When teasers of Lords of Shadow emerged I for one was actually excited. I had been drawn into Castlevania when I first played Symphony of the Night arguably the best game in the series, sad to say that the 3D Castlevania's were unimpressive to say the least. Though with both Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness being lackluster games you'd think I'd pass off another 3D Castlevania game. I did not, as I always had hope to finally see a good 3D Castlevania game and I have not been disappointed.
Lords of Shadow is basically a reboot of the series where you play as Gabriel Belmont a member of an order called the Brotherhood of Light, after the World is sent into chaos caused by the Lords of Shadow the Brotherhood sends their men to deal with it. Gabriel is one of those tasked to do the deed and along the way gets an increased motivation where he is told of a way to bring back the dead more specifically his dead wife who was murdered by the Lords of Shadow. The story starts off rather slow paced with dialogue seemingly uninteresting but as time goes by the story becomes much more bearable and arguably much more interesting with a nice finishing touch at the end before and after the credits stop rolling.
The graphics are impressive, with the game set in very different areas that put you in colorful surroundings and at times darker more sorrowful areas. There are times you are in a lush vibrant forest, at times in the middle of a snowstorm, and under heavy downpour, the best moment was fighting the Stone Idol Titan where as I ran left, the way the sunlight shone with the titan blocking the way was just a magnificent sight to behold. The way they made each environment was something I took a lot of interest in with the backdrops in some areas worth looking at. Character design also is a point worth noting as each character with a speaking role looks interesting in design, seeing the first Lord of Shadow had me anticipating what the next Lord of Shadow will look like and to say the least all looked just as interesting as the one that came before. That's not to say the characters (enemies included) without speaking roles are ignorable most of them are actually wonderful to look at save a few, it could use more variety, though the ones presented are enough. The game does not suffer from texture pop-in and from my playthrough the framerate was constant enough that I never had a problems with how the game played.
The voice-acting in this game is just as impressive as it looks with the cinematic emphasis it was amazing how well the voice actors performed their roles. Though I did find the voice of the Chupacabra to be not up to the games standard but I guess the devs wanted to make the creature as annoying as possible. The soundtrack to this game is good in it's own right with strong tracks like "Besieged Village" and "Final Confrontation". Other than that the game never had dialogue that felt forced nor did have any sound files that felt out of place.
The gameplay was the bit that I was just fine with, it wasn't that it wasn't fun but it was just another game where you could just use the starting move set to win. Though the combat upgrades are plenty they're not all too useful and you resort to the simple dodge and spam an attack button though it was nice to see some effort was made to give the option of making the combat richer. The platforming is okay but like most of the times when it comes to platforming there is hardly any challenge to it aside from the occasional crumbling ledge and likewise the puzzles are not difficult but then again when has a hack-n-slash game give a hard puzzle. The game also has a fixed camera and though sometimes it was nice other times it made the game look less appealing especially since a lot of the parts had you zoomed a bit too far away from Gabriel. The game also has a decent difficulty compared to most games in the genre this game actually can pose a challenge at times unlike other games of it's genre and outside it's genre this is one of it's shining points as far as I'm concerned. The game is your standard hack-n-slash game where one button is a direct attack and another is the area attack but it does have a few moments where it plays like Shadow of the Colossus those moments are few enough but it did make me remember the times I enjoyed Shadow of the Colossus. Lastly it also streamlines Quick Time Events from pressing a specific button to see the cinematic parts of the fight or the finishing moves of the fight to a simpler press any button when the the time is right now this may not seem much at first glance but it does let a person be able to focus more on the cinematic then anticipating what button is next.
The game was fun it started out pretty rough for me but as I played on it became more and more interesting and I've invested myself into finishing it, with a rather interesting twist at the end and a solid system Castlevania: Lords of Shadow proved that a 3D Castlevania can be done and that it can be just as interesting as the 2D ones.
Edgar writes: "To celebrate the game's 10th anniversary, let's take a look at the gothic world of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow."
Although being linear, which I wish it wasn't, the first game was absolutely incredible. A mix of old school God of War meets Date's Inferno; I was highly impressed by this title. I heard the sequel was trash so I ever played it but I think LoS was a good example of how a 3D CV game could be.
