Weight, Sluggish Skates, and Input Response
The moment you grab a sword as a Dark Crusader, you feel the engine pulling you forward. Your light swings make you slide several feet with every press, carrying momentum that sends you sliding past targets if you swing without a hard lock. I spent my first two hours getting used to that weird slide, and it never felt totally natural. When you hit a button, the swing comes out with noticeable recovery before you can snap into a defensive roll.
That deliberate recovery is normal for heavy action titles, but here the buffer window acts erratic. Sometimes I queued a roll right out of a heavy flail smash and my character stood rooted for half a second before rolling late. When an enemy giant swung a tree trunk at my head, that delayed recovery meant eating a massive hit I had reacted to in plenty of time. If a game forces slow animations on me, every cancel and dodge transition has to fire cleanly off the pad every single time.
The camera lock has its own ideas during crowded skirmishes. In tight corridors, target lock frequently jumps to an archer on a catwalk high above instead of the ghoul chewing on your ribs. You end up swinging blind into stone walls, bouncing your steel, and watching your stamina drain out while you reset your footing. It works fine in open arenas, yet in closed spaces, the movement physics fight you as much as Adyr's cultists do.
Crossing Between the Living and the Dead
The core hook works better than I expected. You explore the world of the living, but hold a magic lantern that reveals the parallel world of the dead overlapping right on top of it. Shining that lantern through an iron gate reveals a skeletal walkway that only exists on the other side. Step into it completely, and you enter the dead world full time, turning the environment into a decaying landscape with bone bridges and twisted growths.
Dying once in the living world shunts you into the world of the dead for a second chance, which keeps the pacing aggressive. You have to hunt down an escape totem while hollow horrors crawl out of the walls. It builds legitimate tension because you cannot linger forever without getting swarmed by faster predators. The transition between these two spaces is mechanically clever, giving basic level exploration some real puzzle legs.
Problems crop up when the dead world floods the screen with basic fodder during high-stakes boss encounters. Fighting a colossal boss should test your reaction timing against big telegraphed patterns. Instead, you constantly clip against small crawling minions spawned behind your back. Getting shoved out of a dodge roll by an off-screen ghoul ruins what could have been a clean duel.
Weapons, Hitboxes, and Audio Feedback
There are nine starting classes and a huge pile of weapons to test out, from heavy-hitting flails to rapid-fire crossbows. I leaned heavily into strength builds before tinkering with agility blades and sorcery. Slashing with dual short swords gives quick active hits that cut cleanly through light swarms, while flails land with a blunt, satisfying crunch on armored foes. The English voice acting and audio design give the combat punch, especially when a parry deflects a massive blow.
Hitbox precision is hit-and-miss depending on the enemy type. Standard human soldiers have tight hit zones where ducking under a horizontal swipe actually works, which is rewarding. Giant brutes and winged horrors, however, feature lingering hitboxes that clip you even when their weapon model is already resting motionless on the stone floor. Taking phantom damage from an attack you visibly cleared by two feet gets old fast.
Ranged tools help smooth over some of that jank. Crossbows fire rapidly and let you pick off pesky casters who sit on elevated ledges. Magic feels potent too, providing wide blast zones that wipe out clustered mobs before they trap you against a corner. If you build specifically around spacing and ranged harassment, many of the frustrating melee collisions become far easier to manage.
Co-op Runs and Technical Hitches on Steam
I took advantage of the online co-op system across several zones, running alongside a friend through shared progression sessions. Having a partner changes the rhythm entirely, because one player can draw boss aggro while the other works the flank with charged heavy attacks. Quick revives and shared progress make the campaign way more fun to tackle as a pair rather than soloing every dense mob ambush.
Performance on Steam leaves something to be desired during fast skirmishes. Frame pacing hitches happen regularly when entering new zones or when several fire spells explode at once. On an action game that asks for sharp reaction timing, micro-stutters during an enemy swing make you mistime your defensive inputs. When the framerate dips mid-dodge, you eat a full combo through no fault of your own.
