Castlevania Dungeon Forums
The Castlevania Dungeon Forums => General Castlevania Discussion => Topic started by: Nagumo on February 27, 2014, 03:51:34 AM
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I thought it would be interesting to have a topic like this. Perhaps we can make threads for each new game that comes out, perhaps also for the ones that have already come out.
Rules: rate LoS2 on a scale of 1 to 10, supplementing your rating with a review, if you want to (It's not necessary but is highly encouraged). However, please do not rate or review the game after you've played through the entire game.
I'll be keeping track of the average score. :)
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Nice thread :). I will try to make a review.
The ambience is more "dark" in its environments than the first game, and the graphics continue to be its major point. The boss fights were good, but is missing classic horror and mytological enemies like Minotaurus, Mummies, Dragons, among others. Some enemies and bosses seems like those in Darksiders. Is warmly appreciated the help in navigation, specifically in the climb sections. The first game give a little help here. The rat trasformation and the power to prossess, eh I mean possess its innovative and a nice addition to the Dracula´s lore. The music is good, but feels very environmental. The combat gameplay is solid, and is in line with the first game. The camera is a downgrade, because in times is in an undesirable place, when you need it.
Overall, it feels like a improvement over the first LoS. Many things to polish, but still fun to play. I give to it a 8.
PD I make the review based in the full walkthrough that I see in Youtube. That counts? :P
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I just beat it fresh, I'm gonna take a few days to reflect on it and review it myself...
So far, Good, not perfect, but definitely good.
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The camera is a downgrade, because in times is in an undesirable place, when you need it.
You can turn off "Combat Assisted Camera" in the options and have full control of whatever you want it to do in combat with the Right Analog. I found this was a mixed blessing. On random fights in various places its really nice to put the camera where you want it, but when you're fighting just one thing, like a boss, the assisted camera is really helpful at staying behind you so you don't have to worry about handling it.
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Mechanically, I find it superior to LoS. The combat is superb, and you feel very powerful as Dracula. It's fast, exciting, and gives a lot of control. The platforming has also been extremely sped up, though it sacrifices the whip platforming to do so.
The boss battles are also magnificent, and trump anything in the previous two games, save for maybe the Abbadon fight. The Castlevania segments could be considered better than their LoS1 equivalents, but by and large, while the city has a couple scenic locales, it generally drags down the artistry of the game, littering the world with samey plazas, science buildings, and ruins.
However, as a player that was emotionally invested in the characters and their stories, LoS2 is disappointing. The game provides no sense of closure, and throws in a bunch of uninteresting villains at the expense of the characters people already care about. It also killed Victor in the most spectacularly stupid way possible after giving him almost no screen time.
Overall, I give the game a 7.5. It was a great ride, but ultimately left me feeling unsatisfied.
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I would probably give it an 8.
If compared to Lords of Shadow 1, I would say that Lords of Shadow 1 is more fun to experience, but Lords of Shadow 2 is more fun to play.
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Though the combat and controls were more solid than Lords of Shadow 1, and the general gameplay was better than Mirror of Fate, the awful story, lackluster environments, and lack of a sense of progression made this 15 hour long game feel much longer. None of the story elements were properly delivered on and the grand sum total of the plot is not only flimsy (the often mentioned Zobek/Satan gambit) but ridiculous because there's nothing different about how they were executed to make it anymore meaningful than last time. The script could've been for a 4 hour long game and maybe fit but it's distended here.
The plot device that is the satanic army conversion chemical is convenient so that way Mercury Steam wouldn't have to make an open city but even still the game utterly fails to deliver on the potential of the setting. The fact it restricts it even further to small hallways and rooms that look largely the same with very obvious loading rooms in-between is an even larger embarrassment. The graphical quality of the city environments looks almost PS2-like and would've been a low ringer early this gen.
I'd go on but I could do this forever.
2.1 - .1 lower than I gave Mirror of Fate, which was only better because it was shorter. To be clear, I'd put SotN at high 8's low 9's and Lament of Innocence somewhere around a 4 or 5.
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Average score: 6.4
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I have my own thread for posting these kinds of reviews. I haven't added to it for months now, but I'm sure you'll forgive me the 'necromancy'.
For the moment, though, I'll draw out the suspense, and say:
"Review forthcoming."
Rules: rate LoS2 on a scale of 1 to 10, supplementing your rating with a review, if you want to (It's not necessary but is highly encouraged). However, please do not rate or review the game after you've played through the entire game.
