Bare with me, this is a very long review because this game is very special to me. If you take the time to read it all I greatly appreciate it, but if you don't that's fine too.
Over the last couple days I played through this game for the first time in almost 10 years since it is now available through PS NOW PS3 streaming. I'm probably one of the few hardcore Castlevania fans to have this opinion, but I have a deep love for Lords of Shadow (Just the first game, we don't talk about the sequels) and it has always been a personal favorite of mine so I wanted to see how well it holds up and even 12 years later it is still better than most games that come out nowadays as far as I'm concerned.
The setting of Lords of Shadow takes place in the year 1047 during an apocalyptic event known as "the end of days" where the Earth's alliance with the Heavens has been severed by a malevolent order known as the Lords of Shadow who have casted a dark spell which has trapped the souls of the dead in limbo and stopped them from reaching paradise while also conjuring evil creatures to lay waste to the Earth and its people.
We follow the story of Gabriel Belmont, a member of the Brotherhood of Light, a holy order of elite knights who protect and defend innocents against the supernatural creatures of the night. Guided on his journey by his recently murdered wife Marie who is trapped in Limbo and Zobek the oldest member of his order who acts as his mentor and friend, Gabriel sets off to defeat the Lords of Shadow to claim the God Mask, an ancient relic with unfathomable power said to even be able to resurrect the dead which Gabriel hopes to use to bring back his beloved Marie.
I can not express how much I love the story of Lords of Shadow into words, it is a tragic epic that really evokes classical literature in its timeless philosophical "balance between light and darkness" themes and its emotional core. This is a dark and mature story that is all about the sacrifices one is willing to make all in the name of love and the depths they will go to for the sake of revenge and if they can still be redeemed when all is said and done and I just think it's a very beautiful and relatable story.
A big part of what makes the narrative for Lords of Shadow so convincing and compelling is the incredible voice acting from an all star voice cast of big Hollywood actors which I still consider to be one of the absolute best among all video games to this day. From the one and only Sir Patrick Stewart as Zobek and the narrator to Jason Isaacs as the literal biblical fallen angel Lucifer himself and the show stealing performance from Robert Carlyle as Gabriel which really adds this extra layer of humanization to his character this is just some of the best voice acting around. The cast themselves even made their own contributions to the characters while recording due to their love of the script and it really shows in their performances.
When it comes to gameplay Lords of Shadow is well known for being a God of War-like and I won't deny it, it definitely has a lot in common with God of War. They're both third-person action-adventure games with fixed camera angles, focused around gory combo-based combat featuring a vast variety of upgradable weapons and skills, platforming, puzzles and cinematic boss fights that utilize a gratuitous amount of QTEs, but like...It does everything God of War does and it does it just as well so I really don't care that it is a copy.
However I will say Lords of Shadow adds in some unique flavor of its own with the Light and Dark Magic system which is both symbolic and fitting for the overall themes of the game, but also just an incredibly fun gameplay mechanic which adds an extra element of strategy to the fights since your primary healing source is your Light Magic and your Dark Magic is a damage buff and your main source of replenishing them is the focus meter which only increases if you don't get hit in combat. Therefore you have to learn when to use or when to save magic and this system constantly tests your reflexes, especially on the harder difficulties. One other thing Lords of Shadow differs in from God of War is how it is structured into a replayable mission based format much like Devil May Cry.
Visually Lords of Shadow is a breathtaking game with impeccable art direction that really captures the grandiose adventurous style the game goes for, from lush fairytale like forests to snowy mountains, gothic castles and deserted lands of the dead you'll visit a variety of unforgettable vistas on your journey which still look graphically impressive even 12 years later.
The bombastic cinematic score composed by Óscar Araujo utilizing a 120-piece orchestra really gives me vibes of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings score and it perfectly captures the feeling of travelling across the world on an adventure. While Michiru Yamane is one of my fave composers in all of video games and her tracks are much more individually memorable I just can't picture her type of baroque/neoclassical music over this game due to its cinematic nature and I think the film score style OST fits much better and helps with the epic atmosphere Lords of Shadow conveys.
What Lords of Shadow lacks in originality it more than makes up for it with a truly beautiful story alongside a top notch voice cast, tight and addictive gameplay with tons of depth plus stunning visuals and a bombastic score that enhances the atmosphere and when all is said and done that makes it stand side-by-side with the best the action-adventure genre has to offer and it still outclasses most games made even 12 years later.
P.S. The only reason this game gets shit is because it did something from the norm of Castlevania, if this would've been a new IP and didn't have the Castlevania title attached to it, I think it would've been a massive success...Or it would've flopped because the whole reason the Castlevania name was even attached was for marketing reasons and it clearly worked since Lords of Shadow is the best selling game in the series regardless of the reception it got from fans.
