Saw you post this on twitter. Can't wait for it to come out

Excited!

With all the games that are coming out soon. You betcha furry ass I am.

Not a big fan of God of War, so I was disappointed that they went that direction for Lords of Shadow.

Just bought Lords of Shadows yesterday.

Assassin's Creed 3! Right, forgot about that somehow hahaha

I just finished the lords of shadow a few weeks ago, and I have to agree, I love the tragic story direction they are taking with this series, I can't wait for the sequel!

Fuck LoS 2, I want Mirror of Fate! :D

Get both lol

This fall/winter, I'm really hoping Borderlands 2 lives up to be what the first was touted as. I wasn't hugely disappointed by the first as it was pretty fun for the first playthrough. There just wasn't much to bring me back to it, along with broken PC multiplayer (fuck GameSpy).

Ass Creed 3, but mainly just for the conclusion of the story. Ubisoft keeps adding crazy shit like that Tower Defense component in Revelations, so who knows what they'll cook up for gameplay this time.

Maybe Halo 4. I had a lot of fun with the first three, but I still have not bothered more than 1-2 missions of Reach's campaign. The latest trailer was pretty hot though (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca3Y8Ws3plI).

A couple of friends are really stoked about Borderlands 2, so if these guys are, for sure it should rock. :)

Totally agree with you on the Castle War 1999 thing. I've been wanting to know that story since Aria came out. :O/

Not slamming LoS, because it is a great game, but I honestly didn't have a problem with most of what they did post-Symphony. Circle of the Moon was kinda eh in a lot of respects and was thankfully retconned (who the fuck was that Graves dude anyway?), but the card system was interesting, and a legit Belmont as a main in one of the Metroidvanias was nice, even if Harmony of Dissonance was visually an oversaturated acid trip that made my eyes bleed.
After that, I actually liked the fact that during the span of time after Richter gave up the Vampire Killer and before Julius came in 1999, they finally started showing who picked up the slack for those few centuries, (not counting Bloodlines on Genesis, which apparently most people knew jack about until Portrait of Ruin picked that plot thread up). It's not as if as early as Castlevania 3 we weren't shown that the Belmonts weren't the only powerful monster hunters in the world.

As for the 100 year cycle going out the window... well, that's what happens when dickwads decide to set the infernal one's alarm clock early by sacrificing virgins and killing his wife and shit. I'd almost think that if they'd let him take his nap for a full century, maybe he'd have mellowed out after a couple centuries of getting his ass kicked by Leon's bastard children :OP

being i'm a weirdo that likes the oddballs in things, my favorite characters of the series are Nathan Graves and Cornell from the version 1.5 N64 game. = P come to think of it...i wonder if there are any rule 34s of Cornell...= 3 Graves, though, i think was a relative of the Belmont clan, and just someone to keep the Vampire Killer safe until the next Belmont has to wield it when dracula came back when he was supposed to.

anyway, Circle of the Moon was meh in a lot of things, but its still one i have more of a drive to play over again versus most of the castlevanias. I have no idea why..maybe it's just the card system that i like so much, or maybe because of the different ways of leveling after you clear the game once.. Also, I think it still is part of the timeline though, just barely. = P anyway, the end battle in that one was pretty epic, and hard..though the whole game was hard. x-x I can't get myself to like HoD much, probably because of the music. (the scores are fine, but what instruments or whatever they used were grating to my ears) I'd play the 3D any of the vanias before that one.

sorry for the random reply, though. ^^;

I've heard that explanation about Graves, but with how jacked up things were detail-wise in that game, it's hard to buy completely. It wasn't even the Vampire Killer he had, but the "Hunter Whip." Which yeah, could be a synonym, but could also be something different. They also tried to make the whole Morris connection, like John and Jonathon Morris from Bloodlines and Portrait of Ruin, who are definitely the caretakers of the whip during the Belmont exile, but... in Circle of the Moon, the Morris is Morris Baldwin. First name, not last.

Given the evidence and what Konami people have publicly said, what most likely happened was that the game was supposed to be canon, even if it was only a side-story. But the people doing the dialogue or translation for the game screwed the pooch something awful, so much so that rather than admit how fucked up it was on major points that would validate it's canon authenticity, Konami went back and said "Yeah, canon timeline wise, that never happened :U" Which kinda sucks since CotM was a decent game to play in spite of being pitch dark and hard as hell.

