When I first opened up Babylon’s Fall, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. The trailer seemed interesting and gave me a vibe that this was going to be a game filled with beautiful cutscenes, rich lore, and fantastic gameplay. After playing the game for a few hours, I honestly felt stuck on how to react to this game. There are so many interesting little tidbits in this game, but they are often so hard to see through the dense amount of bugs, oddities, and directions that this game takes. I will explain, but it is probably best to look at what the game is on the cover (metaphorically speaking).

Babylon’s Fall is a game developed by Square Enix and Platinum Games. The game is a co-op hack and slash adventure role-playing game (say that three times fast) that takes place in a mythical world that is loosely related to our own world. The similarity is with the Babylonian Empire, which exists in this new world with a whole lot of magic and intrigue surrounding a great tower they built referred to as “The Ziggurat.” The world is currently being torn apart by multiple factions on the outside of The Ziggurat while a faction known as The Domitinian Empire tries to unlock its secrets for itself.

The character that you create right before hopping into the game is a prisoner of war from one of the three factions that The Domitinian Empire is fighting. You are brought to The Ziggurat in order to defeat the Gallu which reside within. This is a dangerous task on its own, but the empire makes things easier for you by giving you a weapon known as The Gideon Coffin.

The Gideon Coffin grants you extraordinary powers that can be used to level the playing field if you find yourself outmatched or outnumbered. However, The Gideon Coffin essentially makes your character a slave to the Domitinian Empire and kills a majority of the people who put it on. The only hope of escape for your character is supposedly upon the top of The Ziggurat.

Now that I have explained all of the story elements, which are honestly the coolest parts of the game, let’s get into the rest of the game. At the launch of the game, you are instantly blocked by a screen that demands you to log into a Square Enix account or make one. As soon as I saw this, I had a bad feeling about this game. Most companies who force you to have an account in order to access their product after buying it are usually trying to hook you into their system so that you buy other games and get bombarded by emails.

After getting past that, I was greeted by the Character Customization. I tend to spend a ridiculous amount of time with this menu in games in order to get my character just right. A good amount of time was spent here, but it was mainly because the choices were extremely bland or bare. There were so few options for males that I ended up making a female character so I could make a decent-looking character.

Once I settled on the character, it was time to load into the opening cutscene and first level of the game. If you couldn’t guess how they were, allow me to make it plainly obvious; it wasn’t good. Out of the gate, the in-game cutscenes were somewhat difficult to look at. Pieces of clothing and hair were going through the player models and the look of the crowd that greets you reminded me of a crowd that you would see in Assassin’s Creed II, which is a game that came out in 2009.

On top of this, the first level was very bare-bones in terms of things to do and enemies to fight. There were many times where I was running through linear alleyways that were solely made so that the NPCs could drop additional lore into your lap. I was hoping that this would be a one-level deal, but this continued to happen throughout the levels I completed. It didn’t help matters that the combat felt just as empty as the levels.

Overall, I would not recommend this game to anyone in its current state. I think that there is a possibility that the studios could reverse course and turn this into an amazing game, but it will be an uphill battle. Regardless of if they are able to revive this specific game or not, I believe that the world of Babylon’s Fall is one to hold onto. There are certain story elements that I hope that we can explore in some way in the near future.

A PC review copy of Babylon’s Fall was provided by Square Enix for this Review.

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Babylon's Fall

59.99

4.5

Score

4.5/10

Pros

• Interesting Story Elements
• Range of Different Weapons

Cons

• Clunky & Outdated Graphics
• Boring Gameplay
• Quite a Few Bugs
• Horrible Character Creator