Fight against the formidable Lords and Generals that command a demonic army, Lords of the Fallen rewards skill and persistence among dedicated Action RPG fans.

Lords of the Fallen is a challenging Action RPG set in a medieval fantasy world ruled by a Fallen God. It peppers its cutscenes with choices such as whether to chop a monk’s infected arm off or leave 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. At times it sacrifices too much at the altar of combat accessibility, but it usually makes up for it with a tempting risk-reward system that caters to multiple play styles, and through the arcadey pleasures of hacking and slashing for loot. That’s a bit of a surprise for a game that makes no secret of its heavy debts to the ultra-punishing Dark Souls series, but the combat I experienced on the way to that first death revealed a game that’s just as concerned with letting us have fun without the pain. Forty-five minutes passed in Lords of the Fallen before I died for the first time.

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