Wow, what a major let down...

[Zyrconia]

This game makes a horrible first impression. And I was looking so forward to it...

It has such a low key ammeter vibe to it. Like all the systems are there, but it is missing the last 6 months of polish.

I boot up the game, have to agree to a couple of eulas (♥♥♥♥ you devs) with a UI that feels just bad. Even scrolling it is not smooth. Then there is no PS4 button support, even though my PS4 is detected. That is a trivial thing to add ta games, takes minutes. I wouldn't dare launch a game without all modern pad support, since it is so trivial to add. I could do it in my sleep with nothing but C++ and a hand made DX engine, and these people use Unreal 5, which supports it just fine. LAzy and/or uncultured on the requirements of launching a game.

So I tweak the Steam controller settings in hopes of fixing it and reboot, only to find that I have to agree to the eula again.

Then the game defaults to DLSS on and 50% frame scaling. Ouch. Do you want my game to look like ass? 50%? That is ludicrous. Do you think I have a potato PC? So at this point I'm genuinely scared that the game is optimized very poorly and will barely run with or without DLSS. Luckily it runs well, 70-80 FPS, no DLSS. So why the default 50% scale? How many people left the default on and now their game looks like ass? On the other hand, many people won't be able to tell.

But before testing the performance I have to go though character creation. It is a bit bare bones. Changing classes is very laggy. With all the artistic skill of the devs and all the power of UE5, can you not manage a non laggy class chooser? Just prelaod all the data in the background. I guarantee it, from one dev to another, that UE5 can handle pre-loading 10 armor sets.

The body weight slider is extremely laggy yet again. And regardless what you do, you get an ugly hunchback as a character. Here is the pre-order bonus that I would like to have:
https://betterposture.ro/cdn/shop/products/Corset_pentru_corectarea_coloanei_Back_Corrector_Pro_Better_Posture_1_cu_logo_720x720.jpg?v=1654699504

But the UI continues to be very amateurish. Barely works. Many options are missing. Is so bad with the pad that I had to switch over to mouse and keyboard. Usually console ports are the other way around. Whoever made this UI is either under payed or we are seeing the first draft.

Is this one of the least polished UIs I have ever seen (we are only counting UIs that work)? Yes, probably.

Plus pressing L1 takes you back to main menu unceremoniously, no conformation, no nothing. And a lot of weirdness, like options starting at 10. I go to choose ears, and first options is 10 and the last is 16. WTF?

Then in game we have the lock on camera. It constantly picks the wrong target and you have to fight it every step of the way. Sometimes 4-5 inputs are needed until the game understands that out of the 2 foes on the screen, with the right one selected, i want to focus on the left one. It is not like this game is designed around fighting ganks and you need great focus camera...

Is this the worst lock on camera in a souls title? Yes, probably.

That all could be forgiven, but I did mention the ganks.

I am a souls purist and think that souls should be one on one honor duels, at least when it comes to bosses. But still, in general you should keep ganks light. Because slow animation driven high commitment systems + lock on camera do not mix well with one on many fights.

Nobody, not even the most skilled of devs can make such a system work well, because the inherent contradiction between slow deliberate combat with high recovery time after a move and ganks can not be solved.

If you have a very fast and fluid combat system you can partially compensate for this, but Lords had this barely functioning lock on camera + way too uncontrollable dodge + surprising cheap attacks from the gank participants, so all the compensation goes down the drain.

Ganks are not he only thing, but also rampant ranged enemies. And very unpredictable encounters. A good souls game is a like a good stealth game when it comes to predictability: go through the same encounter 1000 times, get the same result each time.

But ganks are in the DNA of this game if the first two hours are representative. And from what I'm hearing online, the game has huge levels full of ganks and few checkpoints. Not a good designs.

The same way as having enemies pick up your souls is a bad design. So this mini-boss/harder enemy that is a bit cheap and I died 5 times in a row to has picked up my souls? Well, how am I going to get em back? Might as well take my souls on death then.

Oh, and don't get me started on on the drooling imbecile designer who decided to add an animation to picking up your lost souls. It is not like a part of the community has been screaming since the DeS days that picking up your souls in the middle of a boss fight needs to go as a design? How about making it worse? Good one devs. It is not like Nioh 2 had the great innovation (better late then never, ey) of putting the souls outside the boss room? And Lies of P copying it. Also, no check points in NG+? ♥♥♥♥ you!

Speaking of Lies of P, playing this after makes it particularly rough. Lies of P is a 9/10 product, highly polished, that also has a few idiotic design decisions (no poise, way to tight parry window, very missile stagger attacks, locking away key features behind upgrades) and is way way too hard. But if you can get past these problems, it is a very good and polished game.

But this? In its current state? 3.5/10.

Hopefully we get some patches...

Hot take: either my standards have risen much or the original Lords of the Fallen was better. After Lies of P I started playing The Surge (the original) which is a somewhat clunky and janky title in which almost every time I dies, it is the game's fault, not mine, pulling some BS, yet I find it way more enjoyable that Lords.

[Vermilion Knight]

If you like Lies of P so much why don't you go play that game? At least in Lords of the Fallen you can roll after you get hit and you don't have to purchase the rolling from a skill tree.

[Savager]

Agreed dude, i was looking forward to this game but its not polished well. When I played Lies of P I had rock solid 144 fps from the start to end with or without DLSS. But here? Pure garbage I have to use DLSS bcs otherwise i get low FPS drops but even with it I am getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ framerate in the main hub area and the framerate was the real boss in the first real boss fight.

