Wow! I've been cruising the internet a little and there are some people upset about this game! Too much combat, floaty jumping, falling damage... that last one in particular is apparently quite an affront to some enthusiasts. I played the recently released demo of the game before reading all this vitriol and I came away with a very different impression. I feel like a lot of the criticism out there is only criticism to a person who has specific expectations for what a Castlevania game should be... the style and features of this game are very unlike recent handheld Castlevania games, but quite good regardless! Let's break it down.

Graphics and Sound

Are awesome, just like they were in Lords of Shadow. Putting this gothic action game in the hands of a Spanish development team is a gamble that's paid off very well - the art in these games is distinctly European and captures gothic stylings far better than any of the Japanese developed games ever did. There's an authenticity of design here that helps these games stand out not only from other Castlevania games, but from other games period. Very good stuff. The environments steal the show, and playing with 3D on is an absolute necessity. Even indoors the way the setting falls back into the background is really well done. It achieves the effect that the old parallax scrolling layers would pantomime in the old 2D games.

The music sounds like Lords of Shadow music. Did you play that game? Hop onto youtube for a listen if you feel the urge. LoS opts for a theatrical style soundtrack instead of looping level songs as past Castlevanias always have. I'm sure this is something Castlevania enthusiasts aren't happy about, but don't listen to them. It's a good theatrical style soundtrack, whether it fits with tradition or not is far less important than that.

Platforming

is kinda weird. The jump arc is pretty stiff, reminding me of Super Castlevania IV. But unlike that game everything here is pretty easy - ledges are set aglow for the player when they're at all less than obvious, and Trevor can grab onto edges from a decent distance away. Falling damage is the penalty for failure if you miss a big jump, but from what's been shown it looks like missing platforms isn't gonna be a huge issue. It seems more like a tool to encourage the player to actually follow the intended level design rather than just shortcutting around by falling three stories. As long as the level design is good, this won't be a problem. If the game forces the player to backtrack through tedious and/or very hard sections just to avoid falling damage, then this will be a problem. On it's own falling damage is neither good nor bad, it is the level design that will make it one or the other. I really do like the stiff jump arc though, all the animations in this game feel deliciously heavy.

Combat

seems to be the focus of the game. Which shouldn't surprise anyone who played Lords of Shadow, this new Castlevania franchise is a franchise of action games. I'm not an action game enthusiast so I can't talk about frame canceling or move balance or anything, but it was surprisingly hard. Enemies will take a chunk out of 'ya if they hit, and very few moves stun them. I ended up using the dodge roll and air dash an awful lot just to stay alive. The whip felt good and heavy to swing around. There's a move list with two pages of unlocks as you level up, more than half were unlocked already for the demo. I couldn't figure out uses for all the moves, but I'm sure for the guys who break down combat systems and really get into that they're all valuable.

So in Conclusion

The game reminds me of pre-Symphony of the Night Castlevania in a lot of ways. Enemies take multiple hits, jumping is pretty stiff, dying is a real possibility. Real challenge has been absent from this franchise for quite a while (though Order of Ecclesia should be lauded for beginning to re-introduce the threat of death) so getting a brand new difficult 2D game with a lot of the stylistic trappings of the original formula is pretty exciting! It's also exciting to get a well produced 2D action game from a Western developer - these games have been almost solely the realm of the Japanese for far too long. This game isn't trying and failing to be a Metroidvania, it's trying to be something new.

From what little I played of it, I kinda just didn't think that the God of War/Lords of Shadow combat makes very much sense on a vertical plane. It was designed around a horizontal plane like most of the flat combat areas in GoW/ LoS, and switching it to a vertical plane just felt weird and ill-fitting when I played the demo.

I thought the frame rate was pretty poor in spots, and the combat style was ill-suited for 2D. I felt that the difficulty stemmed from a lack of control precision rather than solid design. However, I am a sucker for a 2D Metroid-vania games, and Mirror of Fate seems like it may have just enough of Metroid-vania still in it to scratch that itch. The cell-shaded art-style is pretty cool as well. I just wish they had less of a focus on the combat in this particular iteration, or worked harder to make the combat work on a 2D plane.

I dunno. I don't really think this game is aimed at me, anyway. I might give it a look down the line, but I certainly wasn't impressed enough by the demo to seriously take note of it.

My problem wasn't that it wasn't a Metroidvania (which I do like). I didn't even really expect it to be one. I was looking at it through more of a classic 2D game lens (which I admit I like less, but that I still like), which is what I read this game pitched as.

I don't like a lot about the demo, but what really stood out as my main problem is the combat and it's over-animation. When the character attacks, he moves forward.

This is a 2d game where space is limited and placement and control should be priority number one, but in just pressing attack, you lose control of your character. Pressing attack multiple times launches the character into a combo that seems like it is doing more harm than good, because during the animations you can't control what your character is doing, enemies can still hit you, your attacks don't stun them and they take several hits while you take so few. You're dancing into damage.

So the most effective way to play the demo is to press y twice and pause or roll backwards and then repeat. That's it. You just mastered the demo combat. It's painfully easy and the only difficulty comes from the scaling of health and damage, not from clever design. I don't think the GoW style of combat they are used to making works well in 2D here.

I don't want to make a wall of text, so I'll just leave that one problem I had with the demo, but there are more.

Best blog title I've seen in a while. And also, it's nice to see someone judging a game for what it is, now what he/she wants it to be. Kudos.

The thing that I have issues with is the frame rate. Will probably get over it though.

The game felt too sluggish with the constantly bad framerate. On top of that, I had a definite issue with the combat in that it took about 20x the amount of hits to kill bosses/tough enemies, and about 3x too many on standard enemies.

That, and horizontal attacks are a big WTF in a 2d environment. The game feels ham fisted, and it's a shame, too. The environments are glorious, and it looks like a proper castlevania (no, I don't give a shit whether it's metroidvania/classicvania.). Music, however, was a let down.

I also was disappointed, I loved lords of shadow but its combat style just doesn't work for me in 2d. I also kind of hated how the jumps felt and on the xl things looked very aliased. Most of the time characters were too small on the screen and sometimes hard to make up from the backgrounds.