Console Crusaders: Lords of the Fallen Emerges Stronger After Major Performance Upgrade

The troubled action RPG Lords Of The Fallen has rebounded in terms of player reviews on Steam, thanks to a major performance patch. Developers Hexworks have rectified several crucial PC-related issues with the 1.1.191 patch. Initially, the game’s release sparked a wave of disappointment, mainly owing to prevalent crashing. However, the new update seems to have stemmed the tide.

A fundamental imperfection, although not completely Hexworks’ responsibility, pertained to outdated graphics card drivers. Given Lords of the Fallen's utilization of the latest Unreal Engine 5, keeping the drivers up-to-date was crucial. Hexworks noticed a common thread among most crashes - dated drivers. To address this, they implemented a pop-up feature within the game that checks for the current driver status for Nvidia or AMD, guiding players to download an update if necessary.

Additionally, several crashes were related to issues with frame generation stability. Consequently, this feature has been temporarily suspended to offer a better experience, particularly for users with 40-series Nvidia GPUs. Sadly, some PCs experienced crashes when the game auto-determined the quality of graphics, mainly with certain 30 and 40-series GPUs.

Hexworks observed that some players were overtaxing their hardware by opting for settings beyond its capabilities instead of relying on the game’s auto-settings. This triggered instability, frame rate drops, and even crashes. Post-patch, however, the automatic detection of ideal settings should work flawlessly.

Lastly, a coding error causing potential crashes following the game’s initial cinematic has likely been rectified. As an alternative solution for any ongoing issues, Hexworks suggests adding "-nopsos" to the game’s launch line in Steam to disable the problematic shader compiling calculation.

The update doesn’t end there. It also introduced improvements that limit the duration of visual effects linked to the use of the Barrage of Echoes spell, which previously could hamper performance if overused. Hexworks even rebalanced enemy threats, making them slightly less destructive, and adjusted the hit reactions of particular projectiles. All while spicing up the Ruiner boss's standard attack and slightly reducing the power of his other abilities.

Multiplayer combat enthusiasts will find the added inability to parry opponents kicks a novel feature, offering them more strategies to counterbalance highly skilled parriers.

This slew of improvements has seen Lords of the Fallen's Steam reviews steadily shift from 'Mostly Negative' to a 'Mixed' rating. Coupled with the developers' assurance against employing the contentious anti-piracy tech Denuvo, the game appears to be on the cusp of a comeback.