The Castlevania Lords of Shadow Trilogy Part 3: The Flawed Finale

Castlevania Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate wasn’t exactly the follow up fans and critics expected for the series. With how successful the first game was, following it up with a handheld spin-off game seemed an odd choice. But it was never intended to be a follow up. It was meant as a smaller spin-off title to hold fans over until the actual follow up came out.

And that follow up would arrive only a year later in the form of Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2. unlike Mirror of Fate which tried, and failed, to adapt the gameplay of Lords of Shadow into a 2D Search Action game, Lords of Shadow 2 would be more of what you would expect from a sequel. Building on what the original did while also trying to address some of the criticisms.

Chief among those being the lack of originality. While that never bothered me, I thought it did enough with its ideas to make them its own, not everyone thought that way. A lot of players felt it borrowed too heavily from other games while losing a lot of the series identity in the process.

Lords of Shadow 2 would attempt to rectify this. Keeping the core gameplay but making a few key changes. Such as changing the camera to help it stand apart from God of War and incorporating more Search Action elements to make it feel closer to the classic series.

Did it work? Well critically speaking, not really. While it wasn’t reviewed super negatively, it also wasn’t exactly enthusiastic either, especially compared to the first. Though frankly the main reason for its lukewarm critical reception wasn’t entirely fair and didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’ll get more into that later.

Sales wise it also wasn’t great. I couldn’t find exact sales figures, but it supposedly sold well though nowhere near as well as the first. And considering this game likely had a similar budget, if not a larger one, I think it’s safe to assume it failed to meet Konami’s sales expectations.

As for me. I kind of hated it. I loved the first game and did not like the direction the sequel took. But after replaying it, I do appreciate the game a lot more. Oh, it has its problems, but it does have elements worth praising that I may have overlooked on my initial playthrough.

First off, the story is great. It picks up where the first game left off with Dracula having to hunt down Satan’s acolytes to prevent his return. The set-up honestly isn’t all that different from the first game with three evil assholes ruling the world and Dracula having to stop them.

While the Lords of Shadow were reflective of medieval horrors like werewolves, vampires and death, the acolytes represent more modern evils like corrupt religious leaders, big pharma and weapons manufactures. Things which have only gotten more terrifying in the years since the games release.

Honestly though, I don’t find the stuff with the acolytes to be that engaging. I get what they were going for, but it’s let down by the fact that the acolytes aren’t very interesting villains. I won’t lie and say that the Lords of Shadow were great antagonists, but at least they had a decent build up. We got an idea of how bad they were by traveling through their different realms, which helped give them more personality even if they didn’t have much screen time.

With the acolytes you never get this. You do get it a little with the first one being the leader of a big pharmaceutical corporation developing a virus that mutates people into monsters. At least with her you get to travel through her facility, which isn’t all that interesting but does at least give some build up to the character and it fits in with what happens in the story with the virus getting out and mutating the city.

The other two don’t get anything like this. Corrupt religious leaders and weapon manufacturers might be evils in the real world, but in regard to the story it doesn’t amount to much. You don’t even get to travel through a weapons factory or a dark church or anything, so it feels like wasted potential.

There are enemies tied to them, but they don’t appear that often and without any distinct areas for the acolytes it was hard to connect specific enemies to them. Unlike the Lords of Shadows who had specific minions you would only fight in their territories.

And even when you get to the acolytes there’s not a whole lot to their personalities. The first one has it a bit better than the others, but all they amount to it being crazy. They’re basically just Mileena from Mortal Kombat without any of the charm. The only thing I remember about the second is that he shot lightning, and the third gets offed before they do anything interesting.

The Lords of Shadow weren’t deep characters, but at least they had some recognizable charateristics. Cornell was violent and brutal, Carmilla was seductive and Zobek was a cunning manipulator. Not much, but at least it’s something.

