Topic: Something(s) I thought Lords of Shadow 2 should have had more of.

[DragonSlayr81]

It's alright, but I'm still not a fan of the LoS-style of music, and never will be.

But to get back to your little blip regarding Vlad the Impaler, I REALL(really) want them to focus on him if they ever reboot the CV series again. No Gabriel, no Mathias, no bullshit "I'm some other unknown guy that BECOMES Dracula". No, make it Vlad. Just go all out and do it. And yeah, actually, since SotN(with the part where Death takes your equipment), seeing some of the impaled bodies actually made me WANT a CV game where you would enter an area with a whole bunch of impaled corpses around you. Twisted, sure, but I was basically WANTING this since 1997, and STILL haven't gotten it.

[Anglachel]

It was really one of the plot elements that I was looking forward to the most and am still confused as to why it didn't happen. Doesn't Armored Dracula look very similar to portraits of Vlad? The beard says it all.


Seeing him decimate Brotherhood soldiers and impale them one by one would have been a perfect Castlevania touch.

And speaking of the classic series, it seems like they gave him the same name and hinted that he was Vlad the Impaler but never truly confirmed it. Hints and references (like the room you encounter Death) seem thrown in here and there.

[Belmontoya]

I love it. LOS music in SCV4 style is great.

I felt the spirit of SCV4 music a lot in the LOS OST, so it's nice to hear something like that!

[Flame]

It was really one of the plot elements that I was looking forward to the most and am still confused as to why it didn't happen. Doesn't Armored Dracula look very similar to portraits of Vlad? The beard says it all.


Seeing him decimate Brotherhood soldiers and impale them one by one would have been a perfect Castlevania touch.

And speaking of the classic series, it seems like they gave him the same name and hinted that he was Vlad the Impaler but never truly confirmed it. Hints and references (like the room you encounter Death) seem thrown in here and there.

how about his character art?

http://s23.postimg.org/dyxqejjih/Dracul.jpg

it HAS the beard.

it feels to me, that when designing him for MoF and loS2, they decided to make him look still very much like Gabriel for association reasons, instead of going full out with a more dracula appearance like his art. He instead just looks like Gabriel gone shut-in for a few. (I mean thats what he is, but still)

also, i found this.

http://media1.gameinformer.com/filestorage/CommunityServer.Components.SiteFiles/imagefeed/featured/konami/castlevanialordsofshadow2/halloweentrailer/castlelos2_610.jpg

more missed potential speaking to the idea of Dracula Haunting Modern day European streets.

First Return to the Castle - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 OST


sorry guys but this track is incredible & fits right in with the series

as does this

Second Acolyte - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 OST

first hearing this in the overlook tower area, i think it was? blew my mind, it was just so fucking perfect. of course, parTICULARLY because of that sad violin. the child's voice makes it as well.

the underground gardens had a pretty damn fitting atmospheric track, that really felt kind of magical.

The Underground Gardens (Atmospheric) - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 OST

and of course, most of the boss themes, particularly Carmilla and Death, i thought were plenty good enough to be "Castlevania" tunes.

No, the music wasnt particularly a problem I had, and if anything its biggest crime is reusing music from MoF. That felt really lazy, no matter how much they re-orchestrated it. the music did overall feels I dunno, more lacking than LoS1.

[Anglachel]

Speaking of music, one track that I've never found is the music that plays when Satan is first speaking to Zobek. It also plays in the ending Resurrection DLC, when Gabriel shatters the Combat Cross.

When comparing the two musics, I find the 1st game to have better atmospheric music whereas 2 has better fighting music. I mean, Toy Maker is just a powerhouse (love those bells(?) that play around 0:30 in the background.)

The Toy Maker (Grand Battle) - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 OST

But in comparison, I find the best track from Lords 1 (atmospherically) to be Castle Hall. Sounds so perfectly grand and fitting for a Castlevania.

Castlevania Lords of Shadow Music - Castle Hall

[Flame]

Man LoS1 really DID have much better music.

then again, LoS1 had better everything.

Funny how that works no? in comparison to shit like loS2 and to a lesser extent, MoF, loS1 is a pretty damn amazing Castlevania isn't it?

I almost kind of wish they hadn't done the Dracula plot, and instead left it with the bittersweet ending. On it's own, as a self contained CV story, it would have been fine.

[Anglachel]

I agree with that, and it is a beast of a Castlevania, which is why I'm gonna be replaying it soon.

Not only is it better, it's so wild how DIFFERENT of a game it is from LOS2. It's like the second game feels like a ripoff of the first game rather than a true sequel, like the B-movie sequel.

