Another souls-like? Seriously? I know, I know, plenty of you guys are already tired of the genre, but hey I consider myself a pretty big Souls fan and I’ve made it a point to try out as many of these games as I can. So enter Morbid: The Lords of Ire, a small game developed by Still Running and published by Merge Games. With such a small team of developers, was Morbid a game that broke through the mold and differentiated itself from others in the genre? Or was it doomed to be lost in the sheer quantity of soulslike games we have? Keep reading to find out!
You’re here! Now go kill things
Morbid: The Lords of Ire, is technically a sequel to Still Running’s previous game, Morbid: The Seven Acolytes, which was an isometric take on the same formula, but to be honest it’s not really that relevant. Having never played the first game, I pretty quickly got the gist of what was happening story-wise. You play as Striver, a warrior of some kind that has to go and kill five “Acolytes” because… They’re evil, or possessed or something. It doesn’t really matter, go to these five areas and kill the bosses there, okay?
There is some story and lore as you play of course, these Acolytes (and the various enemies you face) are possessed by “Ghalars”, and your job is to rid them of flesh to control. Clearly the story or plot isn’t the focus here, with even the voice acting leaving a fair bit to be desired. Instead, Morbid: The Lords of Ire focuses primarily on the combat and level design and… It does a pretty good job.
Combat Basics
So right away as with most soulslikes, I assumed it would play clunky, the level design would be weak, the enemies either too frustrating or too easy, and that it would focus on some gimmick addition to separate itself. This game mostly avoids all of those issues in a way plenty of the previous soulslikes I played rarely did.
To start, the game is relatively simple. You equip a weapon, it has a specific move set that it shares with other weapons in the same family, and you start swinging or smashing away. This seems like the usual affair, with RB being one attack and RT being another, but it does differ slightly. See, every enemy in the game has two bars, an HP bar at the top and a bar that determines if they stagger and open up for a stronger attack. I found that RB attacks mostly targeted the HP of an enemy while RT attacks targeted the bottom bar. You’ll need to learn to combine these, as enemies put a “lock” on the bottom bar, which reduces how much damage you can do to their HP, until you hit them with an RT attack.
This worked pretty well for me as I weaved my attacks as needed, especially as I’d stagger my enemies half the time with my giant axe. The game also gives you a ranged single-use gun (that reloads when you kill something) as a way to instantly stagger enemies and take a chunk off of the bottom bar. Finally, with the right timing, you can also parry an attack which then opens the enemy up to a stronger attack that primarily targets their HP. All of these combat systems work very well with each other, especially once you learn an enemy’s move set and determine whether it might not even be worth fully breaking their guard, and instead just target their hp. It also really helps that you can roll out of an attack without fully committing to it.
Speaking of, in terms of maneuverability you have a full roll by using B and a small instant dodge by using A. I thought the dodge was an interesting idea, but in practice I stuck with either strafing around enemies or doing the full roll. It could just be muscle memory from previous souls games but I definitely did not trust a slight shuffle to get me out of harm’s way. You can also block normal enemy attacks by holding the left bumper, which is the first step needed to parry.
The game does bring in another mechanic to this whole foray, the insanity system, but it doesn’t really affect your playstyle much I found. Essentially, as you play and defeat enemies, your sanity will either go up, go down, or stay neutral. Going up means your exp multiplier (more on this later) increases, your stamina consumption decreases and deal more guard damage. Your insanity going down increases the damage you both do and take, but if the bar is low enough then you may see “specters” of recently defeated enemies appear soon after you kill them. These specters do more damage but are easier to kill. In practice I mostly ignored this system, even when I would be fully insane or in enlightenment, it didn’t change my style of swing and smash everything I saw. Which I think works for the better, as all too often soulslike games focus too much on what differentiates them. This system adds a small flavor of change but it doesn’t get in your way or annoy you enough to want it gone.
Plenty of things to rip apart
Now two things are essential for a soulslike to be even half decent. Good enemies (and enemy variety) and good level design. Morbid: The Lords of Ire, certainly has the first one while doing a serviceable job on the latter. While there’s the occasional cheap enemy mob out there, I found that as long as I took the time to learn the attack patterns then most enemies were fair but still challenging. Even when put in situations where I was surrounded by three of four monsters and my retreat path cut off, as long as I didn’t panic I’d be able to roll, parry, smash, and shoot a bloody path out. Landing a parry can be huge, as it gets an enemy close to being fully staggered, which then locks you into an animation where you can’t be hit. Sure it’s not the most immersive, but I appreciated that Morbid prioritized being a game first and foremost. There are a few bosses as well of course, with each area having an optional side boss and then a main one at the end of the path. For the most part, the bosses were fun and had decent variety. One of them did have me scratching my head on how the fight ended, but the others looked cool and the main bosses put up a decent enough challenge to a veteran souls player (As in each fight, minus one, took me at least a few tries to defeat). Like the enemies in the game, it’s all about being patient and learning boss move patterns. Know when to parry, when to break guard, when to attack, and when to focus on either HP or guard bar.
