On the whole, I liked the game. The music was fantastic, but Oscar Araujo is always fantastic, the combat was smooth and engaging and the voice acting is very solid in spite of occasional moments of ham fisted dialogue.
Stuff I really liked:
- The Castle. Visually it was just fantastic. Vibrantly coloured without compromising the whole horror Gothic aesthetic.
-The Toymaker's Puppet Show. This was hands down one of the best pieces of storytelling I've seen done in a game, if that quality had persisted throughout the final part of the main story it would have been epic.
-Inner Dracula - This was eerie and creepy and all kinds of claaasssss! Awesome soundtrack to the boss fight too.
-Victor. Really wish he'd stuck around a bit longer. Loved how he used all of the old Lords of Shadow Relics, nice touch.
-Combat is a joy. I've always loved the combat in the LoS series, lifted from GoW and Lament of Innocence as it is, it's just immensely fun to take on enemies.
-Boss Fights. Good boss fights have sort of been the hallmark for the LoS games, and it continued in this.
- Certain parts of the city were beautiful. I love the interior of the church you fight Victor in, I love looking up at the Cathedral from the streets in the Arts District, love shifting the camera to look out over the city from high vantage points. Certain parts of the city were a tad bland, mostly the underground bits but hey, undergrounds aren't appealing in real life, and I thought they did a good job with making a Castlevania style urban setting.
-Knight Scrolls/Memorials. These have always been on of my favourite little story elements in the games, was happy to see them continued and expanded on a little more.
Chupacabra - Eh, I just like the little guy in spite of his headwrecking thievery
Stuff I disliked
- Lack of variation between weapons. I wasn't expecting each weapon to have entirely different moves and mechanics, but it irked me that they had so many identical moves that were just renamed. The whip, void sword and chaos claws all had a guillotine move for example, and while the move is badass and effective, I would've liked a little variation or different effect for each weapon. To be honest, this was more of a minor peeve because I enjoyed the combat enough that on the whole I probably wouldn't have given a feck if we'd just been given the whip
- Golgoth guards. It made sense that you couldn't fight them in the beginning, fair enough, Dracula's weakened. It made no sense that the Prince of Darkness who, earlier in the game wiped out an entire army single handedly and now having regained his powers had to continue to sneak around them and not just plough through them for a short cut. The stealth sections would have bothered me much less if they'd given a reason for why Dracula had to continue to be sneaky, instead of just kicking ass.
- Dracula impaling Carmilla with his giant metal phallus. I thought it looked ridiculous and could only have been made more overtly sexual if Drac had done a crotch chop and shouted "Suck it!" afterwards. I know Carmilla's been the seductress and there's huge sexual undertones with vampires anywho, and it's probably playing off that, but it just looked stupid to me, I can't really put my finger on what it was about it that bothered me, just thought it would have been better if he'd impaled her through the heart for the whole, vampire finally put to rest connotations or something. It just seemed out of place and very hurrhurr
-The ending. Seriously anti-climactic. The lack of a fight with actual Satan would have been forgiveable had there been some sort of satisfactory substitute for it, even just some sort of dramatic tragic thing like Gabriel killing Alucard to get rid of Satan. Instead it just felt sort of "Oh...Satan's dead now...". There was also the total 180 on Dracula's part from wanting to die to suddenly being apparently content not to, with no real explanation. The story up to that point lead me to believe that if Dracula would choose his family, that meant he would choose to die and be at peace with them at last in the afterlife or what have you, instead of choosing to continue terrorising the world as vampiric blood and nature are urging him to do. The ending just brushed over that, methinks and didn't really resolve it. Does this mean that Dracula's choice was to continue haunting the world? Does it mean he and Alucard are going to be a good ol' family and go to Church every Sunday...evening of course? It also totally neglected Alucard's feelings about his vampirism. I know he's come to terms with it by the time the game takes places but he spent the whole thing also wanting his immortality to end. Grah! The whole ending just makes me go in circles.
