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Castlevania Lords Of Shadow Ultimate Edition |OT| Now at 60 FPS!

Fantasmo

Member
Maybe this can help: one thing I noticed, enemies tend to always do an unblockable attack after they block successfully some of your attacks

Dude you weren't kidding, it really works. SO much less of a crapshoot. Thanks a million!
 

Derrick01

Banned

Now I'm even more confused. A modern city? He was killing knights in the initial cg trailer. Oh well open world is nice to hear at least.

I just finished the swamp boss and am not feeling this at all. Does it change a ton?

It gets more interesting with better bosses, areas, tougher puzzles and the combat gets a little deeper as you get more tools but the basic formula is going to be the same. There's no more on rails segments like that horse in the 2nd section thankfully. By swamp boss I'm assuming you're still on chapter 1, which is pretty awful. That chapter's going to end even worse I'm afraid to say.
 

Fantasmo

Member
It gets good around chapter 4 or so, I think. Yes, it takes forever. It's more "epic quest" than action. The pacing gets better later. The first few chapters play very slowly.
 

Momentary

Banned
After Chapter 3 all the way until the end of the DLC... it was pretty good. Not my favorite Castlevania, but definitely better than the past 3D ones on PS2 and some of SOTN knock offs. Played it on Knight difficulty and I feel it really helped the combat shine a little more since with lower difficulty you can just mash your way to victory instead of getting into the combat system and timing your blocks correctly.

Only thing I hated, like I said before, was that you had to offset your blocks since hit detection from enemies were screwed up. You would take damage AT the start up of an attack. I really hope they fix their hitboxes in the next game.
 
Now I'm even more confused. A modern city? He was killing knights in the initial cg trailer. Oh well open world is nice to hear at least.

Spoilers
David Cox claims msot of what they've shown so far is one area very early in the game that's a flashback and acts as most of your tutorial stuff. Apparently the bulk of the game will occur present day in the aftermath of the ending cliffhanger in the last game. They've said it'll be open world, but since we haven't seen anything yet, it'll still kind of an open question.
 

Teknoman

Member
I hope they manage to keep it secret till the last minute. Too many games have their major twists revealed early on these days.
 
I'm not sure about the whole modern setting either in LOS 2, would've loved to stay in medieval Europe fighting monsters and beasts from old myths and folklore, but the promise of using different weapons instead of one, more open level design and free roaming camera are really great changes to look forward to.
 

Actiss

Member
Wow, had gone from Chapter 2 to Chapter 8 in one session yesterday; close to 9 hours of play. Went to pick it up again this morning and all my saved data is gone. Welp, done with this game; would of been nice to see the ending.

One of the first things I do when playing any PC game is to use mklink to junction the game's save directory to a Dropbox folder (in addition to turning off Steam cloud) so that in case something ever goes wrong with a save I can always use Dropbox's Restore Previous Version feature. I think that GameSave Manager does something very similar, but I've never used it.

I know this doesn't help you now, but it's something to consider going forward.
 

Fantasmo

Member
Now I'm even more confused. A modern city? He was killing knights in the initial cg trailer. Oh well open world is nice to hear at least.

Spoilers
David Cox claims msot of what they've shown so far is one area very early in the game that's a flashback and acts as most of your tutorial stuff. Apparently the bulk of the game will occur present day in the aftermath of the ending cliffhanger in the last game. They've said it'll be open world, but since we haven't seen anything yet, it'll still kind of an open question.

I hope they manage to keep it secret till the last minute. Too many games have their major twists revealed early on these days.

I'm not sure about the whole modern setting either in LOS 2, would've loved to stay in medieval Europe fighting monsters and beasts from old myths and folklore, but the promise of using different weapons instead of one, more open level design and free roaming camera are really great changes to look forward to.

Edge had an article about how it's going to look, I'll spoiler it just in case.
http://www.edge-online.com/news/castlevania-lords-of-shadow-2-mercury-steam-castlevania-wasnt-going-anywhere/

Yet the team’s biggest struggle in developing Lords of Shadow II, was in deciding the form of the parallel future city, where Dracula awakens centuries after his fall. Enric Alvarez, director and writer, says: “Even among the artists there were many different perspectives on what it should look like. Someday we may release this artwork, because we have very different visions depending on the artists who created it. For me as a game director it was very difficult because I didn’t feel we were even close to what we needed.”

