Mixing classic Castlevania items with the orbs is a really fun idea but the relics are a bit useless and the combat sometimes gets a bit repetitive. I took a big break in the middle of the game and it felt realy nice to come back to.
I enjoyed my first time through the areas but it becomes a bit tedious to move through when you come back for secrets. Being able to go through the areas in any order you want is always appreciated. I also think the bosses have a better connection to their respective areas compared to other games in the series,which is neat.
I think Leon's design and lines are really cool, he might be my favourite Belmont.
Overall I enjoyed my time but I don't think the game excells at anything.

This game is pretty decent, but I think you have to get the correct mindset first to enjoy this game.

If played as a normal action game, this game might be decent, kinda repetitive, but still fun. Combo can get repetitive but it has a nice feeling to it. It also has a bit of simple puzzle to solve. Bosses are good, but not great, most of them are easy and in fact I actually only died once to a boss and that's to a super boss.

If played as a metroidvania (which this game is kinda), then it's pretty bad. The backtracking for item is abysmal, there's no teleport in between area so you have to walk/run back and forth. There's a teleport item which will either takes you to the starting area (of the entire game) or to the last save point, but they cost money.
Not to mention that walking speed feels a bit too slow for how big the map can be.
The cherry on top is that the optional item isn't even that useful or fun most of the time, there's ONE item that I like which is wolf's foot that can make you run and jump faster, and as far as I know, is the only ability that is essential in getting some optional items (apart from straight up key).

To sour the game even more, to use the wolf's foot (and any other RELIC), you need mana, but mana doesn't recover automatically when you go to a save room. You have to either use item or perfectly block an enemy attack (which is almost useless when dodging is a lot easier).
So... I barely use the wolf's foot anyway, or any other relic for that matter.

Lament of Innocence é um jogo que eu não esperava nada honestamente. É um dos Castlevanias que eu nunca tive o interesse de jogar direito mas PRINCIPALMENTE nunca tive uma maquina que pudesse rodar esse cara. Agora finalmente tentei e estou mais surpreso do que nunca.

Ele tem seus problemas graves de level design mas tirando isso, a gameplay é uma das melhores da franquia, conseguiram transmitir bem o estilo metroidvania para algo com um combate mais elaborado, o que ficou sensacional. As músicas, gráficos, histórias também tão incríveis então é um prato cheio.

A exploração é o mais paia, a navegação não é muito boa e é isso que impede esse jogo de entrar no panteão dos melhores da franquia pra mim, mas mesmo com isso, ele tá bem alto na lista hein!

Facilmente um dos títulos que mais me surpreendeu da franquia.
O primeiro jogo da cronologia de Castlevania definitivamente não decepciona, música e ambientação são lindíssimos, gráficos ótimos e uma história bem decente até.

O combate e o foco no mesmo foi bem colocado, temos vários golpes e o chicote nunca fica enjoativo de usar, mas não posso dizer o mesmo do level design. Infelizmente as salas são repetitivas e o backtracking é muito cansativo visto que Leon é um personagem relativamente lento e a exploração não é mais o foco.
Mas ainda sim, é um ótimo jogo.

Lament of Inoccence se queda a medio camino de trasladar la fórmula de Symphony of the Night a las tres dimensiones, teniendo escenarios divididos por áreas que quitan parte del encanto de lo que hacía tan especial al juego anteriormente mencionado. A esto tenemos que sumar algunas zonas sin mucha inspiración en el planteamiento del desafío, un combate bueno pero que pudo pulirse un poco más y lo monótono que se vuelve por momentos lo alejan de ser una obra que tuvo el potencial de ser una no perfecta, pero cuando menos sólida en su resultado final, ya que si bien cuenta con apartados excelentes como un estilo artístico mejorable, una de las mejores bandas sonoras de la saga en general, boss fights sencillas en cuanto al desafío que proponen pero no por eso menos disfrutables e incluso una evolución en la narrativa de la saga, en la cual la historia tiene un peso mayor en comparación de juegos anteriores. Estos apartados y otras virtudes que pueda tener este Castlevania se ven opacadas por no poder combinar sus elementos en un todo funcional.

I tend to kinda hate dropping games but holy shit this game is just so boring I can't take it anymore!

