Kings of Lorn: The Fall of Ebris

This game doesn't deserve bad reviews.

I'm honestly more excited for a new kings of lorn than quantum error.

I recommend this game only to those who are really starved of first-person fantasy games.

It has some very good parts to it. It has good atmosphere. There is nice visual variety between levels. Some of the designs are quite creative.

But it is a slog of a game. The beginning is very difficult, but eventually you are given ranged weapons which makes the game trivial if you decide to use them. The tutorial really shows everything the game has to offer. Find keys, pull levers, get to a boss. Most of the bosses become common enemies you face shortly after, so none of them are memorable.

Most of the game is linear, but then padded out with maze-like levels with very similar looking hallways. I don't know if the developer was trying to make the game seem longer than it is, but it made the experience worse, not better, and really hurt my lasting impression of the game. The linear levels play much better.

I did finish the game, which is rare for me, so there is something here that's quite good. It took two lengthy sessions to complete. It has charm. I'm curious what the developers will make next.

After completing one playthrough I would say I'm not disappointed in the game, it was a decently dark medieval journey through a dead universe with somewhat satisfying combat. That being said early game did suffer from a steep learning curve that led with a fairly unforgiving initial boss fight. Along with the early on difficulty a reoccurring crash bug at an early section required me to temporarily lower all visual settings after which the game functioned normally throughout the remaining 5 hours of gameplay on high. Was the game worth $29.99? That's a hard sell for me to argue for, but the game managed to keep me going till the very end and I would suggest this as a nice weekend runner for a bored fps player.

A game with so much potential and yet it plays like it is still in very early access with many bugs including a crash on exit where i have to reboot my computer because i cant get to the task control screen.

Level design is very limited with each level looking the same and what there is to enjoy visually is hidden in the too dark setting. I checked to see if i could turn up the brightness in the options but no such setting existed.

Exploring feels like a chore once again because of the dark and the fact that when i die i go back to the very beginning with no way to save anywhere i want. Plenty of dead ends as well when exploring areas as i ask myself why did they have me go all the way down this deep pit for nothing. Going up and down ladders is clumsy and unpolished as my character had no way to get off the ladder as he would walk a certain point up invisible stairs only to walk by down. When exiting the game i also cannot save so that means having to repeat the whole level again if i need to leave the game for real world activities.

Asking $54.99 for this is pretty ridiculous considering how little there is in the game and the early access feel of the entire product. Definitely don't buy this game. Way too buggy and hardly any content.

this game is hard but once you get the fighting skill down i honestly think its a breeze, its really just learning your enemies and then knowing when to attack, i played this on ps4 first then on pc, beat it on both platforms. Mortal Shell is easier than this game.

its not very forgiving as in you do need to save a lot, which i dont mind, i have raged a few times for sure.
i was hoping for more at the end but i love how its left open for a sequel if they ever decide to pick this back up.

the weapons i feel like you dont really get the chance to use many of them since you mainly stick to one or 2 but of course you can swap out as you please, i just found myself using the heavy sword and staff a little bit more than other weapons.

story is pretty good, i enjoyed it and found myself interested in what happen.

gameplay and fighting mechanics aren't horrible but are a little glitchy sometimes, but the devs have improved on that since i first played this when it launched, and i think pc has less issues than console.

i feel like you get your money worth with this game, its not a super 12 hour long plus story line but its a solid 6 or 8 hours give or take on how you play or how much time you spend.

7/10 for me.

had this game on my wish list for years they revamped the name and lore somewhat but overall looked great after being released and reading reviews i decided to wait on buying. almost a year later i buy it on sale and the combat is sooo lack luster and in the first 30 mins of gameplay had to restart 3 times do to character getting stuck on nothing. overall a very huge disappointment from what seemed like a good game rip.

These indie slavic companies always manage to trick me to buy some good fps game.

Felt like a hexen clone after the trailer, but turns out its trying to be a next level souls game. After the incredibly metal intro you get to wonder around in a pitch freakin black room for 15 minutes. After getting bored, i gave up and started to watch a youtuber play the first level cause i must be the moron obviously. Well the youtuber was wondering around for 40 minutes then got to the next level which was pretty much the same looking boring "everything is black and the visibility is zero" kind of map.

