Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate Review

Hey! Another portable Castlevania game, someone tell Carl! Wait, its not sprite based like its predecessors and its a sequel to the PS3/360 Lords of Shadow? What the hell is going on?

Yeah Mirror of Fate is the first proper portable Castlevania game since 2008’s Order of Ecclesia and not only is it polygonal, but it’s a sequel to the character action game Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Remember that game, the one Hideo Kojima kinda had a hand in creating? Yeah, this is a sequel to that. Apparently it did well enough to warrant a portable sequel and a proper sequel scheduled to be released later this year. Let’s collectively try and get over the wordiness of that title right now. Not only does it have two subtitles, but both of the them follow the “blank of blank” pattern. While dumb, this pattern is not anything new for the franchise.

Like most Castlevania games since Symphony of the Night, Mirror of Fate fits into the the genre it helped create, as a Metroidvania style game. Armed with the familiar Combat-cross from the previous game the characters fight through a castle periodically gaining abilities. These abilities allow the character to access parts of the castle they were previously unable to access. This style of game is unique in that it promotes backtracking that is not a complete bummer. The backtracking is not as prominent in Mirror of Fate as it is other games in this genre, but its there and it works. There is always something super satisfying about getting a new skill and remembering where you can run back to and use it.

Unlike the first Lords of Shadow, Mirror of Fate is a 2D game with 3D graphics. Everything is done on a 2D plane, but the power of the 3DS allows for decent looking polygonal enemies characters and environments. The downside is that going polygonal leaves Mirror of Fate in somewhat of a limbo between the classic portable Castlevania titles and the modern Lords of Shadow. The Japanese charm that came with the big classic and detailed sprites is gone, completely gone (which for me is a good thing because that means the overly anime art is mostly gone too). However with the game being 2D, it doesn’t carry the same weight and sense of scale that Lords of Shadow carried. It draws enough from its predecessors to feel familiar, but at the same time feels like a red-headed step child.

Coming off of a convoluted story in the first game, Mirror of Fate not only delivers an equally convoluted story, but ups the ante tri-fold before the opening cut-scene is over. After a history lesson on the Belmont family its revealed that the first character that gets play time is Simon Belmont. Very little happens in the story during most of the game, much of what happens is just in service of Simon finding Dracula (his Grandfather). About halfway through the game the focus shifts to Alucard, and his story is also in service of him finding Dracula. Trevor Belmont comes out to play too. I’m not going to spoil anything, but lets just say the Belmont family gets plenty of attention throughout the game. Its typical Japanese, Castlevania stuff, and is kinda dumb, but there’s a large audience for this type of soapy Gothic storytelling. I’m not going to say its bad or poorly written, I’m just going to say its typical.

Simon, Alucard and Trevor have decent move sets with the Combat-cross and they control the same. However their magic powers differ greatly. The combat is fast paced and the enemies are varied. Probably the biggest problem with the combat isn’t the combat itself, but the checkpoint system its built around. Checkpoints are everywhere! When traversing the map, there’s little worry to be had. Dying doesn’t come with much consequence so there’s little need to dig deep into the combo system. Not needing a deep combo to take out enemies makes the combat feel shallower that it actually is.

The checkpoints may be bad in most areas, but they are wonderful in the boss fights. Each Boss has multiple checkpoints, making the normally impossible seeming baddies able to be handled with the appropriate level of difficulty. Blocking is a must when fighting most of the bosses, and as in most games, learning the patterns is necessary.

Mirror of Fate is a hard game to target. On one hand, Castlevania fans will love the structure, but any of them that are attached to the sprite art style will be turned off immediately. We are really dealing with a Windwaker-style divide here. Pardon me while I editorialize a bit deeper. Why make this a Lords of Shadows game? I get that Konami wanted to completely reboot the franchise, but the name Lords of Shadow carries some baggage with it. Not necessarily bad baggage, but baggage nonetheless.

Putting the Lords of Shadow name on this makes me think of the God of War/Devil May Cry style of game-play that was in the first Lords of Shadows game. If that’s your starting point as a fan, stepping into the 2D world of Mirror of Fate will be jarring and probably won’t be well received.

Portable technology has come far enough to allow full 3D games to easily be playable on handhelds. A true Lords of Shadow style game could have been made, easily and it could have been on either 3DS or PS Vita or both. It just feels like Mirror of Fate is purposely trying to pollute the waters for both Castlevania and Castlevania: Lords of Shadows. Maybe I’m crazy, and this shake up was needed, I don’t know. What I do know is that despite these oddities the 3DS needed a game like this in its library.

Its a fun romp that’s just tough enough to be challenging. The voice acting may not be awesome and the localization doesn’t look to have been the highest priority during development but it looks good and sounds great.

Verdict: I liked Mirror of Fate, and highly recommend it to Metroidvania fans, and that’s probably the best thing to take away from this whole review.