It has everything in the world going for it too, aesthetically and musically it really has such a strong presentation and vibe to it. Leon himself is an interesting character with some cool movement abilities for combat and the guard MP building deal is neat as a concept. It all just ends up feeling so wasted here though.

Like one of my biggest issues with this game is just how flat and boring the level design is and how copy and paste and repetitive the whole thing feels. I dig that you can approach things in a nonlinear order BUT everything is so boring and repetitive that the game just can't support anything else. The platforming is so basic and everything becomes so boringly copy and paste that after a certain point I just didn't wanna boot the game up again, I just knew I was done and had to tap out.

At least I can see the rawest line in the entire game whenever I want elsewhere instead like why didn't the whole game have this energy guys c'mon!

Lament of Innocence tries to combine the unique exploration style of its own predecessors while introducing fast-paced hack 'n slash gameplay from contemporary titles like Devil May Cry. Unfortunately, it fails to do either very well.

The exploration is slow and stunted due to dull, repetitive areas; an unintuitive and often unhelpful fast-travel system; and slow, stiff character movement. These combine to make traversal (and backtracking, which you will do an excessive amount of if you wish to get any items or upgrades whatsoever) a chore. Additionally, Lament includes some of the most cryptic, unintuitive, and sometimes outright opaque progression in the entire series (yes, including Simon's Quest). Although much of it is not necessary for game completion, it will lock the vast majority of players out of the actually fun and interesting aspects of the game's combat altogether.

The combat, while not completely boring, is too simple and repetitive to remain interesting for the game's already stretched length of about 10 hours (more if you go for 100%). You start the game with almost no combos (a detriment to a game of its style), and even once you do progress enough to unlock more, you realize that only one or two out of the already extremely limited supply are actually worth performing consistently. The camera is fixed in each room, meaning that if it's in a bad angle, you have no choice but to try to move to another part of the room to see the action better. The Relic system is also laughably underdeveloped, having only 6 options to choose from in the entire game, 3 of which will ever be useful; of these 3, none are unlocked without copious amounts of backtracking and cryptic nonsense. The saving grace is the legitimately fun and interesting mixture of classic sub-weapons (Daggers, Axes, Holy Water, etc.) and Orb powers, which combine to grant Leon many exciting abilities. The system is almost exactly like that of Harmony of Dissonance, making it a welcome return from another troubled Castlevania title. Unfortunately, some of the best and most interesting of these are, once again, locked behind the game's poor exploration.

The music, while legitimately good, starts to grate on you once it has looped for the 100th time on a stage. For as long as you will spend in each individual area picking your way through the same enemies in each cookie cutter room, there is a distinct lack of different music for different floors, sub-areas, etc.

The story is a mess, pulled in two directions by its archetypal nature and its new series lore. The majority of Lament is an uninspired narrative consisting of a young knight, aided by an old mentor, on a quest to save his girlfriend from a vampire (notably, not Dracula). While almost nothing about Rinaldo the Alchemist and Walter the Vampire is particularly compelling, Leon makes for a simple but effective protagonist, and the twists (one of which is extremely obvious) actually make the game's narrative stand out from its peers a bit.

Overall, Lament of Innocence, whether due lack of care or (much more likely) budget and time constraints, is a half-baked entry in the Castlevania series, but it is still far from the worst.

This game kind of owns actually. I was ready for jank (and there was some here and there, this is a pretty early PS2 game after all), but not nearly as much as I'd expected.

We're so used to the right stick controlling the camera in third person games like this now, but I honestly think Lament of Innocence makes a solid argument for letting it do other things sometimes. The directed camera did a perfectly good job 99% of the time and using the stick to navigate items and equipment mid combat instead added some fun friction to an otherwise fairly repetitive (though still enjoyable) combat system. Exploration is fun and will be familiar to players who have seen Castlevania map screens before, but can suffer at times from a slow movement speed with little to speed up traversal through larger sections.

The plot is mostly pretty silly, but had at least a couple of interesting twists and turns, and honestly a series taking inspiration from classic monster movies like Castlevania does can stand to be a bit silly, so it's a welcome vibe. The bigger problem is the larger twist at the end that seemed to come almost completely out of nowhere, and since this twist has massive consequences for the entirety of the series, it's disappointing how little weight it carries for the player in the moment with how little was done to set it up.

Overall though, this game shines as an early example of 3D combat that games like Devil May Cry would go on to refine and has plenty going for it as a transition into 3D exploration as well.