At $29.99, the scope is undeniably large, and the English interface makes stat menus easy to parse without clutter. But CI Games needs to tighten up input buffering and frame stability before this can sit alongside the elite tier of dark fantasy action games. The ambition is high, but the rough technical edges keep pulling the combat down from greatness.
Comments 12
BestNewest★ Best comments
Dont let the frame drops scare you off young one. Ive seen worse launches in my sixty four years. The dual world mechanic reminds me of some old Amiga titles we used to load from floppies (takes me back). Your sorcerer build sounds wise - magic was always my crutch in these games. Keep at it mate Bill
Reminds me of the first one back in 2014 (or was it 15? memory's fuzzy after all those lan parties in the basement). The lantern gimmick feels like they watched too many Zelda videos (Twilight Princess specifically, the mirror world bits). Nine classes sounds like bloat but the flail moveset has weight (unlike the floaty daggers in the beta). Frame drops on my 2060 during the big boy fights though - had to drop shadows to medium. Thirty bucks ain't bad for a weekend rental basically.
yep phil i feel that flail pain in my bones man! tried warrior first run and those recovery frames got me killed more times than a toddler loose in the cereal aisle. y'all are fixin to make me lose my mind here with these corridor cameras too, stuck on geometry more than the actual enemies lol. thirty bucks ain't nothing to sneeze at but the lantern puzzles are actually pretty clever. might respec to sorcerer since ola_ollie said it melts early game. fixin to give it another go after bedtime routine settles down
tbh the sorcerer melts everything early game but once you hit the cathedral zone lmao nope back to melee i go
Good review. Does the lantern puzzle stuff stay fun the whole way through, or does it get old fast once you leave the early areas? Also wondering how it runs on Steam Deck with those frame drops.
Reminds me of the first one back in 2014 (or was it 15? memory's fuzzy after all those lan parties in the basement). The lantern gimmick feels like they watched too many Zelda videos (Twilight Princess specifically, the mirror world bits). Nine classes sounds like bloat but the flail moveset has weight (unlike the floaty daggers in the beta). Frame drops on my 2060 during the big boy fights though - had to drop shadows to medium. Thirty bucks ain't bad for a weekend rental basically.
@prost_markprost_mark the zelda twilight princess comparison is spot on lol also dont forget you can cancel the flail recovery with a quick step if you time it right (works on keyboard too btw)
Lords of the Fallen? More like Lords of the FALL-en am I right? The lantern puzzle bits are actually pretty neat though. My sorcerer build melted the first boss but then frame tanked during the big knight fight. Chat in my head says "git gud" but my fingers disagree. Ten bucks says I'll still finish it.
@ola_ollieDont let the frame drops scare you off young one. Ive seen worse launches in my sixty four years. The dual world mechanic reminds me of some old Amiga titles we used to load from floppies (takes me back). Your sorcerer build sounds wise - magic was always my crutch in these games. Keep at it mate Bill
@wombat_23wombat_23 honestly just good to chill out with the lantern puzzles after a rough shift anyway (took me back to when i used to play solitare on my old nokia but anyway) the frame drops suck tho
@ola_ollieola_ollie ur literally wrong rn the knight fight dont frame tank its just the flail hitbox clipping the wall rn i timed it 0.3s early u should dodge earlier not later
Sorry, got distracted by the lantern mechanic. The dual-world idea is clever but the combat feels like fighting through mud. Those recovery animations on the flail are brutal. Paid thirty bucks and already regretting the warrior start. Camera gets stuck in every tight corridor. Not sure I have the patience for this one.
@Phil M.Phil y'all are sleepin on the warrior start but the flail recovery is dumb as hell fixin to get patched hopefully i bet the dev's got balance notes cookin up rn
@Phil M.yep phil i feel that flail pain in my bones man! tried warrior first run and those recovery frames got me killed more times than a toddler loose in the cereal aisle. y'all are fixin to make me lose my mind here with these corridor cameras too, stuck on geometry more than the actual enemies lol. thirty bucks ain't nothing to sneeze at but the lantern puzzles are actually pretty clever. might respec to sorcerer since ola_ollie said it melts early game. fixin to give it another go after bedtime routine settles down
@yeptbh sorcerer falls off hard lol thirty bucks for this jank is wild lol