What at first seems like an admirable attempt to carry on the series ends up being a parody of it's former self.
What people liked from the 2D games was the exploration of Dracula’s castles, the Metroid style gameplay, and the simple yet very responsive controls. But alas, these are lost as well. This time around Dracula’s castle seems dark and uninspired. Before you had a huge variety of locations ranging from caves to nightmare worlds. Now, you still have caverns, libraries, dungeons and other “spooky” castle type locations but they feel more like someone is going down a checklist and stringing all these locations together. In something like Symphony of the Night you had a very precise map that showed you the shape of the area you were in as well as how it fit in with the rest of the castle. If you got a new ability that allowed you to take a shortcut through a door to another room, you knew exactly where you were going to end up. Now the map is just areas connected together by lines. So instead of being this amazing map that is interconnected and complex you feel like you are just being strung along from required battle to required battle. They try to remedy this in Mirror of Fate by adding chests similar to the ones found in God of War that boost your maximum health and hiding those in areas of the map you can't access until you have the right power. The problem with this is that backtracking is time consuming and annoying and the reward is laughable. It’s like the developers thought that was the reason people would backtrack is because of backtracking itself, not exploring and finding new pathways to old and new areas.
The environments and aesthetics of Mirror of Fate left a lot to be desired. Instead of having a beautiful Eastern European meets Asian art style, we now have something that looks like a 1980’s hair band style of characters. That plus the cel shaded art style in the cutscene only further the idea that this is simply faded reflection of what Castlevania used to be. I will say though, if you do play Mirror of Fate, use headphones because the speakers on the 3DS do not do the music justice. I feel like the overall quality of the game does not warrant it’s $40 cost, something like $20 would be perfect for this game.
All of that being said I didn’t absolutely hate the game. I still enjoyed running through Dracula’s castle, hearing that gothic music and slaying monsters with my whip. If anything I think it shows just how good the Castlevania series is if Mirror of Fate is as good as it is even with all of it’s flaws.
I give Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate a 7/10.
Score: 7 / 10