Even then, I also think the Dracula ending on it's own worked pretty well too.

I did read somewhere Dave Cox said they thought that the first game wouldn't take off and so they put the ending in there thinking that, if things didn't work out, players would at least be able to use their imaginations about what happens.

But I still have never encountered an ending that got me more excited for a sequel.

So here's a toast to MecurySteam's masterpiece. 

[uzo]

Funny how that works no? in comparison to shit like loS2 and to a lesser extent, MoF, loS1 is a pretty damn amazing Castlevania isn't it?

No. It's sequel being shittier doesn't automatically make it stand with the rest of the franchise.

[darkmanx_429]

Almost all the concept art was missed opportunities at making the game greater than it could have been. Especially, after the superb first act of LOS2. If only Mercury Stream would of got their in-house shenanigans together...

Personally, the most fun I have had a with a "vampire" game (since Legacy of Kain) was Infamous:Festival of Blood.

I feel like if the game was made open world like that game LOS2 would of worked better.

[e105beta]

No, the music wasnt particularly a problem I had, and if anything its biggest crime is reusing music from MoF. That felt really lazy, no matter how much they re-orchestrated it. the music did overall feels I dunno, more lacking than LoS1.

Part of me thinks the music was originally composed for LoS2 and that it got "bumped down", so to speak, for early use in Mirror of Fate. Not that it really matters, but given the overall difference in quality between the LoS2 tracks and the MoF tracks, I find it to be more likely. MoF's soundtrack was pretty phoned in outside of a couple of tracks.

Ahh, well, what should LoS2 had more of? Well, more castle, and more Victor, and more ending. Honestly, LoS2 is one of those games I feel needed LESS of bad things, more than it more of good things. IMO, when it was good, it was great, like the castle and the combat, but then it got slogged down in so much bad. Take those things out and the good things would have filled their place if designed correctly. But I guess its all about perspective whether you need more of something or less of something else.

For example, it needed more pre-apocalypse. If I'm going to play in a future setting, I want to play Dracula dealing with being 1000 years displaced, but you don't, because that world goes to shit in the first 15 minutes of the game. So there was no stalking commoners, no sneaking around rooftops, no ambushing people in back alleys, just rat stealth through well-maintained hi-tech facilities to avoid un-killable guards, and battles against steam-punk police on the rooftops.  The fact that the "end of days" countdown started at the very beginning of the game killed a lot of tension. The game needed a traditional buildup where you go through the city, get familiar with it and how it works, then in the late-second act everything goes to shit, and you actually feel it because you knew the city before it went up in flames. There's real impact there. You feel the threat.

Instead of that we got this back-and-forth hi-tension, low-tension deal. One second demons are invading Castlevania city, and the next second Dracula is chit-chatting with Trevor. One second you have this great scene with Marie and this great boss battle with Carmilla, but then all the build up is thrown away and you're just roaming around a burnt out city again and Marie is never again to be seen. I'm supposed to feel threatened by Satan, but I don't, because nothing ever gets worse. It just stays at a "Hey, everything is kind of bad" tension level for the whole game, unless you're roaming around the Castle which, while the best parts of the game, actually killed any sense of tension. They want to tell two different stories, and they both suffer for it.

The game also needed more of a sense of power. They gave you some cool powers, like possession and transformation, but you never get to do anything cool with them. Ok, I'm Dracula and I get to posses things, but only if I can sneak up on them and only for a limited amount of time, and I don't get to do anything cool with them? Lame. And while getting pwned by Golgoth guards is fine when I'm weak, but when I'm strong let me turn the tables. Let me feel powerful! Power isn't about getting railroaded through a very specific set of steps, with minimal opportunity for mistakes, its about freedom. If I'm going to jump into a Golgoth Guard, I want to bazooka the shit out of people with him. Hell, Mercurysteam should have preemptively taken a page from Shadow of Mordor's book. I'm Lord Dracula. Let me dominate and command monsters for. You don't need to let me do it to all of them, to maintain the challenge, but give me an ability where I can temporarily restore my own army in battle. That would be awesome.

I also didn't need this bizarre dimensional plot to visit the castle. Some supernatural force raising up Dracula's Castle, a castle which he then has to go and reclaim to wield against Satan (if Satan HAS to be in the game), would have been a far better situation than the nebulous Dracula blood that's kind of your enemy but kind of not leaking into the real world maybe once? I dunno, it didn't make a lot of sense. So LoS2 needed more sense.