I was very happy the game was Linear as I hate exploring. The first game was one of my all time favorites and the 2nd game was a total letdown with the lame hub system and stealth sections. Playing in current times sucked too. I wish they would make a remaster of part 1.
It is a great game, but just like DMC is not a Devil May Cry..this one was not a Castlevania :-)
Give Castlevania to Igarashi team, and they will nail it as they did with Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness.
If you decide to play a Castlevania game, make sure it's in 2D. Unfortunately, the series has never been able to make the jump from 2D to 3D successfully. Publisher Konami has tried. Six times in fact, but whether trying to build it in-house or with a third party developer, they never captured the essence of the series or make a good game for that matter. So just to be sure you know what to look out for, here are the six 3D Castlevania games that have been made.
I loved the hell out of lords of shadow, lords if shadow 2 had its moments but just didnt leave as much of an impact on me as the first did, still loved it though. They are both great games IMO, maybe not the best "Castlevania" games but great games in their own right.
Yeah that first game was legit good. Really wish they hadn't taken a step back for the second, this series really looked great in 3D.
According to one of the former devs of Mercury Steam the higher ups kept interfering with the sequel to the point where the game was nothing like what the dev team had envisioned for the sequel so we got the mess that was Lords of Shadows 2.
I enjoyed Lament of Innocence and Lords of Shadow. They were entertaining titles and I wouldn’t mind trying Lords of Shadow 2 on PS Now.
Just because a game isn’t GOTY worthy does not mean it’s not worth playing. You could do a lot worse than those exceptional titles.
I really liked lament of innocence and Lords of shadow! Havent tried the other 3d games. But ive played most of the 2d games!
I don't know why Castlevania: Lament of Innocence gets a bad rap. It was one of the best in the series at that time and really was a compliment to the Devil May Cry 3rd person style of action that was getting popular at that time.
I rented it on a fluke and was seriously surprised on how good it was. So much so I went out and bought a used copy of Curse of Darkness and instantly returned that trash.
The problem with Nintendo 64 games is they all tried to mimic the Mario/Zelda 64 style of gameplay and how could they not with that whacky ass N64 controller. Almost every game outside of Nintendo's own felt horrible and incomplete.
From Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher in Uncharted, to Professor Layton and Claire, here are 15 of the best video games couples.
UC4 was a great relationship story, even if that wasn't it's primary focus. Anyone who's been in a long term relationship knows that it can be like a rollercoaster with the highs and lows, UC4 illustrated this brilliantly.
A list for Valentine's day. What about Garcia Hotspur and Paula from Shadows of the Damned? He traversed hell for her despite her having a previous affair with a devil.
How about Dante and Beatrice from Dante's inferno? Dante also went through hell and faced off against Lucifer himself.
These guys definitely carried quite the burden for love.
Uncharted 2 is still a masterpiece in storytelling of love triangles.
Nate, Elena, Chloe and Harry Flynn.
WoW!
Unbeatable!
That would be a love square. Though Flynn wasn't REALLY part of it, so triangle would still be apt.
I am Gabriel Belmont. No, seriously, look at my avatar.
Anyway, as an actual reviewer, I was surprised at the quality of the review and the fact that it wasn't copied and pasted. Trust me, whenever there's a good quality review, I check. While I'll say it again, SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT IS NOT A CASTLEVANIA GAME, I will say that you have written a great review here. Approved from me.
Last I recall SotN did make a few mentions few and some not really mentioned but shown but they did.
Like the opening where it's basically the end of Rondo of Blood and Richter in mentions to Alucard that he is "the same Alucard that fought with my ancestor Trevor Belmont many years ago" or something along those lines.
Basically SotN was Iga's way to combine what Iga liked about Dracula's Curse and Rondo of Blood.
I really hope they improve the gameplay and cut down on the cutscenes... and those camera angles! Sheesh, how bout giving us a real 3D Castlevania with no fixed cameras. I really liked the story. It mostly grew on me after the first initial chapters. And what was that twist at the end all about? Overall the game looked fantastic. Was the game interesting? Yes. Fun? No. My 2 cents.
By the way, I've only only played the first 3 Castlevania's on the original NES when they launched.