Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 [PC/ PS3/ Xbox 360] review

[jimtendo]

[PS3 version tested]

No takers?
Okay, I'll bite.

Much like Gabriels fall from grace, this Castlevania has dropped off from the good first showing, as Lords of Shadow wasn't that bad (sorry haters) since it had a degree of enjoyability from it. Unlike Lords of Shadow 2.
Whilst I'm finding it okay I can't help but think that they have made it play worse than the first one. I'll list my pet hates via bullet points. If I could, Silver bullet points, to carry on my attempts to shoehorn as many Dracula puns as possible.

• Joy upon joy, a manual camera. But no option to centre/ reset camera behind Dracula. Or fighting enemies in tight quarters with an unruly camera, circa year 2000 era.
• Getting hit from off screen projectile throwing monsters.
• Stealth areas.
• Story is ho-hum, but not a big deal for me.
• locations are not quite as interesting as Lords of Shadow.
• ->Open Spoiler<-

  
  Agreus
  
  maze puzzle.

Now, I'll take the biggest bone of contention that the children of the internet have been spewing vitriol all over, and that is the 'stealth' segments. Well, without wanting to be pedantic, they're environmental puzzles more than anything.
These occur semi frequently, and in terms of 'changing the pace of the game' they are a bad fit. Not only for some unexplained reason that these areas have rodent infestations, but the gun toting unkillable goons are cast-offs from the Quake/ Doom drawing board.
Just wait until you have the joy of the Maze puzzle.

Now, a little mention for signposting/ game logic, in terms of general direction of where to go and what actions are needed to be used. I will cite a couple or so examples, which may be spoiler-ish.

example #1

->Open Spoiler<-

First off, when on the way to seeing your old buddy and pal Medusa, there's a lava laden/ rocky underground section, with a Wolf emblem (which is your warp to the real/ Dracula world. The guide arrow is pointing northwards towards your goal. But there's nowhere to climb. You can see there's bats over some climbing hand holds, but they lead backwards towards the Wolf emblem. So use the Wolf emblem and return to the present day. But now the direction marker is telling me I should use the Wolf Emblem to return (by this time, I spent about 10 minutes goofing about trying to make jumps to platforms I could not make in the lava world) so I make a full loop of the modern city and then use the portal to return.
Now being absolutely puzzled I wonder a little backwards (towards the chains) where I heard the bats chime telling me there's a grappling point, but not visible. that is until you walk on the very discreet beam that's jutting out the floor, and then eureka, finally...

example #2

->Open Spoiler<-

On the train ride when the Strogg soldier is shooting the train links (to detach your carriage) while you're fighting against generic monster design #746, there's a slight cutscene showing a cloud of bats encircling Dracula for a second (but I make no issue of it) so I go about pummeling this creature. But the death screen appears, and not because I ran out of health. So then I take a look at the continue screen and on the left page it hints that I should use Cloud of Bats to distract the Strogg.
In that split second of cutscene when Dracula was surrounded by the cloud of bats I guessed that's what I should've used instead of fighting the monster that's closest to me.

example #3

->Open Spoiler<-

This one will be short.
During the latter stages of the Carmilla fight, there's a text prompt telling you to press the 'right' button to activate the 'mist' ability. I'm thinking "I'm playing a guessing game now? what the hell is the 'right' button?"
Naturally I die, because obviously I pressed the wrong button.
It wasn't until the next time I figured it was the right button on the digital pad. Now if they put that in the text, I might've cottoned on.

I could go on, but really I shouldn't.

People cried for Metroidvania, but honestly, I miss the chapter select. Because at least I didn't have to play a lot of padding sections, such as activating switches to traverse areas, also known as hiding loading screens.

I hear cries from the gallery... "jim, where's your review? all that you've done is moan about the game"
Maybe because there's not much in way of superlatives I can garner from final game in the trilogy.

It's a good job they've finally put the nail in the coffin to Mercurysteams effort.

['Press Start']

Thanks man,

I was going to stake out a few more first play impressions before sinking my own teeth into it but it sounds like a bloody waste of time.

I am cross now.

[Goemon]

I was a massive fan of LoS and MoF so I was really looking forward to this game.
Firstly, I wanted to point out that MS did listen to gripes of the first game and fixed a lot of things

Fully moveable camera
Traversal of the environment is now much quicker
Climbable sections are more obviously highlighted
Air Dodge
Unblockable attacks more obviously highlighted
The combo metre builds quicker
You now have the ability to ‘finish’ and enemy to gain life

I consider these good improvements in some core areas of the game and they definitely give a more refined experience over the original.

However they also looked at ‘What else can we do?’

This is where the likes of the stealth sections come in, which aren’t bad per say but they’re not particularly good either, and more jarringly, they don’t suit the game at all.

They also wanted to make a Metroidvania game, which unfortunately they don’t do particularly well. Similarly to Metroid Other M; you’re always moving forward and rarely return to an area as areas don’t really integrate into each other the way things like Metriod Prime of SotN do. Also your upgrades are fairly sparse and underused; the wolf skill for example is literally used as an auto scene for traversing worlds – not great. I think this is a real missed opportunity.

I feel that they shot themselves in the foot with the epilogue of LoS. It drove everyone crazy when they saw it, it was a really great ‘WTF!!’ moment and I imagine the original idea behind it was to do exactly this.
It’s like the original Planet of the Apes – at the end he finds out he was on earth all along it’s a real No freakin way!

The thing is, these things were never really meant to be followed on, they’re meant to leave on this ‘f***!!!’ but popularity drives another version and it end up going off in some wonky direction

This is what happens here – the modern era again doesn’t fit the game.
I remember some people had a real beef with LoS going ‘it’s not Castlevania’ I never had this problem personally but I can tell you right now - LoS2 is NOT a Castlevania game.
Walking through industrial type corridors really disappoint after some of the beautiful environments for the first game, this game does have a couple of moments of beauty; but not many.

I was also very excited for the story having been fan of the others and reading into it quite deeply I thought they had set something up that was really cool but I have to say it fizzled out with no real conclusion, which was disappointing.

If you liked the original, I think it’s worth checking this out; the game isn’t bad IMO it’s just a massive step in the wrong direction and you can’t help but be disappointed.

[EDDIE M0NS00N]

The original was pretty good Imo, but i steered away from this when i saw the modern locations in the game instead of sticking with the gothic scene.

I always thought that the God of War series had the Castlevania style and managed to nail the gameplay too.

Maybe the creators of the Castlevania should take a leaf out of Sony's in house book, or stick with 2D versions in the future.

Will prob pick this up in a few months when its on a super-super deal

['Press Start']

I am sure they could nail 3D Castlevania if they took a pinch of Demon Souls, a dash of Darksiders and mixed it all together.

[fishbowlhead]

I am sure they could nail 3D Castlevania if they took a pinch of Demon Souls, a dash of Darksiders and mixed it all together.

They did, it's called lords of shadow without the 2 at the end.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Can anyone who has the PS3 version of this confirm if this game comes with a full instruction booklet or a short, quick reference manual?

[Neon Ignition]

Just started out on this now and struggling to wrap my head around it. When I gave LoS the proper time I ended up really enjoying it, it did what it did well and was a meaty sized adventure. Nothing in this is 'broken' so far, only done one stealth section and though pretty pants it was simple enough. The modern setting is pap but the game is usually pretty nice looking, the whole thing just isn't clicking. It's a mish mash of changes and tweaks and settings which don't feel like they belong together, it feels disjointed from LoS despite its many similarities. Really awkward one, will give it another night but yeah... struggling