This is someone elses review, but I find that it's the review for people who have played the other CastleVania games, so if you have then this should be a good review for you to help decide on the New CastleVania Lords of Shadow game, if you read the whole thing anyways, FYI as soon as you can pause the game, do so to go to settings to change Brightness to 10, and you can adjust the diffulculty this way at anytime on the fly:
Somewhere, inside the deep, dark dungeons that make up Konami’s game development offices the company has come up with a diabolical formula. A formula that, once infused with a dose of black magic and some vampire’s blood creates something incredibly potent: good Castlevania games. But wait! Not just any system can partake in this sorcery; the spell only seems to work on Nintendo handhelds, as the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS will attest to. Now it’s the 3DS’ turn to take part in the witchcraft with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate. Does lightning strike again for the series' handheld aspirations or does this game curse all who dare to play it?
This entry in the long running franchise is a spin-off of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which released in 2010 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Set 25 years after the events of the original game, the game follows three characters central to the Castlevania mythos: Simon Belmont, Trevor Belmont and Alucard. Along the way you will discover the stories and secrets of each of these characters as well as uncover the mysteries surrounding the titular Mirror of Fate.
Unlike its console predecessor, Mirror of Fate follows the lineage set by 2D adventures like the Aria games or Symphony of the Night. You will explore Dracula’s castle from a 2D perspective, fighting monsters, discovering secrets and solving puzzles. And for the most part the game does an admirable job of emulating the feel of the older instalments while keeping the action feeling fresh with modern elements (though it could certainly do without the ‘do or die’ quick time events).
Being one half of the ‘Metroidvania’ sub-genre you pretty much know what you’re getting into when you pop the cartridge into your 3DS. Some combat, some platforming and some puzzles. And while the game doesn’t do any of these elements poorly it doesn’t blow you away either. The puzzles, while complex, are few and far between and seem to serve only to break up the flow of the game. Meanwhile, the platforming is plagued by awkward controls and repetitive sections, and the combat tries to be more complicated than it needs to be.
The combat can’t be faulted for not giving you enough options. On the contrary, it gives you far too many. You start with your standard whip weapon and can learn new moves by gathering experience points from fallen enemies, collecting lore or solving puzzles. The problem, however, is that it soon starts to feel like a fighting game, with dozens of different moves to remember, some of which are nearly impossible to pull off. Add to that your four equipable weapons/powers, as well as your special equipment, and you have way too many options that just never get used, especially considering that simply spamming the whip will deal with most situations.
That said, after a while you will find yourself sticking to a handful of moves that suit you best, and once you get the hang of rolling and jumping whilst fighting the game really opens up. But by far the star of the fights is definitely the boss battles, each of which will push you to your limits, demanding patience, timing and perfection to complete. They're also all fantastically unique and, dare I say it, a total blast to fight against.
The platforming makes up the largest part of the game but unfortunately it’s also the most tedious. Long stretches of essentially doing nothing are suddenly punctuated by the need to manoeuvre your warrior who feels like he’s stuck in molasses up several stories of precarious ledges. The puzzles fare a little better and will actually make you think in between mindlessly bashing zombies.
The game’s saving grace is that it mixes up the action quite frequently and with satisfying results. It always seems that just as you get tired of swinging from ledge to ledge you will run into a horde of creatures to battle, or as soon as you solve a perplexing puzzle you will have to deal with a unique boss battle. The game does a pretty good job at keeping you on your toes, even when the sum of its parts can be described as ‘decent’ at best.
Visually, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate stands as a vast departure from the previous 2D games in the series. It borrows the mature and realistic tone from the original Lords Of Shadow yet adds in some elements more akin to the DS games (via some of the ugliest cut-scenes you will ever see). It may look more like God Of War than Castlevania, but in the end it works to help deliver a game that looks and feels like the Castlevania games we grew up with only much, much darker.
The world in which the game takes place and the stories that are told are all very well presented. You will soon be finding yourself wanting to know what happens next to the Belmont clan and their mortal enemies. The game even borrows a bit from the other half of ‘Metroidvania’ by having parts of the story told by collecting scrolls from the corpses of dead warriors that expand on the game's backstory as well as warn you about what's still to come (in similar fashion to scanning objects in Metroid Prime).
During gameplay sections and in-game cutscenes (just keep away from the pre-rendered ones) the game is actually quite the looker. With sharp 3D sprites and models, and a world that is imaginatively crafted, this is a title that stands out in the handheld's current library. The level of detail in the characters and their animations is particularly remarkable. Where the game really shines however is when the 3D effect is cranked all the way up. Not only does the game look sharper and deeper but the developers added some neat 3D animations like enemies being thrown ‘into’ the camera that show off the system’s unique hook quite well.
