Babylon's Fall Reviews
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.
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 seems like it needed a lot more development time. The core combat feels stiffer than my left wrist, which is currently recovering from a broken bone. Combining that with lackluster graphics and limited multiplayer options would be bad enough, but locking out key features of the game behind ten or so hours of gameplay makes Babylon’s Fall a very tough sell. Stacking microtransactions on top of it all leaves a nasty aftertaste that Platinum Games is going to have to wash out for a long time to come.
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 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.
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 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.
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
Anyone who's been keeping tabs may not be all that surprised to find Square Enix once again in a precarious spot that is in part baffling but more so predictable given recent history.
Babylon’s Fall is an early contender for the worst game of 2022.
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.
I hate to be this negative and scolding in this review, but in its current state, Babylon's Fall should not exist, especially not with such a hefty price tag. It's a live service game that's hell-bent on monetizing everything, but it's uninterested in being engaging, rewarding, or nice to look at. There are plenty of glimpses of the familiar Platinum Games talent involved, teasing the game that could have been, but it ultimately fails to make an effort except for microtransactions. Even hardcore fans of the genre or Platinum Games should likely avoid this title.
Babylon's Fall is a game that impresses by the fact that nothing in it works as it should. It's a boring title and marked by a series of problems. It ends up standing out as one of the worst games in a year full of great releases.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Babylon's Fall is a baffling game that lacks any distinct vision, both in terms of gameplay and artistic design.
Babylon's Fall doesn't have the ability to offer a rich and enjoyable multiplayer section.
Review in Persian | Read full review