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Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 - |OT| - Dead and Loving It!

969

Member
Alright i just came back from a 9 hr Los 2 marathon. Been playing pretty much since the game released on Steam. Lord of Shadow difficulty, completionist playstyle; i try to collect and explore as much as possible. I left the game at the
antidote room part
.

All i have to say is that some of these so called "reviewers" have to be held accountable. It's past the "it's just an opinion" territory. Some of the things written about the game are straight up lies and i am baffled as to what kind of profession is this when there are no consequences when you fail to do your job.

A couple of examples if i may.

Quoting Edge (4/10):

"This thoroughly botched yet endlessly reused system is far from Lords Of Shadows 2’s only failing. There’s the banal and unfailable linear platforming, your next destination shown by a noisy cloud of bats, which kills stone dead the prospect of any meaningful exploration."

While it's true that the cloud of bats shows a point where you can grapple, there are many areas that are not marked by it and you'll have to be really observant to your surroundings. Moreover you will have to go back to some areas when you unlock a new power since that will open a path or two.

"There’s the dialogue, voiced by a cast headlined by the returning Patrick Stewart as the shady Zobek and Robert Carlyle as Dracula. The former does his best with a hokey script that asks little more of him than gravitas; the latter doesn’t so much phone in his lines as fax them to an intern and have them do it instead. You get the sense he’d rather be somewhere else, and you’ll soon be inclined to agree with him. "

I won't talk about the script since i haven't finished the game but are we playing the same game here? Carlyle gives an, at least, above average performance. He's going through a wide array of emotions and that becomes even more evident later on
when he meets Marie
.

"Even more shocking than the unimaginative visual design is how rough it all looks. Running at 720p, but seemingly rendered some way south of that, this is a jagged mess, with texture work that at times wouldn’t look out of place in a PS2 game. It’s compounded by the fact this is arriving at the fag end of a generation, when expectations are that much higher. There’s a bizarre, excessively shallow depth-of-field effect that’s clearly being used to disguise poor level of detail on distant objects, frequently kicking in before the focal point of the scene is even onscreen. Even more brazen is the way the frequent, lengthy loading times are hidden behind endless elevators, decontamination showers and supernatural airlocks. It’s tempting to think that the frequent text popups reminding you that you can view unlocked concept art in the Extras menu were put there to appease artists aggrieved at the treatment their work received."

I don't know which version he played but maxed out on the pc this game looks breathtaking. To me it's one of the most visually impressive games in recent memory alongside Metro Last Light. I am well aware that on a technical level it may not be even close but the art design combined with the fluidity on the animations and the visual fidelity made my eyes pop. Also the game performs really well on my system with no loading times or texture pop-ins. Moreover, there is no framecap and that adds to the smoothness on a 144 hz monitor.

"The presence of a weapon that refills your health as you land attacks tends to whiff of a flawed system, and the Void Sword, activated with a tap of L1, does just that. R1 activates the Chaos Claws, which sacrifice the range of Belmont’s signature whip for attack power great enough to break enemy shields. Use of each is regulated by screen-corner Void and Chaos meters, recharged by absorbing orbs dropped by fallen enemies or infuriatingly spaced-out magical fonts. You’ll generate a lot more orbs if you can keep a combo going long enough to fill another meter, but this is a rare event. You’re going to get hit a lot."

Nowhere does the reviewer explain why this system is flawed in his opinion. I'd like to read another line of horse-shit (not really) since i'm sure it'd make a fun read. Next up about that "you're going to get hit a lot" part. You will if you are not familiar with the combat system. Dracula feels more powerful than LoS1 Gabriel if memory serves me right since: a) he can keep air combos up indefinitely and he can counter in mid air and b) magic weapons don't drain while activated but only when they hit enemies. Taking into account that the parry window is pretty big and the fact that all attacks are pretty much telegraphed and adding the fact that parries and counters give you invincibility frames as a cherry on top should show you why you should have little trouble dealing with enemies without getting hit.