You get to punch slow and sluggish enemies with slow and sluggish movement. The fps never goes beyond 100fps even in a little room. The whole thing feels like a chor, and its a damn shame to let the models going to rot in a game like this. Why the hell is it so hard to just put a torch on the wall, and give the damn player a sword? Why do you hate people so much? Im glad mom and dad loved it, but why didnt you get real testers?

This game tempted me a lot cause i love nothing more than a good dark fantasy game where you basically kill everything that you meet while exploring the lore of this world. So it saddens me that this won't be a positive review. I've started on hard mode (King) and while i don't even mind that I'm pretty much dead after 2 hits that blocking is kinda useless or I always have to go to the main menu to continue the game after I die there's one thing that just really bugs me.
The combat is sooo goddamn boring really. All I do is hit the enemy every 2 seconds and then dodge back and I wont get hit. If the enemy can block I just slash his feet. And that's it. It isn't really hard or anything it's just boring af.

I kinda feel like im missing something or I'm fighting wrong somehow and don't get it and it just makes me angry.

Combat and all the enemies feel so clunky and slow. I mean wtf you have LITERALLY ONE ATTACK AND ALL WEAPONS HAVE THE SAME SPEED EVEN.

I don't know maybe it gets somehow better when I progress more I really hope so.

Thoughts After Beating the Game
I definitely enjoyed this game.
Pros
Good music,
interesting lore,
mostly fun combat.

Some areas that could be improved.

Level design - was pretty hit or miss. Levels such as the cave ones or Gorgers tower were great while levels such as most castles and the town were pretty linear and dull.

Ranged weapons - were very overpowered and trivialized just about every enemy including bosses. Used the heart weapon to beat the 1st stage of the final boss in 2 hits

Bosses - Early bosses become regular enemies later in so they lose much appeal on a second playthrough. Larger unique bosses are either made easy from ranged weapons or if you choose to use melee combat you have no choice but to tank hits as your character does not move fast enough to dodge large ranged attacks, mainly an issue with nithe, and the final boss.

Speed - everything from attack speed to movement speed, to swapping weapons just seems a bit too slow

I just finished the game and it is great. It definitely feels like a first-person Dark Souls. If you've ever played the old King's Field games then this is very much like it. I enjoyed the desolate, hellish atmosphere. What surprised me most is the small team that created this game. According to the credits, it was literally a handful of people. If they can create a game of this quality with only 5 people, I can only imagine the quality games they will produce if they get a bigger budget.

Kings of Lorn: The Fall of Ebris

EDIT 3: Unfortunately, I think I'll have to revert to Not Recommending this game for now. After playing through the third level, I've finally reached a point that feels a bit arduous to deal with repeatedly. The boss of the level has a very mysterious hit box, as some player hits register damage while others from seemingly similar spots register nothing, and this is a game where no error can be made or you will be punished severely. On top of that, because the save system has enemies respawning and doors relocking themselves on restart, if you die during the boss fight, you're forced to fight your way through ~15 enemies again every time just to try and redo the boss. If you're hoping to reach the boss with full health (say, if you've cleared the area and then saved the game with full health and armor), you'll have to fight each enemy without getting hit and reopen the boss door every time. Add to this the frustration of spotty hit detection and this just isn't very fun at the moment. Which is a shame, because through all of this frustration, the game still showcases a unique experience that is nonexistent in any game since King's Field 4, and as awesome and addicting as that slow, difficult combat loop is, it no longer makes up for the other shortcomings detracting from it. Luckily, the game is new, and will likely see some updates. Until those come out, this game is a little rough to recommend except to those willing to replay slow, methodical stretches of gameplay over and over if you can't find the hidden sweet spots on certain enemies. I may have excused stuff like this on older games, but I find it hard to accept on brand new titles.

EDIT 2: The dev reached out very quickly and within an hour or so, I was provided a new save file from a previous point (unfortunately had to refight a boss I had already beaten) in the game that I was able to use to continue my game.