Over the last couple days I played through this game for the first time in almost 10 years since it is now available through PS NOW PS3 streaming. I'm probably one of the few hardcore Castlevania fans to have this opinion, but I have a deep love for Lords of Shadow (Just the first game, we don't talk about the sequels) and it has always been a personal favorite of mine so I wanted to see how well it holds up and even 12 years later it is still better than most games that come out nowadays as far as I'm concerned.
The setting of Lords of Shadow takes place in the year 1047 during an apocalyptic event known as "the end of days" where the Earth's alliance with the Heavens has been severed by a malevolent order known as the Lords of Shadow who have casted a dark spell which has trapped the souls of the dead in limbo and stopped them from reaching paradise while also conjuring evil creatures to lay waste to the Earth and its people.
We follow the story of Gabriel Belmont, a member of the Brotherhood of Light, a holy order of elite knights who protect and defend innocents against the supernatural creatures of the night. Guided on his journey by his recently murdered wife Marie who is trapped in Limbo and Zobek the oldest member of his order who acts as his mentor and friend, Gabriel sets off to defeat the Lords of Shadow to claim the God Mask, an ancient relic with unfathomable power said to even be able to resurrect the dead which Gabriel hopes to use to bring back his beloved Marie.
I can not express how much I love the story of Lords of Shadow into words, it is a tragic epic that really evokes classical literature in its timeless philosophical "balance between light and darkness" themes and its emotional core. This is a dark and mature story that is all about the sacrifices one is willing to make all in the name of love and the depths they will go to for the sake of revenge and if they can still be redeemed when all is said and done and I just think it's a very beautiful and relatable story.
A big part of what makes the narrative for Lords of Shadow so convincing and compelling is the incredible voice acting from an all star voice cast of big Hollywood actors which I still consider to be one of the absolute best among all video games to this day. From the one and only Sir Patrick Stewart as Zobek and the narrator to Jason Isaacs as the literal biblical fallen angel Lucifer himself and the show stealing performance from Robert Carlyle as Gabriel which really adds this extra layer of humanization to his character this is just some of the best voice acting around. The cast themselves even made their own contributions to the characters while recording due to their love of the script and it really shows in their performances.
When it comes to gameplay Lords of Shadow is well known for being a God of War-like and I won't deny it, it definitely has a lot in common with God of War. They're both third-person action-adventure games with fixed camera angles, focused around gory combo-based combat featuring a vast variety of upgradable weapons and skills, platforming, puzzles and cinematic boss fights that utilize a gratuitous amount of QTEs, but like...It does everything God of War does and it does it just as well so I really don't care that it is a copy.
However I will say Lords of Shadow adds in some unique flavor of its own with the Light and Dark Magic system which is both symbolic and fitting for the overall themes of the game, but also just an incredibly fun gameplay mechanic which adds an extra element of strategy to the fights since your primary healing source is your Light Magic and your Dark Magic is a damage buff and your main source of replenishing them is the focus meter which only increases if you don't get hit in combat. Therefore you have to learn when to use or when to save magic and this system constantly tests your reflexes, especially on the harder difficulties. One other thing Lords of Shadow differs in from God of War is how it is structured into a replayable mission based format much like Devil May Cry.
Visually Lords of Shadow is a breathtaking game with impeccable art direction that really captures the grandiose adventurous style the game goes for, from lush fairytale like forests to snowy mountains, gothic castles and deserted lands of the dead you'll visit a variety of unforgettable vistas on your journey which still look graphically impressive even 12 years later.
The bombastic cinematic score composed by Óscar Araujo utilizing a 120-piece orchestra really gives me vibes of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings score and it perfectly captures the feeling of travelling across the world on an adventure. While Michiru Yamane is one of my fave composers in all of video games and her tracks are much more individually memorable I just can't picture her type of baroque/neoclassical music over this game due to its cinematic nature and I think the film score style OST fits much better and helps with the epic atmosphere Lords of Shadow conveys.
What Lords of Shadow lacks in originality it more than makes up for it with a truly beautiful story alongside a top notch voice cast, tight and addictive gameplay with tons of depth plus stunning visuals and a bombastic score that enhances the atmosphere and when all is said and done that makes it stand side-by-side with the best the action-adventure genre has to offer and it still outclasses most games made even 12 years later.
P.S. The only reason this game gets shit is because it did something from the norm of Castlevania, if this would've been a new IP and didn't have the Castlevania title attached to it, I think it would've been a massive success...Or it would've flopped because the whole reason the Castlevania name was even attached was for marketing reasons and it clearly worked since Lords of Shadow is the best selling game in the series regardless of the reception it got from fans.