Board Thread:Castlevania Wiki General Discussion/@comment-112.205.32.143-20131119175516/@comment-5207274-20150405051123

While I do enjoy the new timeline to show a more human side of Dracula, I think Lords of Shadow (and Mirror of Fate) fails to deliver a "Castlevania" experience. One of great joys of Symphony of the Night and Curse of Darkness (my two favorite games of the series) was the idea of exploring a massive "open world" dungeon comprised of various stages. Castlevania's gameplay defined, alongside Metroid, a new type of dungeon crawling dubbed "Metroidvania" which is brilliant and very engaging.

Lords of Shadow, on the other hand, is simply another stupid generic God of War rip-off with very poor and repetitive gameplay and those very annoying QTE that no one really likes. Really, the game is not engaging AT ALL. I didn't finish the first one because I was bored as hell, I just wanted to see what happened to Gabriel. Then I got impatient and saw all cutscenes on Youtube. It is so infuriating it is sad that I couldn't enjoy this game when my expectations were really high when I heard Kojima was directing a Castlevania. But I was wrong.

Also, what I always liked about the Castlevania series was that even though the storyline was serious, the game had a lot of subtetly humor, with you still getting roasted chicken from walls and other references to the real world (something Curse of Darkness delivered very comically). Sure, adding that kind of humor would totally kill the vibe of the Lords of Shadow more serious plot, but honestly saying: Lords of Shadow is not a good Castlevania series. It is interesting, at least, but it's not a true Castlevania experience, because it doesn't feel like one. Was it a nice experiment to change pace? Sure was. But I really think they should go back to the roots, maybe keeping this new timeline and bring back the old gameplay, while keeping some gimmicks of the new series. I really like the whole idea of the Vampire Killer now being a more versatile weapon in the form of the Combat Cross. Maybe in a future game they could incorporate that again in a classic Castlevania-styled game.

Until that, Symphony of the Night and Curse of Darkness are my personal favorites, even though by the end you're reduced to grinding festivals. Personally I think the combat system in Curse of Darkness is the best one in the series. It is really intuitive, specially once you master dodging and perfect guarding. Lords of Shadow, on the other hand... It's classic button mashing.