Babylon's Fall Reviews
Babylon's Fall is a terrible experience all the way throughout. Reaching the endgame and postgame content (when the game actually becomes quite good) doesn't matter because the journey to get to that point is the most painfully boring affair in gaming. The game's dull story and horrendous visuals certainly don't do this game any favors.
Babylon's Fall is the first console GaaS developed by Platinum Games and it shows. Technically anchored to the past and artistically uninspired, the action game developed by the creators of Bayonetta hides its best features behind an abysmal story mode that lets the gameplay breath only after more than 10 hours of mandatory tutorials. Post-game content is interesting and the gameplay loop might be engaging after a good amount of updates to fix the rough edges, but will players keep faith in the developers after being welcomed in that way?
Review in Italian | Read full review
Babylon’s Fall falters with its implementation of a live-service model. While it contains a compelling, multi-faceted combat system, its brilliance is lost in a crowd of unnecessary features. The art direction, although interesting, doesn’t capture the notion of an oil painting. Instead, it looks bland and at times, downright ugly. Unfortunately, it seems that a troubled development period has marred the game, resulting in a directionless, cluttered and convoluted adventure.
Babylon's Fall is little more than a string of indiscernible combat encounters with a few big boss fights. The oil-paint art style of the game makes it difficult to distinguish anything in combat, especially in the darker levels. Unfortunately, the rewards of completing Babylon's Fall aren't worth the effort of going through the unbearably repetitive gameplay. Overall, Babylon's Fall is a combat-focused game with a lot of unvaried action that quickly gets old.
Now the only question left is whether Platinum Games and Square Enix have the fortitude to recover? I hope they do, but once players label a game as average (or worse), it can be an insurmountable task to change their minds.
Babylon's Fall is a huge wasted opportunity. Supported by ingenious mechanics such as the Gideon Arms or the Dynamis Abilities, the combat system had the potential to shine with a new and intense light, but the questionable choice to postpone to the endgame the unlocking of crafting and skills related to the three races greatly slows down the progression, placing the player in front of an unbearable monotony and spurring him to abandon the product within a few hours.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Once again, Square Enix fails miserably with another one of these infamous games as a service. Babylon's Fall feels like it was just made as a quick and easy cashgrab, and even PlatinumGames's incredible talent isn't enought to save this trainwreck.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The true problem of Babylon’s Fall is that it has no sense of identity. There’s nothing that sets it apart from games like it, and it only shows itself as a poor comparison to other, free, games. Babylon’s Fall feels like it was made to check a box, because it is just so empty and slapped together. The cookie-cutter levels only serve to wear you down as you just want to make it through main missions that are just about your only way to play the game. At the end of the day, Babylon’s Fall is a live-service game, assuming it survives this rocky launch, there’s enough potential to maybe transform it into something much better in the future.
Babylon's Fall is the latest example of a decent core concept being flagrantly corrupted by the live-service template, and whose prospects for improvement dwindle with each passing day.
Babylon's Fall has fast, flashy combat and a generally enjoyable structure, but is packed with issues, ranging from its limited co-op function to live service elements, which appear to have sealed its fate.
From a dismal effort on the front of graphics, user interface, player onboarding, sound design, and essentially every other aspect of game design, Babylon’s Fall is a failure. Games have bounced back from disastrous launches in the past, but in this case, I feel like it may be best to let sleeping dogs lie. The game’s one and only saving grace is that Platinum Games truly are the kings of combat, and while Babylon’s Fall is nowhere near the top of their collection of works, hacking and slashing your way through the Tower of Babel is at least, occasionally, kind of fun. It is just a crying shame that there is very little else to enjoy from the game; there isn’t anything pretty to look at, nice to listen to, or easy to engage with.
Babylon’s Fall is an early contender for the worst game of 2022.
For what it’s worth, Babylon’s Fall is not the worst AAA game to ever release... it runs properly, doesn’t have any major glitches, and is functional without having to spend any extra cash. It’s just a very boring, uninteresting game that doesn’t work or engage without such a substantial time commitment that I don’t think it would be worthwhile to even the most diehard of Platinum Games’ fans.
All in all, 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.
This isn’t the PlatinumGames experience I expected, and that’s the most depressing part of it all. An absolute waste of potential that should have been far greater than this mess of a release that will quickly be forgotten.
Babylon's Fall gets wrong everything that you can get wrong in a game.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Babylon's Fall is a baffling game that lacks any distinct vision, both in terms of gameplay and artistic design.
If you love loot-based games and like the idea of wielding four weapons at once, you can get some enjoyment out of Babylon’s Fall. You’ve got to look past the drab visuals though, and have plenty of patience to get through its opening hours and lack of direction. Ultimately, there are some good ideas here, and some fun moments to be had, but they’re wrapped up in a package that feels rough around the edges and not up to the usual standard that you’d expect from PlatinumGames.
Babylon’s Fall should’ve been an 11-13 hour action game with a lot of replay value and over the top cutscenes. It should have been an outrageous and addictive action game. This is a free-to-play game but with the greedy audacity to charge people $59.99. If this was free-to-play, then most of its faults would sting slightly less, but they would still sting.
BABYLON'S FALL has plenty of quality game design in it, with a good length main campaign and even side content on launch, with more already added, and even more coming for free. Whether the price is worth it is up to you; play the demo and decide for yourself.