“A castle is a castle and it’s difficult to make it right but everybody has a clear image of what it can be, but a modern city that’s built on the ruins of Dracula’s castle? We needed a city that feels familiar and modern but at the same time has the vibe and presence of a castle. And we were stuck until one of our best artists drew a roundabout, with archways across the street and towers in the distance.”

“It didn’t work until we took it to the realm of fantasy – it’s a city crowded by sky scrapers but if you look across the skyline it looks like a castle. There are streets that feel like ballrooms…”
 
Okay beware of SPOILERS, A site posted 280 Screenshots (3200x1800p), for those interested http://www.gameblog.fr/blogs/wandan...enshots-en-3k-3200x1800p#.Ui2ggOswODw.twitter


Some samples
348102CastleVaniaLOSWanda77.jpg

242374CastleVaniaLOSWanda174.jpg

350727CastleVaniaLOSWanda165.jpg

855303CastleVaniaLOSWanda200.jpg
 
Edge had an article about how it's going to look, I'll spoiler it

That's really interesting. I'm worried about losing that european folklore look to the game too, but from what you quote'd, it sounds pretty cool. As long as it still maintains its roots within this's worlds
*future*
I'm excited.
 

Fantasmo

Member
Chapter 14 spoilers:

Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous. Swimming in laval is dangerous.

Pretty fun.
 

Fantasmo

Member
So I guess I'm the only one actually playing this, so I'll enjoy talking to myself.

Chapter 14 aka DLC 2. That boss, whoahhhhhh.. so cool! Kinda makes me wish I had bought it then, kinda makes me happy I didn't.

"Enough talk! Have at you!"
 

dsk1210

Member
I am still on chapter 2, the chapters are very long, enjoying it in small doses, plays and looks nice, shame about the horrible ambient occlusion though, it looks better without it.
 

Schlomo

Member
I'm also still playing it. Just finished the giant crow boss. I had remembered it much harder than it is. Or maybe I still have my skills from my original playthrough.

I also experimented a little with the supersampling AA fix for AMD cards given in the Steam forums. Looks much nicer this way, although unfortunately there is sometimes a very slight white outline around characters.
 

Fantasmo

Member
Chapter 14 Stage 2, I think the last part/fight, is the devil's butthole. Who in their right mind thought this was good or fair or balanced. Can anyone give me any tips? The attacks come too fast to prepare, the camera is working against me, I have 50% health, very little light magic, and 3/4 shadow magic.

I even got to the second part of the fight with the igniting rocks that turn into lava but I cant even get to all of the rocks in time to stop them from melting and I'm struggling enough in the fight as it is.

It was hard enough when I had to hit his leg, now I have to hit his arm which means I have to jump to attack and Gabriel doesn't have any air escape moves so unless I'm lucky enough to be in the right position to avoid his next attack I'm screwed.

I'm ready to give up completely.

EDIT:
Holy crap, you're supposed to hit the rocks back at him? There's no indication at all. Grrr..
 

Vitet

Member
You can press LT + A to land quickly while in air

EDIT: My advice is...
almost all his attacks have AoE, so try to be far when you see him preparing. It's a pain in the ass, yes.
 

Fantasmo

Member
You can press LT + A to land quickly while in air

EDIT: My advice is...
almost all his attacks have AoE, so try to be far when you see him preparing. It's a pain in the ass, yes.

Oh wow, cool. Thanks again Vitet, I'll give it a shot. I could go to another stage and fill up my life and stuff, but I don't think I have the skill to do the stage flawlessly anyway and I'm at the end so :-/
 
Chapter 14 Stage 2, I think the last part/fight, is the devil's butthole. Who in their right mind thought this was good or fair or balanced. Can anyone give me any tips? The attacks come too fast to prepare, the camera is working against me, I have 50% health, very little light magic, and 3/4 shadow magic.

