Lords of the Fallen is an action role-playing video game created by Hexworks and released by CI Games. It is a new version of the 2014 game with the same name. The game was made available for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on October 13, 2023. When it was first released, it received some good and some not so good reviews from critics. It also sold more than one million copies within the first ten days after its release.

Gameplay

Lords of the Fallen is an action role-playing video game played from a third-person view. Like its earlier version, players can use close combat weapons and magic to fight enemies. The game includes gameplay ideas from soulsborne games. Players can complete the main story with another person, and the game also has a player-versus-player mode.

At the start of the game, players create and customize their character and choose from nine different classes. The game takes place in a connected world that is much larger than the 2014 version. This world has two separate areas that overlap each other. The world of Axiom is where living characters exist, but players can use a magical lantern to enter Umbral, the world of the dead. Even though these two areas share the same space, a place that is hard to reach in one world may be accessible in the other.

The game uses a two-life system. If a player dies for the first time in Axiom, they are sent to Umbral for a second chance to continue. However, if they die again in Umbral, they are sent back to Axiom to their last save point and lose some experience points called Vigor. These lost points can only be recovered by returning to the place where the character died. Save points are rare in the game, but players can make their own save points using materials collected from monsters in Umbral.

Plot

After many years under Adyr's rule, the followers of Orius, a god of light, fought against him. They could not kill him, so they sealed him away. One of Orius' greatest warriors, Judge Cleric, created the Hallowed Sentinels to guard five magical beacons in Mournstead, preventing Adyr from returning. Over time, the Sentinels became corrupt and oppressive.

More than a thousand years after Adyr's defeat, his return grows closer as the beacons are tainted by his influence, and the Rhogar begin to spread across the land. A group of Sentinels, the Dark Crusaders, obtained a powerful artifact called the Umbral Lamp. This item can revive its user, allow travel between the world of the living (Axiom) and the dead (Umbral), extract enemies' souls, and activate Stigmas, which are fragments of past events. When the Lamp's previous owner died, it passed to the main character, the Lamp Bearer. Exacter Dunmire, leader of the Crusaders, asked the Bearer to travel across Mournstead and use the Lamp to purify the beacons, absorbing Adyr's essence at each one.

Each beacon is protected by strong enemies that must be defeated to reach it, though the Bearer does not need to fight them immediately. The world is filled with dangers, including wild animals, monsters, demons, cults, and corrupted Sentinels. Allies may be made during the journey, though some may later turn against the Bearer. The beacon in the Empyrean, the Sentinels' headquarters, is guarded by Judge Cleric herself. During the battle, it is revealed she is fully corrupted, like the rest of the order. Once known as Iselle, she was a priestess of Adyr who betrayed him to join Orius.

There are three possible endings based on choices made during the journey:

• "Radiant": If the Bearer purifies at least one beacon, they can attack Bramis Castle and enter the Rhogar realm to face Adyr. The dark god argues that humanity needs a god to guide them, but the Bearer defeats him and uses the Lamp to absorb his essence. The Bearer is destroyed in the process, while Orius sends beams of light to punish all who have sinned.

• "Inferno": Instead of purifying beacons, the Bearer can use the Rune of Adyr to destroy them. After defeating Cleric, the Bearer enters her dream as Iselle and allows Adyr to possess her body. Adyr returns to rule the world, making the Bearer one of his Rhogar lords.

• "Umbral": The Bearer can choose to side with neither god. They enter the Umbral realm, find a dark priest named Molhu, and access a strange place called Mother's Lull. There, the Bearer sacrifices important people to meet the Putrid Mother, a god-like being. The creature consumes the Bearer's essence, breaking the barrier between Axiom and Umbral, allowing it to destroy all of creation.

Development and release

In December 2014, Tomasz Gop, the executive producer of Lords of the Fallen (2014), said they would make a second game called Lords of the Fallen 2. In May 2015, CI Games announced the game would be released in 2017 and confirmed that Deck13 Interactive, the main developer of the first game, would not work on the sequel. In 2017, Gop explained that the game spent two years in planning and that CI Games made the development team smaller and reduced the game’s size after the poor sales of Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3. In 2018, CI Games said Defiant Studios would lead the game’s development and restart the project from the beginning. However, in 2019, CI Games ended its contract with Defiant, saying their work was not good enough. In 2020, CI Games created a new company called Hexworks, led by Saul Gascon, the executive producer, and Cezar Virtosu, the creative director, to continue working on the game. Lords of the Fallen was made using Unreal Engine 5. The game cost $66.2 million to develop, market, and create the physical version.

CI Games officially introduced the game during Gamescom 2022 as The Lords of the Fallen. In March 2023, the game was renamed Lords of the Fallen. Virtosu said the game was once called Lords of the Fallen: The Dark Crusade, but the studio removed that name because it did not match the game’s role as a new start for the series. Hexworks had big goals for the game, with Virtosu saying the studio aimed to be "the second best reference [after FromSoftware]" for the Soulsborne genre by creating a game similar to Dark Souls 4.5. The game was released on PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on October 13, 2023.

In April 2025, a major update called "version 2" was released. It included better cooperative play, easier ways to play, a new character creator, improved sound effects, and more help for new or confused players.

Reception

Lords of the Fallen received "generally favorable" reviews for the PC version from critics, while the PS5 version received "mixed or average" reviews, according to Metacritic, a review aggregator website. In Japan, four critics from Famitsu gave the game a total score of 32 out of 40.

The GamesRadar reviewer said the game does not have "any relatable characters to latch onto" and described the game's world as "stuck somewhere between Blasphemous and all the black-mana cards from Magic: The Gathering." The reviewer noted that the game's greatest strength is its combat, which feels satisfying when hitting enemies. He also called the system of two worlds "clever stuff that's implemented well." However, he wrote that even on a powerful desktop computer, he had to "turn down the graphics fairly significantly" to maintain performance. He concluded that the game's "clear aspirations to be Dark Souls 4 might have been a little ambitious." GameStar's reviewer, in contrast, believed that the possibility of opening a window to the world of the dead contributed to "a harmonious world design."

PC Gamer's reviewer liked the idea of using a lamp to cross between two worlds, though he felt "Hexworks could've done more with the concept." He noted that using the lamp did not cause performance issues, and the game generally ran smoothly. He appreciated the variety of effects from different weapons and said the magic system was "a genuine improvement over other soulslikes in almost every way." The reviewer praised the combat system, stating it "shines in the game's duels against humanoid bosses." He considered boss fights to be fair but said the rest of the game was too difficult.

By January 2025, the game had been played by more than 4 million players. Lords of the Fallen sold more than a million units in the first ten days after its release.