Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Page 2

Towards the end of the second chapter, kind of in love with the game, even if it is a harsh mistress. Love the look and feel of the game and the score is amazing. I'm actually kind of surprised at how sparingly they're using cutscenes, with it being spread over two discs I expected it to be largely FMV. The first proper boss is a real tone setter for the game, the music and style of the Ice Titan boss fight really get across how epic, and how difficult, the game is going to be. Considering that it's still part of the tutorial the Ice Titan is kind of a motherfucker.

Yeah, it's a good time. Stewart and Carlyle really make the story feel epic even though it's kind of a mess until everything comes together at the end. The ending is awesome, btw - best ending to a game in a very very long time.

It's quite long and has decent replay value. I didn't quite consider it worth buying, but it was a great rental and easily worth $40 or so. In fact, I think that's how I'd review games: True Value. Castlevania gets a 40.

Spike, it gets waaay harder though. I'd keep a stuffed animal handy to beat viciously from time to time.

Compared to some of the enemies that come later in the game, the Ice Titan is kind of a pushover, not that he isn't difficult when you encounter him. It's only in hindsight that you realize how forgiving that fight is.

Holy shit. Which difficulty setting did you guys play at? I decided to give "Knight" a go and the giant wolf that shows up a whopping five minutes into the game is kicking my ass!

I think I'm on the second difficulty level, 'warrior' maybe. I'd suggest switching the difficulty down. You can revisit each level and do them on harder difficulties with more moves/health etc.

Even on the default difficulty, I die often and stupidly. Lucky for me the boss fights have checkpoints. I might've given up otherwise.

Sounds like a challenging game. I'm going to bump it down to "Warrior." Thanks for the quick replies, gentlemen.

I'm playing at the default level, and I keep getting tossed off of that first boss you have to climb. Then again, I suck. Haven't played it in a couple of weeks, I need to pick it up and actually get somewhere in it.

I've been playing this on the 360 in small doses here and there, also on the default difficulty, and the Ice Titan beat my behind quite a few times before I managed to get it done. If it's just going to get harder I may have to kick it down a notch at some point too. I'm a few sections past that part now, but still in Chapter 2. Really enjoying myself.

But this game is quite a surprise. It's very well put together and the graphics in particular are very impressive. If this is the future for 3D Castlevania titles then they are off to a great start.

(edited for some missing letters here and there... ugh.)

Oh god, the second Titan is bizarrely worse and not as bad as the Ice Titan. She doesn't seem to throw you around as much, but there is so much shit going on that it's hard to not get squashed.

It was very smart of them to let you keep all your upgrades when you play through a level again. It allows you to tone down the difficulty when needed, and makes the tougher difficulties much more manageable after you've upgraded a bit.

I beat it on the hardest difficulty they allow at first, but I'd suggest most people play it through on Easy... because it's still not easy. I'm just a masochist.

It is the same mission structure as Devil May Cry 3. You can play completed levels at any time to farm orbs/exp and level into difficulty.

It is a great design choice. I loved this game. Still my favorite game of the year.

I played the first chapter and a half on Knight my first time through and had to bump it down a notch. However, going through the game a second time at Paladin difficulty was actually easier than the first time through because of all the extra moves and health I had unlocked.

I'm a huge CV so it looks like it's a game worth picking up then!

I can't believe they busted out the old "we're not so different, you and I" spiel in two different encounters so close to each other. Great game and all, and I know cliches are part of the landscape, but I can't imagine anyone not groaning, Gabriel included, when "two sides of the same coin" made its predictable appearance.

Finished chapter one. This game is gorgeous.

Had no problems with the titans, but Werewolf Guy at the end of chapter three is a dick.

Is that the one that tosses his bladed weapon at you? I thought he was fine.

For me, the vampire boss that you fight in a small circle arena (not the final vamp one...the one right before that) was the biggest dick in the entire game. He has a bunch of moves that wipe out a ton of health, sometimes chained together one after the other. He doesn't stay in one place for very long, teleporting around quite often. Most importantly, he can completely restore his health until you figure out what to do in order to stop him from doing so. Even then, he has several "sources" to restore from, so the fight goes on for a long freaking time, even after you've figured out what is going on. It was really frustrating to whittle his health down to almost nothing only for it to be almost full again in a matter of seconds.

I also found the ogre boss to be a bit of a pain until I figured out how to properly dodge his attacks. This game has so many bosses though! I be that each one has given different people fits.