I even got to the second part of the fight with the igniting rocks that turn into lava but I cant even get to all of the rocks in time to stop them from melting and I'm struggling enough in the fight as it is.

It was hard enough when I had to hit his leg, now I have to hit his arm which means I have to jump to attack and Gabriel doesn't have any air escape moves so unless I'm lucky enough to be in the right position to avoid his next attack I'm screwed.

I'm ready to give up completely.

EDIT:
Holy crap, you're supposed to hit the rocks back at him? There's no indication at all. Grrr..

The whole fight is horrible and by far the worst part of the entire game. The titan battles and the slow ass early chapters with their swamps look like mastery in design compared to that garbage.

I only had 1/4th health, 1/4th shadow magic and 0 holy magic when I fought him in his second phase. After trying over and over and over, I finally gave up and knocked the difficultly down from hard to easy to be done with that crap and see the final cutscene.

I didn't know at the time that I could go back to older levels, heal up and finish the level and come back to the boss fight with full everything, always thought it was a linear experience, would've probably been able to beat him with that since I came so close many times.
 

Vitor711

Member
The whole fight is horrible and by far the worst part of the entire game. The titan battles and the slow ass early chapters with their swamps look like mastery in design compared to that garbage.

I only had 1/4th health, 1/4th shadow magic and 0 holy magic when I fought him in his second phase. After trying over and over and over, I finally gave up and knocked the difficultly down from hard to easy to be done with that crap and see the final cutscene.

I didn't know at the time that I could go back to older levels, heal up and finish the level and come back to the boss fight with full everything, always thought it was a linear experience, would've probably been able to beat him with that since I came so close many times.

I'm not that far in but I nearly twisted my controller apart with the
Lycan boss fight
.

Are all the boss fights unnecessarily tedious and drawn out?
Black Knight
was a huge time sink but ridiculously easy.

The
lycan
one was just infuriating - easy first half and then the second half was beyond annoying. My fully charged gauntlets occasionally wouldn't do damage to scenery like needed for no reason. It just felt inconsistent and sloppy.
 
I'm not that far in but I nearly twisted my controller apart with the
Lycan boss fight
.

Are all the boss fights unnecessarily tedious and drawn out?
Black Knight
was a huge time sink but ridiculously easy.

The
lycan
one was just infuriating - easy first half and then the second half was beyond annoying. My fully charged gauntlets occasionally wouldn't do damage to scenery like needed for no reason. It just felt inconsistent and sloppy.

Yes, I would say bosses in this game lean towards the damage sponges variant, however they are not that bad or difficult imo, I found some enemies to be much harder to deal with.

As for the
Lycan boss fight, just save everything for the second phase (your crystal, both magics) and just go all out then and he should be much easier. Dodging his regular attacks is pretty easy, his aoe ground stomp is a little tricky since you need to jump over it.
 

Fantasmo

Member
The whole fight is horrible and by far the worst part of the entire game. The titan battles and the slow ass early chapters with their swamps look like mastery in design compared to that garbage.

I only had 1/4th health, 1/4th shadow magic and 0 holy magic when I fought him in his second phase. After trying over and over and over, I finally gave up and knocked the difficultly down from hard to easy to be done with that crap and see the final cutscene.

I didn't know at the time that I could go back to older levels, heal up and finish the level and come back to the boss fight with full everything, always thought it was a linear experience, would've probably been able to beat him with that since I came so close many times.

I love how for this next part (post
molten rocks
)I have to double jump to attack the vulnerable part. As if single jump wasn't dangerous/bad enough.

Edit: Oh god, it's not over yet, there's another part after this barffffffffff
EDIT2: WTF NO INVERT LOOK and only 1 second to aim
the swords
, and he's dim because of the shadow from the moon?!?? ...... I'm 2 seconds away from spamming Dave Cox's Twitter and calling him a hack.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Yup I wrote much of the same thing in the Steam thread. It was my first time playing the DLC and I was so frustrated by that fight because of what they were asking me to do, most of it with so little health and magic too. In fact it's the only chapter of the game I didn't complete on Hard.
 

