Topic: Mirror of Fate in comparison with Lords of Shadow

[Pfil]

So, it's been a few days since I completed the game, and I wanted to think about it more calmly, and give it time to shape a final opinion.

I will talk about what I think about every aspect of the game and compare it to LoS, and also mention some things I believe to be important about the game.
Of course, what's being reflected here is my opinion, in order to be talked and shared with the rest and know what the rest think.

The Castle:
-----------
The best aspect of the game. Not perfect, but a great improvement from LoS. If they continue this improvement in LoS 2, they are in the correct path here.
It contained its share of flaws, though. Each area was a little monochromatic, and everything was too dark. But I could see beauty here and there, which is so important in Castlevania. Some areas were not so good looking, but the details made a good difference.
Also, it could have been larger and varied. When you have to play it at least three times, it becomes a little tired.
Better than LoS.

The Gameplay:
--------------
One of my two major complains about the game. What didn't seem right for CV in LoS, still was fun at times, with the ability to roll, the two kinds of magic, and everything. But when it loses a dimension, the gameplay becomes boring. It just has not place in 2D. It's not fun to be locked in a room until I defeat all enemies, or the fact that so many common enemies take so many hits to die. The other half of the gameplay is the platforming (which happens in large empty areas generally), but it felt automatic and basic (as if it was designed for new gamers, not experienced ones). MetroidVanias didn't have good platforming, but they always overcompensated it with RPG elements. Here, there is no level up, items, weapons, spells, armors, shop, or nothing. We just have experience, which don't add anything because all I could do was buy combos, and pretty much all the game is beatable using the whip. The subweapons are almost useless. The combos are few and very similar. And the characters played all the same. The abbilities add the little depth the gameplay had, but that's it, nothing more.
And, of course... QTE's... I won't even talk about this. They must be removed from gaming, completely. They are not fun!
The other aspect of the game are the puzzles, which are not so complex as the LoS ones (especially the ones in the Reverie DLC). And they felt slow.
Here, LoS was better.

Story:
------
Never a strong pillar of Castlevania, LoS provided a complex and long story that I found to be pretentious and repetitive. But all in all, it wasn't bad, and I really liked the ending. I guess I can say the same here, though it's shorter, which is good. The ending here is also the best part (Trevor's ending). So far, it's the pinnacle of what MS did. Had it been presented in a better way, it would have been also more enjoyable. The presentation of cutscenes felt awkward all the time, especially the lack of mouth animations for the characters when they talk.
I guess Mirror of Fate wins here but not for much.

Music:
------
My other major complain of the game, and the biggest one.
Still, this was better than LoS, but it retained all the problems it had before.
There was some ambient music here. Chord progressions are not classical or baroque, and they don't follow CV classic chord progressions. It's the same Araujo always did for every game and movie he was in. Melody is almost non existent, and arrangements are very shy and subtle.
It would have been nice to have good CV music with this castle, because some areas were almost there where they need to be and the CV feeling was about to start. But, despise gameplay and enemies I didn't like, a good castle without the music can't provide this feeling to me.
CV 64 provided a good example of how a soundtrack can be ambient and sound like CV at the same time. Here, at least for me, it didn't work.
The only time I heard an attempt to make a melody was in the final battle vs. Dracula. But it was about 30 seconds in a 4 minutes noisy action music. And it wasn't finished, either. Why is it that Araujo never finishes his progressions? A major dominant chord in a minor key theme would resolve things a lot of times, but he always goes the same way in slow compositions. The same cannot be said about action tunes, which tend to have the percussion the rest of themes lack but even less chords. Which brings me to the major complain about the music: the action tracks. Literally, it was unbearable to hear the action tracks of this game. I won't say that they don't sound good in the console, because it's intended to be heard with headphones, portable speakers were never good in my opinion. But the problem is the music itself. It's just so noisy, with almost no melody, a few chords, a lot of string dissonances and loud percussion... the same we here in so many action movies. This shouldn't be included not only in CV, but in any game.
I kept imagining the same battles with some good orchestral action theme, like No Regrets from Soul Calibur III. It would have been so much better...
Despite everything and the fact that action music was in both games noisy, the non-action cues were better than in LoS. Still not Castlevania, not by a little. But LoS was worse in this aspect.

