Castlevania Lords of Shadow, Castlevania's latest 3D release

Konami released the game Castlevania: Lords of Shadow in October 2010 in both Playstation3 and Xbox360.  After playing myself Castlevania: Lament of Innocence and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness I looked forward to this game since 3D Castlevania games have been somewhat unwelcome by the series' fans, yet both LOI and COD achieved the style that gave them their Castlevania titles.  However, as soon as I started playing Lords of Shadow on my Xbox360 I noticed that this game is very different in style.  I will now try to review and analyze certain aspects of the game in contrast to LOI and COD which I enjoyed so much in the past when I played them on my good old PS2.  I must warn you first, that there will be spoilers.  I will try to tag them though :-)

What was expected?

COD, cover

Castlevania games very often focus on defeating Dracula.  Dracula is a very powerful vampire that keeps coming back from the dead in order to exact his revenge on humans.  However, from the very beginning there was a clan of Vampire Hunters that vowed to fight him every time we came back.  They are the Belmont.  

In all three games stated before we have the presence of a Belmont, and in two of them he is the main character.  

The Story and settings

For many players the story is the main element for a video game, and how is it exposed to the player.  The first issue for traditional Castlevania fans is that Lords of Shadow is not cannon to the storyline, in fact it is a reboot.  However, for many people just that the story is going to be different it doesn't means it can't be enjoyed.  So you might like the game even if you were expecting a continuation of some sort of the main original story.

LOS, Cover

In this game we follow Gabriel Belmont, who searches for someone known as Pan.  Gabriel says the Brotherhood of Light sent him because they dreamt that a message from his deceased wife, Marie, holds a clue to the world's salvation. With Pan's help he manages to communicate with her. She informs him that Spirits who founded the Brotherhood of Light are attempting to tell her that the power of the Lords of Shadow will save the world.  He then learn from Zobek, another character, of a secret prophecy that tells of a pure-hearted warrior who will claim the Lords of Shadow's power to overcome evil.  Now he will have to search and defeat the Lords Of Shadow who have the pieces of God Mask that may allow him to revive his wife.

Enemies

As for the beginning of the game the vampires or undead are nowhere to be seen.  Actually the enemies are goblins and trolls.  Lycans are also present and they are the enemies that most resembles a recurring element from traditional Castlevania.  However the story explains that one must travel into three different lands, the Lycans', the Vampires', and then the Necromancers'.  So these type of enemies are met in due time.  However these monster are a little different in appearance.

Looks 

The game is just beautiful, with great rendering and lighting. There is just no comparison of LOS graphics with its predecessors. However the environment is not Gothic at all, and so it falls out of the Castlevania style.   Castle are very scarce and most of the time at the beginning of the game you are outdoors.  The paths are not very linear, which is good since in makes it harder to know where to go, but part of the style was the corridors inside spooky castles.  However this made you get lost because everything seemed alike.  The ideal should be somewhere in between.

Gameplay 

Indeed gameplay is probably the most important aspect on a game.  With poor gameplay only a great plot twisting story with awesome graphics can lift a game from mediocrity.  LOS is a game with an incredible gameplay.  Battles are just amazing and the controls are very adequate.  

Weapons and Magic

  

In LOS there is only one main weapon which is the battle cross (the vampire killer equivalent on this game) and upgrades are done to it as the story unfolds.  There are secondary weapons that can be found and used and can also be combined with magic to obtain a different effect.  Magic can be gained by defeating enemies or  hitting a large number of successive hits without getting damage.  This magic can be channeled into either White or Dark magic which are used to heal and increase damage respectively.  

Lament of Innocence, boss fight 

In these aspects LOS is superior to LOI and COD.  On LOI we had the main weapon, secondary weapons, equipment, and magic as well.  However it was not incorporated in an appropriate way.  Magic was pretty much useless, and the combos were scarce. There are also other whips than the alchemy whip, which are embedded with elemental damage, but acquiring them is optional and is very easy to miss them.

In COD we had no secondary weapons and several main weapons.  Since the main character is not a Belmont the Vampire Killer is not an available weapon.  This was to alchemy being incorporated which could be used in order to create new stronger weapons with materials dropped and stole from monsters.  Magic was used to feed the health of the Innocent Devils, which are unique to this game.

Battle

In this game we gain experience which will allow us to buy combos that spice up a lot fighting monsters. There are also items to equip that will unlock new combos as the players finds them.  Magic is also used to elaborate different combos. There is also grabbing of the enemy which might start a sequence of different attacks according to the button that has to be pressed (which will be shown at the screen at are mostly random).  This makes the battle more interactive and harder.   The result is quite epic, while on COD and LOI it was very similar to fighting normal enemies, but with more health and more attack power.

Leveling up, experience 

LOS uses an experience system in which the player earns points that can be latter used to buy new attacks, however the character does not "level up".  He has fixed stats that wont change just by killing X amount of creatures.  This kills a little of the RPG-like experience.

Curse of Darkness

LOI didn't even used experience for anything at all.  The only way to increase attack/defense or some resistance to something was through equipment.  COD indeed has a level system for the character as well as for the Innocent Devil. Stats for Hector increase as well with equipment, while for the ID's their power increases with evolution and breeding. 

Other Items

Another feature common was the use of items and shops.  LOS we don't even have currency.  There are no consumables of any kind, nor are they really that necessary.  However I find that the idea of being able to collect money or stack up on items makes the game less straight forward and more enjoyable.   On LOI we had the alchemist who sold us all different types of items, even relics.  On COD there was the witch who served for the same purposes. 

