Revisiting Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate for the first time in almost 10 years and honestly I somehow dislike it EVEN MORE then back when I first played it.
Speaking as both a huge Castlevania AND Lords of Shadow fan...I don't like this game, I wish I did, but I just don't. The game was legit a chore to play through and considering it is super short and I completed it in one 8 hour sitting that honestly says a lot. I think if your game fails at the simplest form of enjoyment it's just not a good game.
Mirror of Fate is a game that at its core has an extreme identity crisis. It doesn't know whether it wants to be a 2.5D spectacle brawler like God of War or the original Lords of Shadow or a classic metroidvania style Castlevania experience and these two things are just so vastly different from each other that the design philosophies are constantly at odds and clashing with one another and it fails miserably at both. It sucks as a Lords of Shadow game and it sucks even more as a Castlevania.
The combat is a simplistic, shallow, pale imitation of the combat in the original Lords of Shadow. You'd think since you play as 3 different characters throughout the game it wouldn't be, but all of them play the exact same minus their different side weapons so the gameplay gets extremely boring and monotonous, so much so that in the final 3rd of the game I just started running past enemies because I wasn't having fun fighting them and honestly just wanted the game to be over. To make matters worse the controls of the game are some of the most unresponsive I've dealt with in awhile and that makes platforming segments just horrendous to go through.
Shout out to the awful level design of the castle as well which just does not feel coherent making backtracking feel like a complete chore and if I don't want to backtrack on your metroidvania you're doing something VERY wrong, not like it matters though because there's such little incentive to backtrack in the first place due to the very minimal secrets to find.
Also I'll be the first to say the OST in the original Lords of Shadow is spectacular, but this game's OST is extremely lacking because there's only really a couple new tracks, most of it is rehashed from the OG Lord's of Shadow and personally the bombastic film score style does not fit this type of game, it worked so well with Lords of Shadow thanks to how adventurous and cinematic the game was, but here it just sounds out of place.
I can give it 2 compliments and that's really all. It's a very pretty game especially for one that was originally a 3DS title and also I actually appreciate the story more nowadays and like how it brings Trevor, Simon and Alucard into the Lords of Shadow canon, it was an interesting take on the lore that helped to make Gabriel's character even more tragic.
However at the end of the day having pretty graphics and a solid story pale in comparison to the fundamentally flawed design of the gameplay for a game that is primarily focused on its gameplay and I could not in good faith ever recommend this game to anyone aside from hardcore Castlevania completionists who want to play every game in the series because it simply can't hold a candle to any of the classic Castlevania games on the GBA/DS or either of the 2 mainline Lords of Shadow games. This is honestly one of the worst Castlevania games ever made and I would rather play the N64 titles.
P.S. Anyone who thinks this game is the best of the Lords of Shadow trilogy simply for being a "Return to classic Castlevania formula" and "Actually taking place at a castle" is delusional because I'd much rather have a sprawling 3D adventure with well crafted linear levels than a downright awful, incoherent attempt at a metroidvania.
Speaking as both a huge Castlevania AND Lords of Shadow fan...I don't like this game, I wish I did, but I just don't. The game was legit a chore to play through and considering it is super short and I completed it in one 8 hour sitting that honestly says a lot. I think if your game fails at the simplest form of enjoyment it's just not a good game.
Mirror of Fate is a game that at its core has an extreme identity crisis. It doesn't know whether it wants to be a 2.5D spectacle brawler like God of War or the original Lords of Shadow or a classic metroidvania style Castlevania experience and these two things are just so vastly different from each other that the design philosophies are constantly at odds and clashing with one another and it fails miserably at both. It sucks as a Lords of Shadow game and it sucks even more as a Castlevania.
The combat is a simplistic, shallow, pale imitation of the combat in the original Lords of Shadow. You'd think since you play as 3 different characters throughout the game it wouldn't be, but all of them play the exact same minus their different side weapons so the gameplay gets extremely boring and monotonous, so much so that in the final 3rd of the game I just started running past enemies because I wasn't having fun fighting them and honestly just wanted the game to be over. To make matters worse the controls of the game are some of the most unresponsive I've dealt with in awhile and that makes platforming segments just horrendous to go through.
Shout out to the awful level design of the castle as well which just does not feel coherent making backtracking feel like a complete chore and if I don't want to backtrack on your metroidvania you're doing something VERY wrong, not like it matters though because there's such little incentive to backtrack in the first place due to the very minimal secrets to find.
Also I'll be the first to say the OST in the original Lords of Shadow is spectacular, but this game's OST is extremely lacking because there's only really a couple new tracks, most of it is rehashed from the OG Lord's of Shadow and personally the bombastic film score style does not fit this type of game, it worked so well with Lords of Shadow thanks to how adventurous and cinematic the game was, but here it just sounds out of place.
I can give it 2 compliments and that's really all. It's a very pretty game especially for one that was originally a 3DS title and also I actually appreciate the story more nowadays and like how it brings Trevor, Simon and Alucard into the Lords of Shadow canon, it was an interesting take on the lore that helped to make Gabriel's character even more tragic.
However at the end of the day having pretty graphics and a solid story pale in comparison to the fundamentally flawed design of the gameplay for a game that is primarily focused on its gameplay and I could not in good faith ever recommend this game to anyone aside from hardcore Castlevania completionists who want to play every game in the series because it simply can't hold a candle to any of the classic Castlevania games on the GBA/DS or either of the 2 mainline Lords of Shadow games. This is honestly one of the worst Castlevania games ever made and I would rather play the N64 titles.
P.S. Anyone who thinks this game is the best of the Lords of Shadow trilogy simply for being a "Return to classic Castlevania formula" and "Actually taking place at a castle" is delusional because I'd much rather have a sprawling 3D adventure with well crafted linear levels than a downright awful, incoherent attempt at a metroidvania.
Reviewed on Nov 08, 2022