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Castlevania: Lords of Shadow |OT| The MercurySteam has Vanquished the Horrible Night

luka

Loves Robotech S1
Segata Sanshiro said:
Unsurprisingly for a series that has gone through a lot of different styles, whether or not it feels like a Castlevania game seems to vary from person to person. You've got your "not at alls" like jett and I, your "definitelys" like brandon and other people who aren't important enough to remember, and everything in between.

Segata doesn't think I'm important. What have I been doing with my life? :C

Personally I think it's like a Castlevania if you squint your eyes and focus really hard like one of those magic eye things. Doesn't stop it from being a solid game though.
 
I finally had to unlock a solution for a puzzle: 8-3, the "Pac Man" like one. To bad the solution didn't even help overcome the time limit! The hint scroll seemed to say you had to fill all the pools, like, at once, not one at a time, and I kept wondering WTF I was missing.
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
I hardly roll in battle. Lots of parries and launchers. The game basically makes you get good at it as you go and at this point (chapter 9) I am just a whirlwind of death.
 

Tom Penny

Member
Before I waste my time. In the Chromatic Observatory chapter 7
do I really have to save up 25000 to buy a spell to run around the fucking square since normal dash doesn't work
:/
 

Frillen

Member
Tom Penny said:
Before I waste my time. In the Chromatic Observatory chapter 7
do I really have to save up 25000 to buy a spell to run around the fucking square since normal dash doesn't work
:/

Shadow magic is your friend.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Relix said:
Well fuck I never knew that :lol :lol

Read your skills section OFTEN. There are lots of things you might not know about (like exploding fairies and holy water shield for instance)
 

mjc

Member
Oh.My.Christ.

I'm at the
Clocktower
and I'm trying to turn this lever. They have this thing set so I have to fight against the controls to make it rotate. And when I got it moving they threw a fucking enemy my way. This is some gaming 101 shit they messed up with and it's really frustrating. Don't make a lever snap back to it's starting position!

/rant
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
mjc said:
Oh.My.Christ.

I'm at the
Clocktower
and I'm trying to turn this lever. They have this thing set so I have to fight against the controls to make it rotate. And when I got it moving they threw a fucking enemy my way. This is some gaming 101 shit they messed up with and it's really frustrating. Don't make a lever snap back to it's starting position!

/rant

I don't remember having any trouble at all with that level. I must know what other people think is so hard about it.
 

mjc

Member
thetrin said:
I don't remember having any trouble at all with that level. I must know what other people think is so hard about it.
I was fine with it up until this part where you fight the
Scorpion
. This lever refuses to move right and snaps back IMMEDIATELY if it doesn't like your stick rotation. This is really frustrating. Like WTF.

Seriously, I don't think I can do this. This is so mind-numbingly stupid that I just can't fathom how it got past anyone.
 

mjc

Member
Oh wow. So you're not supposed to hold in RT on this one even though EVERY other lever in the game you hold RT while rotating. My mind is blown. Jesus Christ what a stupid decision.
 
mjc said:
Oh wow. So you're not supposed to hold in RT on this one even though EVERY other lever in the game you hold RT while rotating. My mind is blown. Jesus Christ what a stupid decision.

I really need to put this in the OP :lol
 

LiK

Member
mjc said:
Oh wow. So you're not supposed to hold in RT on this one even though EVERY other lever in the game you hold RT while rotating. My mind is blown. Jesus Christ what a stupid decision.
We're to used to holding it down from GoW games :lol
 

NeoUltima

Member
mjc said:
Oh wow. So you're not supposed to hold in RT on this one even though EVERY other lever in the game you hold RT while rotating. My mind is blown. Jesus Christ what a stupid decision.
Whoa. DSP had this same 'problem' on his play through. I thought he would be the only one. :lol

It is always been toggle to turn switches. Holding just happened to work too in most other situations.
 

Duress

Member
Finished the game. That was definitely a "wtf" ending. It's going to be interesting where they take the sequel, that's for sure.
 

jett

D-Member
Truthfully reflecting upon it I believe the game's technical issues affected my final impressions. If this game ran at 60fps or just a locked 30 I think I would have liked it a hell of a lot more. It's not really mediocre, that's too mean. :p It's good but flawed, considering the developer's inexperience in the genre, they did a pretty decent job for their first time. They aimed high and took bits and pieces from the best games in the genre. Can't fault for them for that. Let's hope for a vastly improved sequel, and maybe with a better engine. :p

For anyone interested in the difference between difficulty levels, I just re-played the Olrox fight in Knight and Paladin, for kicks. :p There is really none in terms of A.I. and attack patterns, you receive more damage and that's it. One thing this game does awesomely are the boss fights no doubt.
 
christ I need the DLC, my god come on guys, I know I shouldn't have gotten the Platinum in just over a week but I did and I cannot help that.
 

forrest

formerly nacire
brandonh83 said:
christ I need the DLC, my god come on guys, I know I shouldn't have gotten the Platinum in just over a week but I did and I cannot help that.

