Lords of the Fallen Previews
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We have rounded up a few previews for Deck13 and City Interactive's Lords of the Fallen, all seemingly based on a hands-off presentation the developers recently gave.
Destructoid:
Aside from your weapon of choice, you also have a magic gauntlet that can be continually crafted and upgraded. There is a pool of multi-use spells, but also spell trees specific to the warrior/rogue/cleric classes. The rogue has unique spells like invisibility with a boosted attack coming out of it. The warrior has a battering ram and other combat oriented spells.
Like Dark Souls, you'll leave a ghost when you die that contains your experience. You can also store experience points you don't want to use yet at save points. Your soul will slowly leak experience as you make your way back to it, though, which could add to the loss even if you're banking regularly.
To round out the demo, Gop took a pair of claws and some magic to a big bad boss. The boss hit hard and the fight took a couple of tries. But quick claws and massive combo damage won out in the end. The disgusting monster thing was destroyed and his family shamed.
There are several features in the game that seem familiar to me but with a new sort of twist. For instance, when you die something drops that you'll want to return to collect your experience points; if you die again you lose it all. The twist is that the exp slowly drains so it becomes time sensitive. Another example involves certain objects you must interact with to save, rest, and refill your potions. The twist here is that there is a cooldown on filling your potions.
While the game is fairly open-ended, you'll be forced to pick one of three pillars at the start. These '˜classes' don't restrict gear, but do offer different spell trees. I'd suggest familiarizing yourself with these trees before jumping straight into the game. It sounds like it'll be the first major decision you'll make. All weapons of the same type will have the same move set. However, you'll find better versions of these weapons later.
Most encounters in Lords of the Fallen are head-to-head match-ups, duels where spacing and circle strafing matter just as much as your equipment setup and overall build. Sometimes you'll want to rock a sword and shield to block incoming attacks, or a bladed claw for inflicting damage quickly, or perhaps a staff for longer melee range.
Handling infected grunts who are your same size won't be a problem, so long as you're careful by paying attention to your surroundings and the enemy's attack patterns (an enemy class will learn new attacks later in the level, denoted by slight change of clothing). In one instance against a mini-boss, the protagonist Harkin could clash with the beast toe-to-toe or taunt it to follow him back over some wooden planks that hide a hole.
Every time you reach a save point, you have the option to safely store your EXP so you can spend it on attributes or skillpoints. But let's say you're feeling confident and there's nothing really that you want to spend your EXP on anyway. If you continue on without banking your EXP, you'll continue to build a multiplier that will grant you more experience points per kill. The more you kill enemies without dying or banking your EXP, the higher that multiplier goes.
It's an extra layer of risk versus reward that encourages players to press on to try and obtain more EXP, but proportionally punishes them if they should fail.
It seems to be a pretty high risk, too, because Lords of the Fallen looks like it takes another page from the Souls series in its tendency to teach the players through their mistakes. In one instance in the demo, a lone enemy lured Harkyn into room where two more enemies ambushed him from both sides. In another room, a tough spider enemy suddenly dropped from the ceiling as Harkyn's attention was turned toward a treasure chest.
And then there was the boss fight against an enemy known as (Champion) a large, armored monster with dual armblades and relentless aggression. The boss had three phases, which were clearly indicated in its health bar, and each phase added a new element to the Champion's attacks. While Dark Souls vets probably wouldn't bat an eye at the Champion's seemingly predictable attacks again, this was a presentation it is worth noting that a fairly high degree of patience and precision was needed to avoid him and find openings for Harkyn's own attacks.
As our host advanced even further through the level it was evident that the game is difficult. I don't think it will be put up on that pedestal of '˜painstakingly punishing' or '˜controller throwing rage inducing anger' that the Dark Souls franchise holds but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy either. As he attempted to beat the boss of the level (the same shown in the attached gameplay video) he came near death a number of times and barely escaped. If someone that is demoing a game over and over again still has difficulties (and frequently dies as he admitted to us) you know that an average gamer isn't going to breeze right on through.
I know I can't get through this without discussing how it all looked of course. Many of us have high end PCs and shiny black consoles only months old that have the capability to blow our minds and it is fair to say that CI Games is trying their best to work with all three architectures and give us a solid looking game. For the most part all of the gameplay shown was a catacomb/dungeon crawl with lots of torches and flickering light all around. You could see bits of light flicker off the armor as you walked and moisture wicking its way down grimy walls. A lot of fine attention to detail is something that I noticed myself. During the boss encounter a fire attack was used and the way that the flames enveloped the hands and arms of your opponent was impressive as you could see wisps of smoke and sparks fly when he swung those hamfists around in fury.
Because of the obvious similarities, there was no way a room full of games journalists wasn't going to ask the representative from CI Games at Bandai Namco's Global Gamers Day if the upcoming action RPG Lords of the Fallen compared to the Dark Souls in terms of difficulty. The question came toward the end of the presentation, and it seemed like the man fielding it was expecting it. His response? There's a similar learning curve in terms of dealing with enemies, but overall it's not as unforgivingly brutal. And there are no environmental deaths, which certainly can't be said about Dark Souls.
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Enemies have been designed so that you can't just hack your way through them without any thought, especially because familiar ones can learn new tricks or come in slightly different flavors the next time you run into them. Our gameplay slice featured a spider who was laying eggs that hatched if they weren't dealt with in time, plus the aforementioned gigantic boss that took some doing to defeat.
After fighting some pesky spider enemies, Gop unlocked a chest with a vicious pair of claws in it. (You can switch between weapons easily regardless of what class you are,) he said. (You can also bank experience if you don't want to lose when you die buying attribute points or spell points will let you upgrade your character. Attributes are class-independent, while spells are class-dependant.)
Gop then walked into the arena ahead and fought an boss named (The Champion,) a berserker of sorts that, in between charging your character and smacking the wall, would send seismic waves rippling through the ground towards your character. His first attempt with a sword proved to be futile so he changed up his strategy.
Removing his shield and sword, Gop equipped the claws he had just received in the room before. Suddenly, his slow and bulky warrior became swift and agile. His movements were noticeably faster and his attacks were unleashed in a flurry of punches as opposed to powerful swings. With some careful consideration of The Champion's movements, he dispatched it with patience.
