Lords of the Fallen Game of the Year Edition 2014

There is alot of things that make Dark Souls a frustrating but fun experience. Lords of the Fallen has missed the fun part. The floatyness of the controls, and the general enemy placement, the guardbreaks not leaving a punish window, the enemy having a lunge while the player doesnt... It goes on. Annoyance is the best way to describe the game, and honestly I don't play games to be annyoed without payoff.

This is really an underrated gem in my opinion. Visuals, music, and story are great. The game is challenging. You may die a lot in the beginning if you are new to this style of game. This works out for everyone. If you want a harder challenge you can just fight through the campaign in a speed run style. If your dying a lot (like me), you can grind for XP, and level up till you are basically in God Mode. You can bank your XP at any time, or keep working towards a higher multiplier (which will make leveling up much faster). If your looking for an RPG focused on melee combat with a great atmosphere, cool monsters, and a fantastic soundtrack you won’t be disappointed with Lords of the Fallen!

Clunky: your character is a 150kg beast (fine) his every move is like an elephant trying to turn around itself. You can't interrupt a move, including an attack ; you can't smoothly chain your moves (seems like the animations can't be interrupted, except by an attack of your opponent). "Unfair": of course, it is a souls-like, and Dark Souls IS unfair by design. This one is even more unfair because many things can happen in you back that you are not aware of (including focus NOT switching to another opponent after killing one, even though you have check the corresponding option). Unfairness is also due to the bad camera and >very strong< focus on your selected opponent (I mean, you have to unfocus, manage your camera for seeing what goes behind your back, focus so that you attack in the correct direction or even in front of the character rather than on the side). Add all that to "clunky" Bad graphics programming: I own a Dell XPS 9570, I could run at High such games as Horizon Zero Dawn. For this one, I had to choose Low setup, with every option turned off to get a reasonable frame rate. And the games messes up all my other window' size and position. After three bosses, I decided to hide the game.

Having read a number of reviews, both good and bad, I was on the fence about giving this a go but finally picked it up while it was going cheap. Unfortunately, the price turned out to be the best part of the experience. Gamewise, LotF makes no attempt to hide its being built on the back of Dark Souls, from the stamina-based combat and find-your-own-way quests to the not-campfires and "ghosts" you reclaim your XP from after your many deaths. Nothing wrong with that in itself but, if you are going to copy a classic, at least have the decency to do it well. LotF adds more typical RPG elements into the experience, with classes and magic schools to choose from, NPCs to talk to and equipment to retool with. Unfortunately, this offer of choice is an illusion - unless you're an expert at timing, blocking and dodging, you're going to have a bad time unless you make yourself the buffest tank that ever did thorn damage. At least, that's the conclusion I reached after my Rogue comprehensively failed to do anything other than give the first major boss (the Commander) a few nicks and paper-cuts, getting summarily squished in the process. Playing around with different equipment made a small difference but, with so many useless items, the apparent smorgasbord on offer here turned out to be more of a spam sandwich. Next problem with this boss encounter was the sudden and repeated termination. The first crash I took as bad luck, the second as carelessness, but the third, fourth, fifth… I stopped counting realising this not the product of poor timing but poor programming and/or porting. Not being a AAA title, I would expect some level of jankiness, like the variable-quality acting, voices that sound like they've been recorded in a corridor, the sliding effect when interacting with the environment and animations which can make the characters look like they're standing in front of a green screen at times. All of that could be tolerated, but game-breaking bugs cannot be forgiven.

cool game of the