"It’s genre-standard stuff that’s complicated needlessly by that unblockable sound effect being exactly the same for every single enemy in the game. Combine that with a wayward camera and you’ve got a recipe for trouble, with the mix further soured by the absence of block- or hit-stun. You can be merrily wailing away on an enemy only for them to start up, and execute, an attack in the middle of your combo. "

Did he just say that you can't block or stun enemies on hit? I might be misinterpreting him but if he really said that it's false since you can both block and stun-lock enemies. Or did he say that you can't block-stun as in stun enemies with a properly timed block? Because you can do that as well. Maybe he meant stunning enemies that are blocking maybe? Either way you can do that too with the Chaos Claws. Parrying stun-locks even the heavy guys and normal hits from any weapon will stagger lesser enemies for at least a couple of hits. If you wanted to button mash though you won't be able to do that obviously since after 2-3 hits in, they will wake up and retaliate. Combat is a give and take relationship in this game and while it's not super duper ninja gaiden hard it's not mash X to win.

There are more things in that "review" and a couple of others that i glanced hastily like PCGamer's (if you can call 2 paragraphs that i, or any of my classmates, could write back in the 4th grade a good 20 or so years back a review) that really rubbed me the wrong way and i would further explain why i find them to be insultingly inaccurate but at the moment i'm just gonna go to sleep.

P.S: Apologies if the post is in the wrong section. I don't know if it'd be more suitable to post this in the review thread rather than the OT.
 
You’ll generate a lot more orbs if you can keep a combo going long enough to fill another meter, but this is a rare event.
Hadn't seen this quote before. This is pretty sad. Also, no idea what's up with the camera complaints. Never had a problem with it.
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
The hell am i supposed to do after i meet the first gorgon sister? Went down the welevator and into the lava room with te wolf portal and.... I can't go anywhere?
 
Pretty much all rising launchers can bring enemies into the air no matter what they're doing, so I don't know what Edge was going on about concerning the absence of hit-stuns and such. And when fighting heavier enemies that can't get launched, their lumbering attack animations should, should give you more than enough time to cancel into a dodge or somersault or whatever you feel like doing.

Six hours in, and the most recent boss I just defeated was
the First Acolyte.
This game is damn terrific. I'm having a lot of fun exploring the castle, delving deep into the nuances of the combat system. Misting through gates is giving me serious nostalgic vibes of Soul Reaver, I love it. Very little complaints so far, other than the lack of an invincible dodge or the slo-mo effect after a perfect block. But those are small things that I can live with. :)

PS: I miss my XYY/STT/Direct-Area-Area combo. =(
 
Just got to some area filled with lava and looking for the power of chaos. So far... I love it! :d I'm tired and need sleep but yeah. Unless things really jump the shark, I don't see how I will think less of this game then the first one.
 
Played about 2 hours last night, I've just returned from the castle for the first time, back to the scientific district, and did a little rat wire chewing. I'm a little mixed so far, but given the last game was like 15 hours long, I'm still in very early days. All the stuff in the castle I've done, that was cool, whereas the stuff in the industrial place I'm at, that stuff is a lot more eh. It makes you miss the locales from the first game. If I had to take a stab, I think I'll end up liking the game well enough but thinking the setting was its biggest enemy, rather than any gameplay systems. Playing in the castle feels like picking up where the last game left off, wondering around stairwells and steamy rooms hiding from guards who look like rejects from Gears, not so much.

Like I said though, I assume it's very early days.
 
Just played a couple hours and yeah, the objects can be painfully large looking. Benches that go up to your stomach, barrels as tall as you, and a knight dead on the ground, almost twice your size. Weird shit.
 

Sanctuary

Member
Did the developers forget to include High Definition Textures?

Can't see any difference with the setting ON or OFF.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/239250/discussions/0/558748822814505477/

Uh, you can tell pretty easily in those screenshots that there's a subtle difference. Just compare the etching of the metal right next to Dracula's right. Enlarge both pictures, each on a seperate tab and compare them. It's not a night and day difference, but there is a difference.
 
