"THAT WASN'T CASTLEVANIA!
THAT WAS JUST A GOD OF WAR RIPOFF!"
Nah, but in all seriousness, this game really highlights MercurySteam's strengths as a studio: insane art direction/presentation, and impressive spectacle. It's even got a pretty bonkers final twist in the story. It's nice to see them get their start as a studio, since they'd eventually take their talents and go on to do great things, like bring 2D Metroid out of a two decade-long coma.
Welp, that's all the good I can muster; Time to let out all my frustrations.
I can barely remember a single piece of music from this game. It's all generic orchestral mumbo-jumbo that you've heard literally anywhere else before. The only parts I remember are the ones that played over and over again, forcing me to realize that they frequently reused what few tracks they had in the first place. There are certain sections of the game where characters will spout the same voice clips at you ad nauseum. It got so bad that I had to disable the voices for those sections just to retain whatever sanity I had left. There's also an eternal "shaky cam", as if the whole game is being filmed by a shell-shocked war veteran. It's like that even when you're doing nothing.
This game just doesn't understand action combat. Enemies are damage sponges, even on the easiest difficulty. I think that's to encourage you to use the parry move, but enemies don't telegraph their attacks well enough to make that viable. Half the time I don't even know if I can parry a move or if it's considered unblockable. Even when I do pull the parry off, the extra damage feels minimal, and it has the visual impact of a fart with extra reverb. I'm not even sure it does that much more damage than hammering away at the buttons normally either. It's a god damn mess.
Puzzles are also strewn about, and they're either braindead busywork or outright nonsense. Even after you get a new power, its utility is marred by unintuitive controls, reliance on your limited light/dark magic meters, and unclear signposting on when or where they expect you to use it. One minute you'll be touching wall panels with the appropriate magic like it's paint-by-numbers, and then there'll be a FICTIONAL BOARD GAME in one chapter that's somewhat luck-based and has unclear rules, bringing your entire experience to a screeching halt.
This game also happens to approach replayability in the worst way possible with its "trials". After (and only after) you finish a chapter, a trial will be active the next time you play that chapter. They range from tedious tasks like "kill 50 goblins", to tasks with no room for error, like "defeat the ice titan in 1:30". The trial also won't be considered complete unless you go ahead and finish the chapter you're playing. You're allowed to leave via the world map and keep your upgrades when hunting for collectibles, no clue why the trials are treated differently. Completing these trials gets you...absolutely nothing! Well, nothing except a handful of achievements and a vague sense of regret. You don't even get more experience points for completing these, and there's no way you'll have every single combo bought after a single playthrough (the last few are prohibitively expensive). You also don't gain more EXP by playing on higher difficulties, which begs the question: Aside from 100% completion, what the hell is the point of doing all this crap?
The most damning stake in this game's coffin is that it just doesn't feel like "Castlevania". Lords of Shadow crosses over into medieval territory, and while a lot of its iconography runs adjacent to Castlevania (skeletons, reapers, goblins, etc), it's missing a very crucial element: gothic horror. Hell, there's no Dracula in this game whatsoever. Well, no Dracula until MercurySteam teased the next game in the post-credits scene. I hope the next game delivers on that bombshell, because this game already feels like a distant memory.
THAT WAS JUST A GOD OF WAR RIPOFF!"
Nah, but in all seriousness, this game really highlights MercurySteam's strengths as a studio: insane art direction/presentation, and impressive spectacle. It's even got a pretty bonkers final twist in the story. It's nice to see them get their start as a studio, since they'd eventually take their talents and go on to do great things, like bring 2D Metroid out of a two decade-long coma.
Welp, that's all the good I can muster; Time to let out all my frustrations.
I can barely remember a single piece of music from this game. It's all generic orchestral mumbo-jumbo that you've heard literally anywhere else before. The only parts I remember are the ones that played over and over again, forcing me to realize that they frequently reused what few tracks they had in the first place. There are certain sections of the game where characters will spout the same voice clips at you ad nauseum. It got so bad that I had to disable the voices for those sections just to retain whatever sanity I had left. There's also an eternal "shaky cam", as if the whole game is being filmed by a shell-shocked war veteran. It's like that even when you're doing nothing.
This game just doesn't understand action combat. Enemies are damage sponges, even on the easiest difficulty. I think that's to encourage you to use the parry move, but enemies don't telegraph their attacks well enough to make that viable. Half the time I don't even know if I can parry a move or if it's considered unblockable. Even when I do pull the parry off, the extra damage feels minimal, and it has the visual impact of a fart with extra reverb. I'm not even sure it does that much more damage than hammering away at the buttons normally either. It's a god damn mess.
Puzzles are also strewn about, and they're either braindead busywork or outright nonsense. Even after you get a new power, its utility is marred by unintuitive controls, reliance on your limited light/dark magic meters, and unclear signposting on when or where they expect you to use it. One minute you'll be touching wall panels with the appropriate magic like it's paint-by-numbers, and then there'll be a FICTIONAL BOARD GAME in one chapter that's somewhat luck-based and has unclear rules, bringing your entire experience to a screeching halt.
This game also happens to approach replayability in the worst way possible with its "trials". After (and only after) you finish a chapter, a trial will be active the next time you play that chapter. They range from tedious tasks like "kill 50 goblins", to tasks with no room for error, like "defeat the ice titan in 1:30". The trial also won't be considered complete unless you go ahead and finish the chapter you're playing. You're allowed to leave via the world map and keep your upgrades when hunting for collectibles, no clue why the trials are treated differently. Completing these trials gets you...absolutely nothing! Well, nothing except a handful of achievements and a vague sense of regret. You don't even get more experience points for completing these, and there's no way you'll have every single combo bought after a single playthrough (the last few are prohibitively expensive). You also don't gain more EXP by playing on higher difficulties, which begs the question: Aside from 100% completion, what the hell is the point of doing all this crap?
The most damning stake in this game's coffin is that it just doesn't feel like "Castlevania". Lords of Shadow crosses over into medieval territory, and while a lot of its iconography runs adjacent to Castlevania (skeletons, reapers, goblins, etc), it's missing a very crucial element: gothic horror. Hell, there's no Dracula in this game whatsoever. Well, no Dracula until MercurySteam teased the next game in the post-credits scene. I hope the next game delivers on that bombshell, because this game already feels like a distant memory.
Spinnerweb
4 months ago