I dived back into LoS1 (PS3) yesterday in order to finish it 100% (I still miss a lot of trials and hardest difficulty level trophies). It's not the first time I drop it and come back to it later, and it's incredible how the same exact flaws and tediousness come back to me like a wave of liquid excrement with the same exact smell and taste each and every time.
The game is terrible and a miserable experience for so many reasons. Here are some that really stick out every single time I play the thing:
- Fixed camera angles that force you to walk in all directions all the time, especially toward the screen, for no good reason, which make you want to scream "Please make this as short as possible so I can see again where I am going."
- Transitions between camera angles don't adjust the direction where you are going, so you are constantly correcting your stick because every few meters the camera changes and so does the north of the stick.
- Pointless, useless, boring, unintersting and incredibly slow climbing of old building and cliffs up and down, all the darn time. You will not believe how many times you will climb the same exact structure of cliff where you have to make a short L turn behind a waterfall (sometimes without a waterfall), and then jump to your back, and then go behind another short L turn.
- Fantastic key mapping that cannot be customised. For example, L2 that shares blocking and evading. Or climbing controls where you jump UP by pushing the stick up, and you jump down by pressing X. Also while climbing, jumping to your back does not require pushing the stick to the correct direction, but jumping sideways does.
- Collecting orbs to refill your blue/red gauge by pressing down the L3 and R3 stick respectively is a massive annoyance. Yeah they had no choice but to have 2 buttons for this, since orbs are neutral and fill a gauge depending on the button you press. Also, statues that refill your gauges require pressing both buttons and refill at a slow pace. It takes ages, especially when you have the extra gauge unlocked to its fullest potential. And of course checkpoints usually come just before a statue, so you will waste extra time every single time if you die and want to try again.
- QTE all the darn time. No comment. Miss a QTE and 25% of the enemy/boss HP comes back. It's really wonderful and I am sure everybody in the team was so proud of this decision. You can choose between "press any button at the right time" QTE or "mash the specific button as fast as possible" QTE. The QTE sometimes happen several times during battles at basically random moments that are not even aligned with something special going on on screen. It's absolutely miserable when you know that sooner or later, your fighting will be stopped and you will have to keep your eyes peeled for a shitty QTE or several shitty QTE chained together.
- Level design. This is enraging in some levels. You keep wandering like a complete idiot because you're not sure where to go. It happens basically all the time, even if the game is supposed to be straightforward and linear. The levels are littered with useless pieces of buidlings, vegetations, walls, rocks, roads that aren't roads, that you are constantly unsure where the hell to go. The first level in the land of the dead is a perfect example of this. The camera pans, sometimes, hinting you where to go, but there are places that look reachable which are out of bounds, and places where you have to go that sometimes will make you jump all over the place. There's also a 90 degree turn inside a cave with absolutely no hint whatsoever, where I get stuck every single time I play the level again.
- Unintersting combat with always the same few enemies and always the same exact QTE finish for the same type of enemy that feels like you are wasting 3x the time you really should.
- The action is stopped all the fecking time by useless cinematics and camera cues. All the time, all the time, all the time. It makes you want to rip your tongue out. Wanna skip? Sure, press pause, then left to select YES and confirm. There's a slight delay when you do this so most of the time you will end up pressing NO instead of YES. And for some reason, a cinematics that involve one or more QTE cannot be skipped, even when the last QTE has been done.
- The Catlevania theme is artificial, it feels stuck on with old tape that's falling off and lets you see the generic game that's behind. And so you're rollercoasting in this game where it's obviously not Castlevania, but they have to throw as many references as possible to try to satisfy your Castlevania-visuals hunger. Hey look, bats flying around. Hey look, a castle in the snow. Hey look, skeletons. Hey look, drawbridges. Hey look, you stab a vampire with a cross.
I could keep going on and on but hey, I am really sorry
this is a rant that needed to come out. I have spent WAY too much time playing this rubbish game. All my life I had been criticising IGA-made games, but now in 2025, I have no doubts that all the 2d Castlevania up to Order of Ecclesia are the way to go. Forget all the rest. When you're done with the real deal, and you are really itching for more Castlevania, try the others at your own risk (LoS1/2, LoI, CoD, Judgment). CV64 is my favourite entry in the series but I know it has a bad reputation so yeah, whatever.
Recent Posts
Home
Help
Login
Register