Remember Lords of the Fallen? Not the original 2014 game, the sequel that came out in October last year and was fairly divisive. The game’s developer, Hexworks, never really stopped working on it.
Very quickly after launch, patches started arriving to address some severe stuttering and performance issues, and fix some crucial bugs. Once the bulk of that work was over, Hexworks turned its gaze to some of the core issues in combat, difficulty, and progression.
The developer changed some much, in fact, it ended up giving players the tools to essentially balance the game themselves, but what we all thought was the game’s final patch ended up being just another one in a long list of them.
Just days ago, Lords of the Fallen received its 1.7 update. Though a smaller patch that added support for PS5 Pro was released prior, 1.7 is among the more major, gameplay-changing patches the game has received.
Now, over a year on from the moment Lords of the Fallen first arrived, the developer is once again attempting to tweak the gameplay feel. More specifically, the patch improves character control and responsiveness in combat by tweaking animations to allow for more invincibility frames, more accurate dodges/rolls, and even more accurate animation cancelling.
Hexoworks said the goal of the update is to make the game more accessible to new players, while increasing the skill ceiling for veterans who know what they’re doing.
This patch also comes with a couple of quality of life tweaks of its own, including the ability for your character to automatically collect Vigor, and balance tweaks to New Game Plus. Another feature new players should appreciate is being able to summon NPCs in boss fights on a first try, and they’re going to be more effective, too
Even more surprising is that it sounds like 1.7 may not be the end of the road for Lords of the Fallen, either. Despite a sequel having been confirmed, more work will seemingly continue to go into the current game. If the changes in the new update intrigue you, the game is currently 60% off on Steam, until December 19.