Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate released originally back on the 3DS seven months ago and was billed as an ‘interquel’ with the setting taking place chronologically between Lords of Shadow and its upcoming sequel Lords of Shadow 2. The Lords of Shadow trilogy itself is a wild departure from the traditional and Japanese developed games of the series’ past. The game was made by a Western developer and it opted more for a Narrative driven experience and the gameplay was more brawler oriented. This game however decided to try its hand at emulating the Metroid”vania” gameplay that had dominated the series for a long time, seeing as the scope of the console version did not best fit the 3DS format. And now we have an HD version on consoles and eventually the PC, so no one can be left out. Perhaps this game is a tale best left ignored.

The setting takes place immediately after the events of Lords of Shadow, with the (spoiler alert) fall of Gabrielle into darkness and becoming Dracula. Before that happened, he had a son, who after growing up left to destroy Dracula and never returned. So the game starts with Trevor’s son Simon, and over the three acts you will play as two more characters: Although technically the other two are essentially one character in two different parts of their life. Although the previous game was narrative driven, this game is really lacking any story, at least one that could be considered interesting. This leaves the gameplay to pick up the slack.

While the game appears to emulate the Metroid”vania” sprawling platforming of its predecessors, the game’s combat still tries to play like it’s HD console brethren, and to middling results. While the control and framerate in the game has improved from the 3ds version, on the whole it’s not terribly exciting. Much like lords of Shadows, the game doesn’t get very interesting until close to the end of the third act. The problem with the acts though is that despite each character having their own abilities to traverse Dracula’s castle, you will be retreading through many of the same environments. This threatens to bore the player before they can complete the game’s average length of 9 hours. The game does have unlockable content, but it comes in the form of collecting enemy data cards…hardly worth replaying the game over for.

Outside of the slightly mediocre gameplay, the soundtrack sounds nice, but it’s very generic sounding orchestral music, and it seems to be present only 40% of the time. It’s a far cry from the exciting tunes the series is known for. The graphical style is also split between a more realistic looking graphics engine, and the Cell-shaded renders seen in the few cut-scenes that exist in the game to deliver the narrative. The game would have looked better with the cell-shading, as the HD upscaling doesn’t do the in-game engine any visual favors. While it does look cleaner, much like the 3ds version, many colors do not blend well with the background, which can lead to enemy hitting you because you couldn’t see their basic swipes. At least the stronger attacks are telegraphed and highlighted. The lip-syncing for the voice acting for the story bits also seems to be desynced.

This game seems to lack a strong identity, and its overall presentation just feels like the developers lacked any real kind of vision. At least Lords of Shadows 2 looks like it might deliver the quality that was lacking in this game. While it’s not bad, there are better games out there.

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