Babylon's Fall

Babylon's Fall
No matter how much you can naysay about it, all gaming developers should handle the games-as-a-service model the right way if they are so inclined. If you fail to do that, the whole operation will come falling and crumbling down to nothing, as demonstrated here.
Genre(s): Action role-playing Hack and slash Rating(s): ESRB: T CERO: D PEGI: 18 ACB: MA 15+ NZ OFLC: M Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Release Date: March 3, 2022 Engine: Platinum Engine Developer(s): PlatinumGames Publisher(s): Square Enix Country: Japan

Babylon's Fall was an action role-playing game developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. Originally announced at E3 2018 with a cinematic trailer and re-revealed at E3 2021, with a proclaimed games as a service model.

On September 13, 2022, Square Enix delisted the game and in-game purchases are no longer possible. The game's servers shut down on February 28, 2023.

Why Babylon Fell and Couldn't Get Back Up

1. As mentioned, it's a full-priced live-service title (for which the concept was already struggling for success) being that it requires a mandatory internet connection and it has microtransactions to boot. It feels more like a free-to-play game than a proper console game. This can be best described as essentially what would happen if a Japanese dev tries way too hard to act like a Western game dev, with practices such as the following;
   • One of these microtransactions (10,000 Garaz, which is the paid currency) even cost more than its price tag (8,580 yen, $60 in the US, €70/£60), at $90/€90/£74/11,000 yen.
   • The battle pass system, which is a trope used in many Gacha games and even Marvel's Avengers, is a hundred levels long. Though the fact that it's 3 months per pass might seem more time, as some games run their pass monthly, the fact it takes very long to rank up, and many of the levels on the normal pass are just empty makes the whole thing a chore.
2. Square Enix had very little faith in the game, seeing that it had very little marketing towards its release, which hurt its launch, especially towards other games such as Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West. It was reported that the Steam version peaked at fewer than 650 players on day 1, which isn't good for an always-online multiplayer-focused title. Sometime around April, the month after it released, it was then reported that the game had dropped to less than 10 players, then around May 3, there was only one player (!). In other words, even worse than Battlefield 2042 as both of these games lost a lot of players, through the latter game in June 2022, has around 6000 to 7000 players thanks to the first DLC, but still behind Battlefield 1. To point this out, both games failed to be stable.
3. While not all of the cutscenes, some of the storytelling is told in slideshows. In comparison, Bayonetta used a clock effect for this type of still cutscenes which are used to make the cutscenes feel like comics, but in this game, it instead uses fades, which just looks more like a slideshow or a video project than something you'd see in a video-game. While this can be tolerable on 2D graphics, these cutscenes are comprised of 3D models, and while its part of a design philosophy where they're trying to emulate a oil painting style, it ends up causing
4. NPCs who provide the story are often flat and generic, as they have the same appearance as the playable factions. It's hard often tell which is which during dialogue scenes, especially on the slideshow-style cutscenes.
5. Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, it likes to pad the game out with waves of enemies that are just hit sponges. While the combat is slower to make up for the four-player co-op support, it doesn't help that the enemies barely have any knockback or stagger effects after you attack them. One of the bosses, Zenon has a DPS test where you must destroy a crystal before he charges up his super attack, which you can't do on solo because you hardly deal any damage. While not as frustrating as Mutants in Manhattan's case where in the former where you die very quickly, in this game enemies often barely pose any threat with easy to to dodge attacks. There's also a Gearscore mechanic and you constantly have to replace older gear with newer ones with higher Gearscore just to deal more damage.
6. The game lacks the cheesy but fun storytelling that PlatinumGames has been known for in their games. While it has more of a fleshed-out story than The Legend of Korra (video game), which ended up being paced like a slap-together story where the levels justify the story and not the other way around combined with a messed up continuity, the story is uninteresting as it revolves around a bunch of player lookalikes hanging out in the main hub and dialogue scenes that don't align up with the stages that you fight in. Just like Korra, the plot feels like a bunch of obstacles to get to the main villain and less of something like an overarching plot. It even reuses the "deus ex machina" cliche where you get the Gideon Coffin after the scene where a guardian angel rescues you, who also looks like a player lookalike.
   • The plot, being loosely based on Mesopotamian mythology, centers around a blue sun which is causing the people of Neo Babylon to die via a plague they call the Blue Death. You, as the player, must climb up the tower to shut down the blue sun, nicknamed the Machine Sun. One plot point seen in the prologue is where test subjects are used to train soldiers to use Gideon Coffins where all of them are killed due to them being failures. Many plot points that are only used in cutscenes/dialogue are never brought up in the gameplay.