Character design:
-----------------
Another big flaw. Some characters looked nice, like Trevor. But also did Zobek and Gabriel in LoS. Simon looks like an ape, and he also has the same expression. Alucard looks like a monster, which didn't make sense to me, since Gabriel is also a vampire but never lost his beauty, and Trevor was beautiful from the beggining, so I don't understand this, or the change of his hair from black to white.
But the human characters are OK, I guess. What it's still ugly is the enemies. I won't go into recalling older beautiful CV enemies, but MS didn't correct the approach of LoS. Many things here are borderline with bad taste. I understand this, because I lived in Spain and I know how they approach horror things, but this doesn't have the beauty of CV and doesn't work here. This is, for me, a personal vision of Cox and nothing more.
I always criticized LoS for having chupacabras or Baba Yaga, here we have the hunchbacks, and I think we have the uglier character of all LoS saga. That one you meet in the top when you play as Alucard (he throws Alucard to the water), that you later have to fight again. I forgot the name.
I guess it's a tie here. I didn't like enemies in any of the games, and characters range from OK to not so good looking. Here we have the ugliest enemy and ugliest hero (Simon), but at least we have large areas without enemies here.

Presentation:
-------------
The game didn't have a manual, so clearly, here LoS was best, with its very long and detailed manual. Given that MoF is more aesthetically appealing to me, I guess a manual here would have changed this. I don't like this approach of adapting to modern gaming where perhaps youth, not used to read, won't ever read a manual either. Some of us still like the full classic package, with box, manual, papers and disc/cartridge.
LoS wins this one.

Some other things that I thought during gameplay:
-------------------------------------------------
Knights scrolls. They don't make sense. These knights are dying from a mortal wound, or they are being approached by demons that will kill them, and they have time to write a scroll? Are they carrying the materials to write all the time in battle? I know, VG logic. But still, it felt very forced.
Female characters. With its very macho approach to CV, female characters were reduced to almost nothing. Sypha is just the wife who later becomes a spirit that the hero uses at will. We also have the mother who appears on cutscenes and later in the game menu as a description.
It would have been nice to have a lead female, with sensible feelings and a deep story. But that wouldn't fit for MS, I guess.
And do we really need to fight a giant worm? The boss battle with the crypt lady was enough. And the ghost of the lady should have been more nostalgic and sorrowful, not so agressive and zombie-like. But that's just a common flaw with so many enemies.

Final thoughts:
---------------
Had the castle been populated with, say, DXC heroes and enemies (and gameplay), and had the game included Castlevania characteristic music, this could have been a good game. And not that DXC was so good in gameplay to me, but at least it was something that worked in 2D (2.5 for the matter). It's still better than LoS, even for just the fact that it felt more Castlevania to me.
But it's still missing elements that, up to this point, I believe they are not for incompetence of MS, but just because they refuse to do anything that it's not their personal and particular vision of CV. I consider it a pity because they proved they could have done something so much better.
But, all in all, I liked this better than LoS.

[Neobelmont]

hmm a long post I'll read it and make my opinion but I still think that los is a better game than mof. I'll post why of course 

[Pfil]

hmm a long post I'll read it and make my opinion but I still think that los is a better game than mof. I'll post why of course 

Great! That's what I intended, to know what it was in comparisons to other CV fans
Sorry for the long post, I couldn't make it shorter.

[Profbeanburrito]

If you found all the knight scrolls one of them tells you that they are magic and record their last thoughts so that other people can know what happened to them and to help out those who find them

[crisis]

I agree with most of your points, especially the music. I've stated this in the MoF thread a couple weeks ago but I'll say it again: I like this 2.5D graphical style & wouldn't mind to see it used in future 3DS CV games [that aren't made by MS, obviously]. I was skeptical at first because I love hand-drawn 2D sprites like the previous DS games, but if they decide to revisit the original canon using this graphical style, then I wouldn't mind at all. There are a lot of neat touches in the backgrounds, I wasn't expecting anything breathtaking but they were cool nonetheless. For instance, right before you enter Dracula's throne, the 2 paintings on the left & right depict a large army attacking a giant dragon. Things like that are cool and stylish. HOWEVER, where is the damn staircase?! "Climbing" up to Dracula's thrown via shafts & ledges wasn't that great, they could've at least added the infamous staircase once you climb the tower. There was even a staircase in LoS' castle, so why was it omitted here? Oh well.


