Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Review

Konami has been struggling with a 3D Castlevania game for years and Mercury Steam decided that they where the ones who would finally get it right. Some of you who’s memories have been scarred remember that Mercury Steam is the team behind Clive Barker’s Jericho which wasn’t really worth remembering. Fear not though since this is one 3D Castlevania game that finally gets it right.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Developer: Mercury Steam/Kojima Productions
Price: $60.00
Platform: PS3 (reviewed) & 360

Lords of Shadow is a reboot of the series and a prequel which tosses you into the iron boots of Gabriel Belmont who’s a member of the Brotherhood of Light, an elite group of holy knights, who’s task is to rid the world of demons wrecking villages. It’s a shame that Gabriel’s wife was killed recently by these monsters and now he not only wants revenge against demons everywhere, but also the 3 Dark Lords who hold the key to gaining the power to bringing his beloved back from the grave.

Hardcore Castlevania fans beware, you won’t find much backtracking here, there isn’t much exploration, the entire game is completely linear, and instead of being confined in a castle you’ll move through various environments. Once you do acquire certain upgrades for your cross or receive new relics you do have the option of replaying previous levels in order to open that wall you couldn’t before to get to hidden upgrades. Those upgrades include upgrades for you sub-weapons, life upgrades, and magic upgrades.

This is an action game all the way and is going to be compared to God of War each time people mention it. Yes the game feels like the God of War games, but it has enough in it to make it stand apart from the series and I’m sure people will start calling the new Castlevania games Godofvania instead of Metroidvania (Godofvania copyrighted by me). There are a few combos to buy that are all simple to execute and fun to use but there are obvious combos you’re going to use over the worst ones and the amount you get just feels a bit short. Of course these are just regular combos, there’s an even bigger list of combos you can purchase in the relic section that are used with the various magical relics you’ll acquire in the game. My personal favorite is the Shoryuken move you get from the gauntlets. Lords of Shadow also contains some of the best boss fights I’ve played in quite a while. Sure there are the titans you see in the trailer but those aren’t as brilliant as the Silver Warrior or Black Knight. One thing I will nitpick at is the fact that all the bosses/mini-bosses have an obsession with ground pound attacks. If you don’t know what I’m talking about those are the attacks where they smack the ground and the only way to dodge it is to jump over the wave. Developers this is not a good thing to add and leads to annoying cheap shots the bosses get on you since you can either take the hit from the ground pound or your can jump over it and get punched in the face by the boss.

Lords of Shadow has a neat set of magic mechanic you receive early on. The first is light magic which you switch on with the L1/LS button and whenever you hit an enemy you’ll gain health with each hit while hitting R1/RS will activate shadow magic that boosts the damage you dish out. These will also open up new skills/combos you can perform and can be turned on/off instantly within combos giving fights a bit of strategy. The puzzles scattered throughout the game aren’t anything special, but they do help break up the pace from the combat and platforming sections. There is one puzzle that I did enjoy which tasks you with playing chess against a vampire halfway through the game. Once you complete a stage you can also revisit it to start Trial Mode where you’re given a certain objective, like completing puzzles in a certain amount of time or not using light magic, and the game tracks your completion percentage for each stage which is handy to know what you’re missing.

The character models in this game are detailed and look great, but for some reason the hair and faces on certain main characters just look god awful, thankfully the rest of the game makes up for this with beautifully crafted environments. Your travels will take you to murky swamps, beautiful forests, snowy mountaintops, into eerie castles, and there’s a heavy influence from Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth/Hellboy Series) and Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) looming throughout the game. Lords of Shadow sports some notable voice actors with Robert Carlyle voicing our hero Gabriel Belmont and Sir Patrick Stewart voicing the mysterious Zobek. The do the job perfectly fine, it’s just that they don’t actually do the job that much. You’ll go a few stages without a single piece of dialog from Gabriel until he meets a major character in the story and Patrick Stewart does a brief narration before each stage starts. It’s a shame since it would really help move the story along if Gabriel at the least spoke to himself about his current objective. One part that is this obvious in is Chapter 4 where you’re on your way to the realm of the vampires when you come across a tower where the Crow Witch lives. There is no mention at all why you would need to stop here and waste time fighting all these enemies only to have a certain character whisk you away at the final moment, basically slap you in the head and drop you where you at your destination.

The Final Word
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is simply a brilliant game. It does everything right but just falls short when it comes to the story and the combat doesn’t feel new enough to be outstanding and just falls on great. Nonetheless the game will take you over 15 hours to complete, that’s not including all the trials/collectibles to collect when you revisit levels, and you’ll have a blast the entire time.

– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good