Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

[Reckoner]

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Gabriel Belmont is a man seeking justice. His wife has been murdered and the Lords of Shadow have corrupted the ideals of his brotherhood, the Brotherhood of Light that is.

 

Castlevania is a very well established franchise which lives up to its own reputation time and time again. This time around, the God of War hungry fan may like what’s in store for them since this game was tailored to that hack and slash gameplay style. From dialing up combos to perform magnificent finishers to perfectly syncing button pressing to execute that pesky boss, this game is badass incarnate.

 

The game starts you out in a village without any knowledge as to where you are and what the situation is. Well, what do you do in this predicament? You tear apart anything that tries to kill you. After a few hefty fights, you come in contact with a member of your brotherhood, Zobek. He comes to inform you of your quest: to collect a mask from each of the three lords of shadow. It is said that he who unites the masks has the power to bring back the dead.

 

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You begin with your journey armed with the usual default weapons. In this case, you have Belmont’s trusty Cross-leash. Along the way, you can upgrade your Cross-leash with new abilities. These abilities will give you the skills you need to progress through the level. Aside from your main weapon, you can have an arsenal of up to 4 weapons that can be thrown at enemies. These weapons can range from daggers to holy water and fairies – yeah, you heard me. You can also find treasures to upgrade the amount of side-attack items you can hold, but this requires coming back to stages once you've gained your full potential. Gabriel can also use the money he's earned by defeating baddies to purchase new skills, combos, and relic powers.

 

Castlevania's magic system is based on relics – Light and Dark – and you quickly learn to use them strategically. The light magic will grant you the ability to regenerate health. The dark magic gives your attacks an extra burst of damage. The important tactical decision comes from know when to use these powers as you can only fill one meter at a time. Timing is the key here. Be wary, for there are only 2 ways of accumulating power for the relics. One – being the easy way – is to find statues that emit neutral orbs. These orbs can be absorbed for either the light and/or dark. The other way is to continually attack enemies without getting hit. This will fill up the combo bar at the bottom and will let you know when you’ll be pouring out those tasty orbs. Once you’re under either relic’s power, your ability to receive the orbs from your bar will be on hold until you come out of the said relic power. You essentially have to choose which power to build up as you can't fill up both bars at once this way.

 

 

Your secondary method of attack has you throwing disposable items at enemies for an added effect. You first obtain daggers which can be boosted by relic power and thrown at items and/or enemies for maximum damage or heath regen. The holy water will knock over enemies while doing severe damage to vampires. The fairies are good for distracting an enemy as you unleash your furious anger upon them. The power crystal will summon a weird, naked lady thing that will destroy every enemy on your screen. The crystal only has this power after it has been combined with four magical shards scattered throughout the levels. After use, you must search out for more shards and recombine them.

 

The fighting mechanics are typical for what you would expect to find in this genre. The X button is used for direct strikes while the Y button will be your primary source for area of effect attacks. The left trigger is for dodging so always keep a finger ready on this one. With the hefty amount of combos under your belt, you’re pretty much fit to fight anything that comes in your path. Although upgrading combos will you, they are definitely worth it. There are, of course, several “cheap” combos you can abuse to become a quick and lethal killing machine. After mastering the moves of your choice, filling up the combo meter will be as simple as breathing. My only gripe is the limited amount of freedom the combo system implicates on the player. It seemed like I couldn’t tie together combos to my liking. It was either one straight combo or nothing at all. Sure, you could stop in between moves and start up another one, but that doesn’t beat linking them together to perform a super-mega-ultra finisher. When it came to the final stage of a boss fight (which means you pretty much did the manual button pressing ass-kickery), the gameplay switches off to a brief quick time event. The cutscene will start uniting a small and big circle and at the exact moment of their fusion, you are required to press a button to at last lay waste to your enemy. Although this feature is implemented quite well, it almost immediately becomes repetitive after seeing it a few times.

 

What is a Castlevania game without puzzles? A miserable little pile of secr-- Be prepared as Lords of Shadows has quite a bit of puzzles spread across the entire game. Very few of them are actually simple to complete and most of them take some brain power to solve. Some of the bigger puzzles use up large areas of the level while others leave you riding on an oversized lycan, spider or troll as you climb and pull on objects to get to your destination. I found myself getting stuck on a puzzle or two, but the answer is almost always sitting right under your nose.

 

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Some 3D action adventure games fail when it comes to coordinating the action with the camera. Unfortunately, this game happens to be one of them. Unlike most games of this genre, the camera cannot be moved. It is usually fixed behind Gabriel's back or at some other random location. This is not a fixed camera in the style of say, the older Resident Evil games, but it can sometimes get to that level of annoyance. At times, it'll follow you when you don't want it to and when you do, it will sit back and block your view. I understand that these positions capture the scenery that the developers intended for me to see, but a regular, movable camera would have been the way to go. Another gameplay issue is the platforming elements are pretty much set in stone for you. For the most part, the platforming does what it’s supposed to and it does it well enough to get by, but there could have been more to it. On the side of exploration, you get absolutely no freedom to wander the map and have to settle for a linear path just waiting for you to come down it. Again, there could have been a little extra thrown into the mix.

 

The amount of detail the developers put in with the characters and scenery make for some gorgeous images. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is very nice to look at and the cutscenes portray its graphical beauty. The design choice to limit the blood spill adds to the effect that the game is going for. LoS definitely made the right choice when it came to the amount of violence within the game as it helps keep it within believable and respectable bounds.

 

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My only complaints with the game were the camera angles, the linear level design and the lack of clearly defined objectives. Sometimes the game will throw you a hint as to what you have to do, but there were many times where I was left in an area with little to no idea on how to proceed.

 

Castlevania isn’t what it was, but it sure a good job at jumping into the next generation platforms. Although it suffers from a few issues here and there, it is an extremely fun and enjoyable adventure. The game will run you about 14 hours of pure lycan killing, titan slaying and vampire hunting entertainment. If you’re a fan of the series, you might be surprised at some of the changes the game has brought to the series. Just remember to enjoy the game for what it is and not what you want it to be.

 

Final Score:

9/10

[Johnnydillinger]

Fairies aren't the ones that make me want to play this. The backstory reminds me of the first Castlevania games' which was for the arcade and was called Haunted Castle, but there ou had to rescue Simons bride. Welp, never made it to the end cause it was unbelievably hard (beats all the classics in difficulty), so i dunno if he succeeds or not. Nice review, i'm sad this is not going to be a PC title.

[DarthBONG]

I had high hopes for this game but sadly it has almost been a constant let down. The ridiculous linearity in both story and game-play, bad camera angles (they don't even let you control the camera at all yet they still shit you with horrible angles half the time) plus bad platforming in general, mediocre combat that feels like a mix between devil may cry and god of war. They would have been better off sticking to 2D or at least coming up with a better development plan than just attempting to "copy" what has worked for other games.