The developers, Mercurystream, also pulled out all the stops by getting a full orchestra to record the soundtrack, something nearly unheard of for a handheld game. While the result is pretty jaw dropping you won’t be doing it justice playing it through handheld's speakers, so I definitely recommend playing this game with headphones. It’s a shame, though, that the same effort wasn't made to deliver equally stellar voice acting.
All of these fancy audio and visual elements do come at a price, namely in the form of lengthy loading times and instances of slowdown during intense action sequences. Neither of which are deal breakers, but they do interrupt the flow of the game quite noticeably.
Surprisingly, even with all the different types of gameplay and high production values, Mirror of Fate is a pretty short experience. Clocking in at around 10 hours for a standard playthrough (an hour or two more to get 100% completion), the game is very light on content. And while an unlockable bestiary is nice for collectaholics, there isn’t much to do once you’ve found all of the game's hidden secrets.
I can honestly say I’ve never felt this way about a game before. For the first three hours I didn’t like it at all, over the course of the next three I started to warm to the game, and for the last three I simply couldn’t put it down. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate is not without its flaws, but it’s also not without its charm. While it’s no where near the same level of quality as the DS Castlevania installments, fans of the long-running franchise - both old and new - will find something to like here, even if they have to dig a bit to find it.
EDIT: (Kupomogli more accurate Review)
Most of the reviews that speak about Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate really do the game justice. Some of them slam the storyline since as a reboot franchise it completely changes the story, others completely focus on its faults, etc.
I've been a Castlevania fan since the NES and own every US release and when the original Lords of Shadow came out, I didn't like how they tried to portray the story, but I still played the game and as its own game, a new IP using the same character names in an entirely different storyline, I looked past the dates, the character references and thought of it as an entirely separate timeline, and with Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate, Mercury Steam is doing service by showing that each game in their Lords of Shadow series is specifically in that timeline and doesn't do anything to the timeline that we grew up with. Lords of Shadow is my favorite PS360 game with great gameplay, story, visuals, etc.
The game is a direct sequel to the original Lords of Shadow.. Not a spinoff or anything of the sort. In the very first act you play a short tutorial with Gabriel, one year before Lords of Shadow takes place, while playing as Simon, Alucard, and Trevor all take place right after Lords of Shadow. The storyline was very good and they did well creating their own version of the series, even while including a twist in the game that fans might not like if they don't look past that it's not the same timeline.
Graphically the game is hit and miss. This is a game that I'd recommend playing in 3D if the effect doesn't bother you. In an interview, the game was developed in HD then ported for it to be playable on the 3DS, which is why there is a lot of detail in the game but that same detail looks ugly on the 3DS when playing in 2D because a lot of the background and foreground blend in together. I think Mirror of Fate has the best use of 3D than any other 3DS game I've played and looks absolutely amazing. You see much further back in the background, further back on the very path you're walking on, etc. Every single enemy and object in the game is detailed in 3D separately, so dead bodies with scrolls, chests, levers and such, will usually be on a plane behind you and you see yourself walk next to it. You'd pull metal boxes and you can see through the bars on the box behind them seeing the objects behind them. If there are statues on the walls the statues are in 3D protruding out, so the walls they're on are on a layer back. There's even one room in the game with a mirror, the Mirror of Fate, that there's a lot of depth to the room itself, but with the mirror showing a reflection it also shows the 3D effect all the way into the mirror.
Now for the gameplay, and first off there's the combat. The combat is actually very simplistic. Any review that explains it as too confusing, too hard to pull attacks off, etc, then they really don't know what they're talking about. You can access your skill menu at any time and it will tell you what skills you have. You can roll back and forth, block, jump, and when an enemy is flashing silver/white, then you can grab, all standard. With whip attacks you have your straight long range attack, square that you can hit multiple times, up to five when maxed out, your wide range attack, triangle, which is weaker but attacks in a spinning style to attack a large wide radius, maxing out at five hits, and then others you also learn. The others consist of either hitting x to pull enemies upward, holding the attack buttons down with what it tells you to to have a different attack, or continue holding down the attack further for a finisher to enact(or hold down, let go and press again to make the finish go off of your own accord.) The combat is very simple and if you look at the skills menu each level up you get, you'll see what new attack you acquired or whether an attack was upgraded.
