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How was Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2?

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That was unfortunately caused by one of there artists leaving mid devolopment I think. Because of Eric's stupid Ego.
 
Some great moments and boss fights. The interconnected levels reminded me of a SOTN style map. The castle segments are great, it's simple a mixed bag. It's not a terrible game at all and don't let the hyperbole stench deter you. At that price, it's worth it for combat, bosses, and art style alone. Fuck the stealth missions though. Makes no sense other then to say... I'm a game and I have variation

Pretty much echoes my thoughts. Such a huge dip coming off its predecessor and it hurts because it should have been even better. But as soon as I heard they were going status quopen world with it I started to smell a stench.

However the first will remain in my top three from last gen.
 
Best thing about the game was it's art direction. Some of the backgrounds for the castle sections are beautiful.

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As a game it was average. There are better games to spend your time playing but I think for a low enough purchase price a playthrough is warranted. Events such as artists leaving mid development hindered the game overall, leading to an inconsistent feel throughout.

"My name is al-you-card."

You wot m8? It's Alucard. That pissed me off more than it should have.
 
The hyperbole is/was definitely off the charts with this game. It's a perfectly serviceable and enjoyable character action game with a few questionable sections.
 
Damn right. There's a part where you come out of the castle and there's swirling clouds, lightning etc and I was just really impressed with the scale and detail of the environments. Mercury Steam really have a talent for detail, scale and creating a world you can believe in.
There's so much to LoS. The story alone fits really well with the Castlevania series. It's not a happy tale of a hero but a fallen warrior who lost everything only to be left in a worse state after the first game.
So good.



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LOL, game is atmospheric as fuck

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OP I recommend you get it on sale if your a bit iffy. I think if your a fan of the first, you'll like this one.
 
As someone who was a massive fan of the first game, I was super hyped for LoS2, especially after that E3 reveal trailer.

But the game turned out to be nothing more than a miserable pile of shit. An absolute festering turd.

It retains almost nothing of what I loved about the first game. The beautiful vistas and environments are replaced by a miserable, claustrophic and nonsensical 'open' world which completely fails at portraying any real 'sense of place'. By that, I mean I didn't buy that the setting was somewhere that would ever exist in any world, real or fantasy. The whole gameworld felt like Gabriel was on the set of the UK gameshow 'The Crystal Maze', just these fake facades of 'Industrial Zone' and 'Gothic Zone' linked by interconnecting passageways. Nothing made sense and all of it was ugly to look at and a chore to traverse.

I didn't (couldn't) play through the whole game but the only story I got from it was that Gabriel becomes Zobek's lacky and must carry out a bunch of fetch quests which take him back and forth through this city/gothic castle /Planet Strogg. Every now and then a wolf shows up and takes you to the past or somewhere, and that's about it.

The stealth gameplay is the worst part of the game and whoever thought it was a good idea to shoehorn that festering shite into the game has no business working in a creative medium. The futuristic areas are filled with enemies resembling the Strogg from Quake and despite not looking like any more of a threat than any other enemy Gabriel frequently kills, you can't beat them for no other reason than Zobek says you can't. So you have to morph into a flock of rats to scurry around them. It's tedious. There are other stealth section which are even worse too, and make as little sense.

I feel like I've forgotton more than I remember of what I disliked about LoS2, but it remains my most crushing disappointment ever.
 
I definitely preferred the castle sections to the modern city environment in terms of aesthetics.

Putting the action into a modern environment is not a bad concept per se, it was just so badly executed. They completely fucked it up. Level design, enemy design, story beats, stealth sections. I hated everything about the modern parts, bad from start to finish.
 
I actually really liked it, sure some flaws (namely I'd say a lot of the modern aesthetic clashes with the tone) but I felt much of the criticism was overblown - especially that stealth boss.

I finished it in a couple sittings, really hooked me if no one else
 
I much preferred the castle sections to the modern city environment.

Putting the action into a modern environment is not a bad concept per se, it was just so badly executed. They completely fucked it up.

Eh. I HATE the stupid labs (that have no place in the game), but I didn't mind SOME of the modern city designs.

Gothic designs
 
I was pretty disappointed in LoS2, the whole game felt like a mess.
The ending was unsatisfying too. None memorable music either.
Everything which made Castlevania great was lacking in LoS2.
 
I definitely preferred the castle sections to the modern city environment in terms of aesthetics.

Putting the action into a modern environment is not a bad concept per se, it was just so badly executed. They completely fucked it up. Level design, enemy design, story beats, stealth sections. I hated everything about the modern parts, bad from start to finish.

Yeah I don't get why Gabriel had to sneak around when he's the fucking PRINCE OF DARKNESS. He could easily bop those giant armour dudes. I dunno, yeah the game some major flaws but I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you're someone who's into spectacle fighters like DMC and alike then yeah you'll still be playing it since it's combat system is fantastic. They did a damn good job at making an in depth combat system. But again, I still enjoyed the game outside of combat.
 
LOVED everything in and around Dracula's castle, but didn't care for, or at times disliked, the City and Laboratory settings. The art is incredible and the boss encounters were a lot of fun. There's more than enough value there for $5.
 
This game was so dissapointing. The first game was surprisingly good, and I was looking forward to the sequel. What we got was just so underwhelming and riddled with poor choices in game design.
 