Overall I liked MoF better than LoS because it feels more like a traditional CV game that I've been craving, but that's still not saying much because it has vast differences from a traditional CV game, if that makes sense! But the fact that you explore a large castle, the beastiary is a bit more appropriate with this game (way better than the countless trolls & goblins that riddled LoS), and Dracula being the final boss is why I consider this a more enjoyable Castlevania game than LoS, for me. However, where I felt LoS was way too long a game, MoF is way too short; MS has yet to find that perfect balance I suppose, hopefully LoS2 will realize this.

And yeah, I hate the fact that there is no manual. And lack of bonus content, and totally lame pre-order item (a cheap 3DS case? Really?)

[Pfil]

@Profbeanburrito
It makes sense now if there's a scroll that say that.

@crisis
It makes sense! To me, it felt a lot more like a traditional CV game, but still lacking lots of things. Especially the music, of course.

Yes, some backgrounds were the high point of the game.

More than being too short, is the castle that I think should have been larger. Usually, MetroidVanias take 10 hours to complete. Here, it took me a little more than 8 hours. But the problem is that every story clocks in about 2 or 3 hours, and then you basically repeat the same game with some different stuff.

And well thought about the lack extra content, I didn't think about that.
To be honest, I don't want to play it in Hardcore Difficulty. Since they didn't want to include her as a playable character, it would have been nice to have Sypha as an unlockable character, with different attacks (rod and magic spells, for example).
The bestiary entries unlocked throughout the game also felt too few of a content when compared to the countless drops, weapons and side quests of previous portable games.
In replay value this game has also naught.

Another good point I forgot to mention (not that important, by the way) is the name.
We all know this is taking place in the LoS universe. Did they really need to include LoS in the name?
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate sounds pretty silly to me.
I believe that Castlevania: Mirror of Fate would have been a better name.

What if Konami decides to ask the next studio for another portable game about this story?
Will they name it, for example, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate: Alucard's Revenge?

And I wasn't OK with boss battles having check points in the middle. That was also in place in LoS, and I believe it's this way because otherwise they would've been very difficult, but I prefer a well designed battle that requires strategy, than a battle where I just need to press my attack button until I reach the next check point. And while in LoS the third dimension added depth for a more well thought battle strategy, here things being in 2D didn't allow for more than that.

Back to the hight point of the game: the castle and backgrounds.
I believe they are not that different to the ones we saw in DXC, the only other CV game in 2.5D we've seen so far. I think it's here where MS and IGA have reached the most common ground so far. I don't know if that was correctly expressed. Let me know and reformulate if that was confusing.
I prefer sprites, but I wouldn't mind this 2.5D route to be continued, provided they continue to walk the Castlevania route and not otherwise, with beautiful and gothic aesthetics, and provided they include CV music and a better gameplay.

Just to set a personal example: I always said that I loved Bloodrayne: Betrayal as a whole (not everything about it), but in terms of scenario and backgrounds, I found Mirror of Fate to be more beautiful.
I wouldn't object a new game to have Bloodrayne: Betrayal soundtrack, Mirror of Fate scenery and backgrounds (with more variety and length) and traditional Castlevania gameplay with RPG elements.

[Flame]

I have to disagree on Music. I think it's not much better than LoS, and in fact, probably worse. It has far less tracks than LoS did, and at least some of LoS tracks were actually orchestral versions of classical tunes, like The Courtyard, or The Waterfall, or the CV1 Dracula battle. But MoF's music, while good in it's own right, (to me anyway) was just far too small in quantity to warrant me considering it better. I liked it, but even LoS had a bit more variation as far as atmospheric music goes

Another good point I forgot to mention (not that important, by the way) is the name.
We all know this is taking place in the LoS universe. Did they really need to include LoS in the name?
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate sounds pretty silly to me.
I believe that Castlevania: Mirror of Fate would have been a better name.

What if Konami decides to ask the next studio for another portable game about this story?
Will they name it, for example, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate: Alucard's Revenge?

It would be named Castlevania Lords of Shadow: Alucard's Revenge, if it's an Alucard game. There is no room for a sub-game in the MoF timespan itself. it would have to be after MoF.

Lords of Shadow seems to be part of the title, to emphasize it is not just a Castlevania, but within the same universe as, and sequels to, Lords of Shadow.  Similarly to how Symphony of the night was Devil's Castle Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight, to emphasize it as a direct sequel to Rondo. part of the Castlevania 10 setting.

Also, it's not too irrelevant, after all, Gabriel kind of became a Lord of Shadow, after all. He became one of them just like Carmilla predicted.