The new guys don’t even have that. Not helped by the lack of interactions with them. The first game had an introductory cutscene for each lord that showed them interacting with Gabriel. It helped give an idea on what each character was like. Lords of Shadow 2 has these to an extent, but they’re short and don’t have much in the way of character interactions. So it’s hard to get a read on these guys.

You do have a character glossary that goes into more detail, but I shouldn’t need to read that just to get a basic grip on these guys. Everything regarding the main plot with the acolytes was lame. It wasn’t awful, nothing about it pissed me of, but it was severely underwhelming.

When the story gets good is with Dracula and his character growth. While all the stuff with the acolytes is going on, Dracula is also exploring his old castle to reclaim his lost powers. Sort of. It's never made entirely clear, but it is heavily implied that the castle merely a dreamscape within Dracula’s mind.

Except there are moments that contradict this. Dracula can take items from the castle into the real world, and even a point where he brings a character from the real world into the castle. So is it a real place or not?

It's never fully explained which can make things confusing. I think the idea is that the castle exists in a sort of pocket dimension within Dracula’s mind scape but even that doesn’t explain everything. I think it’s one of those things that’s open to interpretation. It’s best not to think about it too much.

But the focus isn’t the castle itself, it’s on Dracula. If the first game is about Dracula’s fall to darkness, this game is about him trying to regain the humanity he lost. It's made clear that Dracula is still very pissed about what happened to him in the first game, but he’s also grown tired of it all. He just wants peace. The only reason he’s helping Zobek in the first place is for the promise it would end.

He’s an angry vengeful man trying to come to terms with his past. This is emphasized by the fact that the guide throughout the castle is a younger version of Trevor. A vision to allow Dracula time with the son he never got to know.

Dracula just wants to move on and be done with being Dracula. Near the end it’s revealed that the only reason he continues being Dracula, aside from getting revenge on those who wronged him, is because he feels like he’s the lesser evil keeping greater evils in check. He's resigned himself to being the villain because evil will always win.

I like how they handle Dracula’s character. It's a redemption story about one of the biggest villains and I think it’s done very well. If the first two games were about fighting against fate, this game is about coming to terms with it and moving on. It continues the main theme while at the same time bringing the story to a conclusion.

I think the ending is a little anti-climactic. It doesn’t wrap things up as neatly as it could, and it feels a little rushed. It's not a bad ending and it has a spectacular set-piece at least, but it is a little underwhelming.

There’s also a little too much clunky exposition. There are some plot points that you can tell they’re trying to make sense of that just come across as awkward. Not helped that most of the major revelations are done in one cutscene instead of being spread out evenly throughout the game.

Some plot points are retconned and not expanded on much either. I already mentioned the acolytes, but there’s also Victor Belmont who is criminally underutilized. He's the last Belmont so you’d think he’d be a bigger deal, but he just kind of shows up for a bit and then dies from heroic sacrifice. A shame because he seemed like a cool character, and I wanted to learn more about him.

The Mirror of Fate got changed up to a hand mirror instead of the large living mirror it was in the last game. It’s also not that important to the plot, which is odd given it was set up as a major player last time. Even the Toy Maker doesn’t matter much despite him being set-up as a major villain. I liked the segment about him, but besides one area he has no presence in the game at all.

I think this story is at its best when it’s focusing on the characters. Those moments are great, especially the interactions between Dracula and his family, but whenever it focuses on the main plot it isn’t nearly as interesting.

What helps make the story work is, once again, the voice acting. All the actors reprise their roles from previous entries, Robert Carlyle as Dracula, Patrick Stewart as Zobek and Richard Madden as Alucard, and I think Lords of Shadow 2 is where they’re at their best.

A lot of it is because they’re allowed to be a little more over the top. Patrick Stewart played Zobek as the kind friend in the first game, but because Zobek is out as a villain now he’s allowed to be a little bit more sinister and devious which is a lot more fun.