And damn, speaking of 3D Castlevania... totally just remembered how much Curse of Darkness owned back in the day.

And no big, huge Castlevania nerd here, so I enjoyed the random reply :O3

i think i was out-nerded! D = At least castlevania wise, i'm more of a Mega Man or Metroid fella myself! XD

Castlevania is definitely my game, but I love me some Metroid and Mega Man |O3 I tore Super Metroid apart back in the day, and although I'm not a huge fan of Legends or the Network games, I was a huge sucker for the X and Zero series, and ZX as well.

aw, i liked Legends, it was unique and oddball-ish! (remember what i said before about me! XD) I was really happy Capcom was bringing it back on the 3DS, until they said "oh, Inafune's leaving. F U fans, trollololol! *drops Legends 3*" I honestly think the legends series would be grand at this time, the PS was just very limited, but they did well with what they had.

Network....I...i can't sand those, but i hate those kinds of games anyway. I HATE to have random encounters EVERYWHERE when there's a minimum of 2 steps to have one!

X and Zero games; my faves of the mega man franchise, but i have one thing to say: Hey Zero died...again! Oop! there he is again! and the ZX games are well done! hard mode in those are treacherous! (I got through it though, bitch! Yeayuh!)

Did you ever try Command Mission? o-o It's really good, but everyone is scared to play it..I think they did an excellent job making a mega man game formula in a RPG. I've played that so many times and did so many personal challenges with it. = D You do have to make it harder on yourself sometimes though, other than a handful of battles..you can be overpowered most of the game...but they should be, no??


As for Metroid, i even like the black sheep of that franchise too, Other M, quite a lot! some gameplay points were super annoying (the "find this" scenes...i actually didn't mind the missile thing, it just takes a large learning curve to get used to that, it's actually quite fun and absorbing when you get used to it..even if it doesn't make much sense XD) but all in all i was very fun. I also liked that Samus was..you know..human, to, even though everybody saw it as her being whiny.

I STILL want a remake of Metroid 2..Have retro studios do that too! I think they'd make the atmosphere perfect for that!

...I think i've babbled on about stuff that's not on topic enough! = D

Yeah, the whole Zero dying schtick got kinda old after a while, especially since he was supposed to be so much more badass than X, who only died or got infected with a virus a grand total of twice in non-canon plotlines in a couple of the games. Zero was one or the other in literally every game 8Oc

And yes, I thought Command Mission was pretty awesome. It reminded me a little bit play-wise of the Breath of Fire rpgs also by Capcom, which was not a bad thing at all. I think my only gripe was it seemed like there was a lot of backtracking to be done, and there was that one long section of boss battles that you got stuck in where the difficulty suddenly jumped ridiculously. There was a lot of dying in that section for me |O3

I haven't played Other M, but I hear this gripe 90% of the time about Samus being whiny. After reading translations of the manga, which does the story in a similar way, I totally get it. Ridley came when she was a liltiny and fucking blew her planet up. I DON'T FIND IT ENTIRELY UNREASONABLE THAT SHE SHOULD GET THE PTSD SHAKES WHEN SHE SEES HIM AGAIN. IT MAKES SENSE.
Unlike the BS in Parasite Eve 3rd Birthday where suddenly Aya turns into a sniveling wimp seemingly just because. Especially since she was a tough, no-nonsense woman in the first one and displayed emotion all of once in the second game.

CotM was retconned, along with Legends and what they planned for Resurrection; it's still not more than vague if Sonia Belmont is Simon's mother, or even exists at this point.

the thing about LoS is that it's an homage to the original timeline, while making it its own thing. Things are different, but you can tell that it was made by a group of fans that simply wanted to make CV a bit darker, sober. As much as I liked SotN, afterwards, save the 3D games for the PS2, it felt like it was going in a weird anime direction. I'm a fan of CV as well, but I still feel like they gummed it up a bit too much with all of the games they squeezed in, and I'm sure it was Konami milking the franchise for what it's worth.

