Despite the fact that Sony has not yet announced the lineup of PS Plus games for April, there have been leaks via Billbil-kun at Dealabs – Lords Of The Fallen and Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream. It’s my favorite soulslike not made by FromSoftware.
Lords Of The Fallen is a third-person soulslike game released back in October 2023 by Hexworks, with a dark, gothic atmosphere and an emphasis on difficult combat and interconnected map design.
In Lords Of The Fallen you are a lampbearer, an exceptional fighter chosen to be gifted with an umbral lamp and sent to the land of Mournstead to defy the demon god Adyr by bridging the two worlds. The lamp allows you to switch between Axiom (the land of the living) and Umbral (the land of the dead) in order to find the path forward, unlock hidden areas, complete puzzles, defeat spectral enemies, soulflay enemies and collect more loot.
As you progress through the game you will find out that you are not the first, as you find and defeat the souls of past lampbearers. Your umbral lamp is not only a gift but also a curse, as it also acts as a corrupting force and will attempt to seduce you to its side.
As far as reviews go, it has a 75 on metacritic. The title had a very rocky launch with lots of bugs, frame rate issues, intense enemy spawn gank, and poor lock-on mechanics. But despite this it sold one million copies within 10 days. Having gotten all of this feedback Hexblade released Lords Of The Fallen 2.0 often referred to as the definitive edition in April 2025. This version included smoother combat, better lock on, performance and framerate optimization and changed enemy spawn locations.
All of these changes revitalised the game with many players who never finished the game returning and new players joining resulting in them selling 2.5 million copies and breaking even in February 2026 allowing them to put more attention and capital towards Lords Of The Fallen 2 which is set to be released this year.
The two major points of contention that have not been changed are the area layouts and the boss fights. The area layouts are polarizing because they are very large and convoluted with tons of interconnective paths which rewards cautious gameplay and thorough exploration far more than other soulslikes. Some people also think that the ability to shift worlds is a gimmick that is very overused and can get annoying and repetitive with there being sparse checkpoints causing significant runbacks if you die a lot.
The issues most people have with the boss fights are that some rely very heavily on gimmicks such as the use of the umbral lamp to destroy parasites as well many of the later game bosses having minions which are considered to be a cheap and aggravating way to add false difficulty to a boss. The other issue people have with bosses is their recycling as normal enemies or minibosses later in the game which belittles the achievement of defeating one in the first place.
Lords Of The Fallen is not available on PS4 meaning a PS5 is required and takes up 35 GB of storage.
We can recommend Lords Of The Fallen, as at this point the vast majority of issues have been ironed out and if you had a bad experience with it early on in its lifecycle I would suggest you give it another go as it honestly feels like a different game now. It will also function as a great way to see if you might like the second game before it comes out later this year.
Now go check PCGamesN for the best soulslike to play, and see whether Lords of the Fallen fits into the list