[Zyrconia]

Originally posted by Vermilion Knight:

If you like Lies of P so much why don't you go play that game? At least in Lords of the Fallen you can roll after you get hit and you don't have to purchase the rolling from a skill tree.

Because I played it? I could play NG+, and I do have a save, but why play a great game twice when you could play 2 great games?

And I did mention that you had to buy baseline abilities as one of the idiotic design decisions in lies of P. Even, after you buy it, it is hardly responsive. It is still quite bad, but at least you won't die.

Not that Lords of the Fallen does not have overly long knock down times and getting up is hardly responsive there either. Made worse by the ganks.

What is it with soul games not knowing how long a heal animation of a knock down should be so it feels fair an appropriate for the overall speed of the game?

[Zyrconia]

Certainly a major dud. Probably refund worthy and generally I don't refund.

But the interesting thing is that several YouTubers I follow since the DS days, people I know have similar tastes and values to me, actually like the game.

Some say that this is the best non FromSoft souls title. So far it might be the worst...

[Pennywise359]

It had so much going for it and they blew it, I am trying soooo hard to like it but I must admit this is not a good game

[swaggman]

Originally posted by Zyrconia:

Certainly a major dud. Probably refund worthy and generally I don't refund.

But the interesting thing is that several YouTubers I follow since the DS days, people I know have similar tastes and values to me, actually like the game.

Some say that this is the best non FromSoft souls title. So far it might be the worst...

that title would go to surge 2

[Savager]

Originally posted by swaggman:

Originally posted by Zyrconia:

Certainly a major dud. Probably refund worthy and generally I don't refund.

But the interesting thing is that several YouTubers I follow since the DS days, people I know have similar tastes and values to me, actually like the game.

Some say that this is the best non FromSoft souls title. So far it might be the worst...

that title would go to surge 2

Surge 2 was cool.

[Zyrconia]

Originally posted by Savager:

Originally posted by swaggman:

that title would go to surge 2

Surge 2 was cool.

For sure. Surge 2 was pretty decent.

But the level design was something else. I would classify it as so bad it is good?

[J0ust]

I'm sorry but I cannot take anybody who un-ironically calls themselves a "Souls purist" seriously at all. You're not as smart as you think you are, get over yourself

[Zyrconia]

Originally posted by J0ust:

I'm sorry but I cannot take anybody who un-ironically calls themselves a "Souls purist" seriously at all. You're not as smart as you think you are, get over yourself

You are projecting way too much of your biases into a single thing. You should not dismiss multiple points just based on a label. Dismiss them all individually based on the strength of your arguments.

Being a souls purist does not make you (sound) smart and there is nothing to get over.

It is a shorthand label that signals that I value an old scholl design phylosophy in souls. That I value the experience more the fairer it is.

Originally souls was not about ganks. It is a rather cheap way to add difficulty. It is by no means something unconcorable, you can deal with ganks, but still, the design with ganks makes for lesser games...

And as I said, you can't design a good souls experience where you routinely fight multiple foes. Occasionally fighting 2-3 foes at once is fine. Constantly fighting more is not, because you are slow, clunky and your animations are high commitment.

You can add cleave to compensate.

And you can make the character fast, nimble and reactive, but if you go to far, it becomes an action game with souls elements, not a tradional souls title, because those are chacterized by the slow high commitment animations.

[Kleerex]

Originally posted by J0ust:

I'm sorry but I cannot take anybody who un-ironically calls themselves a "Souls purist" seriously at all. You're not as smart as you think you are, get over yourself

A "souls purist" that likes Lies of P at that.

[KoD]

TLDR: I'm an idiot that did 0 research on how the game will look like and now I'm crying on steam forums about it. Spot on, got all your points?

[Hudson]

just a heads up...those youtubers are schills that get paid to like it...welcome to the real world

Originally posted by Zyrconia:

But the interesting thing is that several YouTubers I follow since the DS days, people I know have similar tastes and values to me, actually like the game.

Some say that this is the best non FromSoft souls title. So far it might be the worst...

[楊玄。杨玄。LangrisserWWE]

Another I like game A so game B sucks thread...

[Zyrconia]

Originally posted by KoD:

TLDR: I'm an idiot that did 0 research on how the game will look like and now I'm crying on steam forums about it. Spot on, got all your points?

I did plenty of research. Nobody mentioned the bad UI, but like I said, not a big deal. A few people mentioned the bad lock on camera, but I was expecting normal bad, not worst in class bad.

Plenty of people took issue to the ganky design and I knew I was not going to love it, but it was hard to predict how offensive I would eventually find it.

I did plenty of research, but overall the tone of the discussion around the game is like around a 7/10 game. Like I said in another post, plenty of souls players I respect are really loving the game and I find it extremely strange that they do. Plenty of people are calling this the best non FS souls.

I have very high standards when it comes to souls, but since most titles are not great, I learned to lower my standards and right now pretty much any souls is guaranteed to offer me a fair time. Souls has become like pizza: there is a lot of great pizza out there, but even the worst is pretty decent.

Faced with this amount of praise and hype, I'm sure you did much better research.

I'm not looking for points, don't lump me in with that crowd. And I'm not crying. I just expressed my opinions and observations.

Maybe even having a conversation...

So, incredibly far off the spot.