   • The biggest and most convoluted plot twist was when Galenos sacrifices himself via launching into the sky with his rocket spear, the spear manages to pierce the sky, but in a way that it reveals the whole thing is actually a domed virtual world, which means it is trying to combine medieval fantasy elements with sci-fi elements, which is a decent concept but is hard to get right. Coincidentally, the idea of combining mythologies with sci-fi elements was also done with another game, Too Human, which both happen to be action RPG looter slashers with an emphasis on melee combat.
7. The graphics are awful and unbeautiful and a complete downgrade from the State of Play 2019 trailer. The art style (oil-style painting) doesn't translate very well into 3D, making the game look blurry and choppy, and the lighting looks atrocious which makes the game itself look more horrible and reminiscent of a seventh-gen game or worse is the mobile game, even Sonic 06 has better graphics than this, the textures look shabby and unnatural as they almost look like flat textures out of crayons. However, the character models are the worst in the game since they look like rejected characters from the Assassin's Creed franchise, which can be easily compared to those from PlayStation 2 games and is disgraceful as PlatinumGames is very well known for having beautiful graphics, lighting, and arts like Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Astral Chain, etc.
8. False Advertising: The State of Play 2019 trailer gave the impression this will be a fast-paced action game, but was eventually dumbed down in the E3 2021 trailer. It feels like it was originally a single-player game that later switched over to live service/multiplayer-focused.
   • The boss featured in the trailer, Zenon showcased the ability to parry his giant sword, and the trailer ended with the player utilizing Zenon's sword via the Gideon Coffin to cast a massive attack, which you can't do in the actual game. While you can use the Gideon Coffin to pick up objects off the ground and then throw them at enemies, they aren't that heavy and oftentimes feel like you can just pick them up with your regular hands. This is made even worse when that was also showcased in the E3 2018 cinematic trailer. It should be noted that in the E3 2018 trailer, the heroes were called Nomads, and the main antagonist was implied to be a goddess named Gaia, while in the final game, she was supposedly called Nergal. The plot shown in E3 2018 is completely different from what was shown in E3 2021, which as it turns out, was actually a proof of concept trailer using currently designed assets at that time. Proof of concept trailers are often early cinematic trailers that use currently designed assets to announce a game.
     • While a "proof of concept" was also used for the Bayonetta 3 2017 Game Awards teaser trailer, where Bayonetta looked like a parallel version of Bayonetta from the first game with the Whittingham Fair revolvers (a parallel version of Scarborough Fair) which got changed into Colour My World on the 2021 trailer, it didn't give away any implications of new gameplay/selling points.
9. There is very little depth in the combat, as everyone in the game can do the same thing, and it's mostly just mashing the buttons over and over. While the game lets you choose from 3 factions, the only thing that differs most of the time aside from appearance is the weapon they start with.
   • What defeats the purpose of making multiple characters is that the inventory is shared between your characters, and you cannot restart the main storyline/plot on new characters.
   • Poor pacing, as the early game puts you in a slow combat stance as you're limited to only a few abilities and painfully slow combat with your weapons and lack of Gideon Coffin. The two new combat abilities, Power and Technical, are unlocked after completing the final story quest. Not only does completing the main storyline grant you access to faster combat, but it also ends up making you play the game after you beat the main game's plot.
10. Dodging attacks can be difficult given that having your weapons out makes you walk slower. While it makes sense for heavy weapons such as hammers and slower-paced action games such as Soulslike games, this concept doesn't really translate well for fast-paced action games similar to the likes of God of War and Devil May Cry.
11. The loot you get from the stages are just relics that after you complete the stages, you have to reveal them back at the hub, similar to loot boxes.
    • Speaking of the loot, there's very little depth into them as mostly it's just increased stats and temporary buffs.
12. Weak voice-acting, which can make it harder to understand without subtitles.
13. It heavily reuses assets from Final Fantasy XIV. Given this was supposed to be a Square Enix IP that Platinum pitched to them, these borrowed assets don't add much to improve the game at all and often times the Final Fantasy XIV pieces don't fit together.
14. The game shut down on February 28, 2023, less than a year after its release date, and since it relies on live service, the game is now unplayable.
    • Cliffhanger ending: Prior to that, the game ended on a cliffhanger where after it seems like everything was fine and just as it seems like the heroes have won, it then comes to a screeching halt when Arwia, the angel who saved you at the beginning shows up out of nowhere stating that she is dying, along with you, the protagonist, before the cutscene ends. It seemed like prior to when Square Enix decided to pull the plug on the game, Platinum wanted to do another season that would've followed up from the cliffhanger, but because of how this game underperformed, said cliffhanger will never be resolved.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The character designs are pretty cool, and so are the armor pieces for the players' characters.
2. The music is nice to listen to and fits the game's tone and setting.
3. The concept of being able to wield four weapons at once instead of two is a pretty unique concept for an action game, as you can wield two normal weapons and two spectral weapons via the Gideon Coffin.

