Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (2014) Online

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a vast improvement over the prequel. Excusably flawed in some areas, a well-rounded combat system, great atmosphere and a pretty decent story make it a tasty experience.

Story-wise, you continue a few .. centuries? after the events of the previous title. You play as Gabriel Belmont's evil incarnation Dracula in all his blood-sucking, finger-licking, fang-bearing glory. Good ol' Zobek pops up at the beginning of the game and tells you Satan is raffling a whoopass and you two have all the numbers. Considering the urgency of Bigredhorny chasing y'all around, he asks for a temporary alliance to prevent Satan's summoning in exchange for Dracula's ultimate wish: eternal rest.

I won't spoil any details of later sections of the plot but, for an action game, the narrative is surprisingly solid and enthralling. A lot of the good things happening in this reboot of Castlevania have to do with the atmosphere surrounding the game universe. The soundtrack is chillingly good, the feeling of utter devastation throughout the levels is awesome and the general design of characters and enemies alike is top-notch. Worth noting, some boss encounters come with an extra serving of epic sauce.

There have been a few changes in terms of how the game plays out in respect to the original Lords of Shadow. First off, the camera is now dynamic, which is a simple yet outstanding improvement over the fixed view. Also, we are now thrown into a sort of open-world format. However, the result is something closer to Darksiders or old school console action games where the freedom to roam is limited and what happens is you actually end up revisiting locations that (usually thanks to a recently-acquired ability) reveal a path that would've been previously inaccessible.

Combat is pretty straightforward: your go-to weapon is the Blood Whip, which is reminiscent of the Cross in the previous entry, but there's also the Void Sword and the Chaos Claws. The former serves as a leech-life-back weapon that also has attacks to freeze your opponents, while the latter is more focused on heavy damage and breaks defenses on certain enemies. All three weapons have similar attacks and the inputs are almost the same in all cases, but the whip is the only one that doesn't require a finite 'mana' bar to use. Besides these three puppies, you also get some secondary weapons and on-use items that have different temporary effects, like slowing down time or unlocking all attacks with all weapons. It can get a bit convoluted juggling both resources for the sword and claw plus the secondary abilities plus the inventory items plus remembering all combos, but all in all, it's a neat combat system that works pretty well and doesn't get in the way of fun.

Praises aside, there are a few flaws with Lords of Shadow 2.

For starters, while I can appreciate the intention to redo some of the things that were wrong with the first game, I'm not completely sold on the pseudo-open-world thing. Having to go back a bunch of screens just to pick up a health upgrade you may only get access to 6 hours in doesn't sound particularly enticing to me. Also, it might just be me being silly, but I often times got lost and couldn't really figure out where I was supposed to go next (there's even an objective marker, for Pete's sake!) and I attribute that to levels working the way they do with this kind of system. I found backtracking through scenery I've already seen really exhausting, particularly so when it came to collectibles and upgrades. To be fair, though, the game world is sort of circular, so you're not literally backtracking, therefore your mileage may vary.

Simultaneously, while the combat is good, solid fun, I would've liked to see maybe more instances with weaker but more abundant enemies to make things a bit more dynamic and feel a tad more powerful. Even with full upgrades, often times you feel like you're chipping away at those demons with a wet noodle. Despite urban legends, wet noodles don't hurt at all.

While we're on the topic of combat, some bosses and sequences are very underwhelming, either visually or mechanically, which is a shame because some others are absolutely phenomenal. The peeps at MercurySteam clearly know how to come up with great ideas but consistency goes a long way. Maybe some portions of the game were a bit rushed, which would make sense considering certain parts towards the end of the story also feel somewhat vague and inconclusive.

What it all boils down to is a very interesting and unconventional rendition of the Castlevania mythos that's even better than the first Lords of Shadow. Some details in the final product could have been a bit more polished, but the sum of its parts make for a really fun and engaging action game.

Game had every chance to be amazing. It had every chance to learn from LOS 1, embrace what works, continue what was amazing and not stray too far from its original premise.

Instead...we got... LOS 2. Dracula in a big city, lifeless, in ruins, linear, uninteresting, total lack of interesting narration, total lack of creative boss fights outside of the opening one.

Devoid of immersion outside of Castle Dracula.

Way too obsessed with opening doors, getting elevators to work, flowing through ventilation shafts, avoiding lasers and INSTA FAIL guards that make Dracula feel like a big wimp.

