Lords of the Fallen - Review @ Fextralife
- Thread starter HiddenX
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EDIT: He mentions performance problems too.
EDIT: It's strange that he criticizes the combat in this video, because he said in previous ones that, although requiring some getting used to, it was very satisfying.
The score on Steam, after being Mostly Negative, is slowly recovering. It will be more significant after the weekend.
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I played for about 1h. I did have some very weird performance issues right as the game initially loaded me into the starting location. It was really weird.
I seemed like what usually happens when a game has shaders that it needs to precomputer or whatever, but it doesn't do so while not in the game. It seemed like it did it on the first load or something.
So the second I loaded in, the framerate dropped to like 10, and then over the course of the first minute of gameplay it slowly stabilized and got to 60 (where I capped it).
Afterwards it was very smooth, no issues. No framedrops or anything.
I do wonder if I'll experience the same for a second time or anything. I hear the game doesn't have any load times after the initial one, and the initial stutter was way too short for it to have deal with all shaders (if that is what was happening).
But, I don't mind right now. I won't be touching the game right now. I'm just too tired for a souls-like right now.
I seemed like what usually happens when a game has shaders that it needs to precomputer or whatever, but it doesn't do so while not in the game. It seemed like it did it on the first load or something.
So the second I loaded in, the framerate dropped to like 10, and then over the course of the first minute of gameplay it slowly stabilized and got to 60 (where I capped it).
Afterwards it was very smooth, no issues. No framedrops or anything.
I do wonder if I'll experience the same for a second time or anything. I hear the game doesn't have any load times after the initial one, and the initial stutter was way too short for it to have deal with all shaders (if that is what was happening).
But, I don't mind right now. I won't be touching the game right now. I'm just too tired for a souls-like right now.
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Vaelith
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About 3 hours in now, and no technical problems of note on my end. The first time I loaded into the game, the loading screen ran at like 1FPS for about 1 minute, which was worrying, but the game settled down after that, and it's been smooth sailing ever since on ultra settings at 4k resolution.
To mention a pet peeve of mine, the game doesn't handle tabbing outside the game very well, it compresses the screen creating a weird band on the upper 25% of my primary screen, and then it takes a few seconds to tab back into the game; it doesn't happen as smoothly and seamlessly as I'd like.
I hope they resolve the issues for those who are having them (seems mostly people who don't have a high-end rig, which might have not been tested properly during development), as it will likely dampen the success of a game that is quite good on its own. I'll talk more about the game itself once I'm further in, but for now, I like what I'm seeing.
To mention a pet peeve of mine, the game doesn't handle tabbing outside the game very well, it compresses the screen creating a weird band on the upper 25% of my primary screen, and then it takes a few seconds to tab back into the game; it doesn't happen as smoothly and seamlessly as I'd like.
I hope they resolve the issues for those who are having them (seems mostly people who don't have a high-end rig, which might have not been tested properly during development), as it will likely dampen the success of a game that is quite good on its own. I'll talk more about the game itself once I'm further in, but for now, I like what I'm seeing.
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Note that fextralife isn't a "he", it's some terrible content recycling company. One fun thing they do is embed twitch streams invisibly on their web pages so every viewer of the page gets counted as a twitch viewer so it royally screws up discoverability for actual streamers.
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For anyone playing it, what's the difficulty level like?
One thing I liked about the original (and the original developer's other game, The Surge) was that. though it was challenging at times, it wasn't super crazy OTT hard like some Souls-likes like to be. Some wear their extreme difficulty like a badge of honour.
One thing I liked about the original (and the original developer's other game, The Surge) was that. though it was challenging at times, it wasn't super crazy OTT hard like some Souls-likes like to be. Some wear their extreme difficulty like a badge of honour.
Seems pretty easy so far but I'm only an hour in or so. Also I'm coming straight from lies of p which had some of the hardest encounters in any souls or souls-like games I've ever played and I've played many.
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I consider you an expert level Souls player, so that probably means it'll be a decent (but manageable) challenge for me, and that I shouldn't ever go anywhere near Lies of P.
I'm not sure if you were being ironic. There were similar false claims on Reddit not long ago (I think @Couchpotato still has links to them) that Fextralife was evil, embedding Youtube (or Twitch) videos to increase their view hits, and spawning bots that would vote down people's post when they referred to Fandom instead of Fextralife and vote them up otherwise.
Don't listen to all that noise; the competition is somewhat fierce between those guide websites. The original poster never verified any of his claims, nor did he bother to prove them later, and there were big gaps in his reasonings. Yes, there are videos when you're not VIP, but that's what many websites do. An ad blocker will conveniently hide them (maybe that's why, like me, you don't see them).
I usually find his reviews informative, well-constructed, and honest, which is more than what can be said of many others. Here, he obviously changed his mind a little, but he explained why near the end (I posted a little too quickly about it).
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I also find fextralife videos decently informative, maybe a bit biased sometimes.
About the practices to maximize viewership and money, I have no issues. You’re in a hypercapitalistic society, this is what it pushes you to do.
About the practices to maximize viewership and money, I have no issues. You’re in a hypercapitalistic society, this is what it pushes you to do.
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Vaelith
Keeper of the Watch
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I don't mind Fextralife either. Game journalism is what it is, but if they do the work of scouting games, editing videos, and posting readily available information about games I may be interested in so I don't have to move a finger myself, they can take a couple of minutes of me counting as viewing their Twitch channel. That's such a first-world problem to be concerned about.