EDIT: As a brief update, my save data with the game has unfortunately become bugged. It's not corrupted, but every time I start my save file, my character is instantly killed in a black screen and I'm forced to restart from the menu (which then just continues this loop). I've reached out to the Dev about a fix and will update as more information comes through. However, unfortunately, this now means that I cannot recommend the game, as despite all of the good things it has going for it and its unique King's Field style of gameplay, I can't recommend people to pick up a game that has the issues mentioned below combined with potential gamebreaking bugs.

I originally recommended this game, but have changed it to Do Not Recommend based on the gamebreaking issue I have encountered. Original Review Below.

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Reviewing based on initial impressions, as this is what most people will encounter before they decide to refund the game. Will update review if bigger opinions arise or when I finish the game.

So, for all the people saying this seems like Skyrim or Doom, I'd honestly say it most strongly reminds me of King's Field, which is the first-person RPG that FromSoftware was doing before Demon's/Dark Souls. You follow a swing-block/dodge-reposition-swing-block/dodge-reposition pattern, which is basically copy/pasted from the King's Field combat (and I mean that in a good way; this is the ONLY gave I've seen mimic King's Fields' combat so successfully), so this could be a huge turn-off to people wanting a more fluid or faster-paced combat system. In this aspect, much of the game has the sort of Dark Souls patience requirement as you fight, and I'd argue it exists even more here (as it did in King's Field). This type of game (in the beginning, anyway) is only difficult if you don't adhere strictly to combat flow I mentioned before, so keep that in mind. All of this I mention as positive things, especially for people who may remember or have enjoyed King's Field in the past.

Now, for the less positive. Enemies don't seem to have clear attack animations; occasionally, I can tell when an enemy is attacking, but other times, it seems that just being next to thing incurs damage. Occasionally, some enemies inflict damage and it seems as though its done through telekinesis, as their character models are a foot or two away (this seems a bigger issue for the crawling enemies). In conjunction with unclear attack animations, this can be a pain. Outside of combat, collision with objects can be troublesome. Walking into treasure chests that reveal lore vital to the universe causes your character to wig out and stutter around the object, often disorienting you. Climbing down ladders doesn't seem to be a problem, but a few times, climbing up ladders had me slightly edging off to a point where I actually fell off the ladder.

All of this is kind of a nuisance, but ignorable if you try to avoid it all. However, the biggest issue I encountered was that at one point, all of my keys except for the Menu key, the attack button, and the block button stopped working. I couldn't crouch, open doors, or do anything, and unfortunately, that meant I also couldn't go back and save in the first area (it requires crouching). I had to replay a portion of 15min after restarting from the main menu, and while it wasn't a huge deal, it's certainly an issue I don't have while playing any other game.

I point all of this out because I am extremely impressed by the development of this game so far. The animations are nice overall (enemy attack animations could really use an overhaul, but easier said than done), the environment uncannily captures the foreboding sense of dread and despair that King's Field and Demon's Souls made popular, and the sound design (outside of the voice-over mixing; stands out a little too much from the rest of the audio) are all very impressive for this unknown title. I feel obligated to point out both the things I love so far, and the things I think could be improved on. Fortunately, it has the core components done right, so even with its flaws, I absolutely cannot recommend this game enough to people who might be trying to get their King's Field fix and have yet to have that itch scratched.

Will update my review as I play more and finish the game.

At the time of this review I've only played about an hour of the game and so far i really enjoy it. As someone who loves the visuals and environmental story telling of Dark Souls and the like, this game delivers really well on that. The game looks really really good and runs smoothly on high settings. There's lots of time and effort put into every environment that you walk into which makes the game even more immersive. Its also nice and refreshing to play a game that just kind of throws you in and doesn't hold your hand, its one of those games where you just "go" and learn about the world on the way.