There are more evil slayers out there that can take on the hordes, but for Drac, especially after what was made canon in Lament of Innocence, only the Vampire Killer could be powerful enough to take out a Vamp of Dracula's magnitude. This conflicts with SotN, though Dracula wasn't at full power when he was resurrected by Shaft, and it, while giving variety to gameplay for CastleVania, sort of puts the Vampire Killer to the wayside, which takes out half of the idea of CastleVania; The Belmonts vs Dracula. Hector (CoD) was backed by Trevor, as was Alucard in CV3, Soma Cruz had Julius backing him up (as much as I don't like that the Sorrow games exist), the Morrises and Shanoa didn't particularly fight Dracula, and Graves isn't canon, so it's a little frustrating when you have several of the later games where the Vampire Killer is almost an afterthought. the plus side is that it varied up both the forces of good and evil on both sides, but all of the villains pull from Dracula's power, which, if he had such power, should be able to stay around himself, one would think. Or hell, get another force altogether that doesn't get its ass handed to itself every 100 year- every 30 y... 15 years or so.

I love the gameplay, but the story is what got me into CV, and to see it get played out like it did in recent years makes me feel like it did either need to be put to rest, a lot of the games remade with smoother translations and better flow, or, like the LoS series did, make an alternate universe where things are taken from established CV lore and made for a smoother transition, and on top of it, more epic in nature, makes me feel like it's headed in a good direction. And, like Cox said, the LoS series is its own contained world, and will have no effect on the original timeline, which I guess is still gonna be added to, if they find space for another installment outside of Julius' tale.

So, in short, though I'm not fond of how anime CV (original timeline) has gotten, I love the gameplay, and I'm still a fan of the series. I'm also a fan of the LoS timeline, and I'm glad that it's got a finite end, and praying that Konami doesn't try and milk this timeline after MercurySteam lets it go for all of the monies, because that would be terrible lol

I really can't disagree with you on any of what you said other than maybe the Vampire Killer thing. You needed it to kill Walter back in the day, and it's beastly compared to what any other non-Belmont protagonist has, but... let's be honest. It started out as just the alchemy whip. A whip, even an alchemic one, is not a very lethal weapon.

Plus when you get right down to it, everybody in the series admits the Belmonts are freaks of nature. Anybody who "beats" one always recognizes they were allowed to win. Maybe that's the idea - it's a vengeance thing for the Belmonts who just happen to have been badass even before Leon went all "HUNT THE NIGHT." Maybe the truth is that Dracula is a tough dude, but if you happen to have some power because you're something like his kid, his lapdog, his teenage reincarnation, some tatted up hooker borrowing his power, you still have a shot at putting him back in a wooden box. It's just that the Belmonts are better at it because they've been doing it since the dark ages, and getting it on with the likes of Sypha to make themselves even more badass.

Honestly, I kinda like what they did in SotN, because it was the first time it showed that the Belmonts are still human despite their insane abilities. All the BS with the Morris clan happened because Richter let his guard down and got possessed, and shamefully had to pass the job of stopping Dracula to the guy's halfbreed kid. It may be an extreme reaction for him to be like "I AM NOT WORTHY, here, take my holy weapon and hold it for the next couple hundred, kay?" but at least it leaves an opportunity to show that they're not all uber, and that somebody else gives a crap about trying to keep the world safe from the lord of vampires.

I also liked how in SotN, for the first time Dracula almost seems to not give a shit that he's about to fight yet another Belmont in the prologue. You get the sense that he's bored of this same old shit, and even the distractions of the Morris clan or Ecclesia or Hector in later games are just an minor distraction to him sitting around and regretting the stupid decision to defy God and be immortal than anything else. I guess being pissed about his first wife dying only lasts for a few hundred before it turns into mild annoyance :OP

Okay, I realize you probably weren't looking for a debate, so let me put an end to this. Yes, Konami milks the original timeline for all it was worth, and there's an extent to which the games are more soap opera than dark tale. But I fully admit that if they cranked out another CV title in the vein of SoTn, Sorrow, PoR, Ecclesia, etc, I would eat it up with a grin on my face, provided it didn't suck ass gameplay-wise. I might bitch about plot stuff, but as long as I get to explore some castle and countryside and shank the some monsters, I'd pay the $40-70 they wanted. And Lords of Shadow definitely has its own place, and has earned the CV name by virtue of being pretty awesome. All I'm saying is that from the Aria-to-Ecclesia era, it's nice to see a hero or heroine who wields something other than a length of leather/chain (I wish they'd just PICK ONE ALREADY, my vote is for chain), for a reason other than "my great great great great great granddaddy was a twat and swore an oath on our bloodline that we'd do this." I want to see more Belmonts kick ass... but it's cool to see some no name with a sword or spell kill Dracula too.