I'm going to revisit past castlevanias that I missed. Mainly SotN, LoI and CoD.
 
Oh well in that case. I just figured you meant out of the entire series the only one he should revisit is SOTN. But if you're factoring in that list, strictly, then I agree.
 

forrest

formerly nacire
brandonh83 said:
Did you miss Super Castlevania IV? If so, un-miss it.

Nope it was my highlight Castlevania until LoS!


jett said:
Limit your revisitations to SotN.

I've played a good chunk of it, but I never finished. It's time to start fresh and do the damn thing!
 

forrest

formerly nacire
jett said:
wat, you want the guy to play LoI and CoD? :p

I played a bit of LoI when it initially came out and I never really got into it. I kinda feel like giving it another chance. Same thing happened with me and MGS3 which I didn't really like until I dedicated myself to it a year later. It remains as one of my favorite MGS titles.
 

linkboy

Member
jett said:
wat, you want the guy to play LoI and CoD? :p

LoI wasn't that bad of a game, wasn't great, but it gets to much of a bad wrap.

Anyways, I'm stuck (as usual). I just reached Chaper 9 and I'm stuck in the
music box.

How in the fuck do you get the yellow cyclinder.

Damn this is pissing me off.
 
Even if you don't visit Curse of Darkness (and probably, you shouldn't), make sure you visit its soundtrack, which is probably the best soundtrack in a series of great soundtracks.

I think I'm actually going to use its soundtrack for the rest of this game. I'm not feeling Oscar's score that much and every little bit helps at this point.
 
The
music box
, like all the titans, is so incredibly simplistic once you know the layout and structure. I too was a bit annoyed at all of these things. At first.

Then when you do the trials for them and force yourself to learn it, when you actually do them (beating the titans on a very strict time limit, doing the
music box level
flawlessly) it makes you realize how easy and simple these things are.

I suppose that's why I'm ultimately indifferent toward them. I totally get why people don't like these parts of the game, they're definitely not the best the game has to offer and the titan encounters could have been designed better.

still easy as fuck tho.
 

luka

Loves Robotech S1
jett said:
Truthfully reflecting upon it I believe the game's technical issues affected my final impressions. If this game ran at 60fps or just a locked 30 I think I would have liked it a hell of a lot more. It's not really mediocre, that's too mean. :p It's good but flawed, considering the developer's inexperience in the genre, they did a pretty decent job for their first time. They aimed high and took bits and pieces from the best games in the genre. Can't fault for them for that. Let's hope for a vastly improved sequel, and maybe with a better engine. :p

For anyone interested in the difference between difficulty levels, I just re-played the Olrox fight in Knight and Paladin, for kicks. :p There is really none in terms of A.I. and attack patterns, you receive more damage and that's it. One thing this game does awesomely are the boss fights no doubt.

5JJvD.jpg
 

Vrakanox

Member
Segata Sanshiro said:
Even if you don't visit Curse of Darkness (and probably, you shouldn't), make sure you visit its soundtrack, which is probably the best soundtrack in a series of great soundtracks.

I think I'm actually going to use its soundtrack for the rest of this game. I'm not feeling Oscar's score that much and every little bit helps at this point.

That's a good idea actually, I think I might do that for my 2nd playthrough. Well, if I ever play through it again that is. Really there isn't a reason to, it's not like i'm going to unlock anything.
 
I found that playing older music with this game just doesn't fit all that well. I'd rather listen to Araujo's music, it really does fit the game much better.

Though, hold up, I understand why some aren't digging the soundtrack, and I don't think it has anything to do with the actual score.

While there are occasions where the music seems to be assigned to a particular boss fight or environmental cue, the problem is that it feels like the soundtrack was randomly implemented into the game.

During any given level, a lot of the time I notice several different tracks from the score just randomly playing. There are so many stages in the game, and while the score does add new music as you go, I don't think there's quite enough of it to cover how large the game is.

That's a problem with having orchestrated videogame scores. The quality is impressive and in the case of Araujo's music, extremely thematic, bold, and tonally accurate. However, as impressive as it may be, writing music like that for every stage, cinematic, battle sequence, etc. is relatively impractical.

Not impossible, but it would be a daunting undertaking for a music composer. I do think this is why some have reacted somewhat negatively to the music. I think it's an amazing score and one of the best game soundtracks I've ever heard, but you can tell that they struggled with spreading his music out across the entire game.
 
brandonh83 said:
I found that playing older music with this game just doesn't fit all that well. I'd rather listen to Araujo's music, it really does fit the game much better.

