Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

The road to Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 was a short, but still bumpy one. The first game was an uneven adventure that set up the plot of its sequel with a post-credits twist that made absolutely no sense, while Mirror of Fate made poor use of its classic Metroidvania format and told its story with a disastrous structure. And here we are, with the last game of the trilogy, Lords of Shadow 2, which manages to be worse than its predecessors: although it still shares most of their problems, it also displays an alarming lack of creativity and direction.

The premise was already set. Dracula is alive in the twenty-first century and Zobek warns him that Lucifer is about to free himself from hell once again, which is sure to become a problem for the vampire, who stopped him the first time. This was shown to us in the post-credits scene of Lords of Shadow and this sequel adds almost nothing to the plot, just replaying that same cutscene at the beginning. Dracula must stop Lucifer again – even the character himself stresses this word – and that’s it.

The only element the game adds is another layer of motivation: Dracula considers his immortality a curse and wants to die, but Zobek explains that only the Vampire Killer – a fabled weapon in his possession – can grant the protagonist his so-whished release. So, Dracula goes out to defeat Satan again so Zobek can reward him with eternal rest.

The story here has a lot of untapped potential. The protagonist yearns for death, but his self-destructive desire is barely explored. First, it doesn’t make sense as a motivation to destroy the villain, as Satan surely could have found a way to grant Dracula his wish. Then, what will happen if Dracula succeeds and dies? Will he go to hell and be at the hands of his nemesis for all eternity or will God forgive his acts and send the vampire to heaven to be with his wife? Despite its importance, Dracula doesn’t ponder too much on this issue.

Early on in the game, the protagonist fights some holy knights and explains to them why their holy incantations don’t work on him: Dracula claims that he’s God’s chosen one. But the apparent contradiction of having a murderous monster as a warrior of God is never brought up. In one of the first cutscenes, Dracula feeds on an innocent family – children included –, which clearly marks his monstrous side, but after this event, Dracula goes back to acting like your usual hero: killing the bad guys and saving the world. In other words, he’s a living contradiction, but the narrative is not too much concerned with that.

Dracula gets to fight even the creatures of his own castle, which makes him act precisely like a warrior of light: we are playing as the prince of darkness – as Dracula, ever humble, likes to call himself – but in practice, the protagonist’s evil nature doesn’t make much of a difference.

The real Dracula’s castle was destroyed centuries back, but a fragment of it still exists inside the vampire’s mind. It’s a memory, but one that still holds power over reality: the protagonist can visit the place, acquire a new piece of equipment there, and then come back to the real world with it. In the dark, frozen gothic halls of the castle, he meets his minions, which are often hostile. They become so because they’re possessed by a sinister figure: a pool of blood that represents his monstrous side and likes to say menacing things like, “I’ll feed on your soul!”

The first Lords of Shadow was deeply interested in the battle taking place inside the protagonist’s mind, so this is a natural extension of that idea: now we can see a physical manifestation of his fears and anxieties. However, like most things in Lords of Shadow 2, it’s a great idea that is not fully developed. Dracula fights this blood monster at the middle of the game, but defeating it produces no visible effect on the protagonist. This could have been a climactic fight, being the one responsible for making him remember important points about his past and his family – a thing that actually happens at the end – but the game prefers to make a random gesture produce this effect.

His relationship with his son, Trevor, is another missed opportunity, since the game tries to build up to a twist that, besides not working with people that have already played Mirror of Fate (there’s the exact same one there), requires Trevor to disappear from most of the game to work. In his place, we have his child version in Dracula’s mind castle, who is just a defenseless kid that is always in need of help. This, of course, is a great contrast to the real Trevor, but again, the game doesn’t seem to be aware of that.

To talk about Lords of Shadow 2’s story is mostly to talk about things that could have happened, since few things actually do happen in the game. Lords of Shadow 2 is rife with underutilized narrative elements: it has a bunch of great ideas, but absolutely no idea of how to use them. It sets up a lot of interesting paths forward, but doesn’t know which one to tread.

Take the villains as an example. Zobek is now a successful businessman, but this translates only to his headquarters being a company building. He’s reduced to a glorified quest giver, having nothing meaningful to do during the entire game. Since his narration is now gone – instead of levels, the game now boasts an interconnected world that doesn’t leave space for it –, the character loses his creepy edge, and especially now that we already know his true intentions.

Satan’s acolytes on Earth, meanwhile, are leaders of a pharmaceutical company, a weapons manufacturing company, and a religious cult: this could have said something about our modern society, but the game never even thinks about going there. Even Satan himself is just as underutilized as in the first game, appearing only at the end and just to spit out some boring villain stuff. Getting Jason Isaacs for the part, but limiting it to lines like, “I desire to destroy this world. If I cannot rule the world of man, then no one will!” is just criminal.

