That, in that monster of a title, is the final officially released Metroid-like Castlevania game by Konami, and also the last one I hadn't beaten yet. After completing this (and Circle of the Moon last year), I've finally beaten all of them! And it was... not the WORST one I've played, I guess ^^;. As I understand is the case with the rest of the Lords of Shadow games, Mirror of Fate is hardly a 10/10 game, but it also isn't the worst thing ever despite being a rather unconventional Metroidvania. It was also originally a 3DS game, but it was ported to the Xbox 360 and PC with this HD release. It took me a little over 8 hours to 100% the game using an Xbox One controller on my PC on normal mode (you need to collect 100% of the collectibles to unlock the secret extra bit of the ending, which is boring and honestly not really worth it ^^;).

Mirror of Fate takes place after the original Lords of Shadow and explores the lives of Gabriel's descendants after he defeats the titular lords of shadow and becomes Dracula. His son, Trevor Belmont, and his grandson, Simon Belmont, (and even Aclucard) all make appearances in their own acts of this three act game. It certainly has an interesting core concept in how it handles this reboot: turning Castlevania into a family drama instead of some amorphous centuries old battle of good vs. evil, but it's also very boringly done. None of the character writing, dialogue, or even the flavor text is all that interesting at all despite the game clearly thinking that it's VERY interesting. It's only really noteworthy in how much potential the idea has, but even then the execution is so lackluster that it doesn't really matter.

The mechanics and design of the game are also flawed but interesting (but mostly flawed). While you CAN go back to older areas to use new abilities to hunt around for stuff, that really isn't the purpose of the game. Despite the fact that you CAN backtrack and there are some (fairly awkwardly placed) warp points, the game was clearly designed to be gone through one-way, so back tracking is quite slow and not very fun. This is also because the combat is like the combat in the proper Lords of Shadow game: it's like God of War. Enemies are way too spongey and take way too much punishment to kill, making combat a constant slog. Throw that in with just how little health you actually have, and combat is often quite frustrating rather than satisfying. The God of War spongey enemies simply don't work well in 2.5D compared to 3D.

The multiple playable characters is neat but not all that remarkable. All three characters have those Kratos-glaive-like whips (super ridiculous range) as well as two magic states you can toggle on and off on top of two sub weapons. Each character has a magic state geared towards defense, and one geared towards offense, but it's not terribly interesting. If anything, Simon's power to just simply convert his mana bar into an extra health bar trains you badly at how you should handle fights, so then when you get to Alucard's chapter things are suddenly way harder now that you don't have that anymore. The sub weapons also have very infrequent ammo at the cost of being far more powerful per hit, but I found myself barley using them until the very end of the game, and even then that was just to clear through more tanky enemies. The fighting does work fine enough, and the bosses (especially Dracula) are usually pretty good fun, but for normal enemies the combat feels boring more often than it feels satisfying or fun.

The platforming is also fine but nothing totally special. The graphics are fairly nice for what was once a 3DS game, but there are points where the visual style is too cluttered to obviously tell what is and isn't a platform, so I nearly fell into a pit once or twice because it had looked like the ground instead of like a pit. The jumping feels a bit floaty and weird, and the back-dash doesn't really feel like it goes back as far as it should, but those aren't unforgivable sins. The most annoying thing about the platforming is that about halfway into act 1 you get a hook shot sort of weapon that can grapple onto certain wall holds and ceiling tiles, but the range on that hook shot is entirely arbitrary to the particular grapple point. The grapple points tend to shine a certain way when you're close enough, but I found it often fiddly and weird, and the grapple points on walls weren't nearly well-distinguished enough from non-grapple wall holds, so there were a good few times I fell to my death (because bafflingly enough this game has fall damage) because I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to drop down instead of start rappelling off of the wall.

The presentation is also pretty "meh" at the end of the day. The in-game models look quite nice, especially for what was once a 3DS game. I'm honestly kinda interested to see how nice it looks on an actual 3DS. But there are also cutscenes done in this cell-shaded comic book style that, while not how the actual gameplay models look, looks absolutely hideous. They really should've went for 3D stills that really look like a comic book, because seeing these cell-shaded character models move and especially talk in herky jerky awkward ways is far more often unintentionally hilarious than anything else XD. The music is also just atmospheric orchestral stuff whose only meaningful quality is that it's VERY forgettable.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. It's not an outright awful game, and I wouldn't even say it's the worst Metroid-like Castlevania game (I still say that's Circle of the Moon), but it's a pretty weak entry in a genre increasingly filled with more and more all-time greats. If you MUST play every Castlevania game in this style, like me, or somehow already own it, you probably won't hate your time with the game, but it's also just so sorta average I can't recommend anyone not into Castlevania seeking it out willingly (or paying more than a couple bucks for it).