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I don't know about Twitch, but one of the claims was about Youtube auto-play videos (not sure if there's still on the site). After searching a little, I found a Youtube page explaining that those didn't count as a hit.
And if I disable my ad blocker, sure enough, I see the Twitch video. It's hidden but still visible in the HTML sources when the AdBlock is enabled.
And if I disable my ad blocker, sure enough, I see the Twitch video. It's hidden but still visible in the HTML sources when the AdBlock is enabled.
mercy
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An excellently Art Directed game. Checked negative reviews on Steam with CTDs and bad programming/design issues. Unfortunately it seems, while the graphics team did its job - the videos looked amazing - the technical gameplay has collapsed into a mess.
Many customers complain about real issues that should have been solved prior release. Typical publisher-tyranny = they force the game out to satisfy investors. But in this case their stupid gamble misfired probably. And the team is now under double-pressure in crunch again, which has the danger to disintegrate the nerves of developers..
I deleted my bookmark of this game. Expect this game will be truly finished, so players can try it a second time.
Probably Just proof of sinecure-abuser Schlemiel idiots at publisher CI Games.
Worst case scenario is that HEXWORKS is an inexpertly put together mixed team with excellent artists and bad designers / technical coders who are establishing gameplay..
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@mercy
I played all weekend without an issue. Friday night to Sunday, 20 hours, not one issue. The game is excellent! I think they really nailed it.
I think the low Steam reviews are just people reviewing their hardware. If you have a spicy 7800X3D rig, like @JDR13 and myself, you won't have any issues. I've been running it in 4k ultra with FSR Quality and getting about 80fps average. Could turn off ray tracing stuff and that'll go up to 100. Playing with controller it feels fine even when it dips to 60fps in those 1% low situations.
If I had to find something to complain about it would be how the multiplayer doesn't seem to use any local region and most of the time I join someones game it's too laggy. That's if it connects at all. I'd say it failed to join half the time. Also, I got stuck in a bit of "umbral" scenery when the host went umbral and I was standing in it. Also, enemies seem to have trouble crossing shortcut bridges that the player has knocked down but that doesn't really bother me.
But, damn, it really is a great game if you can run it. I'd highly recommend it to souls-like fans provided they don't have a potato PC.
I remember the first time I played an Unreal Engine 3 game on my PC and it ran like shit and I cursed the engine and called it an unoptimized piece of shit but eventually hardware catches up. It is the next-gen engine and very taxing on the hardware. You could say that the improvement in graphics isn't worth the performance cost and I'd probably agree with you. My old GTX680 almost ran Dark Souls 3 perfectly and those graphics are fine. Elden Ring graphics are fine. But, you know, that's the way she goes.
I played all weekend without an issue. Friday night to Sunday, 20 hours, not one issue. The game is excellent! I think they really nailed it.
I think the low Steam reviews are just people reviewing their hardware. If you have a spicy 7800X3D rig, like @JDR13 and myself, you won't have any issues. I've been running it in 4k ultra with FSR Quality and getting about 80fps average. Could turn off ray tracing stuff and that'll go up to 100. Playing with controller it feels fine even when it dips to 60fps in those 1% low situations.
If I had to find something to complain about it would be how the multiplayer doesn't seem to use any local region and most of the time I join someones game it's too laggy. That's if it connects at all. I'd say it failed to join half the time. Also, I got stuck in a bit of "umbral" scenery when the host went umbral and I was standing in it. Also, enemies seem to have trouble crossing shortcut bridges that the player has knocked down but that doesn't really bother me.
But, damn, it really is a great game if you can run it. I'd highly recommend it to souls-like fans provided they don't have a potato PC.
I remember the first time I played an Unreal Engine 3 game on my PC and it ran like shit and I cursed the engine and called it an unoptimized piece of shit but eventually hardware catches up. It is the next-gen engine and very taxing on the hardware. You could say that the improvement in graphics isn't worth the performance cost and I'd probably agree with you. My old GTX680 almost ran Dark Souls 3 perfectly and those graphics are fine. Elden Ring graphics are fine. But, you know, that's the way she goes.
I don't think many people have that sort of system. From what I've read, setting Reflection and Global Illumination on high actually enables ray tracing, so setting that on medium could help less fortunate players. I haven't bought the game yet, so I don't know if there's any warning about this in graphics menu.
Well I will never pay more then $400 for a new video card every time I update, and cant justify spending $1,000 just for a GPU. Yes I'm not made out of money nowadays.
Prices are insane were one hardware component cost more then the whole system.
They're insane. And it's not only the price, but the ridiculous amount of power they require, and the noise they generate.Well I will never pay more then $400 for a new video card every time I update, and cant justify spending $1,000 just for a GPU. Yes I'm not made out of money nowadays.
Prices are insane were one hardware component cost more then the whole system.
Carnifex
SasqWatch
I guess I'm odd, as I tend to tone down graphics and completely eliminate audio before venturing into a new game. For the graphics I do that simply not to tax the mechanics, it's like driving a standard auto at maximum speed, you can only sustain that for so long before damage ensues. Give me the graphics equivalent to early Wizardry or Ultima games and I'm more than satisfied.