Lords of the Fallen Preview: Man defeats god and a new action RPG is born

In a world where man defeated god and convinced themselves evil could be removed from man people are strangely surprised when things didn’t end up working perfectly for men. What did you expect? Silly men. What is mankind’s solution? Have someone who has sinned fight the demons who have arrived. You know the old trope, fighting evil with evil.

This is Lords of the Fallen. As a fast-paced action-RPG, this game brings a bit of everything to the table. You want story, character growth, choices, crafting, and multiple endings all in a single player game? Well you got it. While I didn’t get any hands-on time with it at Bandai Namco’s Global Gamers Day 2014, you better believe I wanted to.

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.

Through crafting you’ll be able to make powerful armor and weapons as well as upgrade what is already out there. There will be item variety dropped from the same boss if you figure out how to defeat bosses in unique ways. Instead of a difficulty slider, there are hidden challenges in the boss fights. “Defeat this boss without ever X” or “Defeat the boss without it ever X” could win you a better or different item than the boss would normally drop.

The game will pit you against difficult decisions that will and can change the outcome of the game. You’ll be facing every boss no matter what, but these decisions can decide if the boss is easier and will contribute to which ending you receive. So yeah, story matters. This also leads me to believe that replayability will be high. I’m quite excited to get my hands on this game and look forward to the arcade-esque fighting elements in an RPG setting.