Fantasmo

Member
Yup I wrote much of the same thing in the Steam thread. It was my first time playing the DLC and I was so frustrated by that fight because of what they were asking me to do, most of it with so little health and magic too. In fact it's the only chapter of the game I didn't complete on Hard.

This isn't even the last part! Even if I manage this part of the QTE shit fest, he's got enough health, I guarantee there's yet another part! I'll be completely out of all magic! They already completely overdid it with the
flame skeletons
right before this. There were like 16 of them! Even if I redo the stage you just get bombarded and get no health at all?

At least in the original game you didn't need to complete the DLCs to get the achievements to pop. I've still technically not beaten the game thanks to the way the Ultimate Edition works.

Who thought this shit was fair?
 
This isn't even the last part! Even if I manage this part of the QTE shit fest, he's got enough health, I guarantee there's yet another part! I'll be completely out of all magic! They already completely overdid it with the
flame skeletons
right before this. There were like 16 of them! Even if I redo the stage you just get bombarded and get no health at all?

You don't need to beat them, just run past them.
 

Fantasmo

Member
You don't need to beat them, just run past them.

I wish I knew that last night, I would have had a full blue bar. I don't want to do the stage again, like at all. That's good to know though, thanks man.

Let's say you do this fight perfect, the fights between the two chapters amount to like a solid hour. Between last night and today I've been fighting this guy for four hours. My focus is completely withered. I do well for a part of the fight, and halfway through I can't even pay attention to what's going on anymore because it's far too long, takes perfect timing, and is totally exhausting. I've never been so angry with a stupid section of a game before. I'm gonna take a break until tonight, this is so tiring. Goddamn.

Edit: Wait a minute this stage is super short! I was on the phone for a couple hours last night drinking wine and talking to a friend that I forgot where it cut off! Starting stage over!
 

Parsnip

Member
I played through the DLC chapters on 360.
That dlc boss is a pain in the ass for sure. I ended up finishing it on highest difficulty, not sure if I'm going to even try again, it's just so grueling.
 

AnnTiPa

Member
Let's say you do this fight perfect, the fights between the two chapters amount to like a solid hour. Between last night and today I've been fighting this guy for four hours. My focus is completely withered. I do well for a part of the fight, and halfway through I can't even pay attention to what's going on anymore because it's far too long, takes perfect timing, and is totally exhausting. I've never been so angry with a stupid section of a game before. I'm gonna take a break until tonight, this is so tiring. Goddamn.

Been quite a while since I finished this but I remember having similar feelings. :)

I do remember though that at some point something just clicks and it becomes much easier. After finishing it first on normal, finishing it on Paladin difficulty (that was the hardest one?) took merely a fraction of the time.
 

Fantasmo

Member
I played through the DLC chapters on 360.
That dlc boss is a pain in the ass for sure. I ended up finishing it on highest difficulty, not sure if I'm going to even try again, it's just so grueling.

Been quite a while since I finished this but I remember having similar feelings. :)

I do remember though that at some point something just clicks and it becomes much easier. After finishing it first on normal, finishing it on Paladin difficulty (that was the hardest one?) took merely a fraction of the time.

Well, I'm all stocked up, and now that I know that I don't have to fight anyone before him, I can go in with full health and magic.

Does the purple crystal work at all?
 

Fantasmo

Member
FINALLY!!!

My strategy was to dodge until taunt, hit and repeat. Since each part is a checkpoint, after getting through each part without getting hit much, I'd stop and take a 15 minute break. If I took too much damage, I'd restart the checkpoint. I also treated each attack as a reason to run and jump since a lot of the time there isn't time to figure out which move is coming next, and if you get hit the dodge/taunt count starts over again.

Paladin and trials the only thing left. And I can see how Chapter 14 would be almost identical on Paladin, not much extra difficulty.

Most exhausting boss ever!
 

Dunkelgrau

Member
I am playing this on knight right now and I have to say: Holy shit, this is really hard. I often have only a little of my energy left, when it comes to the bigger fights, like the spiders or trolls for example. And I am only in the second chapter ... Any hints?