[Neobelmont]

So, it's been a few days since I completed the game, and I wanted to think about it more calmly, and give it time to shape a final opinion.

I will talk about what I think about every aspect of the game and compare it to LoS, and also mention some things I believe to be important about the game.
Of course, what's being reflected here is my opinion, in order to be talked and shared with the rest and know what the rest think.

The Castle:
-----------
The best aspect of the game. Not perfect, but a great improvement from LoS. If they continue this improvement in LoS 2, they are in the correct path here.
It contained its share of flaws, though. Each area was a little monochromatic, and everything was too dark. But I could see beauty here and there, which is so important in Castlevania. Some areas were not so good looking, but the details made a good difference.
Also, it could have been larger and varied. When you have to play it at least three times, it becomes a little tired.
Better than LoS.

The Gameplay:
--------------
One of my two major complains about the game. What didn't seem right for CV in LoS, still was fun at times, with the ability to roll, the two kinds of magic, and everything. But when it loses a dimension, the gameplay becomes boring. It just has not place in 2D. It's not fun to be locked in a room until I defeat all enemies, or the fact that so many common enemies take so many hits to die. The other half of the gameplay is the platforming (which happens in large empty areas generally), but it felt automatic and basic (as if it was designed for new gamers, not experienced ones). MetroidVanias didn't have good platforming, but they always overcompensated it with RPG elements. Here, there is no level up, items, weapons, spells, armors, shop, or nothing. We just have experience, which don't add anything because all I could do was buy combos, and pretty much all the game is beatable using the whip. The subweapons are almost useless. The combos are few and very similar. And the characters played all the same. The abbilities add the little depth the gameplay had, but that's it, nothing more.
And, of course... QTE's... I won't even talk about this. They must be removed from gaming, completely. They are not fun!
The other aspect of the game are the puzzles, which are not so complex as the LoS ones (especially the ones in the Reverie DLC). And they felt slow.
Here, LoS was better.

Story:
------
Never a strong pillar of Castlevania, LoS provided a complex and long story that I found to be pretentious and repetitive. But all in all, it wasn't bad, and I really liked the ending. I guess I can say the same here, though it's shorter, which is good. The ending here is also the best part (Trevor's ending). So far, it's the pinnacle of what MS did. Had it been presented in a better way, it would have been also more enjoyable. The presentation of cutscenes felt awkward all the time, especially the lack of mouth animations for the characters when they talk.
I guess Mirror of Fate wins here but not for much.

Music:
------
My other major complain of the game, and the biggest one.
Still, this was better than LoS, but it retained all the problems it had before.
There was some ambient music here. Chord progressions are not classical or baroque, and they don't follow CV classic chord progressions. It's the same Araujo always did for every game and movie he was in. Melody is almost non existent, and arrangements are very shy and subtle.
It would have been nice to have good CV music with this castle, because some areas were almost there where they need to be and the CV feeling was about to start. But, despise gameplay and enemies I didn't like, a good castle without the music can't provide this feeling to me.
CV 64 provided a good example of how a soundtrack can be ambient and sound like CV at the same time. Here, at least for me, it didn't work.
The only time I heard an attempt to make a melody was in the final battle vs. Dracula. But it was about 30 seconds in a 4 minutes noisy action music. And it wasn't finished, either. Why is it that Araujo never finishes his progressions? A major dominant chord in a minor key theme would resolve things a lot of times, but he always goes the same way in slow compositions. The same cannot be said about action tunes, which tend to have the percussion the rest of themes lack but even less chords. Which brings me to the major complain about the music: the action tracks. Literally, it was unbearable to hear the action tracks of this game. I won't say that they don't sound good in the console, because it's intended to be heard with headphones, portable speakers were never good in my opinion. But the problem is the music itself. It's just so noisy, with almost no melody, a few chords, a lot of string dissonances and loud percussion... the same we here in so many action movies. This shouldn't be included not only in CV, but in any game.
I kept imagining the same battles with some good orchestral action theme, like No Regrets from Soul Calibur III. It would have been so much better...
Despite everything and the fact that action music was in both games noisy, the non-action cues were better than in LoS. Still not Castlevania, not by a little. But LoS was worse in this aspect.

