dsvanias

[dsvanias]

Castlevania Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate HD coming to Steam this month, first screenshots Konami has announced plans to bring Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate HD to Steam for PC later this month. 10 screenshots found their way into our gallery.

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Revenge is a powerful emotion, my friend. It has been my closest companion for many years.

Dracula

Castlevania: Mirror of Fate

(via noborux)

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Gaming Things that make you RAGE #283

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow: Not Drawing the Magic Seals Correctly

submitted by: shonenshoujokid

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To really defeat a boss, you have to draw the magic seal in order to end the battle.  However, if you fail at drawing the seal, the enemy gains some extra HP and you have to fight it again.

-shonenshoujokid

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Middle Finger

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

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Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin intro. Requested by x

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My latest illustration! Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. You can find more of my work at: https://www.behance.net/dsong

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1-21 Edge of the Sky - Akumajo Dracula Ubawareta kokuin Original Soundtrack ~Disc 1~

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Gravedorcus

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AHA!

*Daemon Lord voice: HOHOHOHOHO!* 

You thought I wouldn't be able to rematch you, didn't you, Gabula? Well too bad!

You bet I made a whole new playthrough just so I could reset right before beating the last boss, therefore giving me the power to rematch it indefinitely!

.

..

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SUCCESS!

- Mod Owain 

[dsvanias]

OwO)b -------------------------(>

Belmont Emoji :'D

[dsvanias]

Another argument.

The current excuse I'm seeing from the fandom, for MoF not including a boss rush that allows all characters to face the same bosses (excluding ones that can only be beaten by one, due to subweapons) is that it wouldn't make chronological sense, with the plot spanning 57 years and all. What do I think of that excuse? Bull and Shit.

I will have to remind everyone who uses that argument, of the fact that Portrait of Ruin included bosses from Dawn of Sorrow as extras (You know, back when the series still made sure their games had a lot of those) and those bosses were in copyvania in the year 2036. 

Not only were those bosses between two games, and not within the same one, as a MoF boss rush would be, but they also had a span of 92 years between each other (PoR's 1944 - DoS' 2036) but also, they weren't even in the same castle, and there was no trouble with chronology there, certainly *rolls eyes*.

- Mod Owain

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I have a sort of weird fascination with video game reviews, so I was going over the reviews for the 3DS games that I own (which I may or may not elaborate on later, if people are interested) and I was expecting MoF to get around a 7.0 and truthfully, that would have been totally fair... But 4.7 and the title of worst Castlevania title? NO.

It's like the reviewer wrote his article entirely based on comparisons between this game and previous entries on the series, which really isn't fair and should not be... Oh wait, that is exactly what was done.

And yes, I do completely agree on the map, as I have said in my review, but saying that the gameplay doesn't work at all? I'm sorry but that is some high-grade bullshit.

I'm very disappointed and befuddled with them, really, after that one.

- Mod Owain

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Umm so.

Good job, IGN, yes, do harp on Mirror of Fate for being different than the classical style games. Good job.

The castle isn't boring, you are. Get out of the entitled  old-school mentality. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the classic style, but I didn't set out in Mirror of Fate for a classic game, that would have been stupid, like your review.

- Mod Owain

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Oh and also.

The game has no instructions booklet, what the everloving fuck? I love instruction booklets.

- Mod Owain

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Mod's opinion on MoF:

So yeah, I finished the game yesterday, and I do believe I have to say some stuff about it. Overall I really did like the game, it was good fun and that's all that matters, and with my game clocking in around 13 hours means it's not that shabby for a current generation game either.

Ample spoilers ahead though, even if I was careful with what I wrote, so it could be read by people who didn't want the plot spoiled for themselves. This is a review for the 3DS version, naturally.

So, first off, I gotta say that I actually really liked the multi-protagonist approach, it keeps the game always fresh while still moving the story along quite nicely! I do wish we had a longer prologue with Gabriel, however.

