Hexworks’ Lords of the Fallen (a modern reboot/sequel to Lords of the Fallen, confusing though it may be) is due to come out on October 13, and there’s a measure of hype surrounding the game’s release. An Unreal Engine 5 offering, the game is poised to look great. Will it run great as well, though? Setting these issues aside for a bit, there’s also the question of the game’s mechanical difficulty and, indeed, relation to the revered Dark Souls franchise and its many offshoots.
From Software is the studio responsible for Dark Souls and, by extension, the Soulslike craze. As of late, the studio has taken some time off major Souls projects, such as the phenomenal Elden Ring, to produce Armored Core 6. A great game, to be sure, but hardly a Soulslike, which suggests there might be a bit of a market gap that Lords of the Fallen could end up slotting into.
What is Lords of the Fallen?
Obviously, the new Lords of the Fallen is not an actual Souls game, as such. It is neither affiliated with nor supported by From Software, and stands on its own two feet as a Hexworks/CI Games production. Lords of the Fallen is, however, a Soulslike: a game that takes ample cues from titles made by From, to the point where it may well end up being similar enough to appeal to the same audiences.
Something similar happened with the recently released Lies of P, in fact. That game’s similarities with, say, Bloodborne, did not go unnoticed, and the reviewer felt that it was a tad too similar to what From Software had made in the past.
It is unclear whether the same thing will happen with Lords of the Fallen, but the good news is that the game does have a few key novelties going in its favor. For one, it plays host to two separate dimensions: the world of the living and the world of the dead, with the players able to freely move from one to the other. The feature is like something out of a Legacy of Kain game. Secondly, Lords of the Fallen has a streamlined two-player multiplayer mode that doesn’t require the same sort of fiddling as a From Soft game does.
So, there’s potential merit in Hexworks’ new title, but it may pay off to wait until the first reviews are in, naturally.