Man... some of the areas in this game look like were taken straight from concept art. Damn beautiful!

O1scRnD.jpg
 
Just got done from a marathon myself...just wanted to pop in and say this game SUPERSEDED my expectations and I had high hopes, not even half way thru as far as i can tell and the game is surprising me at every turn! Thank you Mercury Steam if your out there!
 

Grinch

Banned
Motherfucker. Game starts in 720p, trying to change resolution only crashes the game. Tried setting the game to windowed, "Could not reset D3D device".

According to Steam forums I'm not the only one with this problem. God damn annoying.
 

gribbles

Banned
Just got done from a marathon myself...just wanted to pop in and say this game SUPERSEDED my expectations and I had high hopes, not even half way thru as far as i can tell and the game is surprising me at every turn! Thank you Mercury Steam if your out there!

Surpass. Supersede is to replace.
 

b0uncyfr0

Member
Just started playing : any way to downsample without setting the resolution in windows first? They really should remove this limitation. Im trying to see how far i can push it without loosing too much fps.
 

Haunted

Member
Seriously, am I the only one seeing this here? This looks ridiculous. Is it because of some weird perspective effect? Does it look like this to those playing the game as well? (pic is screenshots I took from TB's WTF Is video)

OAdO6cC.jpg
What the fuck?

This is environmental design 101. How do you mess up the scale this badly and no one notices? Almost comical.


If you told me those screens (and that of the GB QL) were from a section where you were shrunk down by magic, I'd believe you.
 

Dascu

Member
Maybe they had some difficulties adapting the controls and camera to realistic/small interiors. Consequently they scaled Gabriel's model down a little bit and hoped people wouldn't realize.

Looking at gameplay footage, I kind of feel going for a free camera was a bad choice. LoS1 had some really great moments where areas are gradually revealed by the camera, and you miss that kind of visual surprise here.
 

BluWacky

Member
I don't know which version he played but maxed out on the pc this game looks breathtaking.

Since the review talks about 720p they obviously weren't playing on PC where you can go up to 1080p. Ergo the comments clearly apply to the console version - and if the console version has poor loading times etc. then those are worth commenting on.
 
The whole rat transformation mechanic thing seems a bit...unneeded. He's fucking Dracula, isn't he supposed to turn into a bat instead?

Also needs less street walking, less platforming and a better ending. I don't really feel like I'm playing as the almighty Prince of Darkness.
 

Sanctuary

Member
To downsample with this game, you have to actually change the desktop resolution first, and then the new resolutions appear in the game options. I've never seen this issue with any other game before.

To the reviews and other people asking why he's turning into a rat: guess you never watched Bram Stoker's Dracula. He's also not turning into "a rat". He's turning into a rat swarm. The number of rats indicated in the upper left are just to show how many more rats in the swarm are left until you die. They aren't really extra lives even if the functionality is really similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1rnBQJxfdk

Also, this game is reminding me a hell of a lot of the first Darksiders, minus the wall running.
 
What the fuck?

This is environmental design 101. How do you mess up the scale this badly and no one notices? Almost comical.


If you told me those screens (and that of the GB QL) were from a section where you were shrunk down by magic, I'd believe you.

Almost comical? It's pretty much hilarious; Dracula is 3 feet tall.

I remember Platinum games showing how they scaled up the environments in Bayonetta by about 50% to improve the flow of the gameplay and camera. It looks like Mercury Steam have attempted a similar solution here, only it really, really doesn't work when your environments are filled with recognisable everyday objects.
 
20 minutes out of 9 hours so far, for me. It's not hard stuff.

I've been playing it since noon and I will say if I have been doing those stealth stuff it's really short and not that hard at all. Also doesn't seem to be much of it either.

Cheers guys. Interesting you both jumped to it not being hard; that really wasn't the implication at all haha. It's dull and boring, rather than difficult. Very simple linear *puzzles*, oppose to genuine stealth. Good to know there's very little though, because the rest has been pretty awesome so far.
 

