Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

A feast for the eyes, a gauntlet for your thumbs and a satisfying puzzle for your brain to chew on, Lords Of Shadow 2 is a competent jack-of-all-trades.

Dracula evolves once again with the Mercury Steam crew by offering a 20 hour action-packed adventure with a beautiful design and interesting mechanics. Even thought it has some shadows (stealth doesn't fit well into the formula), this game is worth a buy.

This was never going to be the shock hit that the first game was, because we were forewarned of its excellence. While it does suffer a little from the stellar expectations, this huge finale is its own creature, and easily does MercurySteam's saga justice.

Thankfully, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 almost always rises above its annoyances. There's plenty to see and do, from its magnificent moonlit views to its sensational bosses (infuriating stealth boss excepted).

Lords of Shadow 2 didn't succeed in outrivaling the first episode. But it is indeed a great game, beautiful and interesting, with some flaws (mostly the stealth sequences) that can be annoying at times, but never prevent the player from a desire to run to the end of the story and explore this pleasant open world.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is no doubt a good game, but fails to deliver all of its promises. Combat mechanics are tailored for core gamers, but besides that the game fails to deliver a correct balance of old and new features, but first of all it's too derivative.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 isn't a complete disappointment, yet it makes very clear how difficult it is to accomplish a good sequel, especially when you need to please both the hardcore fans and the masses. The switch from fixed camera angles to freeview adds some hiccups in the game mechanics, while stealth, platforming and unimaginative boss fights often spoil the fun. There must be a great sequel hidden down there, but it's seldom seen during the 10+ hour of hack'n'slashing.

A controversial title, not fully doing justice to the excellent work MercurySteam put in the first game. It sports a very good combat system but stumbles on boring stealth and platforming sessions, with too many cutscene interruptions. However fans of the series will love playing as Dracula and going deeper in the Belmont family story.

The problem is, the last game did everything much better. I don't think I have ever played a sequel that made me wonder more if the people behind it were fully sure why they did it. In a way, it's no small feat and a testimony to Mercury Steam's considerable talent that they still managed to make this an enjoyable experience.

On the whole Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a game that does the basics well enough, without ever really setting itself apart. It is a nice conclusion to the first game but nothing more, nothing less. Worth picking up if you enjoyed the original, but hardly essential at the same time.

We were expecting much more from this final episode of the trilogy. A game that mixes excellence and fun with frustration and boredom, and that closes the story in a quite disappointing way.

A strange beast. It gives us the narrative conclusion we wanted, but in a sequel we arguably didn’t need. It’s fun enough, but never feels essential, and the fact that it’s let down by its combat – which plays such a huge and vital role – means you may reach the final stretch with little emotional investment to spare.

Quotation forthcoming.

Lords of Shadow 2 is worth playing through if for nothing more than to get closure to the series, but it is easily the weakest of the three Mercury Steam entries to the franchise.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 could have either used significantly more development time, or significantly less. Either way you slice it, ideas that just have no place in the game could have either been expanded upon or pared down to the point where it doesn't feel like Dracula was wasted.

The end result is something that doesn’t come near the level of overall quality found in the original Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.

If this Dracula seeks eternal rest then as much as we’d love to see him stay alive for one more adventure, perhaps it’s about time a stake was put through his heart.

A disappointing end to a promising tale, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a turgid and inconsistent sequel that fails to live up to its forebear.

Despite some truly gorgeous visuals on now last-gen hardware and satisfying combat mechanics that feel as Castlevania as 3D gameplay could ever hope to get, Dracula gets hampered and hogtied far too frequently by poorly executed stealth. These mechanics have no place in an experience that, without them, could have totally satisfied your bloodlust.

The world is both large and intricately detailed, and you'll want to explore it. But there aren't enough interesting set-pieces to assuage the feeling you're merely engaging in attritional combat to see the next environment or get to the next part of the story. A huge shame.