Lords of the Fallen

What a frustrating game.

Bought this back when it came out, couldn't get over the weirdly clunky, floaty gameplay, and refunded. Bought it on sale with 2.0, and it definitely plays better than I remember, even if there is still quite a bit of micro-jank to be found, but overall it plays decently well. That's not the frustrating part.

The frustrating part is that the game feels like a chinese telephone version of Souls games, which I guess it is, but in the worst way, where they laser-focused on some of the worst aspects of Souls structure and design, while doing well on other parts. Level design is generally pretty good, combat feels solid, the lamp gimmick is a gimmick, but not the worst one, boss quality varies quite a bit, but even the more annoying bosses are generally not too difficult, so it evens out. But then you have your needlessly convoluted NPC quests, and the encounter design is just Elden Ring-tier terrible. Constant bumrushes, enemy spam, monster closets, and an endless barrage of fuckers tucked into dead angles or behind objects out of sight, scripted to combo, push, or just drop a high damage attack on you the second you turn the corner. It's so common, you can actually reliably predict that if you enter into a room you can't fully survey from the doorway, there's probably a fucker coming from behind, or if you see a breakable object obscuring part of a room, there's probably a fucker hiding behind it.
It's frustrating because the game is almost good, but then it reminds you of all the worst shit this genre has spawned.

Lords of the Fallen thread, I guess. What's your favorite weapon?

I rushed through every level with cheatengine during release. Why? Because I felt it was a bad game, but was curious if there were any noteworthy pretty areas, there wasn't. It was all a big swamp map.

It was all a big swamp map

I can only remember a single swamp, and it was barely even posionous

They severely gutted the difficulty of the bosses and normal enemies while reducing mob density. You can use "modifiers" now when you start a new game to enable some challenge shit. One of which returns the enemy density to what it used to be originally but you can't un-nerf the bosses/mobs.

Wait, they reduced mob density and the game is still rife with spammy encounters? The fuck was it like before?

Basically unplayable.

I can believe it. The game does put some emphasis on ranged combat over melee, with a ton of throwables and ammo types and all that, but having to whittle down every group before you can engage sounds miserable.

I LOVE CONVOLUTED NPC QUESTS
I LOVE WAVES OF MOBS AND ARCHERS
I LOVE PERILOUS DROPS AND LABYRINTHINE LEVELS
I LOVE HIDDEN ITEMS EVERYWHERE
I WISH MORE SOULS-LIKES WILL JUST GO ALL IN ON WHAT MAKES SOULS FRUSTRATING TO PLAY SOMETIMES
Anyways, my favorite weapon is the Judge Cleric's Corrupted Sword. Absolutely crazy damage if you don't care about keeping your level low. I've been killing the Spurned Progeny in a single attack string.
It really wasn't that bad, but I'm someone who genuinely loves those kinds of encounters.

Can't play the 2.0 free mode with a friend because his game just constantly jitters. We have the same graphics card. I have no idea how computers work, but I feel like they fucked up somehow.

The devs seem to have a difficult time with PC optimization. I've been hearing a lot of complaints from players there, but I haven't been experiencing issues on the PS5.

What were they thinking with the levels? They are like 4 times bigger than they should be, you just walk through corridors killing fodder enemies that you fought 3 areas before, no unique traps, occasionally switching to umbral realm to pull some stone platform or destroy a door for the 5th time and then kill a shitty boss that gets recycled 10 minutes after.

The world and its scale is pretty cool, but everything is boring as shit, i would be really angry if i paid full price for it, and i dont get the hype around this update, the game is still really average and not well put together, they could’ve done so many things with the umbral realm to but they didn’t.

