The divisive new Soulslike "Lords of the Fallen" currently sits at a "Mixed" review average on Steam, with many players reporting severe performance issues...
Lords of the Fallen (not to be confused with 2014's Lords of the Fallen by the same publisher), the new kid on the Soulslike block, came out last Friday to fairly divisive reviews. Some critics were seriously impressed with its realm-hopping mechanic and rewarding exploration, while others were less forgiving of its difficulty spikes and performance issues. Now it seems like the performance issues might be the game's biggest nightmare, as negative Steam reviews complaining about the tech problems have brought the review average down to "Mostly Negative" on launch day.
The game was reported to have pretty awful frame drops, stutter constantly and even outright crash on many systems when it launched on Steam last Friday. The developers were quick to respond with tips on how to potentially alleviate the issues, and a few patches over the weekend seem to have improved the game's performance enough for the review average to climb back up to "Mixed". However, the damage might already be done.
Lords of the Fallen: Already Doomed On PC?
Steam reviews are pretty important to any game hoping to find success on Steam. The review average is the first real metric anyone looking at a Steam game page sees, and an orange "Mixed" or even red "Negative" jump out at a viewer, making anyone interested in a game think twice about giving it a shot. So suffice it to say that a Mostly Negative review on a game's Steam page is the last thing its developers would want to see on launch day.
Which is a shame, because from what little of Lords of the Fallen I've played myself so far I could already tell that there's a lot to like here! And so many good ideas don't deserve to be buried under (hopefully) temporary performance issues, out of sight for people who could appreciate them. Here's hoping that the game is in a more playable state for everyone soon!