Also, more consequences! This goes back to the tension thing, but when I beat Inner Dracula, it meant nothing. There was no sign, gameplay or plotwise, that anything changed, at least not in any significant extent. Like, I conquered my Inner Evil and got wings? Woohoo... Same thing happened when Victor died. For being the last Belmont, his death meant absolutely nothing, and it did absolutely nothing. And all the fetch quests, like for the Mirror, ultimately amounted to nothing. Really you spent 20 hours doing a whole lot of nothing.

Finally, more Satan. If you're going to bring back the Prince of Lies, make the fight even more spectacular then the last! Like 4 phases of evil. Start with the dumb whale, then the Alucard fight, then a Satan fight, then a SUPER Satan fight, and then top it all of with a weakened Dracula against a Belmont, or a redeemed Gabriel against his own inner darkness. THAT would have been sick.

[Aiddon]

No. It's sequel being shittier doesn't automatically make it stand with the rest of the franchise.

Seconded; just because a sequel is crap does not make its predecessor retroactively good. Maybe better by comparison, but that's not the same as actually being good. I think the thing that always annoyed me the most about LoS was how Cox tried time and again to justify the drastic change in lore and gameplay by bringing up the pre-MetroidVanias. Except if you think about it for a moment you realize that's a complete and utter lie.

And this can best be argued with a simple question: in the original games, what is your worst enemy? Because for the majority of the game it isn't boss monsters or fighting. No, your worst obstacles are things like bats, Medusa heads, and pitfalls. When you get down to it the old 'Vanias were platformers and the fact that Cox and MS never realized that shows that they had no clue what the series was about.

[Dracula9]

Is it strange that above all the other crap in Lords 2, I wish that

(click to show/hide)

Satan had a more dramatic death sequence than simply falling over?

Also, uzo's right.

No. It's sequel being shittier doesn't automatically make it stand with the rest of the franchise.

You guys (not just specifically people in this thread, but the fandom in general) collectively lost your fucking minds when LoS1 came out, complaining for months on end about how it wasn't a true Castlevania. Now that it's gotten two subpar sequels, it's suddenly a masterpiece that fits the series?

Doesn't work like that. You can't have your cake and eat it too. I suppose this can be chalked up to fanbase desperation due to lack of quality official releases (similar to how the Megaman fandom, for a good part, thinks Unlimited is the most amazing fangame ever made, when the reality is Unlimited is absolute shit for being a five-year project), but that doesn't justify the sudden 180.

Don't get me wrong, I've always enjoyed LoS on its own. It's by no means a perfect game, but it was definitely made with love where visual tone and style was concerned (yeah, yeah good graphics don't make a good game, blah blah), and I can detach my nostalgia for Castlevania when playing it enough to enjoy it for what it is.

But starting, essentially, a series of online riots over the first game, then switching gears to praising it when it got shitty sequels, is a bit confusing.

[theplottwist]

Is it strange that above all the other crap in Lords 2, I wish that

(click to show/hide)

Satan had a more dramatic death sequence than simply falling over?

The whole Satan thing was a giant, messy crap. They made Satan himself buffer (for no apparent reason), they made you never fight Satan himself (for no apparent reason), they make Satan killable via Vampire Killer (for no apparent reason, and which could've been done in the first game), his death is utterly miserable (for no apparent reason). Satan doesn't feel like Satan. He doesn't feel threatening at all. Gabriel scared me much more than Satan, who's supposed to be the big shot.

Like e105beta put, this whole game is a giant amount of absolutelly nothings and no-apparent-reasons.

[Dracula9]

Don't even get me started on buffing him out. That was a fucking joke. It worked okay in the Darksiders series but doing it here just made him feel so non-threatening to the point of being laughable. He might have been a copout antagonist in the first game, but he definitely looked the part and felt menacing. Hell, I have more of an issue giving him regular bright blue eyes than the actual buffing out. HOW DO YOU MAKE THE ULTIMATE FORCE OF EVIL LOOK MORE INTIMIDATING? TAKE AWAY HIS PREVIOUSLY INHUMAN EYES AND GIVE HIM HUMAN ONES. Great plan, MS.

And butt wings don't do much to make a silhouette intimidating, either.

Ultimately I think MS was trying to sell the "Gabula's more powerful than Satan himself" aspect a little too much. Which makes zero sense, as unexplained gameplay elements take more effort than writing a decent fucking plot, but it's MS. Sense isn't a requirement on their application, apparently.

[VladCT]

Again, blame Alvarez. Guy got too cocky for his own good.