Topic: Lords of Shadow, 6 years later

[KaZudra]

Rugal appeared here to trash this game again, like I expected, good.

Rejection is what validates our existence, I just wish he could find ONE good thing about it.

[Lelygax]

I don't think Rugal have played it, but I know he didn't need to. To be honest I hate what LoS did to this franchise as much as him I think, only difference is that I ain't as vocal as him about it and I will give it a try sometime because I'm kinda masochist. Its really a shame that he doesn't post as much as before.

@zangetsu: Ironically, I like to play as Vega too since Street Fighter 2, but I suck playing as him on Street Fighter 4 because of his special combo finish move, its hard to do it.

[Claimh Solais]

...That was a glorious remix.

Its really a shame that he doesn't post as much as before.

To be fair, there isn't a whole lot to talk about lately. LoS was the major thing to talk about on this board over the last few years, and with the last game having come out two years ago, that topic has pretty much lost its steam. News on Bloodstained is sparse, so the topics that come from that are pretty few and far between. That just leaves us with What-If, speculation, and Pachinko topics, and we pretty much burned through all those, too.

[Lelygax]

...That was a glorious remix.

Well... its SiIva after all xD

To be fair, there isn't a whole lot to talk about lately. LoS was the major thing to talk about on this board over the last few years, and with the last game having come out two years ago, that topic has pretty much lost its steam. News on Bloodstained is sparse, so the topics that come from that are pretty few and far between. That just leaves us with What-If, speculation, and Pachinko topics, and we pretty much burned through all those, too.

Well thats kinda true, but I think there is more material that happens to appear from time to time, like castlevania clones being discovered or fangames being created. Its kinda sad because it looks as if we were this franchise last defense before it vanishes into oblivion. Hopefully Bloodstained will bring more varied topics when it launches and maybe even open Konami eyes (later is kinda hard).

[Claimh Solais]

Well... its SiIva after all xD

I have no earthly idea who that is. lol

Well thats kinda true, but I think there is more material that happens to appear from time to time, like castlevania clones being discovered or fangames being created. Its kinda sad because it looks as if we were this franchise last defense before it vanishes into oblivion. Hopefully Bloodstained will bring more varied topics when it launches and maybe even open Konami eyes (later is kinda hard).

Yeah, definitely hoping for some news on Bloodstained, something substantial that'll keep a conversation going. Definitely will be happening once the game releases, but we're over a year off at the very least on that.

It's a real shame such a classic franchise is being mostly relegated to slot machines and pachinko. Even though LoS2 was mostly a disaster, I'd still gladly take a fourth one over what we're currently getting.

[Rugal]

I've played Lords of Shadow 1 all the way through. I played the Mirror of Fuck demo until I fell from a high spot and got hurt from it.. In a god damn Castlevania game. As soon as that happened, I uninstalled it.

Vega is my favorite Street Fighter character. I made 97th place at Evo with him this year out of like 5k entrants.

[KaZudra]

I have no earthly idea who that is. lol

You're in for a GRAND Time!

[TheTextGuy]

You're in for a GRAND Time!

Shocking.  It's a stunning edge of a video game rip indeed.

[zangetsu468]

Vega is my favorite Street Fighter character. I made 97th place at Evo with him this year out of like 5k entrants.

That's great mate, good on you. 

[uzo]

Oh my God; Gax and Rugal won this thread. Up-votes for all.

[Flame]

I've played Lords of Shadow 1 all the way through. I played the Mirror of Fuck demo until I fell from a high spot and got hurt from it.. In a god damn Castlevania game.

Well, pitfalls in classicvanias were also really high drops :^)))))

[zangetsu468]

Well, pitfalls in classicvanias were also really high drops :^)))))

High drops could kill in CV64 if it was a pit, or kill if you'd already lost hp and it was a really long fall. I didn't have an issue, but CV 64/LOD were more realistic. It's a bit odd in a 2d game, where often you try to fall to save time moving through the area.

[Darth Cariss]

Yeah, LoS series is pretty bad. It has some decent qualities, I like the cast, and the references to previous games are amusing, but I'm already pretty sour most of the time on the 3D 'vanias and this one doesn't help with that viewpoint. My favorite LoS game is Mirror of Fate for sure, but I will say that I only played the HD version (I heard the original 3DS version was garbage so I skipped it back when it came out). I expected it to suck super hard so I was pleasantly surprised that it was a decent Castlevania game, though still much weaker than any of the IGA 'vanias of course.

I did enjoy how totally insane LoS2 was, in that "so bad it's good" sort of way. There was a point where I was battling against jetpacking riot police that I was like "what the hell am I even playing?" and started laughing. Played them all only once, they weren't good enough to be worth a round 2.


I don't mind there being alternate Castlevania universes and side stories, I think it mostly just bothers me that Lords of Shadow meant the end of the IGA games, which I was a huge fan of. As its own thing if it had only been a supplement I might've looked back on these games more fondly as an experiment, but as they pretty much represent what is seemingly the end of the Castlevania series at this point (though I have no doubt there'll be a reboot eventually), it leaves a pretty poor taste.

[Intersection]

Six years can go a long way in changing your perspective on things.

When I first started posting here, I was too busy despising Lords of Shadow to really give it a chance to entertain me. As a long-time fan of Igarashi's games, I was up in arms from the day LoS was announced: I didn't like what the game stood for, I didn't like the way it was being touted as a "reboot", and I especially didn't like what it meant for the future of the series: IGA sidelined, Castlevania shoehorned down the God-Of-War reboot path with an unknown developer. So when I actually got to playing it, it's no surprise I was disgusted: it wasn't the game I wanted to play, it fit none of the "standards" I had in mind for the franchise, so I naturally dismissed it as crap in as little as a few hours.