A lot of the actors feel like they’re having more fun with their performances here, especially Carlyle. Unlike the first game where he played the brooding anti-hero, here he’s allowed to have a lot more range. He plays it up as a more villainous character while still making the character sympathetic.

Robert Carlyle is at his best when he plays villains, and Lords of Shadow 2 plays into that strength. Richard Madden also does a great job as Alucard even though he doesn’t have much screen time and they even got a decent child voice actor to play the younger version of Trevor. Props to them for that because child voice actors can be extremely hit or miss.

Say what you want about the Lords of Shadow games, but they always had great voice acting in them even for the minor characters. In fact, the only voice I didn’t like was the Chubacabras, and that’s only because it was intentionally annoying. So even then I can’t be mad at it.

As for how the game looks, it’s both better and worse than the original. On a technical level it is better. The character models are a lot better with much improved facial animations. It’s especially noticeable with Marie, she looked a little off in the first game, but here she looks alright.

The texture work has also been improved. It isn’t as fuzzy or pixelated as the first game, there is still some pixelation, as well as some slight texture pop-in, but the technical hiccups here are much rarer and harder to spot. And to top it off it now runs at a smooth 60 fps, making the performance far better.

So, on the technical side it’s all great, it’s on the artistic side where things start to slip. A lot of that is due to the change in the camera. Lords of Shadow 2 now uses a third person camera you can freely control rather than the fixed camera angles from the first game. Because of that, a lot of the cinematic spectacle is lost.

There are no moments like the original approach to the vampire’s castle in the first game, so it doesn’t feel as grand or epic as it once did. That said, if you take your time to admire the backdrops and get the camera angle just right, you can still get some pretty epic shots. But because you have to get those manually, they don’t stand out as much.

Some of the shots in the first game still stook with me even after not playing it for years. I cannot say the same for the sequel. And while the change of camera does have something to do with that, another reason is that the environments aren’t nearly as interesting.

To be fair though, it isn’t entirely fair to compare the environments between games. The first game took you across several environments across the world, while Lords of Shadow 2 takes place within 2 set locations, the city and the castle. Of course the first games environments are going to be more visually diverse and interesting compared to the sequel.

And to give them credit, Lords of Shadow 2 does have varied locations while in the castle sections. You’ve got the main wing, which is steeped in gothic horror atmosphere, but then you have the toy maker theatre, the gardens, the city of the damned and the library. All of which keep the atmosphere while making each of the areas visually distinct.

I love the way the castle looks in this game. Dracula’s castle has always been one of the most iconic videogame locations and it’s represented very well here. It’s the best 3D rendition of the castle I’ve seen.

The city is where things go pear shaped. I get what they were going for, they wanted to make it something like Gotham City, a modern city with gothic architecture. Except Gotham City had a character and unique with different districts that stood out. If you look at the Arkham games, particularly Arkham City, and you can see that the city itself has a personality and a distinctive look. There were so many little details in those games they made them all a gameplay feature.

Castlevania City isn’t like this. And yes, that is seriously what they named it. They could have named it something cool but instead we get the lame nomenclature of Castlevania City. It’s named that way because it was built around the site of Dracula’s Castle, but the castle was never named that, so it doesn’t make any sense. You might as well have called it Drac City or Vlad Ville. If you're going to be dumb at least have fun with it.

Anyway, the city itself just feels like a typical city scape. There are some clear gothic overtones at times, but mostly it’s just generic city streets, factories, rooftops. You know, standard city stuff and it’s all so dull to look at.

All the city area’s start to blend together after a while. There are four different districts, but they aren’t visually distinct. The science district feels the same as the arts district, which feels the same as downtown. Nothing about them makes them stand out.

This is because early on a virus sweeps the city which turns the population into mutants. The idea is that the city is in a state of panic and disrepair, but Arkham City did something similar and still had areas that stood out from one another. There’s no excuse why Lords of Shadow 2 couldn’t do the same.

