Let's Talk... Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was an excellent blend of exciting combat, well-crafted puzzles and grand boss fights that quickly became the single best-selling Castlevania of all time. Lords of Shadow 2 puts you back into the shoes of one Gabriel Belmont, who became (or already was?) Dracula, the Prince of Darkness, at the end of the first game. A more action-oriented game than its predecessor, Lords of Shadow 2 focuses more on its excellent breed of fast-paced combat but suffers from a convoluted and unfocused story and some occasionally over-ambitious gameplay ideas that simply fail to come to fruition.

Dracula is portrayed as a stone-cold badass... but also loving father..?

Lords of Shadow 2 takes place well after the events of both Lords of Shadow 1 and Lords of Shadow: Mirrors of Fate and is actually set in the modern day. After his castle is besieged by an angry mob known as the Brotherhood of Light, Dracula is forced into a deep sleep lasting a thousand years. He awakens in the present day (ish) and comes into contact with Zobek, one of the Lords of Shadow (and voiced by Patrick Stewart), who promises to remove his curse of immortality if he destroys Satan, who Zobek will return to Earth soon. Dracula must track down the three Satan-worshipping acolytes that can lead him to Satan. Along the way, however, Dracula is plagued with constant visions of his late wife (who he was tricked into killing in the first game) and his son, Trevor Belmont aka Alucard (yes that is Dracula backwards…). Oh, and he’s also being stalked by bloody reincarnations of his castle, who are desperate for him to stay in his castle and so possess people and objects to attack Dracula…

Needless to say, the plot gets a little weird. It gets off to a promising start, but each layer of convoluted nonsense that gets added spread its focus thinner and thinner. It’s hard to enough to keep up with the game’s intense back story and all of the crazy lore surrounding the Lords of Shadow series without all the extra nonsense layered on top. The game makes a number of rather hokey attempts to humanise Dracula by trying to show him as a loving father and devoted husband. These scenes are hard to take seriously and really highlight the confused pacing and tone of the story. These failed attempts to explore Dracula’s character are made worse when they are continually contradicted by scenes of Dracula being a ruthless, cold-blooded bad-ass (which is exactly what he should be). That’s not to say that the story is completely without merit, however, and there are a couple of cool moments spread throughout (with a genuinely good twist towards the end). But, frankly, Lords of Shadow 2 presents a fairly disappointing conclusion to the trilogy.

It's fair to say that things get weird before Dracula's dead wife shows up

Where the story fails, however, the gameplay truly excels. The combat is more complex than the previous games and takes more explicit influence from titles like DmC: Devil May Cry. These influences come from your three main weapons: your Blood Whip, Chaos Claws and Void Sword. Combat revolves around you switching between these three weapons to take advantage of their varying effects. The Void Sword does less damage but returns health on each strike, the Chaos Claws hit fast and hard and can break armor, whilst your Blood Whip is your default weapon. Both the Void Sword and Chaos Claws require separate types of magic to power and each successful strike will deplete a weapon’s respectful magic bar (magic is gathered through killing enemies and dealing damage without being hit). The DmC likeness comes from the way that each weapon is effectively toggled on and off. The Void Sword is toggled with one button (LB on the 360 pad) and Chaos Claws are toggled with another (RB). The game gives you good reason to switch between weapons, though the few they give become quickly predictable.

The game also encourages you to mix up your weapon habits by offering you three levels of “mastery” for each weapon. Full mastery of a combo is gained through prolific use of it, which is displayed by a percentage that will increase by a small amount after every successful use of that combo. Once a combo reaches 100% mastery, it can be transferred to the overall mastery level of the weapon that it belongs to (since each weapon has its own combo list). Each mastery level gained for a weapon will increase its damage output and thus its overall effectiveness in combat. It’s an interesting system that gives you plenty of incentive to vary your combos and encourages you all weapons in equal measure. It works excellently in giving you a legitimate reason to mix things up and resist the urge to just mash out the same combos every time. The combat generally flows better, looks better and feels way more satisfying than it ever did in the first game.

Gameplay is fast, fluid and vastly improved 

Further improvements in the gameplay come from the ability to turn off  quick-time events. First of all, arguably the most important change from the first game, the ability to completely get rid of all quick-time events from start to finish. A bizarre yet fascinating feature to include, one wonders when or why these QTEs became optional (negative reaction from fans? Play testing?). Either way, QTEs are now a toggle-able option in the options menu. This is made even stranger because of how QTE-rich this game is, boss fights are full of them, interacting with objects usually requires it, all finishing moves use them, the list goes on. Being able to turn off QTEs is an excellent and refreshing change that really makes you realise (even more so) how dumb and unnecessary they really are.

The game’s excellent combat, very basic puzzle-solving, and rewarding exploration are occasionally let down by some truly awful pseudo-stealth sequences that feel both poorly designed and completely out of place. Whilst the majority of the game is well-made, the over-ambition and lack of focus that encumber these stealth sequences unfortunately overshadow the obvious talent over at Mercury Steam Entertainment. Occasionally you’ll be faced with clumsy forced stealth sequences in which Dracula must evade a pair of huge brutes wielding inexplicably large weapons, who will instantly vaporise him on sight. Escaping these sticky situations either involves distracting them with a swarm of bats and then sneaking past or using Shadow Portals to turn into a pack of rats to then distract them or get behind them before possessing one of them, usually to then open a locked door. Needless to say, these sequences are horrible. Frustrating, poorly designed, out of place and thoroughly without merit. Such sequences feel like a physical manifestation of a developer with too many ideas and too much ambition.

Most of the boss fights are pretty awesome

The design of the world, however, is one of the few things in Lords of Shadow 2 that actually feels like it stems from too little ambition. Unlike the exotic locales of the original Lords of Shadow, this game takes place almost entirely in a stale and extremely ordinary modern day setting and many of the environments live off a colour palette diet of dull greys and browns. Whilst there is some novelty to the concept of demons in a modern day setting, they just don’t do enough with it to make it interesting. Aside from a panic-ridden news report towards the beginning of the game, there is zero mention of people and society in this completely empty world and the world is inhabited almost entirely by demons. That is, of course, except for a group of mech-soilder dudes with guns and jetpacks who are given absolutely no explanation, and become a prevalent enemy type later in the game. When you consider how great the game looks on PC, the environment design is disappointingly plain and feels far too uninspired (especially when DmC: Devil May Cry showed us how cool demons in the present day can be when done well).

On the PC, the game looks truly amazing. With some excellent lighting and some great-looking environments, the game’s many beautiful moonlit set pieces really show up the game’s 360 and PS3 counterparts. Fortunately, the game also manages to run extremely smoothly. Controls are tight and the game plays reasonably well on a mouse and keyboard set-up, though you’d probably be better off using a gamepad. The star-studded cast of the first game continues here with Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Zobek and Robert Carlyle reassuming the lead. Needless to say, the voice acting is truly excellent and, in some cases, manages to compensate for some shaky writing and the unstable plot.

On the PC, the game looks really fantastic

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a fairly divisive mixed bag. On the one hand, the game presents a thoroughly improved and truly satisfying combat system, incredible visuals, some great boss fights and a number of outstanding moments. But on the other hand, you have a convoluted story with confused pacing and tone that offers a pretty disappointing conclusion to the Lords of Shadow trilogy, a couple of over-ambitious mechanics and simply boring environment design. In the end, though, Lords of Shadow 2 maintains a high level of quality and enough moments of excellence to make up for the parts that just leave you thinking who thought this was a good idea?