The next two games, at first, didn't exactly help change my sentiment: Mirror of Fate was a rookie and mostly excusable try at a 2D platforming game from a developer who had never really made one, and we all know how much of a mess Lords of Shadow 2 was. But after dejectedly abandoning LoS2, and dusting off my copy of LoS just to see if it was really any better than I remembered, I actually found myself having... fun. You see, Lords of Shadow ended up scratching an itch I didn't realize I had, because in retrospect the game has a whole lot going for it - most of which I glazed over trying to find a Metroidvania game in something that obviously wasn't.

Nowadays, I find myself resenting the way Lords of Shadow was marketed far more than I do the game itself. LoS happened to be a very promising hack'n'slash title that got mispackaged and thrown into the wrong franchise. Had it been released on its own, it would've probably been seen as a homage to Castlevania on the whole - it's packed with enough of that gothic aesthetic to make any Castlevania veteral feel at home. But for me, that's where the comparisons should've ended.

Look, the game itself is startlingly beautiful and imaginative; it's absolutely crammed with content that always oozes effort, even if it isn't all great; it has a simple, elegant combat system that never stops being challenging; and it comes with a good story to boot. I still find myself revisiting Lords of Shadow every once in a while, because you can tell pretty much throughout that the devs really wanted you to be impressed and have fun, even if they didn't always know what they were doing - and I'm humble enough to appreciate that. It's a telltale sign that a developer has some good, hardworking people behind it, even if their direction ends up screwing the sequel.

In short, I just feel like the original Lords of Shadow wasn't really a Castlevania game because it never really tried to be; the people at MercurySteam evidently wanted to do their own thing, and to their credit they actually did it pretty well. They just didn't make the Castlevania we were all expecting - and in a way they don't deserve all of the bitterness the game has seen over the years.

Because to be honest, if anything deserves that kind of bitterness, it's Konami.

[zangetsu468]

Six years can go a long way in changing your perspective on things.

When I first started posting here, I was too busy despising Lords of Shadow to really give it a chance to entertain me. As a long-time fan of Igarashi's games, I was up in arms from the day LoS was announced: I didn't like what the game stood for, I didn't like the way it was being touted as a "reboot", and I especially didn't like what it meant for the future of the series: IGA sidelined, Castlevania shoehorned down the God-Of-War reboot path with an unknown developer. So when I actually got to playing it, it's no surprise I was disgusted: it wasn't the game I wanted to play, it fit none of the "standards" I had in mind for the franchise, so I naturally dismissed it as crap in as little as a few hours.

The next two games, at first, didn't exactly help change my sentiment: Mirror of Fate was a rookie and mostly excusable try at a 2D platforming game from a developer who had never really made one, and we all know how much of a mess Lords of Shadow 2 was. But after dejectedly abandoning LoS2, and dusting off my copy of LoS just to see if it was really any better than I remembered, I actually found myself having... fun. You see, Lords of Shadow ended up scratching an itch I didn't realize I had, because in retrospect the game has a whole lot going for it - most of which I glazed over trying to find a Metroidvania game in something that obviously wasn't.

Nowadays, I find myself resenting the way Lords of Shadow was marketed far more than I do the game itself. LoS happened to be a very promising hack'n'slash title that got mispackaged and thrown into the wrong franchise. Had it been released on its own, it would've probably been seen as a homage to Castlevania on the whole - it's packed with enough of that gothic aesthetic to make any Castlevania veteral feel at home. But for me, that's where the comparisons should've ended.

Look, the game itself is startlingly beautiful and imaginative; it's absolutely crammed with content that always oozes effort, even if it isn't all great; it has a simple, elegant combat system that never stops being challenging; and it comes with a good story to boot. I still find myself revisiting Lords of Shadow every once in a while, because you can tell pretty much throughout that the devs really wanted you to be impressed and have fun, even if they didn't always know what they were doing - and I'm humble enough to appreciate that. It's a telltale sign that a developer has some good, hardworking people behind it, even if their direction ends up screwing the sequel.

In short, I just feel like the original Lords of Shadow wasn't really a Castlevania game because it never really tried to be; the people at MercurySteam evidently wanted to do their own thing, and to their credit they actually did it pretty well. They just didn't make the Castlevania we were all expecting - and in a way they don't deserve all of the bitterness the game has seen over the years.

Because to be honest, if anything deserves that kind of bitterness, it's Konami.

There's a lot of truth to this post.

When the game was simply advertised as "LORDS OF SHADOW" and the first trailer came out, I immediately thought it was cool that it's an homage to Castlevania with the main character and his chain/flame whip, I was really interested to see what the game was like.

When it was announced that LOS was Castlevania LOS, I had my doubts as to how that would work. The trailers leading up to the game didn't seem bad or anything, but I was worried about how a Castlevania game's pacing would work in 3d, using combo's, being combat heavy and straying from its 2d origins. Needless to say I was right to worry.

LOS1 was fun for sure, it had a lot of redeeming factors which mostly outweighed the few issues. If the main character was simply called "Gabriel", simply became a Vampire and not "Dracula" and they didn't try to shoehorn Castlevania's universe into LOS' universe, the game would have been better and felt much more original. The Castlevania title was a cashgrab to try and reinvent the series and make money. Konami should've treated one of their most beloved franchises with more respect when giving MS the authority to make LOS.