The city just isn’t visually interesting. You could argue that the castle areas do mitigate this somewhat. After all you do swap between the two throughout the game, which does help things from getting too stale. The thing is that you spend more time in the city than the castle, and by the end of the game you only go through the city. By that time any mitigating factor the castle areas had have long gone.

I’m torn on the game’s visuals. It is an improvement on a technical level, I can’t stress that enough. There was a clear attempt to improve some aspects of the visuals and there are still some visually stunning set pieces. It’s just the environmental design holds it back, which is a shame considering that was a strong point of the first game.

I wouldn’t say it looks bad it just isn’t visually interesting. This game definitely feels like a game from the early 2010’s. Games back then were all about having grittier environments and washed out colours. I’m glad we’ve move past that because those kinds of visuals clearly haven’t aged well.

Lords of Shadow keeps the same gameplay style as the first game. You still get the same hacks and slash gameplay, but with several noticeable changes. While the God of War influences are still apparent, they did make a concerted effort to make the game more of its own thing.

Part of that is the camera. As I said earlier it is now controllable rather than fixed. I’m of 2 minds with the camera, on the one hand it isn’t too bad and at least zooms out when fighting enemies to give you a better view of the fight.

On the other hand, because it’s in third person that means you will get those moments where you’ll need to adjust the camera when you lose track of the enemy. There are moments where you will get by an enemy you didn’t see coming which will no doubt cause irritation. You also get those parts where you just end up in a bad position which causes the camera to bug out. These are rare but still annoying.

I still prefer a fixed camera angle for hack and slash games like this. Not that a controllable camera can’t work in these kinds of games, it worked in Bayonetta, but I’d much rather not have to worry about the camera and just focus on positioning and blocking/dodging the enemies.

However, the controllable camera does make sense for Lords of Shadow 2’s design. Rather than the level-to-level structure of its predecessor, Lords of Shadow 2 instead goes for a more open design. It’s designed more like a 3D search action game with levels open to exploration, gathering upgrades and abilities to reach previously inaccessible areas.

Does it work? Not quite, but before I get into that let me talk about what the game does right, the combat. it isn’t too dissimilar to the previous games. You still have the direct and area attacks along with the magic systems. If you played the other two games before hand it shouldn’t take you long to get into this one.

The combat is noticeably faster than the first game. It isn’t as weighty, but hits do still feel good and I think the combat flow is a bit smoother. It’s a little easier to do air combo’s and enemies don’t dodge out of the way nearly as often.

The downside is that enemies are now much more aggressive. It’s not too difficult to get juggled, though damage output has been reduced to compensate for that. And some enemies will just no sell your attacks. I know a lot of hack and slash games do this for larger enemies, but even smaller enemies were tanking my hit and giving it back.

Combo’s have also been slightly reworked. There’s less combo’s that rely on mixing area and direct attacks, though many of the moves from the first game are still here and accounted for. The smaller number of combos might seem disappointing at first, but there is a reason for this. And that reason is the reworked magic system.

You still have light and dark magic, but instead of giving you healing or more damage, now you get different weapons with their own line up of attacks. Instead of light magic you have the void sword, a blade which still heals you but also has freezing properties. Instead of shadow magic you have the Chaos Claws, powerful gauntlets that can also break through shields and armour.

This is what I wanted from the magic system in Mirror of Fate. It builds on what the first game did by introducing more play styles. While the basics of the combat don’t change much between them, the combo structure is the same across all three weapons, the properties of all 3 do make them feel different to play.

The new play styles add a lot more depth to the combat. The Void Sword being able to freeze enemies in place but it doesn’t do as much damage. The Chaos Gauntlets are still good for dealing damage but they have much shorter range, and you can’t just spam it since you’ll want to save it for armoured enemies.

There’s a lot more decision making that goes into using the magic. It’s a far more engaging system that allows for more experimentation. Even the magic meters fill far faster than the first game, making it easier to have magic stocked.