Did you mean before?
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I wasn't going to post since the lack of replies has proven this thread to be pretty pointless, but that ridiculous 2-range (with decimals!) review could use some counteracting.
Fun action game. It's an improvement over the original in combat and console performance. A much darker and generally more gothic game than LoS1 in terms of aesthetics and music. Cutscenes look nice and the voice performances are pretty great. The connected environment is pretty neat and the game constantly teases you with out-of-reach upgrades, which is something I enjoyed. Excellent boss fights overall, especially on your second time through when you're more comfortable with their patterns and your repertoire.
The story falls largely flat barring a few specific instances. Many of the characters in this game are one-offs that don't really connect to a larger narrative aside from maybe helping to characterize Dracula. The ending is lame and does not leave a good last impression for those who aren't interested in playing beyond that. I've also encountered several bugs and a handful of crashes to the point where I hope a stability patch is issued. The lack of a means to easily refight bosses and revisit specific scenarios is also pretty baffling in light of Lords of Shadow 1.
I could say some more, but why even bother for something like this. 8/10
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My note would be 8/10. What I disliked is the plot, the random usage of music (but the soundtrack is cool IMO), and the repetitiveness of some parts. But the game is tons of fun to play, gorgeous, and very cool.
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but that ridiculous 2-range (with decimals!) review could use some counteracting.
How ridiculous that I thought lowly of the game! I need decimals to help me wade through the morass that is how much I dislike each game in the LoS series. It's going to end up being a decimal when Nagumo divides it out anyway SO WHY NOT!
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How ridiculous that I thought lowly of the game! I need decimals to help me wade through the morass that is how much I dislike each game in the LoS series. It's going to end up being a decimal when Nagumo divides it out anyway SO WHY NOT!
Your views do seem ridiculous to me, which is what encouraged me to post my review and score. Put a lid on it.
Also, I've always thought that a 100 point scale is overkill. Using .5 increments is one thing, but tenths? That's just silly and arbitrary. 5 star system is the best.
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Bearing in mind I just beat Raisa (so this is an incomplete review), my current impressions are that in combat, Dracula feels appropriately vampiric, which is kind of a first. He doesn't hide behind magic spells and transformations, but gets close up and visceral with his combat, using a LOT of blood and bites.
However, two niggling points I dislike: Dracula is rubbish at sneaking, and you'd think the Dark Lord, Prince of Darkness and King of Night Who is Called The Dragon would have a few more sneaking tricks besides mist and turning into rats. Agreus' maze has driven my mind to the fine-tuned hell of psychosis and back, and I generally do not appreciate sneaking when I bought the game to be an all powerful vampire lord up against the personification of Sin Itself, especially when it feels this blocky. If I wanted to sneak, my Metal Gear Solid games are three feet away.
Second, while the boss battles are good, I wish there was more hit-stun associated with your attacks. Too often, I am setting up a combo, only for the guy I'm wailing on to spit in my face and retaliate as if I'd struck him with a piece of tissue paper instead of an UNGODLY WHIP MADE OF THE BLOOD OF THE DARK PRINCE /boomingvoice
One of the things I liked so much in Lords of Shadow 1 was that for the first time in recent memory, the whip felt like an actual weapon, delivering hits that felt solid and delivered appropriate amounts of stun considering the enemy was being brained with a 20 foot spiked steel chain. Here... the whip feels daintier than Simon Belmont's jumps in Mirror of Fate. And the Void Sword and Chaos Claws are not much of an improvement over the whip in this one.
So that's the stuff I don't like.
Pretty much everything else is either something I approve of, or represents a significant step in the right direction.
More comments on the story once I beat it.
Though wandering through the open city, I almost screamed "IT'S LIKE CASTLEVANIA HAD SEX WITH UNDERWORLD AND IT WAS ADOPTED BY DEVIL MAY CRY!"
I consider that a term of endearment. Why is there no Kate Beckinsale in this? :|
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I have a huge HUGE review coming down the line, but for now, yeah, I was not amused. Excellent high points, I mean, crazy highs with incredible stupid design choices. The news about development problems soured me a lot too. 7/10. (LoS1: 8.5/10).
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I'll give the game a 7/10.
The story was good with the exception of the open-ended ending. The combat was superior to that of LoS1. The boss fights were interesting. The two titans weren't to bad. The fact that you had three weapons each with their own skills was nice.
