Babylon's Fall

Babylon's Fall has fast, flashy combat and a generally enjoyable structure, but is packed with issues, ranging from it's limited co-op function to live service elements, which appear to have sealed its fate.

Babylon’s Fall should have fared better than it has. Hidden somewhere behind a myriad of poor choices is some enjoyable hack and slash combat. Going with an online-only, GaaS model and still sticking gamers with a $60 price tag. The strange choice of the watercolor painting art style. Taking nearly 20 before introducing any of the interesting pieces of character customization. Waiting until the player completes more than three-quarters of the story before opening up any of the side quests or resulting rewards. All of these could have easily been avoided.

By focusing on both action role-playing, massively multiplayer online role-playing and combat sequences, the title proves to be too generic and gets lost along the way. Technically dated and visually unremarkable, despite an original “brushstroke” effect, Babylon’s Fall is aimed at a niche that will appreciate its particularities. Fans of challenge and online experiences could find their way there, but most players are likely to find the difficulty poorly regulated and the endless battles.

While Babylon's Fall had several good ideas and had a lot of potential, it shot itself in the foot with its intrusive live service model and its painfully obvious lack of polish, making it that much harder to recommend to anyone, especially at the ludicrous price of $60.

Repetitive, ugly and lacking everything resembling fun, Babylon’s Fall is a mystery, and the mystery is: Why does it even exist?

An overpriced game with a solid combat system that's buried under a mountain of banality and monetisation.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to pay so much for such an awful experience. There’s a potentially enjoyable action game trapped inside Babylon’s Fall but it’s buried deep under layers of bugs, bad design, chaos and overall misery.

From the technical production to its desired visual direction alike, you needn’t take one step into any of its lackluster dungeons to find something both unpleasant and unappealing to invest in. And once you do, you’ll find a core loop unashamedly insistent on dragging its heels all in the name of a loot grind that itself isn’t all that exciting. To say the dismal failings on its loot aspect — and perhaps, even its live-service ecosystem on top — isn’t even the lowest moment should give you a clearer picture on how badly PlatinumGames and Square Enix together have missed the mark here. It might then end up strangely poetic come year’s end. That after seeing what might arguably be the year’s best offering release in recent weeks, Babylon’s Fall by contrast, could very well stand as its worst.

With lacklustre combat, serious flaws in visual design and clarity, and a complete absence of synergistic team-based gameplay, Babylon’s Fall is a disappointing attempt at a live-service game.

Even with PlatinumGames’ signature combat and some mechanics brought in from its past work, Babylon’s Fall babylon-falls short in every department. Any hopes I had were quickly dragged down by wonky combat mechanics, a below-average narrative, poor graphics, and even worse aesthetic choices that only make the whole experience even more unenjoyable and frustrating. Babylon’s Fall is a poor attempt at a cash grab that doesn’t even get that right - no one is going to want to spend money on it.