A really good action adventure game with a few flaws and some broken mechanics. Should be played!
Castlevania isn't as good as it could've been, but it is certainly not 7.5/10 bad.
The game features Gabriel who is on a journey to kill whoever might have had something to do with his poor Maries death. In this quest he will have to fight off the Lords of Shadow, that also seems to be taking over the world. The plot line is good enough in itself, but it somewhat fails because of the lacking intro to both Marie and Gabriel - what I mean is that the game could've been so much better if it had a cutscene/intro that explaine to us who they both are and what happend to Marie, and another point is that even though the game alludes to us that the Lords of Shadow are slowly taking over the world you don't really get the feeling of that at no point.
The gameplay of the game somewhat of a mixed bag. The combat is fluid and works wonderfully most of the time and yet I believe it could've been better - the blocking mechanism only occoured at random incidenses and some of the relic abilities was never really neseccerary to use because it was so much easier not to. What the combat ends up being is: smash square and triangle button accordingly to your situation and avoid enemies by rolling on L2. Most of the your relic abilities never really come in handy - except for "the ultimate shadow magic" - and some even comes off as plain annoying. The other abilities, as using knifes or hoy water are however good and can be used in different ways depending on the use of light and shadow magic. So even if the combat sounds as a smash-fest it's really not. I just would've wished that the other combat mechanics would've been better implemented.
Another important aspect of the gameplay is the climbing/jumoing mechanics that will be the main source of irritation during your game. It might just be me, but I had several issues the climbing part and it was mostly when I had to jump from on crack on a wall to another. It only gets worse if your under stress because the ledge you're on is about to break - at one time nearing the end of the game I litterly "game overed" because of an incredible stupid climing mechanism that forced me to climb around a corner - and for some reason when you do that, the control direction changes, so you have to know what direction button that will get you moving again - and because the ledges were broken I died several times.
It's these sort of problems that pleagues the game from time to time and it is distracting, because the game is otherwise good. The problems, however, are by no means game breaking, they're just annoying and some people might be better to cope with them.
There were a couple of times during the story I wished for Gabriel to have taken a break and give the story a chance to actually evovle, besides the story teller between levels, I wouldn't have minded knowing more about Gabriel, but that is only nitpicking and nothing big. The story in the game is overall good, not great, but good, There's a couple of twists, but they could've been fleshed out some more - again I'm only nitpicking.
What really makes the game feel epic, however, is the musical score. It's so good that it put games as God of War to shame. The music is dramatic without being annoying to listen to. I really liked it and I'm hoping that a potential sequal will use the same componist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8Uqy9L_xtk and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmUZ8B2pgAc&feature=related
It's easily one of the best aspects of the game and I'm litterily baffled why modern developers are so facinated by making the best graphical looking games when music and sounds are equally as important. It's far easier for a person (or at least me) to recognize a game because of it's musical theme than because of it's graphics and thus Castlevania: Lords of Shadows will, to me, be a game recognized because of it's music rather than its graphic.
Having said that the graphic in the game is by no means ugly. The game looks great if it wasn't because of ugly textures. The game will take the gamer through a lot of beautiful places and the graphics does a good job to enrichen the journey.
Overall it was a much better game than I had expected - I can't judge the game based on previous Castlevania games, but I did enjoy this one, despite the flaws.
I'm hoping there will be a sequal since this is definately a game that can improve and be a lot better.