Rating of
3.5/5
Yet Another ‘Castlevania’ Genre Mash-Up
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/25/16
The venerable ‘Castlevania’ franchise, which has been around since the 3rd Generation and even received a horrific port to the Tiger brand of stand-alone handhelds, has garnered a reputation for reinventing itself. Mixing up its tried-and-true mechanics with liberal borrowings from other genres and styles has seen both ‘mainline’ ‘Castlevania’ as a series of 2D platformers, ‘Metroidvania’ as an incredibly well-received series of connected-world castle-crawling pseudo-Action/RPGs, and most recently the ‘Lords of Shadow’ attempt at transforming ‘Castlevania’ into a modern 3D franchise (after a horrific failure with “Castlevania 64” in the 5th Gen). “Castlevania: Lords of Shadow –Mirror of Fate HD” (“MoF”), in addition to being quite a mouthful, is a filler game taking place between “Castlevania: Lords of Shadow” and “Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2,” but doesn’t share it’s style 100% with any existing branch of the ‘Castlevania’ family tree. Instead, it’s a blending of beloved ‘Metroidvania’ exploration with combo-centric Beat ‘Em Up Action.
Presentation
“MoF” has two distinct art styles that it employs for gameplay and cutscenes respectively. I don’t think this inconsistent use of style is a particularly good idea, but both styles are quite eye-pleasing, so I can’t complain too much. For gameplay, “MoF” uses a fairly typical 2.5D style with generally attractive models and textures. For cutscenes, though, “MoF” uses a really sharp cell-shading style reminiscent of the ‘Borderlands’ series or “Red Steel 2,” and looks fantastic. Character animations aren’t the best they could be, though. In general, I would have preferred the entire game use the cell-shaded style, just to give it some extra pop, but the ‘realistic’ style looks good enough not to cause any problems.
Being a ‘Castlevania’ title, the audio is expectedly well-done. The soundtrack is typical ‘Castlevania’ excellence, and the voice-acting does a fantastic job of adding character to the variety of Belmonts and vampires the series is known for (Who knew the Belmonts were Scottish?!).
Technically, “MoF” is solid as a rock. Not a single glitch, crash, frame rate drop, or other bit of PC nonsense interfered with my game experience.
Story
I have not played either of the 3D ‘Castlevania: Lords of Shadow’ games (in fact, I have a Hell of a time not calling this latest spin-off branch ‘Lord of Shadows’), but the gist of the series I get from playing “MoF” is that it is an attempt to reboot the ancient, crufty ‘Castlevania’ canon that hasn’t been reliable or consistent since the NES.
As a filler episode taking place between two ‘Lords of Shadow’ games, “MoF” doesn’t painstakingly retread a lot of old ground, but its story cutscenes do a decent job of explaining what happened in the first part whilst setting up the premise of the second part. Some of the revelations about the origins of Dracula and Alucard blew my mind, and further fleshing out the backstory behind the Belmont clan’s involvement, as well as the origin of their archetypal ‘whip’ weapons was quite satisfactory as well. For a series that started as an Engrished-up 8-bit 2D Platformer, longtime fans have been missing out on a LOT.
“MoF” takes place over three chapters, each dealing with one important character from the series: Simon Belmont, Alucard, and Trevor Belmont, respectively. Completing all three episodes with 100% exploration unlocks a further ending scene, which is a nice bonus for completionists. While there is an achievement for completing the game in 3.5 hours, I found that a first-time playthrough took closer to 10 hours on the default difficulty.
Gameplay
‘Castlevania’ spin-offs frequently appropriate gameplay mechanics and concepts from other franchises or genres in order to reinvent the wheel. In “MoF,” the insanely popular (and sadly rare, outside of handhelds) ‘Metroidvania’ style popularized by “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night” has been blended with a combo-based fighting system that would be right at home in any generic 2D Beat ‘Em Up. I didn’t find this most recent blend particularly toothsome, as the exploration aspect from ‘Metroidvania’ has been watered down significantly, and the equipment and RPG elements almost completely removed. The Beat ‘Em Up fighting is rather tedious and transforms encounters with enemies that should die in a single hit into long, drawn-out affairs.
In place of equipment and RPG elements, the protagonists of each chapter in “MoF” can acquire key power-ups, Action/Adventure style. Each chapter contains a set number of these, and most of them are hidden in out of the way locations. Power-ups increase the player’s Health, Magic, or Ammo Capacity (for sub weapons), while finding key items as part of the game’s linear progression unlocks each character’s slate of abilities. There is still, however inexplicably, a leveling system, by which the player can take their trio of heroes (who all share the same level and experience total) from level 1 to 18, which unlocks additional combos and special moves in the battle system.
I find it incredibly obnoxious when a battle system locks-down skill-based gameplay behind RPG-style leveling. Why does my character need to be a specific arbitrary level to do a certain air combo? I’m perfectly capable of inputting the button-presses required regardless of character level!
Aside from the misbegotten Beat ‘Em Up mechanics, “MoF” also suffers from somewhat floating jumping. This is a significant problem, because a lot of the exploration to be done in the game’s castle environments involve jumping across pits, whipping onto a grapple point and swinging before jumping, jumping from wall-grip-to-wall-grip (all of which are conveniently marked by glowy motes), etc.
In general, everything about the actual core gameplay in “MoF” felt unpolished to me, and that’s not a good thing when I only played on Normal difficulty, which features a large number of checkpoints, a highly detailed map, and even checkpoints midway through boss battles. I would have ground my teeth down to the roots if I had tried to ramp-up the difficulty.
Overall
While the ‘Lords of Shadow’ reboot does great things with the ‘Castlevania’ lore and “Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate HD” is a very aesthetically pleasing game, I found that blending Beat ‘Em Up mechanics with ‘Metroidvania’ just doesn’t work all that well. “MoF” was a decently enjoyable game, despite its flaws, but I can’t say it did anything to convince me to try the 3D ‘Lords of Shadow’ iterations. If anything, the prospect of this type of gameplay in 3D has put me off the rest of this reboot series even more, which is a shame, because the writing is quite good.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