Interaction with surroundings and puzzles

Shadow of the Colossus

I find the surroundings, as stated earlier, to lack the traditional Castlevania style.  However they are far more interactive.  There is a lot of climbing on edges involved, even during boss fights which resembles a lot another game, Shadows of the Colossus.  

In COD and LOI there was a lot of walking on corridors.  There were little puzzles. It was mostly about to defeat all current enemies in order to advance to another room, which was pretty much the same as the previous one.  Unless you're really high on stress and manage to relieve it with simple button smashing you might get bored.  So they were very shallow.

LOS in the other hand goes a little too far with the puzzles, sometimes being a little too hard for the common user. Also you will have to climb, swing and jump around a lot in synchronized movements in order to reach the top of a structure or jump from one side of a mountain the other.  When you think about it, it has a lot of platforming which should make it more like the traditional 2D games.

Further elements 

I'll discus miscellaneous in this section, focusing on what LOS lacks.  For instance, the game is divided in missions with objectives.  These missions are restrained into certain world areas which cannot be visited outside the mission.  To revisit a place you have to exit whatever mission you're on, being relinquished of any progress and enter the mission menu where you can access the previous levels and do them again from scratch while retaining any ability/equipment you currently have.  Also it is too often that from time to time within a single mission there will be points of no turning back, which limits a lot of the game IMO.   On the other games there is no such issue as there are no "missions".  You are free to go where you can and revisit as much as you want.

The camera is another element that differentiates LOS from LOI and COD.  In LOS we a fixed camera that is not manageable in anyway by the player.  This makes it very hard to catch a glimpse of certain things.  On LOI and COD we have a free camera always with the options of fixing the camera in front of the character's point of view or keep track of a target never loosing it from sight.  However, the epic boss battles that take place in LOS could never happen without the camera working on its own.   Therefore it was its cons and pros.

Saving of progress is done automatically in LOS.  Which means that if something came out different than what you expected and then was automatically saved then there is nothing  you can do about it.  Such an example is the viewing of a puzzle solution, which makes you forsake any reward.  On the other, more traditional games you have to search for the save/healing rooms and do the process manually.  I can understand for some that autosaving is much better, however I like the idea of safe spots being available.  Also manually you get to save on different files so you have a backup plan in case something goes wrong; however this wont apply as for corrupted data since all save files are stored on a single one inside the memory card, I don't know what happens to LOS if the data get corrupted by power going out during autosave.

Player and Innocent Devil against monsters

An impressive addition to Curse of Darkness was the Innocent Devil system.  The ID's are devils or demons that possess according to their type different abilities that will help you on your quest for revenge.  You can have many by the end of the game and they grow and evolve to different creature depending on how you feed them.  Then they will learn different abilities depending on their evolution.  This was much fun and even felt a little like pokémon. I think LOS could have done with something similar.

Characters and Bosses 

Gabriel is a new character and member of the Belmont clan and during the game we can see how he interacts with other characters such as Zobek and Pan.  

We are told by the narrator that his personality changes as the games advances however it isn't showed otherwise.  Actually I would say Gabriel looks to remain pretty much the same through the whole game.

They based bosses in recurring characters from the original series though with little connection other than the name. 

  

Music, Audio and Voice Acting

Music in LOS is pretty good, however they decided to go with Oscar Araujo since Michiru Yamane left the Konami team and his style is quite different.  I feel that Araujo's style gives more space and saturates less the audio mix making it less stressing, whilst Yamane's style was fuller with more notes and definitively more modern.  The absence of Yamane's music was very felt by me.

In voice acting we have live action actors.  Robert Carlyle made Gabriel's voice and Sir Patrick Stewart voiced Zobek/narrator.  They are big budget actors and preformed great, they add a lot of value to the game.   

Game's Epilogue [spoliers] 

I have to evaluate the ending, though it usually shouldn't be, because it is a little disconnected and doesn't feels like it goes with the flow of the game.  As stated at the beginning, LOS is a non cannon reboot of the franchise and states a different origin for Dracula.  At the end of the game Gabriel defeats the main antagonist and though he fails in reviving his wife he goes on living. However after the credits he is shown little less than a millennium later transformed into Dracula.  Later I learned that a sort of expansion pack for the story was released for the PS3 port that links a bit the ending with the Epilogue.  

Here is really about personal taste, but I like LOI's version of Dracula better.

[End of spoilers] 

Final Thoughts 

This game is very well done, very entertaining and very polished.  However it fails to become a proper Castlevania title since lacks a lot of little elements that must be present in order to be one.   Also it is more violent than usual, with gruesome deaths of bosses and other enemies.  There is a lot of blood and gore in this game so if you care about stuff like that, then beware.  Also there is awful nudity in the game. There is a demon you can summon whenever you have the required ingredients that has the most unappealing breasts I have ever seen on a video game.  Also the nude monsters have large pubic hair in order to hide what they thought would have been too much to show.  However how the hair is depicted it feels revealing enough to break down your imagination.  There are a few bugs and glitches here and there as well, I have fallen into nothingness a couple of times with nothing to do about it but to return to the last checkpoint via the menu.

You can call Lords of Shadow a game that doesn't deserve to be branded Castlevania, but it doesn't means it's any bad.  Actually I enjoyed it quite a bit and felt it has one of the best gameplay I have ever experienced.   It is definitively not what I expected it to be, but far from a complete disappointment.