In addition to your whip combos, your characters have sub weapons and magic. Magic is activated by hitting left or right, each character having two spells. Think of Lords of Shadow's light and dark magic for each character, although with Alucard it's slightly different than the other two characters, though similar. If you've ever played a Castlevania then you know what sub weapons are,but if not, they consist of an extra attack that can be thrown out and damage the enemy in some sort of way, which at the very beginning of the game, Simon starts with the axe. If you're not a fan of the axe in the classic CV titles, then you might be happy to know it's not similar in this title. While the axe still does make a trajectory, the trajectory is changed depending on the enemies location to your own, so probably always hit the enemy with the axe. You can press the o button once to use the sub weapon or you can hold it for a much more powerful version(damage wise, not size.)
The first act you actually play that isn't mainly a tutorial you start off as Simon. You might not like this portion too much because difficulty wise it's extremely easy. If you're fluent in the combat in any way the enemies during this act are a joke, but the boss battles during this portion of the game and the entire game for that matter are the highlight of the game. Once you play as Alucard and Trevor in the next two acts, the difficulty in combat definitely ramps up. Once finishing the game, then hardcore difficulty is unlocked which I would recommend playing. Again Simon's act was easy, because even though hardcore now allowed the enemies to kill you easily, it's not that difficult if the enemies can't hit you. One boss was actually difficult, but aside from two environmental deaths, I managed to make it through without dying on Simon's act when playing hardcore. At the end of the game though, through all acts, I died 16 environmental deaths and 17 enemy deaths, with the enemy deaths almost all of them were against bosses.
Now I'm more of a classic Castlevania fan, liking platforming far more than exploration, with Castlevania 2 and Circle of the Moon being my favorite exploration titles in the series, though not my favorite games. I think Mirror of Fate is a bit of both but it goes back to the classical style which I like best. There's the availability of backtracking as the world of Mirror of Fate is interconnected to where you can go back to multiple areas regardless of location easily, but the game has no reason to back track other than increasing max HP, MP, sub weapon ammunition, or the rare chance you need to go past an area you went to get to another area or collect items that you need to proceed. Clearing the map and getting all the upgrades, then if you ever decide to replay it, play the game in hardcore and don't worry about exploration and I think that's the best way to play the game.
Now if you've played the original Lords of Shadow, you'll know that it's exploration mechanic is much like Uncharted. They've integrated that type of style very well into this game by having a lot of platforms that you jump onto the character will grab onto and pull himself up. If you happen to be a very high height and then jump to the bottom, you might take a lot of damage and sometimes outright die if the fall is too great a height, so if you're ever backtracking, you don't want to rush your way down and fall. There's actually one area that you fill with water to get up to the top and you really never have to go back through again if you don't go back to collect everything. The Vertical Prison might be one of the best parts that show off the games platforming.
Now here are the problems with the platforming in this game, and while minor, it's still an annoyance. One issue is that early in the game when you don't have one of the artifacts for your whip you're required to climb up to a second level, then jump across an area. When you go back to that same area later in the game, if you climb down on the ledge and then look down, the ground isn't too far below. Unfortunately, dropping down to the ground will cause your character to scream as if it's too far a drop and die as soon as he hits the ground. While I think this is the only part this happens,it's an annoyance that you can't just take the little damage you should receive to get back down quickly, but rather have to go all the way around because they wanted that to be an instant death part if you didn't make the jump.
Another part similar is that some pits have spikes at the bottom. Now when you're playing normally, you can hold L and hit left or right to do a short air evade. I sometimes use this just to get an extra distance so I don't have to go all the way to the edge, or whatever, but still make whatever jump I intended. However, on this portion if you try and jump down and air dash over into the entryway you're going for, you won't be allowed to do anything and you'll fall to your death into the spikes. When you're making your way through parts like this, you are required to do what the game wants you to do. It's another annoyance as you could make it more quickly and it's not far enough of a drop to instantly die, but again, not what the game wants you to do.
The final issue I've had is the way too forgiving checkpoints. Now this issue is actually remedied a little bit if you replay the game on hardcore like I mentioned previously. If you collect all the modifiers, all the scrolls, etc, those are no longer areas that you can restart from, but even with those being taken away, the game usually restarts you at every single floor that you've completed, meaning you're less than a minute where you might have died from at any given time. During bosses it's similar, you might get an enemy down 1/4 health and have it change styles, so every time you die, you don't fight the entire boss again, you start from that point. Another reason that hardcore makes the game more enjoyable, although most bosses don't have more than two checkpoints.
Finally, while you play as three different characters, each character goes through either a separate area of the castle, or the same areas the other two characters go through but the layout is completely different, yet all still very well designed. So don't think that you'll just repeat what you did through three areas.
I really enjoyed this game and think it's easily one of the best games the 3DS has to offer. It has its flaws, but it does well in a lot of regards that those flaws can be overlooked.