One other major change to the combat was the removal of sub-weapons. Instead, Dracula can use one of his different vampiric abilities. They don’t have ammo counts and refill automatically, but they aren’t as powerful to compensate. The one exception being the relics.

Relics are items you can pick up from enemies or bought at a store run by Chubacabras. There isn’t a specific currency, you just pay with experience points. Not sure how that works but the store is also part of Dracula’s dream scape, so I guess it makes sense. I never bothered to buy anything though since relics drop fairly frequently and for other reasons I’ll get to shortly.

The relics aren’t anything I used too often. One of them isn’t even used in combat; the kiwi is only useful in finding secrets and nothing else. But they can be powerful tools if you are in a pinch. The Hourglass in particular is broken since it slows enemies down allowing for longer combos and it gives you an EXP bonus for every hit. There’s a reason the relics have a limited ammo count.

In terms of his other abilities, Dracula can fire a projectile which changes depending on which weapon you have equipped. Normally it’s a standard blood shot that does very little damage, but the Void Sword gives you a freezing projectile and the Chaos Gauntlets give you an explosive fireball. None of these are that powerful, but the freezing projectile was useful for crowd control.

Dracula can also turn into mist which makes you invincible for a short time. This is more used for exploration, but it can be useful for creating distance from enemies.

While none of the abilities are as powerful as the sub-weapons, they are much more balanced. None of them are broken and each has a clear use. Enemy weaknesses have also been axed so the abilities aren’t as exploitable. The relics can be, but not only are the relics limited in ammunition but a lot of them have a time limit and you can only activate one at a time. So it’s not as broken as before.

My only issue with the abilities is they may have nerfed the projectiles a little too much. The normal one does so little damage it isn’t worth using in combat. Fortunately, they have a better use in exploration, so they aren’t useless, just not good in fights.

There is one last ability you have with the bat swarm. This distracts enemies for a few seconds like the fairies in the first game. But you don’t use this in combat, not primarily anyway. No, you use this for stealth. And it’s here where I need to deviate from where we were and talk about something that has bugged me about this game’s critical discourse for years.

Look, the stealth sections don’t fit the game at all. I mean you’re playing as Dracula, the last thing you want to do is hide like a bitch and scurry around as a tiny rat, which is a thing that happens in the game. They’re shoehorned in and they’re stupid, we can all agree on that, but they are also a very small part of the game.

Maybe about 5% of the gameplay is spent on stealth and most of it is over in 5 minutes. For as forced as the stealth is, it makes up such a small portion of game time that it isn’t worth getting mad about.

So why did critics get mad about them. When this game came out in 2014 it was excoriated by critics for the stealth sections. Which, need I remind you, make up less than 1/10th of the game. This has always been something that bugged about the reviews of this game, especially given that it had much more serious issues that critics didn’t seem to address.

Which brings me, at last, to the exploration. Now, not everything about exploration is bad. In fact, I don’t have that big of a issue with the level design. The platforming is certainly a lot better than the first game. Jumping feels better, climbing is faster and snappier, and there’s actual challenges that require you to time your jumps. They did get rid of swinging, but everything else about platforming was improved here.

Then there’s the puzzles. Unlike the first game where the puzzles were more like a separate minigame, here they’re integrated much more naturally into the game. No more riddles or switch puzzles, just analyzing the environment and using your abilities to get through it.

Look, here’s the down low when it comes to the levels, when you’re just going through the game normally it’s fine. If you’re just trying to get the ending and you don’t care about the upgrades or collectables, then it’s a relatively smooth experience.

When this game falls apart is when you decide to backtrack and try to get everything. Because when you do, Lords of Shadow becomes one of the most agonizingly tedious experiences you will ever play.

