Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 was developed by Mercury Steam and released in 2014.
Centuries pass and Dracula, Gabriel Belmont from Lords of Shadow, wakes in modern times in a weakened state. Satans acolyte's are trying to resurrect him and Zobek comes to Dracula for help in defeating him. In return for the defeat of Satan, Zobek will free Dracula from the nightmare of immortality with the Vampire Killer. In order to defeat Satan though, Dracula has to regain his power, locked away in his castle as he regains his lost memory while searching for the acolytes who are trying to revive Satan. For one scene there will be people in the city, but shortly afterwards the people of the city evacuate and the city is left in ruins. The plotline isn't something normally expected, but it's still well done. It's well written, well voiced, and most parts are enjoyable.
Using what's mostly the same style as the first Lords of Shadow, Lords of Shadow 2 takes place in both modern times and centuries past. While traversing the world, when you need to, any location that Dracula can climb to reach another area has a bat sound when you're near and a slight mist with bats around that spot. One thing though is that other than the bats, some stuff that you don't have to specifically jump to afterwards won't have any sort of indicator on whether you can climb there or not, so you might be climbing part way up one object only to suddenly stop moving because you're supposed to continue climbing a different direction. It's not much of an issue as most of the time it's clear where you can climb, but sometimes it looks as if you can continue climbing one way but can't, kind of taking away from the feeling that you're in control rather than being led around.
Except for two parts in the game, the traversal in this game feels more realistic and it actually works well in the modern environment. Who would have thought that ladders, platforms, etc would work well. Light and dark magic from the first game are replaced with Void Sword and Flame Claws. While they're used in combat, they're also used to solve puzzles throughout the game. The game will have a misty indicator where you need to use them to get past something, like there might be a small metal bridge locked upwards on the roof of a building and you need to get across, or a there's fire coming out of a gas line and you can't pass unless you freeze that section. There might be a fence you need to go through, maybe a grate on the ground you need to go through, or maybe you cant reach a far away platform but there's a fan blowing. Mist form is something you acquire later in the game and work in those circumstances.
One thing I'd like to mention is the stealth sections. It's been brought up in just about every single review as a problem, but not only are they very infrequent, but they're really simple puzzles. There is only one in the game that is really bad and another one that isn't really difficult but people might have a slight issue with. In the stealth sections you will normally use the bats or if there is a location for it, the rat form. Throw bats an one enemy, another enemy checks on him, run past. If you need to turn into a rat, which is sometimes to get into a different room and not even stealth sections, there will be a dark area to do so. I actually think the rat form is kind of cool because it reduces you to the size of a rat and everything else scales to a much larger size. It's also the only part in the game where you have a set amount of lives as you have nine rats including yourself and you or those others following you can get killed while you're going through vents, stuff like fire coming out of the ground, live wires on the ground, a fan, etc.
Lords of Shadow 2 is also open world now, but it doesn't really present itself well. If you're going through the game where you're supposed to go, then it's enjoyable but the world itself isn't really designed that well. In the game you have four districts, one map room to teleport between each district, and each district has I think two shortcuts each that leads to another distict. It's the same with the castle. Four areas each with their map room, and each area has two shortcuts that lead to another one of the areas. So even though there's a shortcut to another district on each side and a map room somewhere in the middle, there are several different areas in each district. You might have to go through several areas just to get to a map room and then several more just to get to where you're going. It wouldn't be such an issue, but to go from one area to the next, you have to go through these obvious loading checkpoints. It's like an access tunnel with a switch to turn on power for the door, closing one door and then opening another.
Yet another problem with the open world is the map system. While you travel around, you have a map for that one area you're in and whatever floor you''re on. If you see an upgrade you don't have the skill to acquire yet, you're not able to add any sort of marker to your map. Even if you were able to add a marker, there's no way to view any section of the map except the small section of the map you're in. In one area in the game, not district, just a small area, there might be around five or more maps, so there's no way to plan ahead on where you're going to go if you do go back to places. How did they get this so wrong? Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate not only has a good map system but it even lets you place your own markers.
