Lords of the Fallen is a Soulslike, so it’s going to be difficult, but how hard is it compared to its peers? These games toe a fine line between being challenging and fair or frustrating. We’ll take a look at whether this one manages to find the right balance or goes too far in its attempt to punish players.
Is Lords of the Fallen too hard?
Like most other Souls-likes, Lords of the Fallen doesn’t have adjustable difficulty. There are no easy, normal, or hard modes; what you see is what you get. Overall, it’s harder than any of FromSoftware’s titles. Unlike those games, which have a difficulty spike early and get progressively easier as you level up and get better gear and more abilities, the challenge stays LOTF has frequent spikes.
Unfortunately, some of that challenge is due to highly frustrating enemy placement and level design. The devs absolutely love pairing melee and ranged enemies together in corridors, usually with a dropoff on one or both sides of the path. However, unlike Dark Souls, for example, where if things get too hairy, you can rely on your good old bow and arrow, Lords of the Fallen doesn’t have a traditional quiver. Instead, all ranged weapons draw from a small pool of ammo. What this means is that you get a handful of arrows before you have to either visit this game’s version of a bonfire or refill using a relatively rare or expensive ammo pouch.
So, many encounters end up with you desperately trying to parry melee attackers while avoiding spells. That’s fine sometimes, but it happens time and again during the game. There are also a few too many enemies waiting behind boxes or around corners to push you off a ledge or ambush you. That’s another Souls-like staple, but it eventually gets to the point where anywhere there could be an ambush, there is one.
The amount of enemies you have to face toward the end of the game is ridiculous enough that it ruins the pacing. There’s no ebb and flow to exploration, just obnoxiously strong foes with fast enemies like dogs escorting them. Hopefully, this will be balanced in future patches because, at launch, the difficulty comes more from bad enemy placement than anything.
