Lords of the Fallen: PS5 Review

Developed by Deck 13 and CI Games
Published by Bandai Namco Games
Platform: PS5

In a year that has seen Baldur's Gate 3 triumph in terms of roleplaying games across platforms, Lords of the Fallen's release has quietly gone under the radar but achieved as much as the aforementioned title has.

A successor to the 2014 action roleplaying game, Lords of the Fallen gives players the chance to choose from one of nine character classes before getting into the world of Axiom.

It's a very similar formula to what has become a genre on console that's been taken over by FromSoftware's Dark Souls games - and Lords of the Fallen rarely strays enough from a template that would help mark it out.

But the game's darkness on screen sometimes makes it hard to engage deeply within the world around it. Combat is bone-crunching enough when it needs to be as you drift between the world of the alive and the dead. The dual realities mark it out as something different, yet Lords of the Fallen, with its fantasy setting and its endless parade of people to slaughter never quite feels like it seizes on its potential, preferring instead to offer a murkier game for those looking for a challenge.

Perhaps it's the fact the genre itself is over-saturated at the moment, but Lords of the Fallen feels like it has the potential to cut through. It's solid enough when it needs to be, and challenging if you're a newcomer to the genre as well, but it's never quite different enough to soar.

It would also have been best to do more with the Umbral, the otherly world and realm which you can slip back and forth in - rather than feeling like the second world is a door to ensuring a second play through of a level to ensure you've mopped up all the bits you need to.

Ultimately, Lords of the Fallen is playable enough, but in an over-crowded gaming genre, it doesn't quite do enough to stand out from all the other Dark Souls-wannabe games out there.