Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 - Revelations is uhh out..

So uhh, the game that probably not a lot of people played recently received a new DLC update. I didn't see any release trailer or any news on Giant Bomb - even Steam doesn't have it in new releases. It was pointed out to me that it was simply available, so I got it.

In short it's not very good.

For something called Revelations, there is a significant lack thereof. If you've seen trailers for this, then there you go, no need to play it, because thats all there is to it. You take on the role of Alucard (thats Dracula backwards by the way) and are tasked with retrieving Gabriels weapons from the evil castle in which he resides. You know, it's the sentient castle from the main game that is scared Dracula is gonna finally grow up, get a real apartment and move out? Cause who wouldn't want to live in a sentient ruin with constantly bleeding walls and switches activated by jamming your hand into some spike, or likewise painful contraption. Well Alucard is more than happy to do this for his father and thats the entire premise of this, ehhh 90 minute (?) long DLC. Although throughout this experience you might keep asking yourself: why wouldn't Alucard just leave the weapons by Gabriels sarcophagus so our weakened prince of darkness can quickly retrieve them upon waking up as opposed to scattering them to the furthest reaches of the castle? A revelation that was sadly not explored.

Alucard doesn't have a lot of new moves in terms of combat as his attack strings are basically identical to Gabriels. You do get some new special abilities once you upgrade his sword far enough the tech tree, but this would require you to actually spend time in the game far beyond the actual running time of the story, which isn't a great proposition.

The DLC is mainly puzzle focused which highlights Alucards new traversal powers, all of which are awkward in some way or another. You can now "teleport" to nearby handholds by turning into a swarm of bats, move back time for specific objects to repair them, or turn into a wolf to jump over bigger gaps. Both the teleport and the time ability require you to hold down the right trigger and scan your surroundings for objects to which you can either teleport to or which you can repair. This quickly turns the game into a Metroid-like experience of walking into rooms and scanning your surroundings to look for anything you can interact with. The puzzles themselves aren't very fun and constructed in a very tedious manner. For instance there is a place with an elevator (yes, the proud family tradition of super powerful beings riding elevators continues) that is operated by two wind up keys that you need to reach by "platforming" up to them. You watch Alucard wind up the key, then you watch the elevator slowly ride up, you jump down, climb to the other side, wind the other key, oops you let go by accident, ok go back to the other side, wind the key, watch the elevator go down.. This design is all over the place where you have a limited amount of time to do something and when that time ends you're left having to backtrack and watch the same animations again before you can attempt to solve it. I was also never quite sure where to go, or where I realistically could go. You can still see small swarms of bats above handholds, but it's never quite clear when you can teleport to them. Sometimes it's right above you and the reticule just won't pop up, sometimes you can barely see it and it shows up. It's all very arbitrary for the sake of keeping the structure of the puzzle, and this makes you feel very lost.

All in all Revelations is pretty poor DLC and it's only saving grace is that it's relatively cheap. If Lords of Shadow 2 gave off the feeling that the really talented part of Mercury Steam got fed up and left halfway through development, then Revelations is very clearly a product made by the remaining half of the studio. It is shallow, tedious and offers nothing new or especially interesting in terms of story development. As much as I enjoyed a large part of the core game despite it's flaws, there is just no sugar coating anything here.

That's a damn shame, was really looking forward to it. Oh well

Very sad that They couldn't reach LOS 1's scale.

Well they couldn't even do that wil the full game. This DLC is a step back to a step back.

I know, that's the worst of it, and with the games reputation I doubt there will be another game, which basically throws the chance for any sort of improvements away, which is sad because it did seem that at the end of LOS 2 Gabriel saw something important in the mirror of fate.

not saying that there won't be more Castlevania games( that's a huge improbability), but it won't be set in the LOS universe.

oh lords of shadow, this like castlevania brand could have been so much more.

This and Assassins Creed have taught me if something if labeled 'Revelations', it is almost guaranteed to have nothing of the fucking sort.

Agreed. Such as shame, the first game was spectacular.

An utter, utter disappointment. Just like the main game. I'll just go play the first one again then...

Revelations huh? What a creative subtitle that is.

Man they fucked up LOS 2 so bad, I loved the first one but the sequel is worse in almost every way. Such a shame...

I thought LOS2 was fun in it's own way. The scope was certainly much smaller, but there were some things that were definitely fun to do and I enjoyed the game overall. It just failed to capitalize on all the things that made the first one a memorable experience. They did fix some things - most notably the combat is a lot smoother and there aren't any more of "find three of these!" type objectives that trapped you in areas that weren't all that interesting to begin with.

I wouldn't go that far, it's not exactly a great sequel but as a game it's pretty damn fun/good, it's a 7.5-8 or so to me, but the conclusion was weak as hell.

@theacidskull: even before the game was released it was designed to be the end of the Lords of Shadow series, which makes it odd that they would have a cliffhanger at the end

It's not even a cliffhanger really, it's more like "I'm gonna make my own destiny" sort of thing.

Exactly, which is a shame because the Dracula/Alucard Pact was a huge and awesome part of the story. It's probably the end either ways, they did say it'd be a trilogy, unless mirrors of fate doesn't count, which again,is improbable. I'm just sad that such a great and unique universe ended in such a way.

Yea I was probably being a bit overly dramatic but I was really let down by it, the combat was still decent but the story and settings were a big step down from the original in my opinion.

But yea, the conclusion is very poor.

Apparently there was some controversy at mercury steam which is why....this game ended up like this.

Man this is late, that DLC came out some time ago (a month?). I bought and played through it as soon as it did and I really enjoyed it. I liked how it was more focused on puzzles and Alucard's movement abilities were pretty neat.

With that said, I gotta say I disagree with pretty much everything you said. I enjoyed my time with both LoS2 and its DLC. I'm sorry you didn't.

@theacidskull: i just want to see what a traditional Castlevania with 2D gameplay would look like on current gen hardware, so im not super broken up over it

@esrever: To each their own. I did say that I enjoyed my time with LOS2 as well, in fact I wrote a favorable review for it. This DLC though was not very good at all. I applaud them for adding more puzzles as the actual game almost lacked any sort of traversal minigames - that said I didn't find any of them very fun. Raising and lowering the blood levels wasn't especially fun and neither was the elevator puzzle. If you enjoyed it, then all the power to you for getting some great bang for your buck, I found it mostly lacking.

Well I still plan on buying the DLC as I like Alucard, so maybe I'll change my mind, but for now it doesn't seem very promising. I also Liked LOS 2 BTW, gave it a 4/5 for solid action and characterization, but I just don't see how it lives up to the first one, that's all.

Gonna have to disagree with you on this one, I'd much rather they keep the 3D gameplay for whatever castlevania games will come next.

I maintain that no one can make a good vampire game in this era, which is a fucking shame considering how badass playing as Dracula should be or this Alucard for that matter. Damn shame.

yikes.... sounds painful to go back to this mess.Hope it's the end of these type of castlevania games.

I don't.

As a matter of fact, I hope they keep such Castlevania games since the basic ground concept has ben already set. I also hope that while Lords of Shadow as a story has ended, this version Dracula and Alucard will still exist in Castlevania games.

@theacidskull: well good for you. I'm commenting on his reaction to DLC which his opinion sounds like something I would want avoid.

Ohh Ok, that's understandable, I was just saying that I personally believe that 3D Castlevanias shouldn't be abandoned.