Lords of Exile (PC)

In the vein of classic 8 bit retro action adventures, Lords of Exile is a new adventure in the same style. Developed by Squidbit Works and Published by PID Games and PixelHeart, Lords of Exile has recently dropped on all major formats, how does it fare in the genre with some absolute classics? Let’s delve into this lovely looking title.

Lords of Exile lets you play as Gabriel, a cursed knight who’s out for revenge against an evil warlord, a nice simple premise for a retro styled platformer. Lords of Exile doesn’t shovel a load of story in your face, there’s a nice intro cutscene explaining what’s going on, and we have some dialogue in game too to keep you updated on where things go. It’s simple but effective.

It plays like other stalwarts of the retro platformer, obviously there’s a huge Castlevania influence here, with staged levels hidden items and a challenge that’s not too difficult, but with enough stressful areas it’ll give you a decent playthrough. You’re given 8 levels to play through to get your revenge, each of these has a different style to it, but nothing too out of the ordinary, villages, forests, castles and a fortress are just some of the levels, but each of these levels have you travelling through different areas within these where levels are broken up.

Each of these levels has a sub boss and a main boss, with each of these proving to be somewhat of a challenge. However most can be overcome quite routinely with some trial and error. The levels themselves do have a bit of variety, where some levels and boss fights can see you on tight platforming areas, or even an entire boss fight where you’re climbing up a wall trying to attack a giant spider, this adds a good amount of variety to keep your play feeling fresh.

There’s a very similar feel to the controls with them sometimes just feeling a little unreactive, like you’re playing literally on a nes controller, I do think this is styled this way to make you focus on how you play but it can be slightly annoying. But mostly the game plays quite well, with combat being melee based with some additional throwables which can be collected in each level, and further in the game you’re given a summon who can help you traverse hard to reach or blocked off areas, these appear as a ghostly apparition behind your character and be controlled with a button press and a hold of attack. These feel a bit under utilised however, with them primarily being used to get through an area, they don’t have any use in a battle really as you can find yourself a bit overwhelmed in combat. Potentially an alternative button for an apparition attack could have been implemented like a special attack.

The game wasn’t too challenging however, there wasn’t a life system on my playthrough so I could continuously try on struggle points again and again, which didn’t feel awful, but a level system on a harder difficulty could have made a good amount of challenge, especially for those who’ve handled Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden and Megaman on runs before. As mentioned there were a few stress points in the game, but that could either be my lack of skill or lack of patience playing.

Visually Lords of Exile feels like a game ripped out of the later NES timeline, with some lovely pixel art cutscenes, leading into a lovely looking game, character art looks good and keeps an analogous colour scheme, with your character sticking with red/orange colour, later deeper shades of blue are used for the character. Enemies tend to stick with this to a degree until you get to some of the bosses. The bosses are mostly huge screen filling enemies, like the aforementioned giant spider, a giant fire breathing boar earlier in the playthrough. The levels in the game have some very nice looks to them, with some nice use of contrasting colours to show things that are potentially dangerous or helpful, though some things like climbing walls can be a bit hidden, though I wouldnt expect any yellow paint to be applied here.

The soundtrack has some absolute bangers with some contributions by famed composer Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage 2), Dominic Ninmark (Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider, Blazing Chrome), and Pentadrangle, you’ve got some of the best retro styled composers in one game and they all deliver some pumping belters to help you get through. Other audio quips like sfx all sound like they’ve been developed with 8 bit systems in mind, some swipes sound synthy and exciting, giant bosses sound like they’re pounding right towards you, and jumps sound springy.

Once the game is completed, you’re given some lovely unlocks, the main of these is being Lyria, a second character who’s a lot more agile than Gabriel, styled more like a ninja, she has an infinite projectile amongst being faster and being able to jump higher than Gabriel. This is a nice addition to give you an opportunity for a second playthrough.

There’s nothing really majorly bad about Lords of Exile, it’s a testament or a love letter to those before it and an example of how 8 bit games can still have shelf life today. Though some finer tweaks to the controls and a bit more of a challenge would have made this something great as opposed to something decent.