About the plot, yes, the 'twist' on that one character's identity IS predictable, however, it's also well set up and executed, along with being appropriately tragic in and on itself. Props also for the order in which the character's scenarios play out. It's worth it, even if it seems a bit chronologically clunky, because ending the game where it did helped a LOT with the emotional resonance of the plot, in my opinion.

Coming from someone who felt lukewarm towards the plot elements in the Lords of Shadow reboot, I have to actually give praise to Mirror of Fate for getting me a lot more emotionally invested in its characters and underlying themes than the first game of its saga did. I do believe it enhances the tragedy of the story, without relying too heavily in the elements that made Lords of Shadow a bit clunky and unpalatable to me.  

The graphics and soundtrack I have literally nothing to complain about, I think both of these elements are appropriately awesome and worked really well with the 3D function, so that's always a bonus, coupled with the great presentation. I really do enjoy the voice acting and all of those great scottish accents, however, A+ (specially having Richard Madden there, as I'm a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones XD)

As for the gameplay, that's where I feel divided on. On one hand, the game is actually less clunky than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. The warp rooms do help a little with the mobility, but I must admit I'd prefer if they were all connected, giving the player choice as to were they wanted to go, and not flocked to a single place. It would have been more optimal that way. I have to give the dev team props, because I did like this game's version of Castlevania and the explorable areas, even if I feel like we could have spent less time in underground mines and more in castle hallways... but that is nitpicking, when the point is that the exploration element WAS well done in this game. Yes, it rail-roads you with the arrow on the map pointing to where you should go next, BUT you have plenty of option to branch out in-between and find all sorts of extras, so I can't complain much there either.

What I CAN complain about, however, was the map. I hated MoF's square map system. It doesn't even work as a map, honestly, as it only shows areas after you have already been to them, and even with the placement of collectables... It still doesn't show how to get to them in any intuitive way. it actually confused me more about how to get to an item, when I would have gotten to it easily, had I not chosen to look for reference in the map. This was not an isolated incident, by the way.

I must say that I enjoyed a lot of the sly references to the classic timeline, but at the same time, they also make my biased stomach curdle, because I could have been playing those games instead, so, while they were a plus, I still want Konami to go back to it... I will readily acknowledge my butthurt-ness about it.

Another thing that I must comment on are the scrolls found along with corpses of members of the brotherhood, the great majority of them functioning like isolated creepypasta logs, which I really did enjoy, and some of those even sent shivers down my spine.

The combo system works well enough, and so do. the finishing moves, which are appropriately brutal and just plain fun to watch. A point of contention that I must note though, are the QTE's (or Quick time events) because the game is absolutely full of them. However, I happen to actually like QTEs, which may be an unpopular opinion, but I do think they work in this game, being mainly how the bosses are defeated, and some also being part of puzzles.

 And now, coming to the point I liked the least about it... The lack of a way to rematch bosses. I absolutely adore the bosses in the Castlevania franchise, I really do, and this game's were not exceptions. I really did spend the whole game looking forward to facing them again, with the new powerups and combos I had picked up after their defeat, and maybe even challenge bosses with different characters than they fought with, where they appeared in the game... Only to find out that the 3DS version does not include a boss rush at all, and in fact, you can't even fight the last storyline bosses for each character again, not even in the free-roaming 'chapter selection' mode, which was a huge negative in my opinion. Being able to challenge the last bosses as much as you wanted was a staple of the franchise that I really enjoyed. I still play the DS games and do just that from time to time, that's just how memorable the last battles were to me, and this game's were as well, which means it's a huge bummer that I need to start a whole new playthrough just to challenge them once...

This actually seems to be a trend that I'm seeing with third-party developers and games that were first developed for the 3DS, where the dev team would keep elements from the original version and then add them back when the games come out on their platforms, and I honestly think this sort of behavior is very reprehensible. It's just not fair to the fans that bought the first version of the game, specially so when you don't add the features later in any form. I'd readily pay for a DLC that included the boss rush in my game. That would actually enhance the replayability factor to a great degree, along with making the game more fun.

Overall: 8/10

[dsvanias]

*dances around*

- Mod Owain