The sound is way better tho, and the combat feels smoother I’ll give them that, but everything else is very average and by the numbers, which is a shame, imagine making all these cool looking levels and not knowing how to make them engaging or unique, with their unique setpieces, gameplay mechanics, traps etc

Anyone else try out the Fully Withered Vestiges modifier? Really makes me appreciate the level/world design.
Some more set pieces would be cool. Enemy variety is probably the biggest criticism I have of the game outside of certain bosses. Doesn't help that quite a few mobs are absolutely obnoxious to fight, like the invisible archers.

and i still can’t progress after upper calrath, activated the beacon, went back to the door with the frozen bell and then my character just locks up and can’t even do anything besides walk around, i know im supposed to get a key from some Andreas but I can’t find him

He should have left the key over in Skyrest.

Enemy variety blows, and it's a major issue for a game like this. As for the umbral thing, I feel like it's the kind of concept that sounds interesting on paper, but is pretty much impossible to execute correctly. You can't put too much in there, or players will just never leave it for fear of missing something, which is already an issue with how eager the game is to put shit like your healing cross upgrades in the umbral. So what do you do? Exactly what they did, enforce the occasional swap, and put important shit right around that swap area, so players don't have to run through every level twice. You can tell they had these problems during testing, because levels are pretty clearly split into the umbral parts and the real world parts, with anything beyond that rarely being more than "shine your lamp to see a bridge". Hell, there's a part in the first area where you have to shine your lamp, walk partway across a bridge, then put the lamp away so you can drop onto a platform with an item. I don't think they ever did even just that simple trick again.

Kukajin's entire purpose is charging you for her assistance

Pieta is available for almost every fight anyway, is 10x better, and fights by your side for free

Why is Kukajin so WORTHLESS

If this game said from software on the cover fromdrones would suck it off and pretend the two worlds thing is the coolest shit.

Much like a ton of the game in general, the idea of "here's a mercenary who fights for pay!" as an NPC isn't completely awful on its face, but then they made her price just a little too high, her combat ability just a little too shit, and her NPC quest reliant on you hiring her for pretty much every fight she's available for. Having a really strong summon who's available for almost every boss, but comes with a fee isn't without some merit, but they missed every aspect of it. It's like the studio has a couple really good ideas guys, but their designers are all kind of terrible.

I don't think her price was too high, but it is funny how wide of a gap there is between her and Pieta when it comes to combat ability.

armor sets where individual parts are of different weight and defense tiers

Why?

Why not?
The more annoying thing is that your inventory doesn't separate between armor slots and just organizes them by weight.

Check shadow settings. If it's only during MP though, that can happen if buddy is joining via password etc. If you beckons a fren instead, and they join via steam, that'll fix it.
Sadly, that's also not "shared progress", so they won't get Flask/lamp upgrades.
Theres a weird quirk where they can get stuck using ladders, and lose their sprint too. To fix that, Co op buddy just has to continue their own game before joining yours.
Also, and I'm not sure if this is by design, they'll never lose their souls. They can end up super high level. Dunno if it affects scaling lel

The Umbral is the biggest fucking disappointment in this game. They clearly couldn't get it work smoothly, and now it's just half-assed. There's several spots in the game where they put an umbral bridge with some cunt enemy on it, to pull you through with a hit if you just use your lamp, then immediately after the bridge, there's a statue to leave the Umbral again. What's the fucking point?

Sometimes it's funny how clearly janky the game is

Doing Echoes of Battle on a NG+ run

Fighting the Sundered King

Try to get a closer look at the queen's statue after killing him

Game tries to kick me back to the hub while I'm in camera mode

Infinite loading screen

Close and reopen the game

Now at the end of Bramis Castle despite not even unlocking the area

version 2.0

huh?

They improved the way combat feels, added a jump button, and allow you to play with a friend who doesn't own the game.

oh k ty

What's your favorite weapon?

before 2.0? Latimer's Spear, because spears were the only weapon class that didn't launch you 2 meters forward with every attack, after the update I've been using the Crimson Rector sword and it's pretty good now.

Nah, the umbral was done pretty well. It's interesting as fuck lore wise too. Wish they had some way to bait enemies into the umbral so they can get butt-raped by all the reapers and bug niggers with 5k hp.