On an unrelated note... I'd really like to see a CV game where the main enemy is NOT Dracula, and he and the castle don't make an appearance. Surely the random monster hunters and even the Belmonts must do something besides sit on their asses between resurrections.

There are several, where it's not really Drac, but still vampires, or it's in CastleVania, or something similar to Drac, so it doesn't really count imo because it might as well be lol; I do agree that they could expand on the CV world by having a shitton of side stories, given that the world is huge and should have tons of evil that isn't just vampires in castles

The whip thing, I actually have some familial history where my great-grandmother's first husband guarded and protected his barn from a thief; tore the guy's neck open and killed him on the spot with a well-aimed snap of a bullwhip. People into the whole S/M thing, when they mention a bullwhip, I cringe because they're fucking lethal if somebody uses one properly, which thankfully, is trickier than you'd think. But, the way that the leather version of the Vamp Killer's wielded in the 3D incarnations has me wishing that it was decked out into its' morning star form, the way it's swung around instead of snapped. Gabriel's Combat Cross is better suited for the way it's swung, and the way I'd believe that a chained-out Vamp Killer would be best worked. I do agree that it'd be awkward to use a whip, as close as you are to most enemies lol

Richter is a bitch, sorry; I'm not fond of him giving up rights to the Vamp Killer, it makes no sense and him damning the whip from the Belmont name til Julius reclaimed it made me angry. He, outside of Julius, was the strongest of the Belmonts, but it seems like his weakness was his pride. I want to say that it was Konami wanting to open up doors for other types of characters/fighting styles to shine (note that everybody save Graves was either a magick user or accompanied by one). They saw that Alucard worked better than a Belmont, since being able to fly and go through walls and such makes the forming "MetroidVania" system more exploitable. More rooms to find, areas to reach, abilities to attain, etc. So, while they gave a really terrible reason for Richter to shrug his family's responsibility to protect the world from evil, including the people that he loves, I want to blame Konami and not sloppy writing. It did, like yous aid, give opportunity for more characters to shine, though Is till feel like they could've been used for other villains and leave Drac to the Belmonts, if not aid a Belmont in battle.

I take it back about the whip, man. I knew they could break the skin, but I was thinking of it more like how slaves would be punished, and they would only die after getting their entire back flayed open and bleeding out or something. Still, like you point out, a hard weapon to use.

And yeah, Richter is a powerful Belmont, but on a purely personal basis I have to say I thought Trevor was more powerful.
After playing through the fights against Trevor in Curse of Darkness, I can't take most of the others seriously anymore. Plus, anytime there's a fake zombie Belmont boss, it's always Trevor. Dude's a beast.
Simon is a close second, but only because he did his whole thing alone, without item crashes or special moves... in a leather skirt :OP

rofl I sorta liked that they manned Simon up a bit while paying homage to the redesign for LoS:MoF:

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/.....mont_super.gif - This was the redesign (the original, conanesque/blonde Simon was the original design, but Konami's art division burned down and anything before Rondo was lost in the fire)

http://www.relyonhorror.com/wp-cont...../05/simon2.jpg - LoS Simon

Hilarious thing is that you can see the debates of "fans" int he comments everywhere talking about how Simon shouldn't looks like a barbarian, or have red hair, etc, when the artist that did SotN did the redesign, giving him the barbarianesque clothing and red hair. It's part of what I mean when the LoS team are actual fans of the original series and it's almost like a glorified fan project funded by Konami!

Also, Trev from LoS - http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7226/.....4e3ee404_z.jpg

http://static.zerochan.net/Alucard......ll.1145374.jpg

Aww yeuhh, combined badass <3

I thought the fur on his... vest? Was always an odd choice, but overall I like Simon's look. LoS Simon... man, he looks almost like a caveman, but okay, I can go with that. I mean, even if Gabriel looked kinda pretty in the face, the dude was probably two feet taller than anyone else in the world and pretty beefed up too, so why shouldn't Simon look a bit neanderthal-esque.

