s Souls.

Hexworks would be best off taking what went well, building on it, and most importantly, massively expanding on the roster of enemies and bosses for the player to fight. As well, actually doing something with the Umbral besides having it turn into a button pressing simulator 90% of the time would do. A theoretical Lords of the Fallen sequel would have a lot of potential under this premise.

For now, let’s give this washed up work a D and be done with it.