- There's a lot of puzzles. They seem to range from braindead-easy to trial-and-error to GameFAQs-time levels of difficulty. For those who watched Tyndis' stream, the
is one of the examples of very cruel puzzle design. I'm surprised they took the time to design all these puzzles though. It's a good way to break up the combat. Some areas of the game were platforming segment - puzzle segment - platforming segment, with no fights in between. Those areas almost feel like a Zelda dungeon, more than anything.
- I mentioned platforming, but 90% of it is climbing up ledges and such. There is a tiny 10% that I would actually consider real platforming, with a 2D camera angle and everything. Chapter XI in particular has some neat platforming elements. A handful of moments even have enemies around during a platforming bit.
- Speaking of enemies, the combat is like a slower
God of War-clone. I'm not a fan of this style of play, and that's why I watched the stream as I didn't think I would enjoy playing a game like that (and after watching it, I haven't changed my opinion at all). A lot of the fights ended up being 3-hit combo - roll away - repeat. I'm sure people experienced with that gameplay style will pick up on the nuances and find that the game has its own identity (I think it has its own identity, but mostly from the setting, puzzle and level design).
- The bossfights. There's a lot of bosses. Some stages are just a bossfight. The bosses range from small to huuuuge in size. And just about every one of them looks like a chore. Some of them took upward of 15 minutes to defeat. One of them took around 25 minutes. And this was on the default difficulty setting. Combat during most of these fights looked very repetitive and dragged on far too long because they had a lot of health to chip away at. Let alone that a lot of them had a health restoration move at the end if you didn't quickly figure out what to do to counter this. Also, one of the later bosses is ripped straight out of
Shadow of the Colossus.
- Camera and level design can be finicky. The player was stuck in a certain area for about 15 mins because he didn't have a clue how to progress. Neither did I. He eventually found the path he was supposed to take by sheer chance, as the camera didn't make it obvious at all. There's several of these moments where you can see that the player didn't know where to go, often because the camera angles aren't always the best.
- The settings themselves all look beautiful, however. There's a lot of areas in the game, with a lot of variety, all with their unique style, enemies and puzzles. Props to MercurySteam. They've challenged Retro Studios of
Metroid Prime fame with their area design. Absolutely stunning at times and full of creativity and originality.
- Finally, the story. In my opinion, if you just switch a few names around, this wouldn't be called Castlevania at all. I'm not going to say a lot about it, as I don't want to spoil anything. But in a way, this game looks like it's just as much of a re-imagining than the recently announced
DmC. I think that some fans might be upset with the story, the ending in particular. Those last few cutscenes are packed with plottwists and you feel the hand of Hideo Kojima at work. Some of those twists are predictable, some of them are completely out of the left field without any foreshadowing.
In closing:
Castlevania Lords of Shadow looks like it's a very decent game. It has plenty of everything and it generally seems to pull it off remarkably well. Some fights and puzzles looked very tedious however, and it might definitely bother some players. I think that certain fans of the franchise (both classic as metroidvania style) will be disappointed by the lack of certain series' staples. I won't go into detail, but to me it looked obvious that this did not start life as a Castlevania game. MercurySteam has proven that it has got talent though. I don't necessarily agree with certain design choices, but I do think Konami needs to give them a shot at a sequel.