The modern setting is as wasted as the British actor. First, most of the game actually takes place in Dracula’s castle – the version that exists in his mind, that is – because the developers know it’s the more interesting place. So much so that they made the castle a part of the city as well, telling us it was raised over the ruins of the real castle. In other words, going from the castle to the city doesn’t mean a striking change of scenery. On the contrary, it makes the city a less fascinating version of the castle, as it still boasts its fallen gothic towers and structures, but now surrounds them with bland industrial complexes and buildings. The city is also called Castlevania City but, fortunately, no one has to say that out loud; we only find this information in the menu.

Lords of Shadow 2 lacks consistency as well, with some scenes in the game not making a leak of sense. Nothing related to the Toymaker adds up, for example, since we hear a story about his missing heart, but acquire it by solving a puzzle that the Toymaker himself designed – so the heart was not missing, after all. The fact that this character appears in Mirror of Fate creates more problems still, since here it’s implied that he was in hibernation for a while. Of course, we can constantly dismiss inconsistencies like these by thinking, “oh, it’s the castle in Dracula’s mind, it doesn’t have to make sense,” but events that take place in the real world are often just as nonsensical.

Take the sacrifice of a certain character, for example. We have just met them, so their death hardly makes an impact, but the problem is that it also sounds completely unnecessary: the character’s plan is to draw the attention of a certain villain for Dracula to fight, but Dracula is right there to fight it, but still doesn’t, waiting for the villain to kill his newfound friend and then go away to another nearby place. Meanwhile, during the first stage of the fight against Satan, the fallen angel just stands there watching Dracula destroy his monster without moving a finger to stop it. And talking about boss fights, there’s one that is preceded by a stealth sequence, where Dracula has to move around a maze while avoiding the boss… just to fight it in an arena at the end of the very same maze anyway.

Lords of Shadow 2’s focus on stealth is mindboggling: if there’s a character that claims for a power fantasy it’s Dracula, but the stealth sequences go in the opposite direction, making him weak and vulnerable, often making him transform into a bunch of rats that can be killed by being stepped on. But it’s the execution that is the major problem, since it’s often laughable when it comes to its implications. There are these big soldiers with big guns called Golgoth Guards, for example, which take two seconds to kill Dracula when they spot him. It’s impossible to defeat them head-on, which makes them stronger than their bosses, which are Lucifer’s hand-picked acolytes, and stronger than Lucifer himself. They are quite stupid, falling for the same “oh there are bats flying over me” trick every single time, but I still think they should be in charge of things.

The combat, meanwhile, hasn’t changed much. Dracula still has the same set of combos, and access to light and dark magic, which heals him or lets him deal more damage. The change comes in the fact that these magic bars are attached to specific weapons – a sword and a gauntlet – with their own set of combos to be unlocked. These combos, however, are basically the same as the regular whip – with just a few unique special attacks – so this just means that we have to now buy each combo three times.

Another change is that there are now shielded enemies and the gauntlet is necessary to break them. So, if Dracula is out of dark magic at the moment when they appear, he’s out of luck: we have to keep trying to jump over the creatures and attack their back even though they rarely stop moving.

The developers did try to correct some problems of the first game, however: we can now fully control the camera while points of interest are marked with some flying bats – so we now know which ledges we can interact with and which parts of the environment we can’t. Dracula can now dodge mid-air as well, which means pushing enemies upwards doesn’t leave him too vulnerable anymore.

The final big change is in the overall structure. Unlike the first one, Lords of Shadow 2 goes full Metroidvania with two large interconnected maps (the city and the mind castle) but it suffers from the same problem that plagued Mirror of Fate: it makes going back to find items with a newly acquired piece of equipment feel more like busywork than exploration, as we don’t have other reasons to backtrack to previous areas.  The fact that the game makes some combat encounters unavoidable and that the parkour is often complex in its design – Dracula is often jumping through moving ledges and platforms – also makes the act of backtracking a laborious one: it takes time.

In the same vein, if the art direction is great at making the castle a classic gothic location, with extravagant statues, arches, and pointed towers – all so tall it could make you believe that a giant lives there – it, unfortunately, fails at making the individual rooms and paths stand out from each other, which means remembering where each item was is harder than it should be – and it doesn’t help that there are lots of them as well.

Finally, the game at least succeeds at its boss battles, especially the first ones that take inspiration from classic Zelda design, requiring the use of the newly acquired weapon to defeat them. They are not complex in their design, but it still makes them stand apart from each other and feel new – an important thing, since the actual combat remains basically the same from the first game, which could have led to repetition.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a missed opportunity at almost every level. It has a lot of great narrative elements in it, but no desire to fully explore them, while its gameplay continues to offer the same flawed experience. In the end, it’s the worst game of its already problematic trilogy.

November 01, 2021.