This is what killed the game for me when I first played it. I remember going for everything in my original playthrough and being absolutely miserable while doing it. As a matter of fact, for this review I opted not to go for everything. I made the conscious decision to just get what I could along the way and I enjoyed it a lot more.

I didn’t make that decision right away. I only decided on this about midway through. Early on backtracking isn’t that bad as it doesn’t overwhelm you with too many things at once, but by the late game areas become so overstuffed with things to get it becomes a chore just to get them all.

And one of the reasons why the backtracking is so tedious is largely because the game doesn’t emphasize exploration enough. Yes, you will need to do this if you want to get the health, magic and ammo upgrades for relics, but that isn’t the main reason you explore in Search Action games to begin with.

As I said last time, Search Action games have you explore because it’s the only way to progress. They drop you into an area with no direction on where to go. It’s up to the player to figure that out. You’re constantly exploring in a Search Action game because that’s the entire point of the genre. It isn’t just about finding upgrades, it’s about finding the way forward.

In Lords of Shadow 2 there’s always an objective marker point you to where to go next. There’s no reason to explore since you’re always pointed in the right direction. I know that some modern Search Action games do this too, Guacamelee does it and I love those games, but in those instances you still need to back through previous area’s to progress anyway. Meaning you still have an excuse to pick up anything you missed.

In Lords of Shadow 2 the levels are segmented in such a way that you almost never need to go back through them at all. Once you’re done with an area you’ll likely never have to go back to it again. Even when you do it’s usually to explore a new part of the area, not to further explore the areas already visited.

There’s almost no reason to backtrack at all. You never need to explore since progression is always shown to you, and you never need to visit previous areas unless you choose to do so to find collectibles and upgrades.

And even then, it isn’t even worth it. Half the stuff you find are ammo upgrades for your relics, which you barely use anyway, or items which unlock additional challenges that are purely there for bragging rights and nothing else. So it isn’t that rewarding to backtrack through areas in the first place.

Oh, and did I mention that some secrets require keys that can only be obtained from enemies that only spawn in one area in the entire game. Because that’s always fun right. You can just buy them, but that still means having to backtrack to the store repeatedly.

The kicker, all you get from the secrets with keys is experience points, which you don’t need because enemies drop plenty. If you’re going to make something tedious, could you at least make it worth it. Is that so much to ask.

All of this would be bad enough, but there’s a lot of other issues that start to pile up. There are so many rooms where you need to activate some kind of switch and wait around for the next room to open up. I know these are there to hide a loading screen, I get there a necessary evil, but good god are they a pace breaker.

And Dracula is already pretty slow to begin with. You don’t have a run button, you have a dash, but it lasts like 2 seconds, I don’t even know why they bothered. It’s so slow getting anywhere, made worse by the overall linearity of the level design.

It’s not open with branching paths, the levels are still designed like linear challenge stages. This is another reason why backtracking sucks, there’re very few if any shortcuts. Even fast travel isn’t always helpful since the fast travel stations aren’t always in the most convenient positions.

But all of that is nothing compared to the biggest problem. The coup de grace that completely kills any enjoyment you could have had with this game’s exploration. It doesn’t have a proper map. To be clear, it does have a map, but it only shows you the area you are currently in. You cannot view the maps of other areas, nor does it show you how each area is interlinked to one another.

That is completely inexcusable. You cannot have a Search Action game without a proper map system. Even Hollow Knight understands this, and that game makes you work for the map since it’s all about getting lost. How in the fuck am I supposed to backtrack through the game without a proper map system.

And the game doesn’t even have the courtesy to mark collectables on the map for you. Which baffles me because Mirror of Fate did this exact thing. Why did they not only not learn from their past mistakes, but also unlearn the things they actually got right? You can’t even mark these area’s down manually, which was also something Mirror of Fate let you do.

You basically need to rely purely on memory to find these things. A task that is easier said than done given how areas tend to blend together. Combined with the linear level design, this somehow makes Lords of Shadow 2’s levels simultaneously confusing to navigate and too straight forward at the same time.

