Babylon's Fall - Review

Ascend to greatness as you climb the looming Tower of Babel and uncover its fabled treasures. Only by mastering the powers of your Gideon Coffin, will you unlock your true potential.

Babylon’s Fall is the newest venture from the acclaimed developer Platinum Games in tandem with Square Enix as another foray into the Live Service game market. Babylon’s Fall uses the iconic signature combat that Platinum Games is known for, alongside the storytelling and world building of Square Enix to bring us this divisive game.

When I first started up Babylon’s Fall, I was struck by one thing. The visual choice and graphic design. I was both impressed and disappointed all at once and found myself struggling to determine whether I liked what I was looking at or disgusted by the fact that the game looks multiple generations old. The more time I spent with the game, this question didn’t become any easier. I appreciate the idea behind having the game given to us with a paint stroke filter over the entirety of the game. It’s not an extreme one, but it gives this wet paint look to every aspect of the game. Whilst I appreciate the concept behind the idea, the execution is painful.

This is particularly evident in the cutscenes for the game. There is full-motion cutscenes, which are actually quite nice and the game would have benefited from more use of them. The others are stutter stepped painted images of the scene, done with the in-game models. These are really unappealing on the eye, due to the fact that the character models themselves, look like they’d be more at home in an early PS3 era game, than they do in the current generation of 4K gaming titles. The decision to use these painting style cutscenes for the majority of the game, and full motion ones for especially important scenes, whilst it makes these scenes feel more important; they stand out in stark contrast. The painting ones are just not appealing.

The character creator is rather bare-bones. There isn’t a huge number of preset faces to choose from, and whilst are a few hair styles, the combination, doesn’t equal a decent amount of variety. Your character ends up feeling more like generic Dynasty Warriors officer, than they do main silent protagonist of the game. The game does give you the option of altering the appearance of your character whenever you wish in the main hub, you are given a warning when you create a character. The game does not allow you to delete any characters that you create. I’m not entirely sure why this is the case, but it is important to note, that once you create a character, that’s it. They can be edited somewhat visually, but you cannot change the starting race or body type choice.

The game works on a “quest” system, which is just a period piece accurate term for a mission. You will spend most of your time in the hub, where you can buy items at the shop, use the forge (after getting halfway through the game) and edit your character. During the story you’ll proceed along a linear story pathway, going through a set of missions in an area, do a major boss fight, then move onto the next mission area. It’s nothing major, but a system like Outriders with proper progression, rather than a snap back to the same hub, then venturing out would have worked here. The fact that the missions turn in NPC comments on that fact that you shouldn’t be at the hub the deeper you get into the game, highlights this fact even more. The mission system could be retained but setting up camps in the areas would’ve been far more logical.

The game encourages you to party up with up to 3 other players and scales the difficulty of the content based on this. Upon release, playing the game with one other person, felt a little overtuned. Enemies were damage sponges, on top of the hit delay with the minor lag, made the early parts of the game feel rather unenjoyable. Whilst Platinum Games is known for their innovative and generally flashy combat style, there is a unique system here for Babylon’s Fall, but it is far less flashy than many of their other installments. The first major patch reduced the difficulty of the missions for people playing solo and this made the game immensely more enjoyable.

This is for two reasons. One, the matchmaking system seems broken. I managed to only match with one other player for a mission once and have been unable to find someone since. Whether this is because of a low player base in Australia, or that most players have already hit end game and or are playing with their friends, it is a problem. You will regularly get a daily mission to use the quick play feature, but I haven’t been able to get a single successful match using the system. Thankfully, solo play being reduced in difficulty means that it is immeasurably more enjoyable.

Upon release I found the game immeasurably unenjoyable to play. The enemies hit harder, I didn’t have enough heals and everything felt like a mini-boss to kill due to their huge health pools. I had connection issues a few times and lost full missions of progress due to disconnects and found myself not wanting to play beyond the first mission area of the game. With the first balancing of the game, I immediately found myself enjoying the combat far more. I felt like I was doing damage, enemies didn’t feel like damage sponges and the missions went from taking 30+ minutes each, to being 10 to 15 each. Getting through the early game is the hardest slog and will unfortunately turn many players away. This is unfortunate because once you hit the third area, the story really begins to pick up.

It’s unfortunate that it takes nearly ten hours for the game to get to a point that the story stops feeling like it’s getting in the way of mediocre gameplay, and the early story feels very hollow and empty. However, the second half of the game feels really thought out. There is deep story progression towards the bosses. There are twists and turns you wouldn’t expect. The characters are finally somewhat relatable, and you stop feeling like you’re a hollow body being dragged along a fever dream. It was a major boss fight in a two-mission area that truly made me start to appreciate the potential the game has. A full motion cutscene to begin the fight, emotional storytelling up to this point. A major cutscene for a phase change in the middle of the fight. On top of that, this was the first boss that pushed me really hard, and I needed multiple attempts on. This is the ultimate part of the gameplay. It’s unfortunate that it takes so long to get to this point, and that there isn’t going to be much gameplay beyond this, bar the end game content with Sieges and Skirmishes.

Babylon’s Fall is very similar to Godfall from the release of the current generation. Both have fallen to the ground pretty hard. The live service elements of the game are shoved in your face, before you’ve even gotten into the game, and it makes Babylon’s Fall feel more like a Cashgrab Service game. There is potential here. The visuals are fixable, and the gameplay is bordering on enjoyable. The story takes a while to take off but does get there in the end. Future content should focus on this emotional build up style gameplay and further expand the history of the Empire and more about the Ziggurat itself. The Gallu are an incredibly interesting enemy, yet we never get given enough to truly become vested in the intelligence they show. Babylon’s Fall has already fallen, but hopefully it can rise from its own ashes.

The Score

6.0

Review code provided by Square Enix

The Pros

+Endgame bosses are intense

+Weapon variety is good

+Endgame is well developed already

The Cons

-Game doesn’t start until its almost over

-Visually unappealing

-Combat feels sluggish and button mash heavy

-Most bosses feel shoehorned