Topic: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate 3DS (Discussion Thread)

[Dominus]

if Richter makes it in, but Christopher doesn't, we'll get to add one more point to the "Christopher is always neglected" score.  Him and Grant should get together sometimes.  But poor Grant hasn't even had his own game or comic series.  It'd be funny if Grant ended up being one of the playables in this game though.

who?

[Kingshango]

Im pretty sure Alucard is one of the four playable characters. The real question is who's the fourth?

Im gonna pick a wild card and say someone of the Belnades/Fernandez family, gotta to have the token mage character in there somewhere.

[GuyStarwind]

If Alucard is playable wouldn't that disprove the Trevor is Alucard theory? Unless I'm missing something?

[Flame]

Isnt there a "Lost soul" mentioned as a character? Im wondering who THAT is.

[Alutwon]

I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being Richter and Julius

[Reinhart77]

i'm guessing that all of MoF takes place prior to the trailer for LoS2, so i think its too soon for Julius to be on the scene.  however, the web site for Lords of Shadow 2 does mention that the Belmonts are out to destroy Dracula in that game.  since i think LoS2 will take place in the present day, maybe we'll fight Julius in LoS2???  that'd be awesome.  maybe in that game Dracula and Julius eventually come to an understanding and when it's all over Julius is able to grant Dracula's wish and "free him from his immortality" (with Zobek's help).

[Ahasverus]

i'm guessing that all of MoF takes place prior to the trailer for LoS2, so i think its too soon for Julius to be on the scene.  however, the web site for Lords of Shadow 2 does mention that the Belmonts are out to destroy Dracula in that game.  since i think LoS2 will take place in the present day, maybe we'll fight Julius in LoS2???  that'd be awesome.  maybe in that game Dracula and Julius eventually come to an understanding and when it's all over Julius is able to grant Dracula's wish and "free him from his immortality" (with Zobek's help).

I firmly believe that Zobek will not help to /anything/. I think he'll be the main baddie.

[Reinhart77]

I firmly believe that Zobek will not help to /anything/. I think he'll be the main baddie.

you've got a good point.  you just can't trust Zobek.

speaking of Zobek, wonder if you get to fight him in MoS as Dracula's associate.  when Dracula asks him "Where have you been all this time?", does he mean since the end of LoS1, or since the last time Dracula was resurrected.  when they call each other "old friend", is it in relation to their time in the brotherhood, or as allies against the Belmont clan? 

[Kingshango]

Julius Belmont and Alucard will be the true final battle after a gauntlet bossfight with Satan at full power and Zobek in his Death form. Of course Dracula will be weak and will be a hopeless bossfight.

[Charlotte-nyo:3]

It's been nice discussing this, though.

For me as well. It's brought up some issues on the 2D games' and the 3D games' battle systems that I hadn't thought of before.

I agree that it adds long term complexity, and so do combos, but what I'm arguing is why limit yourself to only long-term variety when you can have both long-term and short-term?

As I mentioned elsewhere, only for what it might bring gameplay wise, which is more focus on battles, lengthier battles, locked rooms with tons of enemies thrown at you and requirements to kill them all, etc. These seem to be what comes with going increasingly combat focused--or at least what developers often go towards when they go towards a focus on combat.

I doubt I'd have a problem with a combo system just for its own sake; something like OoE's dual hand system but a bit more in depth, or even a totally different take on a combo system than OoE's. Perhaps something like ^Y, >Y and \/Y each being their own different variation on the regular attack for any given weapon that you must chain from a normal slash or two into, with some of them being elemental attacks, some being more piercing for armored foes, or some pushing the enemy back a tiny bit, etc. Perhaps the player could end up unlocking more than 3 and then assign them in the inventory. The thing is, besides not using extra MP, being chained into from regular attacks, and being a variation on the main weapon's attack, that actually sounds rather similar to something like the special attacks in some Metroidvanias, but perhaps those three differences are different enough.

I'm really not trying to knock the gear system in Metroidvanias. They're what make the games so fun for me, but what the different gear never really changed was how most battles that lasted over 1-2 hits became *jumpsmackjumpsmack*

While that will happen, part of that being so frequent is also still due to play style, at least in certain Metroidvanias. It doesn't seem near as bad to me if I'm breaking it up with special attacks, and because the enemies that take a really excessive amount of hits are rarer in the typical Metroidvania, one can save MP to use on them if one wants to.

You're absolutely right, they do take longer (this is where "too long" becomes opinion) but it's never the Devil May Cry slash fests that I've heard so many people relate the game too. You used basic attacks to dispatch the weaker enemies as they died quickly enough, and sub-weapons and magic attacks to take out the tougher ones. Proper resource management was key, and if you could alternate between regular and magic attacks efficiently, you were never too low on magic. It was very, very skill based, and frankly, how long fights took was reflective of how good you were at the game.

That's something that doesn't really sound that great to me in a 3D action game--if you're not that good at the game, the feedback you get is that the battles drag out a long time. The feedback for being "bad" at the game should be deaths so you can see what you're doing wrong. If it just makes the battles drag out, someone can go through the whole game playing poorly and never get better, just assuming the length of the battles was normal for the game. And because of different tolerances for battle lengths, some people who did ok might still join in saying the battles are too long or some who did poorly might say the battle lengths were fine without really knowing the experience of other players.

But they didn't scale with you. The tools you were given were greater than the strength boosts they were given, so if you were improving your level of play over the course of the game, then the game really did get easier.

