From hater to cautious supporter

[dusk bobcat]

I love souls games. I play virtually every new release. I just finished my first time play through, and I wanted to provide some feedback of your game in hopes that it will make Lords of the Fallen 2 better.

My background

I've played and beaten Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1-3, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, Sekiro, Night Reign, Nine Sols, Wuchang Fallen Feathers, Khazan, Lies of P, Nioh 1 & 2, Where Winds Meet, Another Crabs Treasure, LoTF, and a few others that I'm sure I'm forgetting.
I also played the 2014 version of Lords of the Fallen and I hated it. I even argued on Reddit about how bad it was. In particular, it was too easy for my taste - which is why when I finally caved and tried the most recent version I insisted to do it blind and stay at level 1 throughout the playthrough.

**The good **

The level design. Exploration felt rewarding (even though I couldn't equip most of what I found) and it felt like every nook & cranny was worth exploring. The interconnected world design felt fantastic, although many of the shortcuts felt redundant with the seedling system in place.
The aesthetic of the game is phenomenal - especially when paired with the graphics. It's cool to see dark fantasy done right.
The judge cleric & light reaper boss fights were challenging, well designed, and easily my favorite of the game.
The story. Cryptic and immersive. I liked it.

What I hope improves

I'll start with the difficulty because it was the most glaring issue I had with the game. The bosses and enemies attack cadence is far too slow. It makes combat feel like there is no rhythm to it. The enemy attack patterns are too simple. I can't recount a single enemy combo greater than 5 attacks. When you combine these two things, it makes for boring, unengaging & unrhythmic combat. It made me wonder who this game's combat is made for, because it doesn't feel like it was made for players who enjoy other souls games combat. Just something to think about, but if someone has played Elden Ring, for example, they're used to far more complex combat. I don't mean to sound harsh, but do you really think the souls player base can't handle more than a three attack combo? This is made worse by the fact that you get two lives. If you want to give the player two lives at least balance the game around it.

Although I was a fan of the level design, I still had issues with it. I love exploring in these games, but I grew frustrated with lack of direction many times. There were simply too many cross roads leading to another cross road - with no indication of which path lead to progress and which was optional. I hope you consider more hints, subtle or not, that can let the player know which path is progress and which leads to optional areas. The levels were clearly designed around being able to plant seeds for new bonfires, but I found them easily missable. Staring at my lamp for a queue is not fun, especially when I want to look at everything else on the screen which was designed so well. I wish the seedlings were more rare so I had to make a calculated decision, like during a difficult section, instead of throwing them down willy nilly.

I had some smaller issues with corpse runs and a few other elements that I can elaborate on if needed.

Final Thoughts

I just want to end by saying that I was pleasantly surprised with the game, but disappointed that I had to do an SL1 run to enjoy it. The game does a lot of things right, but its issues stand out clearly to me.

Thank you for taking the time to read this—wishing you the best as you work on the sequel.

[sharp wyvern]

Impressive! No stats upgrade woah.

Please sir do elaborate about everything. It was a great reading and very well formatted.

[sharp wyvern]

how do you have level 1? i m trying to do same challange, but i already started on 22.

[untold saddle]

Iirc Condemned starts with Level 1

[sharp wyvern]

you are right

😱

i want new game modificator:

you gain 50% and 25% of Vigor
no character upgrade

[sharp wyvern]

hmm... i dont know ... most of player power coming from weapons upgrades.

tons of vigor allow to buy every consumables which more than enough offsetting lower stats.
and heavy armor is not so penalizing to stay cladded in cloth
so i have starting casting class that i never upgrade, but it doesnt matter.

"how can i play with not upgrading stamina?"
easy... while on zero stamina, i can still keep stabbing with my halberd, so its not a big deal. I would say its even beneficial, as strikes are more predictibile?

... eh why do i keep coming back to this game 😄

[dusk bobcat]

There were a few smaller issues that I had, corpse runs being one of them. There were a few that felt unnecessarily far from the bosses. In retrospect, it could've been that I missed a seedling spot. I know I did in the area leading up to Griefbound Rowena. They're not as bad as some of the others such as the one leading up to Prince Lorian in Dark Souls 3 (which somehow still became one my favorite boss encounters). I'm not a fan of corpse runs in any gamel, but I don't hate them. Maybe that is because they allow you to think on how you died and how to do it better.

Another I had is in the risk & reward tradeoff of parrying vs rolling attacks. It felt as if there was almost no reason to try to learn which attacks were parryable when I could roll the attacks more safely and still get in an equivalent amount of damage. Overall, it wasn't a big deal.