lords of shadow 2 |

Publisher: Konami

Developer: Mercury Steam

Release Date: 2/25/2014

Available On

Whether you like it or not, I have to start out by saying Lords of Shadow 1 was a masterpiece. The game was finely crafted from all angles that make up a great video game. It was the best Castlevania reboot ever done, and it was a fantastic action-adventure genre. It was challenging, beautiful, and memorable. Lords of Shadow 2 is not so much. In fact, I don’t know what happened. They took everything that made Lords of Shadow 1 great and threw it out the window.

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The story picks up after Mirror of Fate. Gabriel wants to die and have eternal peace. He already has to deal with the death of Maria. Zobek (voiced by Patrick Stewart) will give him the vampire killer in exchange for killing Satan. In order to do this, you must help out various other people and find three of Satan’s acolytes. You see, even the story got screwed up. The first game’s story flowed and was touching. Lords of Shadow 2 takes forever to get interesting and has very few cutscenes until the very end. The setting also really throws the game off; being set in modern times just ruins the whole thing. The level design is terrible and confusing, with a poorly implemented “open world” design that just makes you want to tear your hair out.

The game starts off with a nice pace, but once you step out into the present, all that magic from the first game just disappears. Secondly, the combat hasn’t changed much, and the upgrade system feels meaningless. While the combat is still responsive and quite good, the enemies that defined the use of the combat system have been simplified and cut down to a mere half-dozen. Yes, the same half-dozen enemies through the entire game. It’s repetitive and irritating, and you will end up just running past most of them if you can. Not to mention the increased amount of collectibles in the game that require going back through these labyrinthine levels and remembering where these spots are.

If that isn’t disappointing enough, the ending is just terrible. Unlike the sad, tearful ending of the first game, we just get a “what the hell is this?” ending, leading into another Lords of Shadow game we know will never happen. At least the boss fights are fun and, honestly, the best part of the whole game. They are super challenging, and the designs are pretty cool. Satan is a very challenging boss and worthy of being an end boss. Chipping away at health and scrounging your items is fun, but it should be through the entire game, not just the boss fights.

It also doesn’t help that the only store is in one part of the entire game. You have to go all the way back just to buy something. I honestly wanted this game to have a more linear path, so it feels more unique. But here’s the worst part about the game: the stealth sections. Yes, why the hell are there stealth sections in a Castlevania game? They are broken, just boring, and completely slow the game down. Some are confusing, most are boring, and they are all completely unnecessary. Instead of the clever puzzles of the first game, the developers lazy through stealth sections to replace them. Lords of Shadow 2 is just a lazy excuse for a game that never should have been.

At least the graphics are fantastic, and the voice acting is superb. None of that matters if everything around it is a sub-part of a masterpiece. As it is, Lords of Shadow 2 won’t please fans of the first game and definitely won’t draw in haters of the first game to give it a chance. If you never play this game, you won’t miss out on anything, even if you played the first. Do yourself a favor and just forget it even exists.