Reception

Babylon's Fall received negative reviews from both critics and players, criticizing for the dull combat and weak graphics. The review embargo arrived a day after the game launched, and as of March 4, 2022, the PlayStation 5 version sits at 41. Babylon's Fall is Platinum's lowest rated game yet, dethroning Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan. This is nobody's surprise as they are not suited for a four-player co-op as shown in the release of Mutants in Manhattan and the cancellation of Scalebound.

Before the release of Babylon's Fall, CEO Atsushi Inaba, who had replaced Kenichi Sato after he stepped down, announced that the studio would be focusing more on games that "can be enjoyed and loved for a longer period of time". That, however, gave many players skepticism that Platinum might be changing to more multiplayer-focused games.

E3 2018 reveal

The game was first revealed at Square Enix's E3 2018 reveal, where it showcased only a timeline of events that line up with the game's likely plot. The game was hyped as the tone was more styled towards Dark Souls, which gave them the impression that PlatinumGames was working on a Souls-like game. The only cinematic cutscene that likely would've revealed the game's main combat system was when the knight used a telekinetic ability to pull the enemy's sword away and then attack the enemy with it.

The only hint of multiplayer was at the end, where the four characters (called Nomads, not Sentinels) were shown overlooking the tower from a mountain. After that, the trailer ended with a "2019" release date with an unknown month.

At the same time, PlatinumGames posted a blog stating that Babylon's Fall will be a new experience, which seeing the four characters, would be a faint hint that Platinum was trying to tackle multiplayer experiences, or maybe their step into the Soulslike genre seeing the premise.

Though, similar to the Bayonetta 3 teaser trailer from 2017, this trailer was actually more of a proof of concept using early assets as the game was still very early in development.

State of Play 2019 trailer

After a year of no updates after its cinematic reveal at Square Enix's E3 2018, the game returned to PlayStation's State of Play in December 2019. It showcased fast-paced gameplay, with flying swords, dodges, and the ability to use the enemy's weapons against them, which was also revealed at E3 2018. It was entirely single-player focused, with the only hint of multiplayer being the four characters at the end. It ended with "More Information Next Summer". It should be noted that said trailer had no story or plot involved.

In February 2020, PlatinumGames announced a new studio in Tokyo that would focus on live service titles for consoles.

Sometime in July and August, articles started to float around that Square Enix was planning to show more information on Babylon's Fall at the Tokyo Game Show 2020, however, the game missed that event despite it being shown on official listings. After that, nothing was known or shown about the game until rumors started to float around that Babylon's Fall was making a comeback at E3 2021 next year, which were correct.

E3 2021 trailer

During its announcement at E3 2021, the graphics looked notably blockier compared to the State of Play 2019 trailer. Reportedly, the trailer from Square Enix (which had 240k views before being taken down) had 1.6 thousand likes against 6 thousand dislikes. The reason for the blocky/blurry graphics was not due to the compression of the E3 footage, but rather a new art style inspired by classic oil paintings. The biggest criticism was when they announced the game was going to be live service and confirmed micro-transactions, after what was assumed to be a single-player experience with potentially optional co-op from State of Play 2019.

Trivia

• Many people blamed Sony for this game even though it was both PlatinumGames and Square Enix. Coincidentally, this was most likely connected to Sony/PlayStation Studios talking about doing more live service games in 2022, even though Sony had zero involvement in the development of Babylon's Fall.

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