Character design:
-----------------
Another big flaw. Some characters looked nice, like Trevor. But also did Zobek and Gabriel in LoS. Simon looks like an ape, and he also has the same expression. Alucard looks like a monster, which didn't make sense to me, since Gabriel is also a vampire but never lost his beauty, and Trevor was beautiful from the beggining, so I don't understand this, or the change of his hair from black to white.
But the human characters are OK, I guess. What it's still ugly is the enemies. I won't go into recalling older beautiful CV enemies, but MS didn't correct the approach of LoS. Many things here are borderline with bad taste. I understand this, because I lived in Spain and I know how they approach horror things, but this doesn't have the beauty of CV and doesn't work here. This is, for me, a personal vision of Cox and nothing more.
I always criticized LoS for having chupacabras or Baba Yaga, here we have the hunchbacks, and I think we have the uglier character of all LoS saga. That one you meet in the top when you play as Alucard (he throws Alucard to the water), that you later have to fight again. I forgot the name.
I guess it's a tie here. I didn't like enemies in any of the games, and characters range from OK to not so good looking. Here we have the ugliest enemy and ugliest hero (Simon), but at least we have large areas without enemies here.

Presentation:
-------------
The game didn't have a manual, so clearly, here LoS was best, with its very long and detailed manual. Given that MoF is more aesthetically appealing to me, I guess a manual here would have changed this. I don't like this approach of adapting to modern gaming where perhaps youth, not used to read, won't ever read a manual either. Some of us still like the full classic package, with box, manual, papers and disc/cartridge.
LoS wins this one.

Some other things that I thought during gameplay:
-------------------------------------------------
Knights scrolls. They don't make sense. These knights are dying from a mortal wound, or they are being approached by demons that will kill them, and they have time to write a scroll? Are they carrying the materials to write all the time in battle? I know, VG logic. But still, it felt very forced.
Female characters. With its very macho approach to CV, female characters were reduced to almost nothing. Sypha is just the wife who later becomes a spirit that the hero uses at will. We also have the mother who appears on cutscenes and later in the game menu as a description.
It would have been nice to have a lead female, with sensible feelings and a deep story. But that wouldn't fit for MS, I guess.
And do we really need to fight a giant worm? The boss battle with the crypt lady was enough. And the ghost of the lady should have been more nostalgic and sorrowful, not so agressive and zombie-like. But that's just a common flaw with so many enemies.

Final thoughts:
---------------
Had the castle been populated with, say, DXC heroes and enemies (and gameplay), and had the game included Castlevania characteristic music, this could have been a good game. And not that DXC was not so good in gameplay to me, but at least it was something that worked in 2D (2.5 for the matter). It's still better than LoS, even for just the fact that it felt more Castlevania to me.
But it's still missing elements that, up to this points, I believe they are not for incompetence of MS, but just because they refuse to do anything that it's not their personal and particular vision of CV. I consider it a pity because they proved they could have done something so much better.
But, all in all, I liked this better than LoS.

I'm going to try this in a similar fashion.

LoS vs MoF

Gameplay
LoS from what I remember is really good and fair when it comes to this. Not thing seems to OP for it's own good as for the sub weapons all of them were solid. Now what I mean by solid is not only were the weapons good, but they felt actually solid for example Gabriels knife felt quick and delivered a swift death. The light shadow magic due to the triggers IIRC were very easy and efficient. The combat in this due to it being 3d really helped it. Next would be the titan battle. I like them very creative toward the end the scope of them as time went on did have some lasting impression on me. The beast riding was well handled but I wish there could have been a flying like creature you could ride like a wyvern  ala space harrier or something  . Finding the gems felt rewarding and you had to even search for them. Platforming was okay. It's there but it's not true platforming in 3d like hod LoD does it it felt more automatic than finger skill. Overall everything was not perfect like the camera angle but hey, it's not Ninja gaiden 2 bad but a first person view like zelda would help it's one of the best looking games for the system it's on.

Mof: The combat it's all right. But somethings like the range of the whip what the heck? I have never really missed an attack and the blocking is kind of easy Los took some time as well, but LoS it felt good, here you can attack from the other end of the screen if you wanted to, air dashing is very good I used that alot it can get you out of that spot when you need to. The sub weapons were kind of hit and miss for me. For example Simons axe and firebomb was very,very, dull in comparison to the knife or holy water, but the boomerang packed a punch and Alucards wolf form is awesome compared to the weird tit creature from the dark stone in LoS, yet overall the weapons in LoS felt more polished to me that in MoF.

Overall from a gameplay perspective LoS wins in my opinion due to it have more variety and I know for a fact that Mof could have done this(like the horse part in LoS it could have been done since another game did it already and that game is way better than Mof  in alot of cases honestly)

Story
Los To keep it short. Los win due to the fact that it progressed well and it tried nothing to fancy except for the plot twists at the end it was a solid narrative in my opinion.

