Four chapters later, and my expectations for the game have plummeted. Here are a few more impressions. (Keep in mind that what I'd first enjoyed in LoS2 still stands; this is just to point out a few glaring faults).
- I'd said that the game was "genuinely nonlinear", but it's probably not the right term. LoS2's world is based on a nonlinear structure, and there can be some worthwhile backtracking to be done, but for the most part it's simply a series of rigidly linear paths that are connected by larger areas that serve as destinations. The map actually makes this pretty clear. There are definitely a few interspersed locations that you can explore, but when you've set on a linear path you're expected to follow it.
- Traversal segments through LoS2's city areas are more dull, disoriented, and just plain ugly than anything I've yet seen from MS. Especially once you've gotten used to the towering spires and breathtaking vistas you'd witnessed only a few chapters before, the uniformly grey, dark, and bare rooms of those dilapidated modern buildings you're forced to explore start to look like the ugliest environments you've ever laid your eyes on. Nearly every single room looks the same, with only one variation or another of the same damp walls, half-destroyed modern furniture, and utterly colorless surroundings. To make things worse, there's often very little logic to the paths you'll be forced to take; there were times when the level design became so incoherent that I lost sight of where I was going, or how I was supposed to be getting there. It wasn't rare for me to find myself platforming through random trial-and-error. After all, why on earth is Dracula forced to scuttle through a bookstore and restore power to a mental asylum if he only needs to reach the exterior of a corporate HQ (to which Zobek had already teleported Dracula in the first place)?
Even the Bioquimek segments, which are comparatively an improvement, don't offer much more past the miles upon miles of the same sealed rooms and metal platforms, electrical wires and pipelines, and crates and barrels of toxic waste. You're also supposed to be exploring a large, modern city, but there isn't a human being in sight, unless you count the mutilated bodies you'll find lying on the ground. I know that there's a plot point to take care of this, but this doesn't explain why every single area you explore is completely empty, save for the occasional mutant pack you'll encounter here and there.
There's also relatively little enemy variety in "Castlevania City"; the only monsters you'll consistently encounter are mutants -- mutants eating corpses, mutants with claws, mutants with sticks, mutants with sledgehammers, mutants with shotguns, big mutants with horns, all of which look like they're pasted straight from Resident Evil (which they probably are). Only the occasional dishonored vampire or riot police spice up the combat. Still, I'd like to understand just what kind of an idiot chose to paste flying, gun-toting mech armors into a gothic-styled Castlevania game centered on Dracula, taking place in modern (and not future) day. To the game's credit, though, mechs are still fun to defeat.
- I mentioned in my last post that stealth was terrible. I take that back. Stealth is absolutely atrocious. It's not even just linear -- it's "do exactly this or die" linear. And when you're not sure what exactly you're supposed to do, since the game rarely makes that clear, then you're completely screwed. Even the slightest glimmers of player ingenuity are punished as if they were fatal mistakes -- so what is there left to enjoy?
Incidentally, could someone explain why getting accidentally hit by a bat-swarmed guard's rocket launcher does as much damage as getting hit by the fired rocket itself?
- "Next Stop: Castlevania." Do I even need to mention how poorly-made this section is? I mean, if there absolutely needed to be a generic moving train sequence, it could at least have been done correctly. But no -- stick an obtrusive cutscene every ten seconds of gameplay, and you've clearly got a winner. Not that the gameplay is particularly interesting in the first place. Combat? There's combat, all right, interrupted as it invariably is thirty seconds after it starts. Stealth? Golgoth guards? You bet. Stupid shimmying puzzles? How about "avoid the lights on the top of the train", and "avoid getting hit by the wall on the side"? That's called a recipe for success.
The game's plot is still a complete mess, and Marie's and Carmilla's appearances in the next chapter don't help in the least. But I'd given up on the narrative long ago. Besides, despite another stealth section (can't get enough of these, can we?), Drac's return to his castle marks the return of some solid combat and a good boss encounter. So I'm not one to complain here.