I really do have a soft spot for stylised retro gaming on modern machines. From developer SquidBit Works and publisher PID Games comes Lords of Exile. A title that very much oozes 8-bit retroness from every digital pore.

“Embark on a quest for revenge in Lords of Exile, an 8-bit side-scrolling action platformer set in the far Lands of Exilia. With classic retro mechanics and linear level design in 8-bit graphics.”

What you get with Lords of Exile is a very NES/8-bit action-platformer. A little bit of the original Castlevania, a soupçon of Ninja Gaiden and perhaps just a hint of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too. Side-scrolling, hack ‘n slash action, with some deft platforming thrown into the mix. Lords of Exile doesn’t do anything particularly original, but it really doesn’t need to. It pays homage to that era of NES gaming, borrowing from the titles I previously mentioned, and it homages that era very well indeed.

Not only does Lords of Exile look and play very NES-like, it also comes with the kind of difficulty spikes that those titles had too. There is a lot of trial and error as you learn the stages and the many pitfalls. Then, you get classic boss fights where you will need to observe and memorise their attack patterns and learn the best time to attack. There really is a lot like with this game, but I had to title this one as an unfinished review because…

Priced between £13 to £18 (depending on format) and available now for Steam, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox. Lords of Exile is a game that I enjoyed… but I cannot fully review it. You see, I was given a code for the Xbox version and whenever I got to a specific point of stage 3, the game hard reset my Xbox. I tried reinstalling and various troubleshooting suggestions, but it still crashed at the same point every single time. After the 10th time of crashing, I had to give up. Is this a problem with me or the Xbox version in general? I honestly don’t know as I couldn’t find any other Xbox reviews. All I can tell you is that I was really enjoying this, but I can not give it a full review because the game keeps crashing at the exact same spot every time.

I did reach out to the publisher and ask them to let the developer know that I am having this issue. Until I hear something back, this will have to remain an unfinished review. I can tell you that I really was genuinely enjoying this nostalgic trip back to that NES era of gaming and that Lords of Exile looks like it could be a really great game. Hopefully, the crashing issue will be fixed and if/when it does, I’ll update this article to give this a proper and full review.