Now for the negatives. There was little variation of enemies in the city. I still don't like the fact that the enemies had so much health (I'd rather fight 30 enemies with low amounts of health than 10 damage sponge enemies). There's also the fact that there were times were the enemies would gangrape me with unblockable attacks.
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6.5. No reasons to give anymore, have stated then on the main thread. it just wasn't a fun game.
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Average score: 6.9
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Overall, I'd give it an 7.9\10
What I like...
- Music was much better with nods to classic themes as well as original tracks
- Playing as Dracula was very satisfying
- Classic homages and nods combined with already beautiful architecture made very pretty level design
- Konami style humor is present (Cooking the bird, Fighting a Giant Belmont)
- The Options are a plenty, even disabling QTE sequences
- 2 Castles, the old Castle akin to SoTN, the second a modern city built on the castle's foundation
What I Dislike
- Mission layout was too linear
- Story felt rushed near the middle-end, most characters are under-involved in the story
- The handholding is off and on, sometimes confusing
- difficulty settings are basically health modifiers, typical for beat em ups
- The Dragon mode is just a replacement black crystal, more could have been intended, but it fell short
Overall, The stealth sections aren't as bad, just forced. It would have helped if the mission layout involved players doing things on thier own, or a coherent, connected map system. The ending was an undershot, and it brings me joy that the DLC is coming "just in time", Overall this game is in a step in the good direction, but still had a bit to go, I think the development turmoil had a big hand to play in most of the game's issues, it usually is. From most of the cutscenes, How Dracula finished his foes suggested there were more aspects of dracula intended to be controlled, but much like the middle to end, the game felt rushed and features were cut to release on time.
7.9, Though it fell short from the hype, but still turned out to be good, but some of it's flaws didn't get past criticism.
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Spoilers... Obviously.
I'm gonna go with 7.5.
I just beat the game ... and by beat, I mean completed everything, with the exception of beating it on the highest difficulty but on the one right before it.
Good
- Combat - it's very fun and aside from some of the forcing to use the gloves, it was well done imo. It also has a slight lack of variety, esp for the whip.
- The Mist - aside from combat, I liked how they handled it with the fan interactions.
- Enemy Variety - I felt most of the enemies were well designed. Looks and combat.
- Level Layout - It looks very well done, and it works.
- The Boss Fights - Most if not all the boss fights were well done. The Belmont Fight definitely was good.
Bad
- 2nd Belmont Fight, I dunno if they wanted to play homage to the older games or not, but I was just thinking WTF, the whole time.
- The sneaking - It was forced, and it was annoying. Just terrible.
- Loading - Dear lord, the loading. Most of it is "hidden" very poorly in the form of power going out, and "decontamination" sequences... AND WORST, the absolute worst part is the part where they force you to walk through the loading screen. Seriously.
- Story - It made jack worth of sense. One, you can't beat his second apostle, but you can beat Satan? What? His wife and son weirdly showing up all over the place. While I didn't mind the twist at the end, they didn't do it very well which almost made it seem like they did it because they gave up and just went with whatever.
The combat though, is what pulls it through. If not for that, I would've given up with all the loading in the game. Also agree with the hand holding, it is easy for the most part, but I got stuck in the weirdest places.
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I have a huge HUGE review coming down the line, but for now, yeah, I was not amused. Excellent high points, I mean, crazy highs with incredible stupid design choices. The news about development problems soured me a lot too. 7/10. (LoS1: 8.5/10).
Los1 to you 8.5 it was around 9-8 in my book. The freaking framerate in the catacombs haunt me on the 360 version :-X
as for los 2 I did a little mini review I'll find it again.
Quotes were not working for me but this is the original mostly.
So I just beat last night and well overall the game is good. I think we all agree that it's not perfect and it would have been if stupid things like stealth were left out.
For me the pros were the castle segments which looked so freaking good. At times I was saying this is why I got this, the boss battles are awesome( my favorite was the fight with Victor) their such a step up from los1 in every aspect, the combat is awesome except every time I sync blocked one enemy an other did an unblockable at the same time and even with somersault I still got hit. The voice acting is so incredible I loved I can't say anymore than every one brought their characters to life I just wished there was more back story to them.
