This is my second attempt to play Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I originally bought it when it launched in 2010 having been hyped by the launch trailer with Patrick Stewart and Robert Carlyle narrating. Its been 14 years since then and all I remember is not enjoying it much and eventually trading it in but nothing specific about it. A friend of mine bought it so we decided to play through it together as Castlevania fans, what could go wrong?

Everything about this game feels bad to play.

Let's start with the protagonist Gabriel Belmont, he has all the personality and emotional range of a slab of granite. Literally anything that happens gives him no reaction at all like the developers forgot to animate his face. A magic horse teleporting in next to him? No problem. Giant titan smashing out of the lake? Sure. Dead wife appearing in front of him? It's Tuesday. Not a flicker of acknowledgement of surprising events like an animated corpse. His voice actor Robert Carlyle is normally a great performer but it doesn't seem like he was given much direction here. Perhaps it's because voice acting is a very different skill? but it really sounds like he is just reading off a script. Perhaps I'm underselling him here and he is acting to the characters visually displayed emotions, which is absolutely nothing, so in fact an A+ performance.

I could overlook this if the game was fun to play and control Granite Belmont but that's actually the worst part, by a country mile. It's a 3D action game but has a fixed camera with a soft lock following the action. Because the game lacks personality as much as Mr. Granite it's essentially a God of War clone but it fails to understand the level design to make that enjoyable leaving large dead zones of the camera view constantly. The combat just feels terrible, It's slow but not deliberate. Attacks lack weight and impact yet everything is unresponsive at the same time. The controls are somewhat baffling in their design to compound this further. Roll is on L2 with the left analog stick, the right analog stick doesn't seem to be used at all as you can't control the camera. There is no manual lock on to attack enemies, just a soft lock that's easy to lose. It's feels so cumbersome, even after a few hours it still felt like we were learning the controls.

A second friend came by when we were playing and gave it a go and their only impression was "This doesn't feel good does it?"

You can buy more combos for your whip using experience gained through combat but none of them feel easy to pull off or actually useful in any way when you do. The whip completely lacks impact. Enemies will just interrupt you mid attack so most the time hit and run is the most effective strategy. It's Castlevania yet you get access to one sub weapon of a throwing knife and two magic spells of light and shadow. Light heals you, shadow increases your attack. It's...coloured auras in which you collect orbs from enemies with L3 or R3 depending which pool you want to refill. Getting access to this IP and only giving that as options feels so...derivative.

This complete lack of imagination extends to the level and enemy designs equally. Enemies are bland fantasy archetypes of werewolves, trolls, goblins, and spiders. We completed 14 levels in two chapters with several hours of play and barely saw anything else. This is a series known for animated armour, floating medusa heads, dancing ghosts, chimeras etc. How do you take the past games and boil them down to such uninteresting foes? The first main level after the tutorial fight was a swamp you slowly trudge through with some goblins. It's so painfully generic but it's not even done well or designed interestingly to make it fresh. It utterly lacks the panache and style of the series it's based on.

It feels like it's aged terribly going back to it, it has all the worst aspects of the PS3 era. Quick time events for finishing enemies or traversing with a circle going into another circle. Balancing to cross a beam and having to hold R2 if you are about to fall. The game also constantly takes control away from you like it's mansplaining everything feeling incredibly patronising. Constant tutorials, pop ups, camera sweeps. Just let me play the game! I know I can pick up items with R2, I've been playing for over 2 hours! It treats you like your memory is wiped every 15 minutes.

The game tries to be a large epic with high production values with epic music and voice acting yet there are large chunks of levels with no music at all but it's not atmospheric, just empty. What music there is is forgettable like a generic orchestral theme for a summer block buster but no punch or stand out beats. Like trailer music.

After several hours my friend and I just called it quits. Maybe it gets better further on? I am aware of the twist but after learning there were still 34 more levels we just didn't actually want to play anymore. We moved onto Space Marine after this as my friend hadn't played it and the quality difference on the same system was night and day. Full camera movement, easy fluid to use controls, and interestingly a better frame rate and clearer image quality. It really just emphasized all of this game's flaws.

The thing is, I'm sad about this. We wanted to like this, we wanted to beat it and play Lords of Shadow 2 to fill in some gaps in our Castlevania history and see Granite Belmont's story unfold. There isn't an original idea to be had here though and everything just feels so banal with it. Playing this feels like a PS3 game with all the negatives that sentence implies. It takes the worst aspects of gaming in that generation and merges them together but above all it's just forgettable.

Even Patrick Stewart can't save this.

+ I like Granite Slab's outfit.

- Awful camera, controls and combat.
- Bland level, skills and enemy designs.
- Gabriel has the personality of a plank of wood used in a button measuring contest.
- Everything feels so safe and by the numbers like designed by committee.