Konami are back with Lords of Shadow 2, the sequel to their 2010 Castlevania sleeper hit, and with it, they promise the return of Dracula, a revamped open world structure and enhanced combat mechanics, all drizzled in a modern day setting. Can they deliver on this lofty promise?
After waking up, many, many years after the events of the previous games, our hero with a sweet tooth, Gabriel Belmont has got his work cut out. Not only is he still immortal, but Zobek’s back with some friendly ‘help’ to get him back into shape and ready to face Satan. With people still seeking his destruction, our bitey friend Dracula must first regain his powers in order to step up to the challenge. Cue the montage.
After being ‘treat’ in the prologue to control our fully powered up hero, we are, surprise, stripped of all our powers and skills and must regain strength in order to quell Satan’s up rise. Fortunately for us, it let’s us get our hands on some weak enemies for target practice. Whilst being slowly drip fed the truly exciting moves over the course of the game, we still get chance to perfect the basics of dodging, blocking, countering and of course, swinging solidified blood around your head. Although it might partially be screaming God of War, Castlevania’s combat system does still feel unique, moves can be levelled up not only by purchasing upgrades, but by also using combos. You then transfer the progression, in turn powering up your whole skill set, it’s a lot less complicated than I’m making out, but it does increase the rewards for experimenting with different styles.
Along with the blood whip, you will soon get your hands on a pair of gauntlets and a sword to assist in the day to day dispatching of the devils minions. Whilst both have their own separate pools of expendable energy, both can be not only useful in battles, but necessary. The sword, activated via a simple tap of L1, deals less damage but you gain health from each successful hit. The big bad gauntlets, using R1, however not only deal increased damage, but are also invaluable for effectively breaking through enemy shields. Each weapon also has it’s own upgrade tree; although some of the moves are duplicated from the standard weapon, there are also some pretty potent combinations, some of which are deemed worthy of their own cutscene.
Whilst it might seem like it’s all slashing, dodging and ripping still beating hearts from the devil-spawns chests, there are distractions along the way to help break up the pace. Lifeless platforming and ‘puzzles’ clog up the downtime between punching a demon and staring down a boss. The mostly linear platforming sections consist of some flapping bats to let you know you can stick to said surface, followed by navigating a pre-set, often mind-boggling route. Depending upon whether or not you followed the main mission marker, you’ll either end up at an easy to reach secret, a secret you can’t get to yet as you don’t have the pre-requisite power or just simply, the way to go. Whilst I love collecting hidden secrets that actually impact my characters progression in some way, wandering the off beaten path for five minutes, on several different occasions, only to discover I can’t further progress that way does put a bit of a downer on the old exploration urge.
If you come at it at a different angle, then there is plenty to still see and do once you’ve gotten some exploration tools; revisiting areas is encouraged, if not explained particularly well. The rotatable camera is more of a mixed blessing than you might initially realise, being able to look at some of the more inspiring artwork and backdrops is nice, but it’s often infuriatingly too far zoomed in to make out much of your surroundings. A fair example being, after a mild platforming test involving swinging chandeliers (of which I’m pretty sure it’s almost impossible to fall off, rendering it ultimately pointless) I turned around to check on my trusty swinging platforms to see many treasures that were not visible before I’d completed my parkour run.
With the consummate ease our ‘hero’ Dracula tears apart demons from hell, of which most comfortably outsize him, it’s a frustrating and lowly experience to have to transmorph into a small pack of rats to slip by a few guards. Admittedly, in their codex style information page, it describes them as wielding indestructible armour; yet if I were Satan, I’d give the order to mass produce that natty material on a pretty wide scale seeing as the feared and fabled Dracula can not even attempt to engage such beings draped in it’s indestructible glory. It’s a little shame that the stealth sections have been implemented quite so poorly as I understand the reason for their inclusion being that he, at the time, was fairly weak and Dracula, by all accounts is a bit of a sneaky bugger. Oh, and if you think the first few sneaking sections feel a little tiresome or unfair, just wait for the bit with the leaves…
The feeling of ambivalence is an irritating one when viewing and listening to Lords of Shadow 2, the facial mapping of our protagonist looks sublime in the cutscene’s closer shots, yet his hair looks as though it has but two moving parts. The look of dreary textures and uninspired locales from the present day are of a complete opposite to some of the vistas and art design sections of the castle. The sound of two of my favourite actors, Patrick Stewart and Robert Carlyle working together in a videogame can scarcely overwhelm some of the generic stilted script asked of them. The menus feel archaic and unintuitive; despite the glaringly intrusive auto save icon appearing slightly off centre of the middle of the screen, cutscene or not, it still makes me wary to quit when there is no ‘exit to main menu’ option for fear of losing progress.
Despite all this, Lords of Shadow 2 is a fun game, when it wants to be. The boss battles are suitably epic, the music can crescendo and roar at all the right moments, there’s replay value, a challenge room, the combat is solid, the map can be explored with the right tools, and on top of all that, it’s around 20 hours long, with a new game plus option. In defiance of Konami’s and MercurySteam’s efforts, Lords of Shadow 2 isn’t for everyone. If you enjoy a good dungeon romp with a more than competent combat system, exciting bosses, more lore than you can engross and you can put up with the horrible stealth sections, some wonky textures and a plot that doesn’t quite deliver, you’re in for a blood sucking good time.