The combat seems slow at first and takes a bit to get used to but it works really well for the game. Once I got used to the combat it all just fell together and seemed very fluid; dodging attacks and baiting out hits to get that sweet hit on the enemy. Whats really interesting and something that I love about the combat so far is that although you can block hits it does not block all damage but simply mitigates it while still doing chip damage to you and pushes you back some which still lets you kill your enemy effectively, but at a cost. I found that in order to kill some enemies you have to mix between blocking and dodging until a window opens up to strike at them. Another very nice feature I've noticed is that if you catch an enemy unaware you can do huge sneak damage and usually kill them outright when they would normally take about 3 hits to kill otherwise. Eventually you can kill a room full enemies without taking a single hit by killing a couple with a one hit backstab and then baiting out hits with dodges until you kill the remaining ones. So far the combat is satisfying and I'm excited to see more weapons as i play through the game.

I have counted 7 different enemy types so far in the hour I've played not counting the first boss. The variety between enemies is very refreshing and you have to approach each one in a different way if you want to kill them effectively and its interesting to see how fights can change depending on what the group of enemies consists of.

The movement can be a little floaty at first but you are surprisingly (and satisfyingly) fast and it works well with the combat. It seems very old-school in a very good way.

All in all I'm very impressed with this game as it is especially since it was, from my knowledge, developed by ONE GUY. Also, seeing him put out patch after patch right after issues have been reported is very commendable and I suggest to support developers like him who listen to their community and addresses issues quickly. I'm excited to play more of it and i highly recommend buying it to support devs like him.

Before I bought the game I read some of the reviews, but I did not let the negative reviews sway my decision to buy it. You can’t listen to a few complainers who didn’t even give the game their time. The game looked pretty awesome so I had to get it. This game reminds me of old Doom. This game is challenging which means you can’t just walk through like a speed demon and beat the game in an hour. I had my fair share of getting slaughtered but once I figured out how to beat the spiders, headless guys, and skeletons the fun was on. The story is interesting and the purpose of the game is great. I watched a Russian player stream live playing and beating the game and I can’t wait to get to that point. All of you considering the game should get it and actually play the game longer than the few bad reviews who only gave it 15 minutes. There are hours and hours to experience the challenge and fun of this game. I paused the game so I could write this and now I’m going back to destroy some spiders. This game is well worth the money with a unique story, great soundtrack, epic graphics, difficult enemies, and a throwback to old style video games!

Great Game. Combat takes some getting use to but once you get the feel for it its not to difficult. So dont be put off by the reviews stating that the game is to hard.

So upfront, the intro has a fairly long story background, but it looks AAA quality and is pretty cool. The gameplay itself is an excellent mixture of puzzle and combat. So far I have really enjoyed it. I almost refunded it because of the launch crash, but thankfully I waited and the devs fixed it in less than a few hours. Don't let this game pass you buy. I would love to see this game in my Robot Cache library but it is only available on Steam.

Just got the game. Came out just a few days ago and was turned off by the comments. after playing though it seems most all bugs are fixed. definitely playable and enjoyable. only bug i've ran into is the "press any button to continue" doesnt work but a restart fixes it.

I would recommend the game probably later down the road once the game is more hammered out and doesn't feel as sluggish. The concept of the game is great and i'd love to play it but for me it constantly freezes up and stutters making it difficult to play, and even with the graphic settings turned down the game wouldn't go above 30fps for me. The game doesn't allow you to change the key mapping of the controls. By no means am I saying this game is a bad game all I wanna say is that in the state it is right now it really needs to be hammered out more to have a truly enjoyable experience.

absolutely awful controls. The game feel very sluggish and unresponsive. Can´t recomend it at its current state.
Refunded

I think this game has a lot of potential! With that being said currently I'm running into a lot of bugs. Recently I wasn't able to click continue upon dying. I had to go to the main menu then continue from there. There's no level up system that I've discovered yet. The game definitely doesn't hold your hand. I like it in that sense. It's a very foreboding dark game with a difficulty that hardcore gamers will love and others will run from. I'm recommending it because I can see the amount of passion put into the project. You feel like a small human fighting immortal GODS. But just recently I played and after tons of progress the game randomly crashed. Everything feels slightly sluggish right now. I know it just released but it's hard to recommend with how buggy it is right now, but I know if those get ironed out it will be well worth it for this niche.