Mof fails in my opinion due to trying to tell a story that really falls flat on it's face. The story spoilers it's self for you how can you do that to your story? Going backwards is a very difficult thing to do well and I feel that Mof failed in that regard.

Environments

Alot of folks are saying that at least MoF took place in the castle and yeah it did, but to me LoS tried somethings differently that makes it standout. In MoF The theater was cool, the place eith all the electricity was well done, but this case is different in LoS I liked the purple crystal cavern, the deadwaste land, hell and more. Now I'm not trying to say that MoF is bad but LoS to me had better locals.

Music.

This will be my last one since I have to leave for basketball class soon so this will be short.

I cannot remember anything that is good in MoF I just cannot, while LoS brought Belmont's theme and the waterfalls of argtha(did I even spell this correct?).If no feelings are there than what can I say. Belmont's theme played when you were controlling the sun and the moon that makes a sense of awe the feeling that I got man... Mof does not compare.

Cutscenes.
For LoS it was well done some solid stuff cannot wait how this is improved upon in los2.
Mof: At first I thought it was good and now... The game I want to mention is on the 3ds as well and it in my opinion does it better. I recall someone saying the cutscenes look like a comic or something, well there is another game that does that and way better. Not only that but even motion comics have even better mouth movement than what MoF did.

Overall: I give it to LoS not only due to it's length, but due to the more solid narrative, better combat, more gameplay mechanics, and replayablity. This had some form of thought put into it.

Mof is kind of lackluster in my opinion due to how short it is, lack of accomplishments that one can feel, forgettable music, and lackluster story. It just does not feel planned right.

[Pfil]

@Neobelmont:
I also had a big problem with the length of the whip. It just makes the game more boring, and makes it all look so over the top. They try to be realistic in the approach, but I don't find this extra-long whip to be realistic at all.

Oh God I had forgotten about that ugly topless creature from LoS! Yeah that wasn't good at all.

What game did the horse part and the cutscenes? I'm curious.

[crisis]

HOWEVER, where is the damn staircase?!

actually i just realized the staircase is in Trevor's part of the game, derp

What game did the horse part and the cutscenes? I'm curious.

In the beginning of LoS, right after the first battle with the werewolves. They begin to chase you and you hop on a mystical horse to get away.

[Flame]

I want to elaborate on my view on the music. Some of the tracks were right from LoS. Which also cuts down on the originality of the soundtrack.

[Neobelmont]

@Neobelmont:
I also had a big problem with the length of the whip. It just makes the game more boring, and makes it all look so over the top. They try to be realistic in the approach, but I don't find this extra-long whip to be realistic at all.

Oh God I had forgotten about that ugly topless creature from LoS! Yeah that wasn't good at all.

What game did the horse part and the cutscenes? I'm curious.

It takes away the challenge even LoS reach of the whip was not that long.

Yep nasty busom that could make any man or woman turn away

Just like crisis said.

An other thing I would like to add is the yellow combat bar in los I loved that but if ms did add that I think most players that are good at countering( TY fighting games) would never die by enemy fire in Mof.

One more thing the 3ds game I'm talking about is shinobi for the 3ds I think it's a great game. FPS is steady from what I played, platfoming is good, combat is quick, there are extras, I'm not sure how long the game is but from where I'm at it's shaping up to be a good game. Better than MoF in my opinion.

[Pfil]

OK, thanks! 

Another little issue with Mirror of Fate was the frame rate. Sometimes it seemed that there were too much onscreen for the console capabilities, or maybe it was just a programming issue of the game. I don't know about that, so I can't tell, but it was similar like what happened in older consoles where there were too much characters and effects on screen.

And the 3D, while adding a nice depth to the good looking backgrounds, was not so special in my opinion.
I expected something more gorgeous when looking at screenshots previous to the game release (not backgrounds, but 3D effects themselves).
And some 3D effects with hunchbacks were not really necessary at all.

[Neobelmont]

Sometimes trying to be a visual spectacle is not the b est way to go work on the fundamentals then build upon that. It seems MS was trying to be ambitious but... Yet the 3d effect is great. It's the one 3ds game that was on 3d for the most part for me.

[VladCT]

About the framerate issue, I think it was because the game was developed in HD first and then downscaled into SD. Bad practice, I'd say.