Babylon's Fall Reviews
Babylon’s Fall is not an awful game, its just not a very good one and while I would never tell anyone what to do with their money, I will strongly suggest you avoid this one as it’s fate will surely be the same as the tower for which its named.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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 gets wrong everything that you can get wrong in a game.
Review in Italian | Read full review
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.
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.
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 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.
My time with Babylon's Fall was a strange one. I don't recall ever disliking a game so heavily, only to fall in love with it moments later. The satisfaction driven nature of the experience is a road worth taking, but the slow burn isn't for everyone.
I don’t think we should completely give up on it, though. Games have been turned around from disastrous launches to become quite well-loved things, and I do think there is room for Babylon’s Fall to grow, while also being a decent time (in the right conditions) right now. It’s certainly content rich in its current state already, and while it’s probably a bit of a gamble throwing money into something that might not be around for too long, I can still see this developing a community.
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 is a huge disappointment. The initial charm of the combat system fades off very quickly and the level design feed that feeling of monotony of boredom. This is a shame, as the combat and the narrative concepts have so much potential.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Platinum Games released its worst game in history and it is surprising that Square Enix simply did not delete the game. It's ugly and boring, and the servers are already empty.
Review in Polish | Read full review