Things that I hated were the stealth. It's not game breaking but it pulls me out and say come on I just want to get this done with. The present day setting when compared to the past is staggering, it's very boring compared to the past segments, the final boss battle was lackluster compared to los 1 it just was not fun and for all the complaints that the Argeus section( This section only took me like maybe 15 minutes to maybe half an hour his ai gets stupid if you use mist I swear I'm not crazy but I got away from using mist) had it was not even half as bad as the riders of the freaking storm I hated the end of that fight so stupid. I tell you it's almost impossible to avoid the electricity. music was mixed heck sometimes I heard nothing, but when I did hear music it did fit in and felt really good, as for story the whole los saga had a simple story nothing ground breaking or even all that great except for the obvious. but one scene made me very ehh and that was
(click to show/hide)
really not even 20 minutes and that happens WTH.
Overall this (without that challenge mode it has) get's an 8-7 in my book because overall the game felt good but what kept it from a 9 are the stupid things that were in it stealth,lackluster story, two boss battles(with one having a dumb finishing segment), but then it makes up for the combo system, the great locals that don't have to do much with the present, and the voice acting, every single one of the voices are great for me with Richard Madden and Robert Caryle taking the cake.
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it was not even half as bad as the riders of the freaking storm I hated the end of that fight so stupid. I tell you it's almost impossible to avoid the electricity.
Were you using the dodge to quickly get out of the way? If you weren't then congrats, I didn't even know that was possible.
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Were you using the dodge to quickly get out of the way? If you weren't then congrats, I didn't even know that was possible.
You can dodge it!!!?? WTF!!! I was up till 4am trying to get that done I fell asleep in astronomy because of this!!! Ahh f*().... Now I have to play it again on prince of darkness. -_-
All what I did was time it since he pulls you in(but I kept going left going right killed me and there were time I could not even move the darn electricity just destroyed me) heck the whole fight was hard for me three vs one was not in my favor so I had to pull a breath of fire and turn dragon, upgrade mid fight iirc. the whole thing was sour for me.
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I was up till 4am trying to get that done
That's probably why you didn't realize you could dodge it.
Honestly it was pretty obvious. he shoots something, you dodge to the side. :P
never game on a sleepy brain.
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I beat the game about an hour or so ago and here's my take.
(BIG INHALE)
I had a major difficulty with finding my way around. The map was not much help.
So basically it suffered the same problem as a previous title (cough, Simon's Quest, cough) had. As Egoraptor said "NUMBER 8:WHERE DO I FUCKING GO?"
The camera is good for viewing the city and castle scapes which have their peaks and valleys. Don't get me wrong there is some spectacular scenery and environments in the game and I wish that some of these settings were used in the first LOS. Graphics are definitely an emphasis and maybe the highest priority in this game. Not that I have a problem with it but the camera does not assist you well especially when aiming your daggers, Void or Chaos projectiles (touch screen aiming controllers will hopefully fix this for the next title)
Second, the game is too short. I sure as shit did not play this game as long as I played LOS.
LOS had some parts that were so annoying as far as challenge I would file them under the category of nuisance play. AKA. excuse me I.E. let the game environments bosses and enemies be the challenge not the camera. Please forgive that reference to the last point.
The enemies are not so imposing and some of them are more suited for another game Silent Hill or something else.
3 I thought that you get to play as another character. There are three from the bloodline in this game and you only play as one of them. WTF
4 The ending boss. What's wrong with the ending boss you say? You don't fight him.
In fairness this is just a rant more than a review and I have not found everything in the game. I'm at about 68% complete. But I don't get much time to post and have to go to a library to do it. I just thought there would be more to this game. Maybe it will surprise me yet.
All the same I think a lot of us in here would arrogantly and maybe justifiably boast that if we had the talent and resources we could do it better.
I will give the guys at Mercurysteam some dap. Grade B This is a good game but we don't want good we want pain.................boxes.
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it was a good game i give it a 7 i like everything sneaking, fighting, etc but the story or lack of one in parts are what i didn't like.
it was so easy to tell who Alucard was from the beginning he play a very small role in the game would had to like to fight him (fight him not him as satans hiding spot) or play as him but not in that ugly armor
like the way they used the belmont from the caned dreamcast game Victor but got pissed they killed his ass as soon as you meet him
and the ending was the biggest let down after all its satan the guy who's going to in slave you the big bad ass but he's a big pussy you don't even get to fight him.
they should had another fight after he runs instead of killing him so easily
lets say if you get all of the dragon metal done then instead of killing him you change into the dragon and satan into a big demon and a bad ass fight happens a new ending and all
would have made it a little better and it seem like it should be in there anyway i give it a 7
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Average score: 7.3