Cornell was kicking my ass until I realised that defence and countering were vastly more effective than dodging. I really need to try and block more moves, rather than trying to dodge everything.

Counter moves defnitely save your ass by giving you orbs to spend back on health. It'll make or break you in most non-titan fights.

I've been playing the game too much like Devil May Cry, flitting around the levels like a maniac, when it seems that taking your time with blocks is infinitely more effective. But yeah the first time I counter Cornell and he exploded with Orbs I was almost jumping for joy, it allowed me to go from having like no health at all to having two thirds of the bar full consistently.

I had the same adjustment when playing Lords of Shadow. In action games I tend to dodge much more often than trying to counter or block. Once I sort of broke that habit a bit, LoS became much more managable. The whole balancing act of trying to build up your focus meter to get more orbs so that you have plenty of magic (which in turn keeps your health and badassness juice filled) is MUCH harder when you don't block. Blocking gives you a huge bonus to the meter, often filling it completely, where chipping away at an enemy can take minutes to pull off, even if you don't get it reset by getting hit. The interweaving of game mechanics and making the different systems reliant on each other is something that LoS did very, very well, IMO.

Only two chapters in and loving this, even if it is just making the wait for Shadow of the Colossus in HD all the worse.

The aesthetic is right, the score is absolutely fantastic, Patrick Stewart makes all load times awesome, the combat feels fluid as hell (though coming off Bayonetta to this, I keep trying to use the right trigger to slow shit down and I can't stop doing it), and so far, while nothing groundbreaking, I'm really enjoying the story, and was surprisingly affected by Gabriel, apparently, murdering Claudia in his sleep.

There's a hell of a lot of game to go, though. Im just hoping it stays fresh all the way through.

 

Wow I must be late to the party. Anyway, shit, I finished Lords of Shadow last night and I was really impressed. I mean we've all pretty much gone over how it rides the recent action/platforming dick with its combos and mini-games but the story was far more interesting than I expected. Someone else mentioned how great the ending was and I have to agree, it was really hard to avoid spoilers the last month while picking the game up when I could. On the boss thing I never had a horrible time with any of them, I thought a few of the regular old monsters were really cheap bitches. I couldn't agree more with the person that mentioned the blocks/counters being screwed up. Cornell and the "Shining Knight" (trying not to spoil and I haven't figured out inviso text yet) toward the end are really just guessing games. You may counter four hits in a row then block at the same point in the animation and get completely smashed. I don't know if anyone mentioned this but there's a FMV after the credits that's pretty interesting and sets up the next game, I hope. And another side note there are two DLCs dropping for this, I think one next month and the next in April so it should be interesting to see what they do with the story and where they go after the disc-busting amount of boss fights LoS had.

 

I finished this yesterday and, needless to say, it went from being a backlogged game I played 3 months late to fighting for GOTY contention. Just… really impressed, through and through. It's been said many times before but cannot be stressed enough: the design choices, from the locales to the enemies to the freakin' menus were a wonderful breath of fresh air. I cannot wait to run through this again (and again).

I'm late to the party myself, but I love this game.. just got to Chapter IV.  I enjoy how the game prompts you to replay levels after acquiring new and different skills.. But here's my question;  I don't really have the patience to go back and replay every level to 100%.. but what are the most important levels to beat 100%?   The ones where you can get special skills and weapons that come in handy later?  

 

Any help? 

As long as you're thorough during your initial playthrough of each level, there's no real reason to go back right away. Between how much you'll naturally extend your lifebar and magic meters, you shouldn't have any real troubles (and that way the flow of the game doesn't get interrupted).

Good Lord(of Shadows) is this game fucking hard... I knew that going into it, but holy shit.. it's like the designers don't want me to finish this game.

 

I just finally beat the three goddamn ringwrath-looking characters in the witch's castle or whatever.. talk about getting hit when your character is offscreen and defenseless.. But I will not give up that easily.. this coming from someone who beat FarCry II on PS3 despite wanting to break the damn disc in half literally every time I'd play... 

 

The secret to beating those "ringwraith-looking characters" is to use your grab.  The range on it is pretty long too. Gabriel will throw his chain out, latch onto their sword, and yank it down. This drives the sword into the ground, immobilizing the enemy for a few seconds.  This buys you some time to either attack this enemy or focus on another one.
 

Once you get yourself some fairies, they make fighting the ringwraith guys much more tolerable. Almost easy, even. The game is very difficult up front but gets progressively easier the further you progress, especially if you're collecting a majority of the magic gems along the way. (Doesn't need to be all of them; just most of them.) For me, the final boss was a breeze compared to the werewolf guy at the end of chapter three.