In my response to that I thought you were talking about buying better combos with "your comboing gets better" rather than player skill increase.

I'll go on record saying I didn't particularly like Order of Ecclesia. They took away all the variety from the previous gear and soul systems and failed to add anything to the combat. You'd equip two weapons, mash the X and Y buttons, and proceed forward while using the occasional combination attack. It would have worked if the level design was more involved, but IMO, it was too many long hallways and floating, high damage, enemy rooms.

I had my issues with it but probably liked it more than you did. I agree that the level design should've been more varied in order to make more of a difference in the battles (particularly the overuse of "straight away" areas). But I feel like the "difficulty up" from PoR did add at least something to the combat--you had to be better in your dodging and more conscious of getting in quick, getting your hits in and getting away than in a lot of the previous games. Not that you didn't have to dodge in the other games, but getting hit felt like more of a big deal in OoE than in any Metroidvania since CotM, yet I still liked the way OoE went about its difficulty level more-so than CotM.

I also to some extent don't totally agree that they took away too much variety (attack-wise anyway)--they took away a lot compared to the soul systems, sure, and it's true there's a lot less ways to attack in the game than in, say, DoS. But I felt like a great deal of glyphs had different enough hitboxes from the others that it still had a serviceable level of variety present. Rather than having souls with usually very divergent methods of attack and weapons with more standard lengths, you had a kind of mix. There were a lot less standard weapon glyphs and a lot more divergent glyphs since spells were made essentially the main weapons and you can have really extreme variations between the shapes of spells compared to a standard weapon that mirrors something from the real world, even with the weird hitboxes they get out of normal shaped weapons sometimes due to exaggerating their size.

Also, the glyphs were more balanced. In AoS and DoS, who perhaps had the most variety, you had some soul attacks that just weren't worth using in most situations because they were weak or very situational. In OoE you had a lot less of that since it seems like they did a better job of balancing what they had, or focusing it all to be more viable, although there's still the gradual arc upward as you find new glyphs of course. It is a change and I like variety when possible, but I don't think I had as much of an issue with it as I might've expected.

Ah, I forget about those levels, but now that you bring them up, I think it's very telling.

Like the surfing level in Ninja Turtles. I'd wager that these levels are added in BECAUSE the combat is so boring. They need something to break up the monotony.

Unfortunately it's problematic for a classification of beat em ups that doesn't allow anything but beat em up combat. I think you still have to allow for other variations in gameplay within a beat em up besides the combat--even if it's just there to break up the beat em up combat so it doesn't get old.

I'd classify Devil May Cry or Bayonetta as a modern day beat-em-up, I guess.

I would as well, it's just it seems the title "3D action" to gaming sites and the gaming press at large essentially means "3D beat em up" if I were to use the nomenclature I'd want. Also, I don't know much about Bayonetta, but if I recall there were at least rudimentary puzzles to solve in DMC (maybe due to its origins as an RE game at the earliest stages), perhaps making it more than just "literally nothing but beat em up combat" as well.

Heaven's sword is a very unique weapon, but I see your point. But why would you ever use the combat knife if you had the Heaven's sword? Or let's take the Kaiser Knuckes. The didn't output enough damage to be more worth than, let's say, the Muramasa, which had high damage and a longer range. When navigating the castle, it's hard to argue that shorter range because that longer range is key in allowing you to dispatch enemies before they get close enough to damage you. The fast fist weapons required you to stop and smack the enemy when you could dispatch them much quicker with a larger weapon.

It depends on what you have on you at the time and thus to some extent where you go once you start getting options to go to different areas, or what randomly drops from enemies. I agree I might just stick with using the Heaven sword in that instance and not use the Combat Knife much if at all (I just went with two items with disparate hitboxes that popped into my head), but there are situations where in my most recent playthrough, the Combat Knife was an asset since it seemed like I was killing stuff faster with it than any larger weapon I had at a specific point. In previous playthroughs I usually just passed on equipping it without really trying it out. Obviously it later got changed up as better weapons came along (it eventually got to a situation like you described where one smack from a larger weapon was quicker), but it was good for a period of time.

[e105beta]

Hey, Chris got his own ReBirth title.  That's something, no?

It was a good title too. Probably one of the better Classicvania's, actually.

[Vampire Killer]

If Alucard is playable wouldn't that disprove the Trevor is Alucard theory? Unless I'm missing something?

I posted this on the previous page...

Hey, considering that in MoF you play during progressive centuries, perhaps one of the remaining two playable characters is in fact Alucard. This would still allow for Trevor to be Alucard, since Trevor is the first playable character.

[Kingshango]

Am I the only one that firmly believe's that Alucard and Trevor are NOT the same person? I don't think Mercurysteam would pull a repeat of what happened to Gabriel otherwise it would be a little too predictable.

[Dremn]

It was a good title too. Probably one of the better Classicvania's, actually.

It's my favorite next to IV.

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

Am I the only one that firmly believe's that Alucard and Trevor are NOT the same person? I don't think Mercurysteam would pull a repeat of what happened to Gabriel otherwise it would be a little too predictable.

I don't know about "firmly" believing, but I do believe that Alucard and Trevor are separate......or more likely I HOPE they are seperate.

The possibility IS there given MS's previous actions and Trevor's look, but I like you hope they do not pull the same card twice by making a Belmont into a vampire.

Its been done before and to many people see it coming now which really does take away form the surprise of it all.

I think it would be a good idea to have Alucard with his own backstory and origin instead of having Trevor simply become him.