Comparatively speaking, Trevor looks almost aristocratic. I like the green cloak and armor, and definitely can see that they actually tried to make a resemblance between Gabriel and his son in the hair and some of the face.
Apparently Simon must take after his mother or something, because except for the brooding expression and huge stature, I don't see much of Gabriel in him. Or could be that it's 2:30 in the morning.

Slight resemblance if you get over the red hair and beard, but he looks more "innocent", if anything (you'd have to see the trailer, better look at his face, he doesn't look as hard as he does in the concept art lol)

hmm...a bull whip that can rip out throats...so if you increase that power with alchemy, you'd probably be able to pop off a head...and if you increase the power again to VK's level, you'd blow a hole in someone's chest...so basically you'd have a short ranged weapon with the power of a shotgun with infinite ammo with the ability to attack rapidly. ouch. o-o

rofl If only things worked like that IRL

it was called "hunter whip?" the sub-menu said "vampire killer," i thought..But yeah, i think they messed things up a bit with CoM, but it's still fun, even if it is tedious! The cards were so fun!


Also, when Ecclasia came out, there was a CV timeline that was posted on the back of a poster for it of it in Nintendo Power. I can't remember if it was CoM or CV64/Curse of Darkness, but all of them had a description of the story of each game, while one was just like, tacked on to it, without any description, only a point in time. = P Sadly i threw away aaaallll my NPs when i moved, or else i would have checked which one.

Not that anyone cares, but I was thinking just now... Everybody loves how tragic the new LoS plotline is. Um... okay. It is tragic. Truly.

But remember that whole thing back in 1094 when a certain baron's best friend set up his fiance to be kidnapped by a vampire?
And then when said baron gave up his title to save said fiance, he got her back for about ten minutes before her soul had to be trapped in an alchemic whip forever to keep her from turning into a vampire herself, and so that her husband-to-be didn't have to be stuck in the Forest of Eternal Night... eternally?
AND then said baron was so pissed that his best friend used him and got his fiance killed all because the dude WAS PISSED OFF AT GOD, he doomed all his descendants to be monster-hunting fashion-reject emos for the next NINE HUNDRED FIVE YEARS? And if you count when Julius had to traipse around with Soma in Aria and Dawn of Sorrow, it's more like NINE HUNDRED FORTY TWO?

Yeah, fucking up your family's lives for nearly a millenium isn't tragic at all :OP

rofl Right, but Bram Stoker's tale on Vlad the Impaler is tragic in itself. A knight, fighting under the belief of God, though very vicious about it, returns to see that his wife had thrown herself to her death, due to a traitor's forged letter of Vlad having been slain in battle.

Gabriel translates well into something similar, where he, under the power of the Devil while fighting heart, body and soul against said Devil for his God, ends up betrayed and possessed, slaying his own wife. He's used as a pawn by God Himself to take out Evil after Evil aft Evil, including Lucifer Himself, and a demon just as destructive (The Forgotten One). He becomes a Demon, a Vampire, something that he's fought against all of his life and is trained to hate, to slay The Forgotten One before the world is torn apart. And, going off of Mirror of Fate and Lords 2, he seems to only want to exist in his won castle while the Brotherhood of the Light, who he's fought alongside of, trains his son Trevor to take him out. And, after Trevor, his grandson, Simon.

Factor in that Trevor's revealed to be the Alucard of the LoS world; so he turns his only son into a vamp, most likely as an innate desire to destroy himself through his bloodline, and his own power. Given LoS1's ending, I'm sure that it didn't quite work out that way, and he's recruited in a weakened, disillusioned state to yet again fight Satan after 1,000 years of who-knows-what.

Gabe's got it pretty bad, I'm sure him and Leon would talk and Leon would be like "Damn, that's bad, buddy."

Yeah, I know, I was just sayin :OP I think people forget about how awesome the old was when confronted with the awesome of the new.

You know, when I first played Lament of Innocence, I actually expected the whole Belmont-becomes-Dracula thing like they did in Lords of Shadow to be what happened after you defeated Walter. Was kinda annoyed that it didn't happen, actually. It would have made for a much better reason the entire bloodline tries to kill Dracula for a thousand years afterwards than "You killed my wife. Major disrespect, brah." XO3

rofl Right, but Leon didn't have a kid yet, or the kid was never really mentioned, so he had to live! I wanna say that Leon remarried after to carry on his bloodline.