And that’s a shame because the combat is great. It’s the most refined of the series and the saving grace of the game. It feels a lot better than the first game, it’s more balanced, it expands on its mechanics in interesting logical ways. It’s a great combat system.

The bosses being a particular highlight, with my favourite being the fight against Victor Belmont. I love that he fights like Gabriel did in the first game, almost as if you’re fighting your past self.

As I said, when you’re just going through the game normally, the game is enjoyable. There are plenty of fun set pieces, puzzles, and combat encounters to enjoy. It’s only when you treat the game like a Search Action title that things go awry.

You could argue that with most of the collectables being optional that this isn’t a big deal since you could just ignore them. But what does it say about a game where you need to ignore a decent chunk of the game just to enjoy it? Nothing positive that’s for sure.

Yes, you can just ignore the collectables and still enjoy the game. But that doesn’t change the fact that doing so makes the play experience tooth grindingly mediocre. This isn’t just a few random parts of the game that are easy to forgive, it’s a major part of the design. You can’t just ignore that and say it isn’t a problem.

Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 is a game of 2 halves. On the one hand it is a fun hack and slash game with deep rewarding combat, and on the other hand it’s a tedious slog of a Search Action game. It’s 2 sides are also reflected in its 2 locations, the castle areas are awesome, but the city areas are dull. It goes from dizzying heights to terrifying lows with no creamy middles to soften the blow.

That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the game. Far from it, I enjoyed it far more than the first time I played it. The strong combat, story, presentation and overall production design are things I greatly enjoy and make it experience worth experiencing. Even if its bad points are really bad.

I still like the game, but I think in terms of overall quality, the first game is still superior. It felt like it had a better grasp of what it was and was more consistent overall. It had room for improvement, and the sequel does improve some key areas, but it also creates a host of new problems at the same time.

The Lords of Shadow trilogy suffers from the same problem a lot of reboots do. It tried something different, fans didn’t like it, they tried appealing to fans and then nobody liked it. If it had played more into its strengths rather than jerry rig the design into something it didn’t fit, I think this series would have been more fondly remembered.

As is, we still have a decent trilogy of games here. Mirror of Fate sucks, you can ignore that one, but the main games I still say are solid titles worth checking out. Are they the best Castlevania games? Not by a long shot, but they are an interesting part of the series that I think deserve more attention.

At the very least they’re probably the most successful attempt to bring the series into 3D. Castlevania always worked better as a 2D game, but if you want a good 3D entry these are probably your best option.

And the stories in these games are really good. The second game also acts as a fitting finale for everything. So, all 3 games act as their own little self-contained trilogy. It did leave things open for a sequel, but that never happened. The sales for the second game were lower than the first which resulted in the series being shelved, not just Lords of Shadow but Castlevania in general. Even 8 years hence we haven’t had a new mainline entry in the series.

Don’t worry, this story does have a happy ending. Mercury Steam go on to develop Metroid Samus Returns and Metroid Dread. Both of which were well received by critics and fans. Koji Igarashi would go on to make his own spiritual successor to Castlevania with the Bloodstained series, which was also well received by critics and fans. And Konami would go on to have a luxurious career of abusing their staff and not making videogames. Happy endings for all.

And that’s the Lords of Shadow trilogy. Despite my negativity near the end, I enjoyed going through these games again with a more critical eye. It gave me a better perspective of what I didn’t like and a deeper appreciation of what I did.

I don’t know what I’ll look at next year. There’s still plenty of Castlevania games to look at. Maybe by then Konami will have released a collection of the DS games and I can look at those. Maybe I’ll go super old school and look at the classic titles.

There’s still plenty of vampire whipping action yet to look at during this spookiest of months. But no matter how you choose to spend this All Hallows Eve, I hope it’s filled with chills, thrills and a whole lot of candy. Happy Halloween everyone.