The game is punishingly stupid at times and puzzles are incredibly simply yet not remotely obvious. Its tedious. Its boring. And its SO ANNOYING because you wanna love this game. I want to love Dracula. I want to enjoy playing as this badass vampire. I want to continue doing all I did from the 1st game, I wanna fly around like in the trailer, I wanna transform into the bird, I wanna transform into a huge vampire.

But instead of doing anything cool and creative like that. We're just doing door unlocking, power diverting puzzles, doing a truckload of backtracking, constantly being introduced to the same areas we've seem before in this lifeless, boring ruined city thats devoid of ANYTHING but demon life.

Its so tedious. And it just doesn't change. Where as LOS 1 would offer you very different areas. Villages, swamps, castles, demonic underworlds, dark forests, beautiful lush forests, snowy locations, and undead, abandoned towns... LOS 2 offers you the same god damn ruined New York streets filled with generic demons and....thats it.

With your occasional trip to Castle Dracula thats not even that interesting either. Especially since its mostly optional.

every mission you complete isn't boiling down to anything grand. Resulting in any big narration or sense of completionist music theme that makes you feel like you did in the 1st game.

It just feels like you now trigger the next cutscene back at Zobeks house where he tells you: Hurry up and complete the next stuff so I can kill you and we can be done.

ITS Unfathomably UNINTERESTING AND ANTI CLIMACTIC.

Marie barely shows up. Alucard's role makes for a cool plot point later but overall remains of minimal interest. The grand finale versus Satan is INSULTINGLY bad.

Its over so fast, you do more climbing than fighting and by the end you don't even do anything to make you feel like you're defeating Satan like in the 1st game.

"sigh" I know a lotta people love the idea of this. Rate it 10 and 9 and more. because its Dracula. Its vampires. We all love it.

but if you really love this concept you should want a proper execution of this premise as well. And Mercurysteam could've done FAR better.

This smells like a rushed product, sabotaged by Konami, it has lacking creativity, lacking level design, underwhelming boss fights and a really lackluster ending that doesn't remotely culminate in anything. LET ALONE... how it basically makes your ENTIRE INCENTIVE SINCE THE START OF THE GAME feel pointless because not only do you realize you can live on with your son but " spoiler alert... " it was the idea all along.... you just forgot after Alucard stabbed you with his sword.

Honestly. Its anti-climactic. I can respect the premise. The idea of the city, demons and all that. But this execution is dreadfully awful and BLEAK as F#ck.

LOS did everything better. LOS 2 deserves to be called out for its lackings. Not solely praised for having a badass Dracula concept and trailer. 10 out of 10 for its opening sequence fighting knights. 6 out of 10 for the rest of the game.

Its a mediocre game. Wasted opportunity. Wanna buy this game? Play it for its opening mission ONLY. The rest can be skipped. You wont miss anything.

Well this was something I had been meaning to do ever since I picked up a controller. Playing as Dracula has been a dream of mine forever. Controlling him, you traverse the large Gothic city built upon your old castle's ruins and ally yourself with an old enemy to stop an even greater foe's imminent return. Systematically, you hunt down those responsible for bringing him back and kill them, all the while being plagued by visions of your long lost son who takes you back in time to your castle in hopes of regaining your latent powers and your lost memories. This all sounds great on paper, doesn't it. Well it's great in practice as well, except for one thing... the game feels and looks like Guillermo del Toro directed it. I know most of you will be pleased to hear this... But to me, the creature designs were just fine before they became all... Outlandishly weird, with the exception of Raisa Volkova's final form. Besides that, the scenery is quite the sight to behold, the "memories" of the castle especially. I often found myself standing completely immobile for minutes at a time marveling at the sights around me, and that is truly an accomplishment. The combat is mostly similar to the previous LoS installment, with the exception of the Void sword and the Chaos Claws that replace your blue and red whip while maintaining each color's magical properties. As Dracula, you progressively gain abilities like turning into mist to move past metal bars and become temporarily invulnerable to damage, swarm of bats to distract your enemies and possess them, the ability to morph into a pack of rats to climb through ducts and get past enemies and of course your blood daggers and relics. The puzzles are back, and there are one or two particular ones that might send you up the wall as it did me. The semi-open world draws a lot from Dark Souls in the way that most areas are interconnected and lead you back to the starting point. Fast travel is available though, if you can find the nearest map room. The trials are done away with and are replaced by arena challenges, unlocked by collecting specific artifacts. So to summarize... LoS2 is a great, gorgeous game with perhaps the most detailed and beautiful environments I have seen in a long time. I just wish they hadn't gone so over the top with the creature designs and had more powers for Dracula, I mean, c'mon he's Dracula? Worth at least a try though, even if it's just for the endless eye candy all around you.