 

Loved this game, BTW. Anxiously await DLC.

Anyone have a clue as to what the DLC's supposed to contain?

Two DLCs. One of them is supposed to tell the story of how Gabriel became Dracula.

Sad face! But not completely.

 

http://www.destructoid.com/castlevania-reverie-add-on-content-delayed-194334.phtml

Fuck me this game is long.. just got to chapter 9 where I need to obtain the three keys from the scarecrows.. Great fuckin' game so far... Annoyingly hard at times, but as Zak Chase said, it almost gets easier as you get towards the end..are Chapters 10, 11, and 12 as long as some of the others?

I've just started getting into this, beating Cornell. I love it a lot, though I agree with the occasional randomness of the countering system. I basically stood toe to toe with Cornell and blocked early enough to trigger lots of counters. That gave me a ton of orbs to keep my health going. Cheapened an otherwise awesome fight.

I'm enjoying going back to the earlier areas because a) they look gorgeous and b) I'm now decimating enemies that used to give me a lot of trouble.

Just entered Chapter 9.

 

Loved the whole stretch from Chapter 4-8. Literally jaw-dropping visuals and art design. The pacing is fantastic, as you see the castle off in the distance and slowly work your way all the way to the Lord of Shadow.

 

The fight mechanics have felt more natural to me now. I invested heavily in light magic and 'Ultimate Light' is quite fantastic at saving my life. I'm now heading back into the shadow magic and it provides more options for smashing the enemy and finishing fights quicker.

That stretch from chapter 3-9 is fantastic. I kind of want to play through it again, but maybe once the add-ons finally come out.

In the final stretch now. The zones here seem inspired by Wayne Barlowe.

And finished! So...

- My favorite game of any released last year.

- A precise and thoughtful battle system, interesting lore, brilliant world design and an epic journey made it a compulsive experience for me.

- The last third was much easier than the first third. Despite that, I still enjoyed the journey through the land of the dead. The 'music box' and Chapter XI boss added intersting elements.

- The ending raises a lot of questions. I wasn't sure what happened when ...

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

- I thought it was cool that the end has ...

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

 

Nice timing, Kriegraffe, as the date for the first DLC pack just got announced (bit high in price, for my taste, unless they mean levels that include individual chapters):

 

I don't know if you guys are still keeping up with this but the first DLC "Reverie" is on the PSN store now. Apparently there was some issue with the 360 version so it isn't up on Xbox Live yet. Which stinks because like a jerk I got it on the 360, I knew I should have gone for the one disc limited edition on PS3. Oh well. If anyone here dls it I'm really curious to hear your impressions.

This thread seems kind of dead but I'll just throw it out there. I picked up the first DLC on Xbox live. It's 800 points, which is waaaaaaaaaay overpriced for what you get. Without giving away any major spoilers it's mostly just platforming, there aren't any new fully rendered cut scenes, they're all done in that heavy black comic style of some of the other art. Story wise it pushes things closer to the epilogue and I'm way more interested in the NEXT DLC and I REALLY hope it gives some meat for the bones. Reverie is really disappointing. :(

Thanks for the heads-up, Ghost. I was thinking about getting this, but I'll probably pass now.

 

That's disappointing to hear. I'll hold off and wait until they drop it to 400 while coinciding with the next one, I'm sure. How long does it last, would you say?

To be completely honest with you I've got two kids so I was on and off it a few times and I don't think it was more than an hour and I'm sure it wasn't more than two. It adds a Chapter XIII with two or three small areas. No new gems or upgrades and a new collectible item, "Frankenstein's Fingers" that unlocks an Achievement but nothing else. There aren't any new enemies though there's an environmental hazard "enemy" in one of the platforming sections that unlocks a Beastiary entry. Like I said before it's mostly platforming and I mean that...it's, at the very least, 90% climbing and dodging saw blades. Since a few of you seem interested you can send me a PM and I'll lay it out for you since I can't figure out the spoiler text thing at all. :( Sorry I'm forum illiterate. 

 

Just beat this epic game and they need to release the next DLC to explain how the epilogue came to be! I'll wait for the current DLC to go on sale though after Ghost explained it.

 

Also, what's the best way to beat those damn skeletons? I ask because I'll be playing this on Paladin soon and they were the hardest enemies for me in the game, should I focus on blocking then attacking them? Counter attacks?