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.