Bedlam

Member
Maybe they had some difficulties adapting the controls and camera to realistic/small interiors. Consequently they scaled Gabriel's model down a little bit and hoped people wouldn't realize.
Yep. That's the only reason I can think of why they would've scaled it like this. Then again, if you have to have wider areas for these type of games, you should avoid stuff like (real-world) doorframes, cars etc. where the weird scaling is immediately obvious.

Looking at gameplay footage, I kind of feel going for a free camera was a bad choice. LoS1 had some really great moments where areas are gradually revealed by the camera, and you miss that kind of visual surprise here.
Agreed. Even back when LoS1 came out and people bitched about the static camera, I felt these complaints were misguided. Save for very, very few occasions, the camera framed the action very nicely and it also allowed for some cool, visual direction. I really prefer a static camera in these kind of games that lets me focus entirely on the action. Sometimes people don't know what they should wish for.
 

Facism

Member
got to say, after a couple of deep sessions with the game, the Edge review is hot, creamy dogshit. Completely off the mark and sounds like a bitter scrub unable to use the tools the game gives him to play it.

Can't stun or push enemies out of attack patterns? bollocks. Hold X/Square attack, R2 projectile on Void Sword and Chaos Fists, guillotine moves for all weapons, even fucking DODGING into an enemy interrupts their blockable attacks and puts them on their arse for easy hits. Yes, you can get crowded. Dodging or jumping followed by holding X/square can remedy that.

Let's not even get started on how forgiving the instant block timing is. Or how the relics are plentiful and buff your abilities.

Even the stealth so far isn't some big shitpile. I can see how they can annoy people, though. You really need a little bit of patience and the ability to think critically. They're more like puzzles than pure stealth.
 

969

Member
Since the review talks about 720p they obviously weren't playing on PC where you can go up to 1080p. Ergo the comments clearly apply to the console version - and if the console version has poor loading times etc. then those are worth commenting on.

Then it should be clarified in the review and the score should be specific to that version.
 

Currygan

at last, for christ's sake
I might miss some.

- Golden Paladin
- Stone golem
- Raisa Volkova (Electric Lizard-Thing)
- The Gorgon
- Satan's Daughter (Other demon thing quite hard)
- Carmilla
- Agreus
- Knight Puppet, Dragon Puppet, the Puppetmaster (Toymaker bossfight)
- Satan Commander (Demon thing # 3)
- Victor Belmont
- Giant Armor x3 (Second Acolyte)
- Inner Dracula (2 forms)
- Death
- Alucard

Am I missing anything?

cool, thanks. Not too shabby but not particularly exciting :/
 

Arkanius

Member
How is this game getting such low scores?
Have people forgot how to play games?

I'm loving it so far. Then again, I absolutely adored LoS1
 

b0uncyfr0

Member
The over-the-shoulder perspective looks weird as fuuuuuuuuuuuuck

I dont mind it, its the FOV whilst he's out of combat thats bothering me. Its really narrow. It makes traversing a lot harder cause you can hardly see much around you.
The FOV you get when you do an attack is much much better. Hopefully someone finds a way to adjust it so it stays like that all the time.
 
They must have. The game is aeesome.

Thief and LOS2 are just the start. Expect more of this as 2014 goes on.

I don't necessarily disagree with reviewers scoring these games low (even though I like LOS2 so far)... it's just that they haven't consistently scored Triple-A games like this in the past. Usually they fall in the 7-10 range. If we see more diversity of scores across the board I'm all for it.
 
A good friend of mine ordered the game for my birthday, and I'm waiting the game to arrive next week. In general the situation with this game and the stealth sections comments reminds me of the reviews and the complains about the free fall sections of Killzone Shadow Fall. Two sections of 2 minutes of duration in a 8 hour game, that were fairly easy if you tried to play the game with a very tiny bit of care, and it seemed that game was pure trash because of it -_-.
 
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