Lords of the Fallen is an action role-playing video game played from a third-person perspective. Like its predecessor, players can use both melee weapons and magic to defeat enemies, and the game's gameplay and combat system adopted elements from Souls-like games. The game's campaign can also be completed cooperatively with another player. The game also features a player-versus-player multiplayer mode. At the beginning of the game, players can create and customize their own player avatar, and choose from one of nine character classes. The game is set in an interconnected world, one that is several times bigger than that from the 2014 game. In this game, two worlds are layered on top of each other. The world of Axiom is the realm of the living, but players can use a magical lantern to access Umbral, the realm of the dead. Despite sharing the same physical space, an inaccessible area in one realm may be reached by visiting the other realm. When the player is killed, they will be transported to Umbral in which they must return to Axiom and retrieve lost experience points. When the player is killed in the Umbral realm, they will respawn in their last save point and lose their unspent XPs. Save points are far and few in each region, though players can craft their own save points using materials collected from Umbral monsters.