I hope the level design will be better in the later chapters, because currently it is very linear and the static camera is really annoying sometimes.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
]blacky[;81453781 said:
I am playing this on knight right now and I have to say: Holy shit, this is really hard. I often have only a little of my energy left, when it comes to the bigger fights, like the spiders or trolls for example. And I am only in the second chapter ... Any hints?

I hope the level design will be better in the later chapters, because currently it is very linear and the static camera is really annoying sometimes.

Just dodge roll a lot. Like a whole lot.

Never ever ever ever ever block. Just roll. Roll roll roll roll roll, hit once or twice, roll roll roll roll rollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
 

Parsnip

Member
I got pretty good at timing my blocks for that deflection effect, to try and quickly get some white magic in order to keep my health up. It worked for me most of the time, but some of the group fights like the lycans in Agartha were just better for me to dodge as much as possible.

Or even skip the fight entirely.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
That feeling when you finish the base game and realize you missed 1 single shadow gem... and it's in the stupid tower before the 3rd titan fight.

Ugh.

Uuuugggghhhhh.
 
Anyone else here who isn't satisfied with the sound in this game? Is it possible that sound effects are lacking? The game feels empty in the audio departement somehow. I barely notice ambient sound or such. Don't know how it compares to the console versions.
Or is the problem on my end?
 

scitek

Member
From what I played, the DLC is awful. From the motion comics to the gameplay itself, I'm not gonna even bother finishing it.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
From what I played, the DLC is awful. From the motion comics to the gameplay itself, I'm not gonna even bother finishing it.

The second DLC is amongst the very worst things ever.

Instant fail stealth platform sections and an absolutely god awful boss fight. It's so so sooooo bad.
 
Just finished this for the first time last night. What an awesome game. I don't usually play these kinds of character action games but really enjoyed this. Also have next to no history with Castlevania, so I kind of just took this game for what it was.

Really though, I was playing it for the visuals. God damn is the art design outstanding in this game. The pacing is definitely messed up in the beginning several levels which are just so much longer and drawn out than anything that follows. They're not inherently bad but just compared to everything that follows, I don't know why they're so lengthy.

I only just started the first DLC and already the motion comic stuff seems a little like a obvious cost saving measure.

Really excited for Lords of Shadow 2.
 

Dunkelgrau

Member
I am at the library right now and „a bit“ disappointed.

I play on hard and because the camera is shit the game becomes really unfair sometimes. Level-Design is extremely linear and climbing is not a lot of fun, too. Because the controls are not very good I often do not know what to press while hanging on a wall or something.
As I mentioned above, combat works not very well because of the bad camera. But there is another problem: Castlevania has too much moves and so every button is used for dozens of actions. I am too old to remember all those combos. Story is okay, but nothing to remember. Puzzles are really bad. First time I see such puzzles was in 1980 ...

6/10 so far. Don’t know if I ever will finish the game.
 

Fantasmo

Member
There's an invincibility trick on PC. I don't know how I did it, but I did try to record it to no avail. I couldn't ctrl alt del or alt tab or ctrl shift escape to get to stream to Twitch with OBS.

After beating the butcher in the refectory, I ran away from the guys in the dining room and towards the end of the stage and somehow at that point, while fighting multiple skeletons and the Knight I was totally invincible. I could kill them but I took no damage.

Probably pointless info, but really cool nonetheless.

Would be awesome for Chapter 14.
 
I'm glad I put the time into 110% this game. Some of the trials are fucking incredulously annoying/difficult especially the dlc ones.
 
I just started this game on PC and I remember why the demo completely turned me off. The titan fights are boring, unfair and frustrating. Is there a save file or mod or something to skip the first two chapters? I cannot for the life of me beat the second titan even on easy.
 

hwateber

Member
Head's up for all you potential buyers. Amazon DD has this on sale for $15 right now. I just got it and played up to the first titan
god that was so boring up to this point
. Runs smooth as butter and looks great, but my god the pre-rendered cutscenes are awful with low resolution, framerate, and jaggies everywhere.
 
Does anyone knows the name of the OSTs that plays in the Electric Lab level in chapter 7? I never had an orchestrated score get stuck in my head like those tracks did.
 
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