It's weird really, just look at the reviews and you will see some really liked it and some hated it, and I never fully trust really bad reviews when some reviews gave the game a good score, if a game was really bad, no reviews would be really positive.

I actually enjoyed it, it wasn't as bad as some of the reviews made out, I played PC version, not sure if the console version is much worseor not but I will say the 1st game is better though.
 
It was everything I did not want from a game starring Dracula, the Prince of motherfucking Darkness.

Dracul the Dragon is way better then his IGA counterpart

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And I disagree. Ripping Knights in platemail apart with my teeth. Draining there blood in QTE"S. Turning into a Dragon. Turning into a plauge of rates. Turning into Mist. Throwing up galleons of corrupted blood. Evil shadow magic.

LOS2 best evil vampire god simulator.
 
The first one was freaking amazing. Such a fantastic game.

However, the second one is a freaking disaster.. I cannot believe that the same developer made Lords of Shadow 2.

This. I was very disappointed in how LoS 2 turned out (possibly my biggest disappointment in regards to sequels). It was such a huge piece of shit :/.
 
This is how I've always said it. How would you say it?

Ah-loo-card? I can't remember how Dracula says it from SotN.

Dracula is pronounced with a hard "u" sound, and Alucard is just Dracula backwards... so it makes sense... ?

Never heard it pronounced that way by anyone regardless of accent. I'm from the UK and every human I've heard say it or read it has pronounced it "Aloocard".

Do you guys say "Al-you-card"?

Also just because the words backwards doesn't mean you pronounce each letter the same way. The structure of the word influences the pronunciation.
 
I hated the Modern day parts of LoS2

I loved the castle though. The game has mixed feelings for me.
I loved LoS 1 as well though.
 


I've got this LttP thread but its spoileriffic so it may not be of much use.

I managed to finish it and not dislike it so there's that, still unfortunate that it failed to build upon the potential the original left.
All that said while I don't think it's better I kind of prefer it for some reason (it's probably because the castle, yum)
 
I didn't finish it due to my file getting erased, but it was an alright game. It definitely isn't garbage (aside from some specific parts), but the first game was better.
 
Never heard it pronounced that way by anyone regardless of accent. I'm from the UK and every human I've heard say it or read it has pronounced it "Aloocard".

Do you guys say "Al-you-card"?

Also just because the words backwards doesn't mean you pronounce each letter the same way. The structure of the word influences the pronunciation.

Upon inspection of my speech, I've found it to be more ah-lew-card. Not a pure oo, but also not a hard you.
 
Seriously one of the biggest letdowns, especially after coming from LoS1 which was truly a diamond in the rough. Such an excellent game, I need to pull that out again.
 
I ask because GamesPlanet has it for a fiver and I was thinking of picking it up. I liked Lords of Shadow 1, pretty derivative but could be spectacular to look at and the combat was fun.

I remember a lot of controversy over this game and not great reviews but I wondered how it turned out in general. Is it similar in terms of platforming, combat, etc?

LOS2 is definitely a big drop in quality compared to the first one.
 
Want to see a developer in love with the idea of crafting a Link to the Past/Metroid Prime Echoes-style overlapping dual world adventure but totally lacking the talent to do it? Play Lords of Shadow 2.

I loved the first one, but 2 is a mess. It has its moments, and it starts off great, but sadly disappears up its own ass with delusions of grandeur. Really poor structure and obstacle design. And holy shit I just remembered the stealth sections.

Such a shame.
 
My abiding, post-traumatic memory of this game will always be Agreus' sodding garden maze; the shittiest of all the shitty stealth sections. I must have tried that fifty times before fluking my way through it. Maybe I'm just rubbish, but I have no idea how that made it past playtesting.

Other than that, I enjoyed the combat, but pretty much nothing else. The world was a chore to navigate, and the art style was incredibly inconsistent, and relentlessly morose outside a few locations.
 
Want to see a developer in love with the idea of crafting a Link to the Past/Metroid Prime Echoes-style overlapping dual world adventure but totally lacking the talent to do it? Play Lords of Shadow 2.

I loved the first one, but 2 is a mess. It has its moments, and it starts off great, but sadly disappears up its own ass with delusions of grandeur. Really poor structure and obstacle design. And holy shit I just remembered the stealth sections.

Such a shame.

Why would Dracula needs to do stealth?
 
The only thing good to come out of the game was this trailer music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi7wkl1VNPE


Watch the trailer to see what happens, but don't be fooled into getting the game because of the hype you may feel when watching. It's just the music getting to you.

The game sucks.
and I beat it.

sigh....


What could have been.

EDIT: You will never have a moment in this game where you are in awe of the environments.
 
Damn right. There's a part where you come out of the castle and there's swirling clouds, lightning etc and I was just really impressed with the scale and detail of the environments. Mercury Steam really have a talent for detail, scale and creating a world you can believe in.
There's so much to LoS. The story alone fits really well with the Castlevania series. It's not a happy tale of a hero but a fallen warrior who lost everything only to be left in a worse state after the first game.
So good.



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A futuristic organization controlling society in Castlevania City fits the narrative to the series
?

The game sucked, and the story is one of the largest reasons it was ass. The ending we got wasn't the intended one, as the one we have was sequel bait, but thankfully the game underperformed so seriously that Konami has probably killed off any internal interest in making another bastardized Castlevania.

Long live Bloodstained. :(

This doesn't even get into the haphazard designs behind the game. Stealth?
 
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