And lastly comes level design, where Morbid: The Lords of Ire does a decent enough job. It’s the usual affair of mostly linear pathways with a few branches here and there, and then shortcuts you can open up that shorten your death run or lead you back to a previous rest point. To be honest there’s nothing really special here but there’s also nothing that sticks out as terrible either. It’s very serviceable level design for folks who are used to playing similar games, with consumable items scattered throughout in every nook and cranny. Every so often you’ll find a separate path that leads you to the optional boss of the area, but for the most part, the levels are pretty linear as you progress through.
No Kneeling Required
Before we move on, I need to talk about two more things. How the exp and “level up” system works and how you upgrade your weaponry. For the first one, as you play the game and defeat enemies, you gain both exp and an increase to your exp multiplier. Reaching Enlightenment also increases this multiplier, but if you die it goes straight back to zero. When the exp bar fills up, you’re rewarded with a skill point, which you’ll need to save as you need five to do anything.
Soon after starting the game, you’ll unlock the blessing systems, which is a mix of both leveling up and ring systems for those similar to the Dark Souls games. You can equip various blessings you find in one of three (unlockable) slots and you can then upgrade those blessings using your accumulated skill points. For example, a blessing can increase your HP or stamina, and then the first upgrade could increase your healing or how quickly your stamina regenerates. Every blessing can be upgraded twice, with the second one costing a whopping 20 skill points but usually providing something big too, like reviving after dying for the first time.
Finally, the game has a weapon upgrade/gem slot system, but it’s a little different from the usual affair. Essentially, as you play the game you’ll find various runes which you can then slot into your weapons. These runes come with both a benefit, like increased damage, and a cost, like reduced speed. After filling all the slots in a weapon you can then infuse it, which consumes the runes but increases the base stats of the weapon based on what you had slotted. And then after you infuse a weapon twice, you can create a “Grand Rune”, which uses a rare consumable item to create a rune that has a percentage of all the previous ones you used. Yeah, this sounds a little complicated in writing but in practice I just popped on whatever damage and speed runes I found and kept infusing them. I’m sure there’s a way to minmax these but that was absolutely not required.
Blood, Blood Everywhere!
Visuals wise, when I started the game the first thought in my head was that this looked a lot like an early last-generation game. While the art design definitely improved or surprised me as the game progressed, the actual visuals are nothing to write home about. I never actively thought that certain parts looked bad, but I also rarely had moments of “whoa” either. Heck, the main one I had was when I entered an area that looked like it was straight out of Lies of P, which led to a chuckle. The game certainly has an edge to it though, as some of the later areas are full of as much gore as I think the code could handle. Even when you hit enemies you see a giant splattering of blood around you. I’m not sure if this was intended to be serious or humorous, but I certainly found it to be more of the latter.
The music and sound design was also serviceable, with boss or combat tracks doing their job of upping tension and area tracks doing their job in emphasizing the various themes or art design.
It is in the visuals though where the budget nature of the game truly shows. Menus and UI look like placeholders while fonts and dialogue boxes are extremely basic. But this is a game made by a small team without all the bells and whistles in production that larger studios can provide, so it didn’t really bother me too much.
Thankfully my playthrough was almost entirely without any bugs at all. There were times where I thought for sure that I was stuck but I’d be able to roll or shuffle my way out. I did have one enemy that just stared at me without attacking, which was pretty funny, but otherwise, I had no technical issues at all in my playthrough.
Conclusion
Morbid: The Lords of Ire, is an interesting game. When I started my playthrough a few days ago, I went in with low expectations thinking this would just be another soulslike game that’s average at best. But as I kept playing and got better at the combat systems, I started to truly enjoy myself and any nitpicking I was doing stopped. Heck, I initially thought this review was going to be half this length!
While the level design is serviceable and the budget of the game clearly shows in things like the UI, the combat flows very well once you get a hang of it and the game is always giving you more monstrosities to slash into ribbons. Morbid: The Lords of Ire might not be the best soulslike I’ve played, but it’s absolutely one of the better games in the genre. And considering it’s not launching as a full-priced game, it’s hard not to recommend the game for fans of the genre looking for something similar but still fun enough to have a good time.
Morbid: The Lords of Ire
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Good Combat Systems
- Good Enemy and Boss Variety
- Locale Variety
- Striking Art Design Later In The Game
CONS
- Lack of Large Weapon Variety
- Very basic UI, Fonts, Dialogue and Voice Acting
- Level Design Can Be Basic