I REALLY don't want to summon for bosses because it ruins the bosses and I would appreciate it if developers would stop putting NPC questlines and unique items behind a requirement of ruining the boss fights for yourself

It's worse than in Souls games here, because bosses seem to aggro on summons way harder than they do on you. I've gone entire fights with the boss never throwing more than a handful of attacks at me while I pounded its ass.

Range attack boosters

Charge attack boosters

Infinite Ammo Eye

Yup, it's sniper time.
Why can't regular Souls have bow builds this fun?

I was astonished that this game managed to make ranged builds fun and viable, where From has failed to make them either across half a dozen games

The game is ok, I'm disappointed that there are so few unique weapon movesets.
I was pleasantly surprised that there are gimmick bosses, I missed those. Spurned Progeny and Hollow Crow(?) were both fun. It felt like a refreshing change from what's become the standard in this type of game.

Hollow Crow was fun

Eh? Really?
I agree with the Spurned Progeny, though. one of my favorite Giant fights in a Souls-like.

Spurned Progeny made me glad I was playing a build that invested heavily into radiant, because fighting it as melee only would've been anything but fun.

It's mostly because From is afraid of making any form of ranged combat (besides spells LOL) strong in any way. Barely anything supports them, ammo count gets scarce, and crossbows have been bottom of the barrel for so many games now.

I'm disappointed that there are so few unique weapon movesets

are you using the multi-hit attacks (L1+R2)? it's not much but it's something. most weapons get a unique attack and boss weapons get a special attack (that you have to unlock first, which is kind of retarded).

I was pleasantly surprised that there are gimmick bosses

a lot of people hated the Hollow Crow, but I was glad that it was a gimmick fight because getting through the snow level was already a pain in the ass for me, I fucking hate snow levels.

How are they even going to make a sequel if the Putrid Mother just wiped everyone from existence

Adyr's ending is the canon ending

God is now in the body of a little girl

Uooh?

Just finished my second and last playthrough. Unlocked Putrid Child which looks really cool but the game is too long with little variety and many annoying things to do it again. The game is more enjoyable with all modifiers on.

Before 2.0 it was a 6.5/10. Now its a 7. They said the sequel was going to be an Epic exclusive and more "commercial friendly" so I don't expect much.

epic exclusive

And just like that it's a flop, sad to see it die like that

It's frustrating because the game is almost good

This exact reason is why I slogged through like 30 hours of it. It so almost feels like a good, solid game, but it reminds you that its a half assed rip off every other 10 minutes
I just really do not like the Umbral at all. I don't like anything about it. Having mandatory exploration and a 2nd life punishment being tied to the same mechanic was a shit idea.

I rushed through every level with cheatengine

literally me. had godmode off and on at the press of a button because I got so fed up with the games multiple layers of annoyances and bullshit

Timmy is paying for my copy so it's cool

They had to make a deal because this one was a commercial flop. Don't expect the sequel to ever come to Steam, just like Alan Wake 2.

best part of souls games is exploration and art (visual and audio).

these games that focus on fighting bosses learning pattern rollspam and just clearing mobs with die and retry shit are completely retarded, dont see the appeal

the surge 1 was ebin, most of other is whatever

I was playing with a friend but with original mob density, does that affect the boss? If the number of enemies during the fight is the same with the nerfed density I can see how anyone would hate the boss instead.
Speaking of which, have they fixed shared progression yet? It was extremely laggy and buggy when I tried.

are you using the multi-hit attacks (L1+R2)

I honestly didn't know that existed. Am I stupid or was this not mentioned in tutorials?

I think multihits were mentioned in the tutorial, but I can't recall.
Anyways, I don't think that shared progression has been fixed on PC yet.

What's your favorite weapon

Bloody Glory, and I'm not even remotely sorry. You can blitz it early, and it's very good all the way through, while allowing you to basically go full radiant caster stat-wise. Just an absolute workhorse of a weapon. I'm not too hot on its looks, but I'd rather use a slightly homely weapon I can get in the first level over a beautiful weapon I only get to use for the last 20% of the game.