Lords of Shadow was just baffling. Its interesting how both Capcom and Konami tried to outsource a beloved franchise to a foreign company at around the same time, and then trashed the fans and critics for the poor reception of their games. We usually think of Japanese companies as being conservative and respectful...
That was a weird time in gaming. Both were made during times when Japanese companies were (unfairly) getting slammed left and right constantly while Western companies could do no wrong (in spite of constant studio closures). It was like being back in the Reagan era where Japanaphobia ran rampant and thus anything indicative of Japan was looked down upon. The two games were run as essentially smear campaigns, painting critics as straw men and even saying how the old entries were never good in the first place. It's a weird tactic to take when marketing a title and it backfired.
I would say whatever the hell Ninja Theory was trying to with DMC was the weirder of the two, because the DMC series was still going strong with Dante being a gaming icon and DMC 4 being a critical and commercial success. The thing that was really head tilting was not only how the Tamtam (the director) was constantly getting into feuds on Twitter, but that the press actively bent over backwards to deflect criticism from NT. What. The. Hell? That was just odd and it made the resulting fallout of the game nosediving look embarrassing for the press.
As for LoS, Cox clearly had no clue what he was doing. His interviews were always bringing up the pre-SOTN entries, but he clearly didn't realize those entries were platformers, not hack and slash. The press gobbled up LoS, but it didn't last because by the time LoS 2 was rolling out the MetroidVania genre had cemented itself as a go-to template for indie studios, meaning that MercurySteam now had to deal with some serious identity crisis and the fact that their approach was obsolete. And we all know how that went down. Critical and commercial flop to be left in the dustbin of history and Cox is now a laughingstock.
At the end of the day, those incidents seem really uncomfortable now. They've both been used as industry punching bags while Dante continues to endure as a cultural icon and Iga had one of the biggest gaming Kickstarters in history while the Netflix series drew upon the classic Castlevania lore and aesthetic, not whatever the hell LoS was trying to do. The smears against Japanese devs from back then also look really uncomfortable now, especially considering how last year brought a MONSTER selection of Japanese titles like Nioh, Yakuza 0/Kiwami, Persona 5, Nier: Automata, Super Mario Odyssey, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Goes to show that chasing after trends is a fool's errand