While playing through the game, both during traversal and in combat there will sometimes be QTEs. I like the simple QTEs where you hit any button once the circles come together, but the ones that come out of nowhere that you have to hit the correct button within a second or the boss is restored half it's health or you have to repeatedly tap a button after getting grabbed I really don't like. Lords of Shadow 2 has a option that allows you to completely turn off the QTEs, something more games need to do.
Combat with the whip is mostly the same as the original, in some ways worse, but in a lot of ways better. Dracula has the shadow whip, void sword, and flame claws which are just magical weapons created by him. Every single whip attack in the game is in the first game and the first actually has four more attacks with the whip, not counting the claw and boots, however, a difference is the change of speed to the whip and the power of the attacks. The whip in this game is more balanced. Certain attacks that felt kind of useless to use in the first game because they weren't very efficient or sometimes just really weak are actually now useful to use. Most of the attacks in this game are actually worth using.
The void sword, an ice weapon, and flame claws are the two new weapons replacing light and dark magic. Both weapons use magic, but they don't run out of magic as quickly. It's probably because of the weapons short range, plus the void sword doesn't restore as much health as using light magic did. The two weapons are kind of similar though. Attacking with them gives the same general effect even if the animation and range is a bit different. Void sword has spells that can freeze enemies, the flame claws can heat up enemies and destroy armored enemies armor or shields.
Each weapon has its own upgrade list. As you acquire experience points you can put it towards new attacks for your weapons in a skill tree like system where it indicates what attacks you need to purchase in order to unlock new ones. Each time you use an attack, the mastery of that attack increases and once mastered can be transfered to the weapon. Once you master a certain amount of skills, the weapon levels up, taking off a little more damage. It doesn't make a huge difference but it's something that tries to get the player to branch out and use more attacks. With the blood whip, I mastered almost everything from regular use by the end of the game, but there were some spells from the magic weapons I didn't use at all.
Then there's relics and subweapons. In combat, the dagger is rather useless, but ice and fire are good, mist is good to get out of grabs and dodge attacks, however there are another six relics as well. All relics are sometimes dropped by enemies and you can also buy them at the Chupacabra's shop. Stolas Clock doesn't stop all enemies on screen, but once an enemy has a hit landed on them, they slow down for a short period of time and you gain extra experience. Ensnared Demon allows unlimited magic use. Tears of the Saint increases your health by a full bar, going over your max health but drains slowly until it reaches max. There's even the Dodo Egg which hatches a dodo and an arrow will point on your minimap to the direction of a random treasure in whatever district you're in(it's completely random so could be the furthest away.)
In combat though, one issue with it is the aim assist. Aim assist is featured on most games of this type, including the first game, but now it's pretty much auto aim. If you're in range of an enemy or use an attack that is in range, then it'll attempt to target that enemy unless another is in range. The problem with this is that there's no telling who it's going to attack. Sometimes holding the direction and attacking wil attack the enemy you want. Unfortunately, it doesn't do that all the time. On the regular story this might effect you here and there but not much. It really only effects you when you're fighting enemies with armor and you don't destroy their armor. This is a huge problem in challenge mode where a lot of the challenges are kill all enemies without breaking a shield, or kill this enemy without hitting it except when it's frozen while killing other enemies so you gain exp atleast every 30 seconds.
Enemies and bosses are all really good in this game. The design is a major step up from the first game in all aspects. In the first game, enemies attacks were so quick you had to remember that if they started blocking they'd come out with an unblockable attack, but if they weren't blocking, you'd just have to remember how long before they usually attacked and then throw a guard up to get a perfect guard. Bosses in the first game also weren't very good and most were designed around some gimmick on how to damage them.
Instead of taking this game as a Castlevania game, I think everyone should look at it and the rest of the series as a Lords of Shadow game. I think it's a great game, much better than its predecessor and it fixes most of the problems the first game had.
Gameplay - 9
Design - 8
Presentation - 8
Balance - 9
Overall - 8.5
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Scoring system.
1-3 - bad
4 - 5 below average
5.5 - average
6 - 10 - good to excellent
The kuporeview inflation score. What the score would be if the average game was 7/10 like IGN, Gamespot, etc. Since I don't inflate scores and my scores are underrated compared to what people come to expect I came up with an equation to inflate my scores to make them similar to others. http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=177193&page=1#1
Lords of Shadow review http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=179671
Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate review http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=179675&page=1#
