Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate HD Reviews

yes

This is just as great as I remembered!

not as good as the Classic Castlevania Games.

I play this game whenever life hits me in the nuts and it makes me feel better every time. Highly recommend

The aesthetic sucks (Alucard what did they do to u😭) The platforming is kinda terrible (so... much... climbing💀) but... It's the only Lords of Shadow game that actually feels like a Castlevania game to me (prolly cuz its a 2D metroidvania and not a bad GoW clone🤷‍♂️)

I was worried going into the game, I wasn't sure if the classic Metroidvania formula would work with Lords of Shadow's combat. But I'm happy to say that this game is amazing, and it combines the best of both elements.

A return to traditional Metroidvania formulae that misses the mark I'm a pretty big defender of the Lords of Shadows games. I found both of them to be really fun, and have some of the most interesting lore and story of any Castlevania game. They aren't prefect and there's plenty to complain about, but bottom line, they're a lot of fun. Unfortunately, Mirror of Fate really misses the mark in just about everything it tries to do. First, let's talk gameplay. This game takes the God of War like combat the first and second game are known for and dumbs it down for a 2D mobile game (this game originally released on the 3DS). There's a world where this combat system works, and there are plenty of Metroidvania games with stellar combat, but this ins't one of them. It could just be me, but I found the combat to be tedious, tells to be far too short, and combos to be completely broken. You'll reach a point, if you play long enough, where you unlock a skill that only requires you to hold the attack button. This skill does so much more damage than any other, there's no reason to use anything else. This just isn't well designed combat. On top of that, the game offers no incentive to use combo finishers, because you get nothing from them other than a short cinematic. This glory kill system should always reward players with something: more EXP, health, More magic, etc. Otherwise, why would I bother to use it. Next, let's look at the Metroidvania aspect of the game. The first Lords of Shadows required you to replay levels with newly unlocked abilities to receive rewards, which was nice, but it didn't really feel very much like the usual metroidvania formulae. Lords of Shadows 2 leans much more into this, but the world is a set of 3D levels, making navigation a little more tedious. Both of them worked by not leaning too much into it, and instead having fun combat. Mirror of Fate tries to really make itself a metroidvania by having lots of secrets and even a reward for 100% completion. However, the structure of the game is such that it's not very fun to complete. This game is split between 3 chapters (technically 4, but the prologue has nothing to find) In each chapter, you earn different abilities, but for some reason your experience is maintained (which will be odd when we get to the story portion). This means that instead of having one large map to navigate, learn, explore, and search, you have 3 smaller maps to do this with. The game even gives you a note system so you can track where you might be able to do things in the future. Too bad the maps are so small and the abilities so few that you'll never really need these hints. With the exception of 1 collectible that was difficult to find, every collectible in this game is stupidly simple to find and collect, but not in a fun way. Without going into minute details on every little thing, I'll just say: the maps are too small, they aren't fun to navigate with new upgrades (staple of a good metroidvania), and the upgrades are too simple and boring. Finally, the story. Lords of Shadows is one of my favorite interpretations of Darcula. The idea that the lineage that attempts to defeat Dracula is spawned from Dracula himself. That Dracula was just a man trying to rid the world of evil, only for that same evil to infect him and turn him into the most powerful and evil being in existence. It's a really fun idea, and executed in a way to make it believable. The one thing I don't like about this story, is that most of it unfolds off screen. I was hoping that Mirror of Fate would fix that, but it does not. Mirror of Fate is a story that explains one thing, and it explains that one thing poorly. Mirror of Fate explains who Alucard is in this version of events, and how he came to be, but it does so in a way that thinks it's far smarter than it is. You begin the game playing at Gabriel so you can briefly understand how the general gameplay works. You're very quickly shifted to play as Simon Belmont, the second in the Line of Belmont's in their quest to defeat Dracula, 30 years after his father died trying to defeat him. As you play as Simon, you'll thrice meet with a mysterious person who, you the player, will immediately recognize as Alucard. So far, nothing too special, but Simon's portion of the story ends with no final boss and a bit of a cliffhanger. Next you'll play as Alucard, seeing what he did while helping out simon. However, Alucard wakes up and stars asking how he became this way and what not. You'll very quickly understand that this is Simon's father, and Dracula's actual Son, now turned undead after dying trying to face him, but the story is going to string you along like you're too stupid to figure this very obvious fact out. Then, you'll face Dracula, and defeat him, but the story won't end. Now you play as Trevor Belmont on the first ever quest to defeat Dracula, culminating in Trevor's death, right before revealing that he is Dracula's son, only for Dracula to save him by making him undead. This whole story and mystery COULD have been really good, but it's ruined off the bat for two reasons. One, the game tells you, before you even get to play it, that Gabriel has a son who he doesn't know about that the Brotherhood hid from him so they could raise him to defeat his father one day. This kind of makes the mystery of what's going on moot, as it's already been answered. On top of this, the other mysteries that exist could still have been interesting, but they are so obvious and boring, that they can't make up for the ruined opening. On top of that, the ONE interesting mystery that is in the game is who is this guide that is helping the protagonists out. This is finally answered after you complete the game, and the answer is again, really boring. In the context of this game alone, it's pretty boring, because it turns out they are just a NPC McGuffin rather than something interesting. In the context of the rest of the series, it's too bad it wasn't someone pulling strings to set bigger things into motion. This game also has the gall to entice you to do 100% completion with a secret cinematic that takes place after the rest of the endings. I'll save you the time, it shows Dracula's castle crumbling and Alucard and Simon leaving it. Awesome waste of time and effort on my part. bottom line, I really like Lords of Shadows in general, but I hate this game.