Though, hold up, I understand why some aren't digging the soundtrack, and I don't think it has anything to do with the actual score.

While there are occasions where the music seems to be assigned to a particular boss fight or environmental cue, the problem is that it feels like the soundtrack was randomly implemented into the game.

During any given level, a lot of the time I notice several different tracks from the score just randomly playing. There are so many stages in the game, and while the score does add new music as you go, I don't think there's quite enough of it to cover how large the game is.

That's a problem with having orchestrated videogame scores. The quality is impressive and in the case of Araujo's music, extremely thematic, bold, and tonally accurate. However, as impressive as it may be, writing music like that for every stage, cinematic, battle sequence, etc. is relatively impractical.

Not impossible, but it would be a daunting undertaking for a music composer. I do think this is why some have reacted somewhat negatively to the music. I think it's an amazing score and one of the best game soundtracks I've ever heard, but you can tell that they struggled with spreading his music out across the entire game.
Yeah, I'm just not a big fan of the whole "orchestral ambient" style of soundtracking. I wish they would have just let Oscar go nuts. From the stuff he did, he sounds like he knows his shit.

And it's not that daunting. :p Other composers make total soundtracks for games longer than this one. They just made a choice to go with what's trendy right now for game tracks. The problem is that music in Castlevania has always been a huge part of the series, so pushing it into the background the way they did just makes it feel... off.
 
Segata Sanshiro said:
And it's not that daunting. :p Other composers make total soundtracks for games longer than this one. They just made a choice to go with what's trendy right now for game tracks. The problem is that music in Castlevania has always been a huge part of the series, so pushing it into the background the way they did just makes it feel... off.

I would be very hard-pressed to find an orchestrated game score, written and recorded as well as this one, for a game as long as this one. It is a pretty daunting task. I mean, film composers sometimes struggle to get a score out for a 2 hour film. This is a game with a heaping amount of stages, several cutscenes, action setpieces, etc. and my argument was that it would be very difficult and ridiculously time consuming for a composer to write a piece for every single different level in the game.

I'm not saying that those other games have bad scores, but it is rare that I hear a genuinely fantastic orchestrated score for a videogame, because a lot of them are incredibly half-assed.

I agree that pushing the score behind the gameplay is different for Castlevania, but this is a different Castlevania. The other 3D Castlevanias had far more energetic music but it fit the overall style of those games. Lords of Shadow is a game with a much bigger scope and slower level progression than what we're used to in the series, which is why listening to the older, faster music of the older games doesn't work out too well while playing this one.
 
brandonh83 said:
I would be very hard-pressed to find an orchestrated game score, written and recorded as well as this one, for a game as long as this one. It is a pretty daunting task. I mean, film composers sometimes struggle to get a score out for a 2 hour film. This is a game with a heaping amount of stages, several cutscenes, action setpieces, etc. I'm not saying that those other games have bad scores, but it is rare that I hear a genuinely fantastic orchestrated score for a videogame, because a lot of them are incredibly half-assed.

I agree that pushing the score behind the gameplay is different for Castlevania, but this is a different Castlevania. The other 3D Castlevanias had far more energetic music but it fit the overall style of those games. Lords of Shadow is a game with a much bigger scope and slower level progression than what we're used to in Castlevania, which is why listening to the older, faster music of the older games doesn't work out too well while playing this one.
Most RPGs do it. Just sayin'.
 
Segata Sanshiro said:
Most RPGs do it. Just sayin'.

What RPG's have fully orchestrated scores as well composed and recorded as Lords of Shadow? I haven't really heard any myself ;)

Of course, I think "as well composed and recorded" might get mixed up with taste, but I'm talking about the actual quality of the orchestrations. Plenty of games have "orchestrated" music, but in my experience, most of them are pretty terrible.
 

jett

D-Member
I really like the soundtrack well enough, it's definitely extremely well made and of high quality. It just lacks some variety, and it's definitely more of the "background music" type, most of the time it doesn't really punch through like the music does in past CV games. Half the game I've spent listening to a variation of the main theme, which is great, and I'm not asking for a piece with Tragic Prince-like guitar wankery here, but some more variety would've been nice, especially considering the immense variety in locales that the game has.

Final Confrontation and Belmont's Theme are the definite highlights of the soundtrack. Their use in the last two trailers no doubt contributed to me buying the game. :p
 
jett said:
especially considering the immense variety in locales that the game has.

Yep, this is what I was saying. There are just so many different components to this game, and to write and record music of quality as high as everything else on the score would be a massive undertaking for a composer.
 
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