Castlevania: Lords of Shadow — We All Wear Masks

As someone
who enjoyed the Castlevania games
provided by Koji “IGA” Igarashi and his team, it was difficult to look forward
to a game proposed as reinvention of the franchise. Konami realized the sad
truth involved with the games IGA headed: their divisiveness among Castlevania
fans. Some didn’t mind having a nearly-annual romp through a
Metroidvania-designed iteration of Dracula’s Castle that begged for
free-roaming exploration, but others thought the novelty of them was wearing
thin with each installment made after Symphony
of the Night. Konami figured the best decision was to reinvent the
wheel with a new team in Spain’s MercurySteam, and hand control of the
franchise to the biggest name in the company: Metal Gear’s Hideo Kojima.

 

Konami had
also become a company that needed more heavy hitters, since they only had one
big franchise. The previous Castlevania games sold well enough to make a modest
profit, but they weren’t huge.

 

So here we
have Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, a
game that, while promised to have more in common with the older games that
apparently everyone loves, actually fuses the aesthetics of the two art styles to
make its own. Gone are the pretty boy (or “bishounen”) protagonists designed by
Ayami Kojima in the IGA titles; in comes one whose looks aren’t quite as
“barbaric” as the late 80s and early 90s iterations, but is certainly too gruff
to be labeled a “pretty boy.”

Well, it’s certainly a looker.

The main
character here is one of MercurySteam’s own creation named Gabriel Belmont.
He’s on a quest to find a way to bring his murdered wife, Marie, back from the
dead; and, as a secondary quest, to fulfill the Brotherhood of Light’s wishes
to find the spirits of the brotherhood’s founders, who are capable of saving
the world. Two masks exist in the game’s world: the God Mask and the Devil
Mask. The former of which is one that’s promised to bring back the dead, the
one Gabriel seeks.

 

The story
has a lot of promise, and lives up to some
of it. But for all the good it does, there are plenty of plot threads that are
either left unanswered or resolved arbitrarily. The ending, for instance,
provides a nice twist, but it comes out of nowhere in the worst way. And if you
want any elaboration on it, you’ll have to purchase the DLC quests prepared
after the game — one of the worst ways to fix the problem. Though this is a
reboot, the story ends up being not much better than any of IGA’s titles.

 

Gabriel
doesn’t use the trademark “Vampire Killer” whip used by every Belmont previously,
but a retractable one known as the “Combat Cross.” It works mostly the same in
battle, but his whip is far more useful for the game’s platforming sections.
The battle system is a combination of those found in IGA’s 3D games (one of the
best things about them) and God of War.
There’s a big focus on skill-dependent dodging and counter attacking, which is
nice and rewarding whenever you’re successful. The game strikes a nice balance
between not being too easy and not quite getting hard enough to feel
overwhelming.

It’s certainly a long whip…

But there is
one frustrating aspect. The combat would have benefited from being easier to
tell what kind of attacks some enemies are about to execute. Most attacks can
be blocked, but some can’t, and the cue the some enemies give just before it is
a tad too ambiguous. That problem is exacerbated when you’re surrounded by a
flood of them.

 

It’s also
tough to time your dodges because of the game’s lack of fluidity. If there was
a game you wanted to show anyone as proof of why good framerates matter in
games, this is that title. MercurySteam was very concerned about the game being
as cinematic and pretty as possible, to the point that they sacrificed the
performance big time. The PS3 version, which I played, hovers at around 25fps
most of the time, and apparently the 360 version fares even worse.

 

You’ll be
finishing a good deal of your opponents with QTEs, which is where the God of
War inspiration comes in. QTE’s are nowhere near as rewarding as finishing them
off with raw combat, and the game gets too reliant on them. You want to finish
off the bosses? There’s a QTE. You want to get back on a horse after falling
off it? There’s a QTE. You want to pull down some curtains? There’s a QTE. This
is too many.

The most satisfying aspect of these battles is when they’re over.

LoS also has
some very special bosses in the form of Titan battles, an homage to Shadow
of the Colossus. They’re not bad, but they aren’t quite as rewarding as
SotC’s primarily because the mechanics aren’t built around climbing gigantic
creatures. Fortunately, there are only three of them, and the final one far
less tedious than the first two.

 

If there’s
one aspect LoS takes completely from the older games, it’s the game’s linear
design. There’s no option to go back to previous locations unless you want to
redo the entire mission. The level designs themselves are a mixed bag, which
presents some pacing issues. The best parts of the game, interestingly enough,
take place in the castle — the place most Castlevania games are known for
existing within. The earlier parts, involving the journey to the castle, are
lengthy slog, with long corridor-like locations that serve little purpose
(another commonality with the 3D IGA games!). The parts after the castle aren’t
much better, either, and felt like they existed to pad the game’s playtime a
little more. Designing a good castle is a nice strength for MercurySteam to
have in terms of designing Castlevania games, and hopefully they focus on that
in future installments.

“Must you be so brooding and mysterious?”

The music,
composed by Oscar Araujo, may not be similar to anything from the older
Castlevania titles, but it fits the kind of game LoS is. It’s a game that, as
said before, is more concerned with being cinematic than its predecessors, and
a movie-like soundtrack suffices for that purpose. It’s excellent very well
done for what it is. It’s no better or worse than the compositions of Michiru
Yamane and others from previous games, but it’s a soundtrack that can co-exist
peacefully with them.

 

And what cinematic
game wouldn’t be complete without a star-studded cast? That’s exactly what
Konami assembled for this game, and they…well, don’t do much better of a job
than your usual Los Angeles-based cast. Robert Carlyle and Natascha McElhone are
good as Gabriel and Marie, though the former has some weird grunts. Patrick
Stewart is fine in the game’s story as Zobek, but he sounds bored out of his
mind as the narrator. That’s, fortunately, the only blight in the voice acting.

 

Lords of
Shadow is a good game, but it always feels like it’s one step from greatness
because of a lack of polish. MercurySteam can easily make the
already-announced sequels great games if they’re in full realization of the
problems that occurred here. And thankfully, they’re not completely rolling
with the concept presented in the post-game twist ending; at least it doesn’t seem like they are.