Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

Having played the first Lords of Shadow game, I had expectations for good gameplay, great boss-fights and hauntingly fantastical environments that the first-game had depicted. Lords of Shadow 2 seems to have started off with great ideas but has largely failed/scrapped in execution. The story picks off from the first Lords of Shadow game where we see how Gabriel Belmont descends into darkness and eventually becomes the Prince of Darkness and eventually meets Zobek again in the modern era ([spoiler]which built upon the absence of Dracula after his defeat at the hands of the brotherhood[/spoiler]). We follow Dracula's journey of redemption as he seeks to end his immortality ([spoiler] though this idea is completely forgotten by the end of the game [/spoiler]) and fights the darkness within him (seen as his contempt towards God for leaving him to his fate in the first game), regaining bits of his humanity through his interactions with visions of his son, Trevor Belmont. These segments take place in sequences where Dracula is able to traverse his castle in search of the relics that give him his powers. These sequences are my favourite parts in the game as they follow along with the facets that made the first game great. In the modern world, Dracula has to find Satan's acolytes (which serve as some of the main bosses in the game) and defeat Satan himself again. These segments didn't look particularly attractive as the modern architecture didn't do any favours to the gothic marvels it was built upon. The game is different from the first LOS game in that the world is no longer broken up in stage-like levels you can replay whenever you want in favour of a metroidvania-like connected "world" which mostly consists of giant rooms/spaces connected by interactive loading screens which the game tries to seamlessly mask but they are still annoying and break the flow of gameplay nonetheless. The game opens up with a great segment where the Brotherhood of Light lays a siege upon Dracula's Castle with all the things that made the first game great plus Dracula's unyielding power. Sadly this is one of the few moments where the game peaks. Dracula's powers do make everything much more enjoyable although you still will get killed in about 3-4 hits when you have to face common hordes especially when playing on Prince of Darkness difficulty. The boss battles are mostly great although Satan's boss battle was kind of disappointing along with how the story ended which didn't bring much closure to closing game of the saga. I love the combat system, Dracula starts with his dark blood whip which mirrors all of Gabriel's whip mastery from the first game. The void sword, the physical manifestation of Dracula's cold heart, replaces light magic and allows you to freeze enemies and objects of interest as well as heal yourself. The chaos power, formed from Dracula's rage and vengeance, replaces shadow magic and deals greater damage allowing Dracula to unleash fiery claws and exploding earthquakes. There is a mastery mechanic which upgrades your weapons as you use different combos and powers each weapon allows which I found to be quite an engaging way to get players to use/learn all their abilities. The weapons get stronger with the amount of abilities you master (this is somewhat crucial in harder difficulties). Now I love stealth games but not when I'm trying to play as God's chosen one who laid a holy smackdown on Satan himself. A very strange idea the devs went with was confining the Prince of Darkness to stealth segments where you will be decimated by Golgoth guards in one shot if you directly confront them. This is the single most annoying and unwelcome part of the game as these segments are neither interesting nor terribly intuitive. Thankfully these segments weren't much of a hindrance or sprinkled around too much. This game definitely had the potential to be as good as if not better than the first game but it is apparent that the development cycle for the game was a mess. There seem to be several ideas which might have been great but were scrapped or rushed into slop. This mostly just means if you seek to 100% the game it will be quite annoying to do so. I would recommend this game only if you liked the first game and want to see some form of a conclusion to Gabriel Belmont's story, albeit not a satisfying one. The game also has the Revelations DLC where we play as Alucard primarily in Dracula's Castle ([spoiler] mainly setting things up for Dracula's revival in the modern era [/spoiler]). Alucard's abilities are mostly geared towards environment traversal but are still quite fun to use and remedies some of the issues with the game world being a chore to get around. Alucard uses his sword, the Crissaegrim, as opposed to Dracula's dark blood whip. The sword also has its own version the chaos and void powers in the form of the Glaciem and Igneas swords which, once all abilities are unlocked are quite powerful. The DLC is mostly just a sequence of puzzles with some combat in between apart from the boss fights. Alucard's gameplay is interesting enough to justify the DLC though I mainly gravitated towards it to wash off the taste off the main game's ending. tldr; the game has its flaws in gameplay-wise and plot-wise but it still has satisfying hack-and-slash combat with good boss fights. Worth playing if you liked the first game's plot and gameplay.