Review – Babylon’s Fall

I love loot-based action games. Getting new gear, seeing how it changes both my stats and appearance; there’s something cathartic about that experience. Despite a terrible experience with the demo, I decided to chase the loot monster and pick up Babylon’s Fall.

Content Guide

Babylon’s Fall has some mild language and suggestive attire.

Review

The world is in trouble, and only those chosen by a device known as the “Gideon Coffin” are worthy of saving it and being called a “Sentinel”…or something like that. The voice acting and animation in the intro were so terrible, I’ve skipped as many subsequent story beats as possible, which is disheartening since it seems like Platinum Games was actually trying to build a fantasy world that did something outside the norm.

Now that we don’t care about the story, we’ve established the gameplay experience must be top-notch, right? Not exactly.

Babylon’s Fall is filled with awkward design decisions. The game is set up with our hero climbing a tower. Each floor is considered a “cloister” and has some sort of theme, often based on elemental factors. Missions typically consist of traversing a stage, completing three to five multi-wave battles, then taking your loot and going home. It’s problematic, though, that combat is mediocre at best and it’s probably the best part of the game. 

Like Destiny, your power is a composite number of all the gear you’re wearing. This includes four pieces of armor and four weapons. Two weapons are used for your standard attacks and the other two are a weird sort of ethereal, floating weapons controlled by the “Gideon Coffin” design on your back and activated by the shoulder buttons. Using them will pull from a bar that builds up from your regular attacks, so combat is intended to have a constant tension pulling from both. What it looks like in practice, however, is a wild claw grip on the controller while you’re trying to target an enemy and hit them with up four different weapons. It’s a nearly-undistinguishable visual mess and it’s bound to give you carpal tunnel syndrome.

Getting through a mission, whether alone or with the help of others, will reward you with any items you’ve picked up through the level. No, you can’t see what those are when you pick them up. They’re deciphered when you finish the mission and can’t be equipped until you’re back in town.

To double down on some of its weird decision, Babylon’s Fall is a full-priced game but they put several free-to-play mechanics in, from a season pass to daily, weekly, and seasonal goals to complete. The game is also rife with encouraging in-app purchases. Want to buy or sell gear from the merchant in town? You’ll have to scroll through 2-3 scenes with real-money currency and season pass content first. It’s ridiculous.

To give them some credit, they try to sprinkle new mechanics in as time goes on, but gear crafting and access to the Gideon Coffin mechanics are all too little too late. At the very least, that should all have been accessible from the get-go.

From an audiovisual standpoint, Babylon’s Fall is a complete mess. They’ve somehow managed to take a PlayStation 3 game and release it on PlayStation 5 and PC. Character models are ugly, the world is fairly hideous, and the enemy design feels uninspired and repetitive. On top of that, they’re using some sort of visual filter that makes things look grimy and, for some reason, our hero still manages to look like they’re made out of cheap plastic.

I’m completely baffled Platinum Games developed this. I’m even more confused that Square Enix published it, particularly in the same release window as Triangle Strategy and Stranger of Paradise. I fully expect to see this go free to play or completely shut down within 3 months of launch. Even with cross-play, there are barely enough players to get help on missions.

Don’t bother picking this up. It is absolutely not worth your time or money.

Babylon must fall because of Israel’s slain, just as the slain in all the earth have fallen because of Babylon.

– Jeremiah 51: 49