I consider myself a rather big Castlevania fan. I actually consider it to be one of my absolute favorite franchises of all time. And it's been that way since I was a kid. I played the NES trilogy in order, as the games came out. Castlevania: The Adventure was the first Game Boy cartridge that I personally picked out after receiving the handheld for Christmas. So yeah, this series has always been really important to me.
That said, I wasn't happy when Castlevania went 3D. Of course Konami's initial attempt was with Castlevania 64. That wasn't a great game. It had some good ideas, but man, I really was not thrilled with the result. After that, things got weird for a while. Basically, over the next decade we got a couple of console releases in the shape of further 3D games (Lament Of Innocence and Curse Of Darkness). I actually bought both of those games on PS2, and yet to this day I've never played either one of them. I felt like as a huge fan of the series, I had to own them. And yet, when it came time to play them... I just didn't really want to. To me, Castlevania was meant to be a 2D series. And so it's a good thing that throughout the 2000's we got a whole string of new 2D Castlevania games. They just happened to be relegated to handheld releases. There were three games released on GBA and three more on the DS. And guess what? For the most part they were awesome games that kept the spirit of Symphony Of The Night alive. So when Lords Of Shadow came out in 2010 I completely ignored it. Again, kind of weird from a big Castlevania fan. But I guess I was feeling snobby at the time. Incidentally, I did play Lords Of Shadow - Mirror Of Fate (2013) as it was another 2D handheld spin-off. And I didn't love it. But then I decided to at least give the demo of Lords Of Shadow 2 a try when it was released in 2014. I remember thinking, "hey, this is actually kind of cool. Maybe I should play these games." That was nine years ago now. So yeah, here I am finally delving into the original Lords Of Shadow, which is now available to me as part of my Playstation Plus subscription. And while it's definitely a 3D game, and definitely a weird game within the Castlevania series... it's actually surprisingly fun. But what kind of game is this, you might ask? Well, it's a 3D action title, sure. I guess it plays a bit similarly to something like God Of War if I had to make a quick reference. You run through large, but mostly linear landscapes. There's no camera controls. You attack stuff using your whip (both direct and area attacks) and secondary weapons. There's combos and new skills to unlock with XP gains. Completed levels can be replayed to complete various secondary goals to gain even more XP to unlock even more skills. There's some Tomb Raider style platforming and puzzle solving. There's even some quick time events. Which is to say, all in all it feels like a mash-up of various successful action games of the era with a coat of Castlevania paint. But admittedly, it does all of these things fairly well, and the game does look really nice. Perhaps the most interesting addition here is the boss battles. To put it not-so-bluntly, at least the boss battles are 100% just Shadow Of The Colossus. I mean, it's really blatant. I'm almost shocked that Konami was so ballsy to put the word "shadow" in the title of this game. But is aping from Shadow Of The Colossus a bad thing? I don't really think so. It's a phenomenal game; a well loved game. It's also a game that hasn't been stolen from as much as you'd expect. So hey, why not? Of course the game is far from perfect. While it's definitely an enjoyable game, and I'd rather play it than its contemporaries like God Of War or Uncharted, as a Castlevania fan there's still plenty for me to complain about. Overall Lords Of Shadow doesn't really look like a Castlevania game. Much of the first half is just open nature. And it's way brighter than you'd expect. Honestly, this could be any action adventure game set in an admittedly beautiful vista. There's also a surprising lack of Castlevania-type music. Instead we've got a very symphonic and subdued soundtrack. And while I'm not one to complain about QTE's, the ones here can often feel frustrating and easy to screw up. I think I'd be okay with all of this if the game wasn't so drawn out. I know I'm just one Castlevania fan with one opinion, but I can't help but think this game's runtime could have been chopped in half. Or maybe cut down even more! It feels like the best parts of this game could have been boiled down to a really tight and exhilarating dozen hours and I'd be able to walk away from it feeling impressed. Instead, Lords Of Shadow just keeps going and going, with interesting moments dabbled throughout an otherwise "just good" padding. There's plenty of Castlevania games that amaze me, and a fair share that frustrate me. The problem with Lords Of The Shadow is that too often it does neither of those things. A game like Castlevania should not be stretched out to the point of tedium, but sadly that's where this game ended up.
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