Story is great ,game play is pretty much puzzles are lame ,cam is bit buggy and combat is pretty boring

Larguisimo, repetitivo, interminable. Cuando parece que ya te lo sacaste de encima, tiene un epilogo que no termina mas. Buena musica, graficos buenos para la epoca en que salio, pero la jugabilidad bastante aburrida.

me encanta la jugabilidad del juego y la historia del mismo

Good game
Fun hack and slash with interesting puzzles
Mid story
6/10

Runs smoothly thru Steam with no crashes 24 Hours+ running 4k max 60 fps with like no dips (4080 RTX, Intel 13900k Windows 11 OS)

Just probably need a walkthrough to legit get all gems and upgrades.

Very good game

this game is kinda @ss im ngl lol

With shockingly short levels, boring combat, and meh graphics, this isn't worth more than $5

I beat the game at least twice and i really enjoyed it. At the last boss i had to lower the difficulty as start the fight with half health bar and empty "mana" was a bit too much for me. Overall great experience !

This is probably my favourite 3D Castlevania, for now at least.

It is a hack-n-slash which is said to be inspired by Castlevania Lament of Innocence, but stylistically and even in matters of gameplay it is easier to compare it to the classic God of War games; from the platforming, to the puzzles, combat, QTEs. Even in the aesthetics, your whip having that "projectile on a hilt" aesthetic of Kratos' Blades of Chaos than the more solid object whip model in Lament of Innocence.


I've seen common posts of people struggling with this game's combat, and since it's like the old God of War games, you'll get the stigma of it being a button masher. This comes from the instinctual desire of newbies to mash the attack buttons, which I suppose is the tempting thing to do when you're having to deal with managing hordes of enemies in a fast paced action game.

Albeit, this game can be punishing to players who play as such. To expand on this, I think this game is stricter than the old God of War games in trying to make the player engage with its' mechanics, though it does so in a potentially vexing manner to the impatient and uninitiated. Though first we must give credit where its' due: the game tries to ease the player into its' combat with plenty of basic mechanics being described concisely through its' collectable scrolls and unlockable combos' descriptions. This is straight forward enough, albeit feels like boring busywork, so impatient players who don't engage so easily may quickly reject the game in a manner that is comical if we consider how generous with information the game can be. Yet some aspects can in fact be elusive. Aerial combat can be tricky to understand, it can seem too risky with the way it punishes you in certain scenarios. This comes from the game wanting players to engage with the dodge roll and parry mechanics as opposed to staying constantly airborne.

Not all of your tricks will work in all situations, and the early game can be grating especially due to the player not having access to certain relics like the Dark Gauntlet (which enriches the aerial combat) until later, so players may bounce off the game's way of teaching them. Though, it is always important to try different combos, alternate between quick button presses and held down inputs. It is also important to use the sub weapons, as they can be tempting to write off, though their effects can make a big difference in varied scenarios.

I found the combat to be mostly fun throughout the main story and DLC, alternating between direct attacks and area attacks based on my intent made sense.

The platforming takes a backseat to the combat here, a tradition continued from the PS2 Castlevania titles. It was only the Nintendo 64 Castlevania games which got closest to achieving the platforming and combat equilibrium of the classic titles, and those were also probably the purest and most original of the "3DVanias", also pretty fun given their age.

Nonetheless, even if the platforming isn't the star of the show here. I still believe it fair to give it some merit, especially since the previous 3D Castlevania game, titled "Curse of Darkness" went for the bewildering approach of omitting the platforming entirely.

The use of the Combat Cross to swing across and scale various gaps and walls was typically well implemented and felt appropriate to the Castlevania brand while maintaing its' own style. When you look back at its grappling abilities in Super Castlevania IV and Castlevania Bloodlines and compare, it's clear Gabriel is as capable as any Belmont or other vampire hunter at versatile use of the Vampire Killer.

There may be problem with overuse of ledge climbing and being too derivative of its' inspiration, but it still takes time to give platforming its' due. In later parts we can especially see greater focus on platforming. The Clockwork Tower featured some solid platforming, given this game's quirks and limitations. The cyclone boots and seraph shoulders relics are used in unison in the game's latter half to provide plenty of 'running start-double jump' leaps over great gaps.

This is not to absolve the shortcomings of this game's platforming. The Nintendo 64 Castlevania games still felt more naturally attuned towards a platforming experience despite being over a decade older. Likewise, this is too far removed to be considered an approximation of the classic style games, which are the paramount examples of the Castlevania series' distinct platforming style.


The game also uses fixed camera angles frequently, I almost never found this to be a real issue. The locked camera angles of Castlevania Lament of Innocence and the Lock-on system of Castlevania Curse of Darkness were much more problematic in feeding the player relevant information, especially during busy fights. While the limitations of Lords of Shadow's camera felt better at encouraging the player to pay attention to the environment and to try and explore, I never felt it impeded the combat.

I also much preferred Lords of Shadow' environments, they never felt like the massive empty room problem we had in the PS2 titles. Navigating through areas was quick.


Of course, Lords of Shadow like any honest 3D Castlevania had to have its' fair share of frustrations, and typical shortcomings of evolving the 3D Castlevania experience.

Unlike the 2D Castlevania games, which felt mostly natural at evolving the series, we can see that 3D Castlevania is burdened by the malady of growing pains. It's as if its' cursed to take two steps forward, one step back with each game.

For me, Lords of Shadow's specific focus on certain mythology and fantasy was a turnoff. It still features plenty of gothic horror, but the Universal horror movie style feels absent here. Not a Medusa head to be found here. Skeletons appear in the game, but quite late and they are somewhat uncharacteristic of what we might expect from this series.

There is also the issue of the game feeling tedious, towards the last quarter especially. There's just too many missions, weird pacing, and repetition. The game's first 2 bosses are an Ice Titan and a Stone Titan, we've seen the Koraton boss and various golems in other Castlevania games so it's fitting to see such a monster. Yet, there was no need to have such similar bosses one after the other. These should have been combined into a single two-phase boss fight. Stuff like that made the first half of the game uninspired.

The boss fights in general were odd here. My favourite might ironically be the Evil Butcher, who's pretty irrelevant story-wise but it felt like there was more going on with him than in some of the more generic slug fests that the game offers.

Another thing I didn't love was how awkward the QTEs felt. There's some games that can do QTEs and make them feel satisfying, but this game's brand of press any button when the white traffic light flashes felt tacky and unfulfilling.

Despite all that, I still would come away with a game I enjoyed. The first 9 chapters genuinely had some good ideas with adequate combat, puzzles and platforming, and the story while cliche and technically just window dressing, still had some okay twists to it that felt like it was trying something.

Though, the shortcomings aren't just a case of struggles to adapt Castlevania to 3D, but also a sort of diluting effect the series seems to be subjected to when trying to grow broader appeal or explore new ideas.