Granted, neither was Marie mentioned to have given birth to a kid, though they explain in the Mirror of Fate trailer that she had to hide it away. Guessing that Gabriel was away for nine months and never knew. Slight plothole if they don't tie it up lol

I noticed that too. It's a cheesy soap opera type trick, but hell, CV has always been pretty melodramatic. Just listen to that awesome dialogue from SotN XO3
I'm still waiting for Konami to go back in the original timeline and proclaim "You know guys, we never actually said in LoI that Matthias became Dracula. We just said he became the lord of vampires. You assumed those were the same. SHIT HAPPENED BETWEEN 1094 AND WHENEVER THE NEXT GAME WAS, PLOT TWIIIIIIST~"

And yeah, my guess was Leon remarried too, or at least knocked up a bar wench in a drunken stupor. With as messed up as he was by his fiance's death, I'm not sure he would have had it in him to try tying the knot again.

One of the things that they carried over into LoS was the innate sense of duty that the Belmonts have to fighting evil. Leon and Gabriel are parallel in story origin, both are valiant knights that fought Darkness for their Brotherhoods. And though slightly different, was that while Leon fought alongside a Conqvist, who felt betrayed by God for the death of his wife during his time away fighting the hordes, Gabriel 'was' a bastard child of a Conqvist who was seemingly betrayed by God and definitely betrayed by Zobek, lost his wife, etc. Gabriel is your Leon, basically lol

That said, Leon most likely remarried after some years, most likely to carry on the bloodline to fight Mattias, or Dracula. I think in the ending of LoI, Mattias takes on the name Dracula, so it's him. It's been years since I've played LoI, so don't quote me on that one lol

I'll have to watch some youtube of the ending cutscenes to be sure, but I'm almost positive that Matthias himself says nothing of the sort, and it's only either before or after the credits that a text epilogue says he claimed the title or became known as the lord of vampires, but nowhere was the name Dracula mentioned that I recall.

It's a really minor point, but it's just enough to leave an opening for a sequel, if you can call any CV game in the original timeline a sequel at this point.
Is there any serious talk of an original timeline CV floating around, or is it just rumors and wishful thinking at this point?

There is one, and I know that Circle was retconned along with Legends, and CV64/Cornell was soft-retconned into something a bit more inclusive. I know damn-near everything happens after SotN, as far as the MetroidVanias, so it's really cramped throughout the 1800's or so. Definitely would have to find a decent updated one lol

I'd almost like to see a remake of CV64 with the Cornell bit, just with tighter controls. I don't know why but it seemed like the characters handled really loose and floaty in that game. And aiming... good luck :O/

I can kinda see why the 1800s was a cramped era. Chronologically, it makes a lot of things make more sense, like skeleton gunmen, and the ubiquitous clock tower levels, without having to get into more modern tech. Granted, you could have had those things earlier, but tech-wise, it's more plausible that these things would be... not necessarily perfected, but the kinks worked out of it by that era. Of course, there's always the "Castlevania is a creature of chaos, its form changes, it's not bound to any particular time period, blablabla" argument XO3

Plus, it allows time for a couple of the 100 year reawakenings to happen actually on schedule, and then for stupid evil people to be like "AHMAHGAD, this Dracula dude comes back all the time, maybe if I help him do it early he'll give me chicks and cash and power." I'm sure by 1999 one doomsday cult or another was trying to revive Dracula once a year.

"What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets!" >= o

*tosses mah glass, breaks that shit on the floor* DO&/ But enough talk, have at you!

X)

Wow they used the story into music from Super Castlevania IV, they havnt forgotten the good times!

lol That was for the video, but they did mention fitting in some of the original score into the new games, or some tracks based heavily off of music from the older games. They did to an extent in LoS1, but you'd have to know what to listen to:

http://youtu.be/Uew581WlY1w = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4np01iChdFg + http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_V3-76hh1k

They did mention adding more familiar hooks into the new games' soundtracks, which might work well for Morror of Fate's side-scrolling take

Sounds like they know what they're doing, and I'm eager to play both the 3DS game and the concluding chapter. Also have to thank you for indirectly pushing me to finish Lords of Shadow, which I had left for a while. Excellent game.

Out of curiosity, did you play either of the DLC chapters? If so, what did you think of them? Thanks. :)

lol Yeah, and the first one's all puzzles, and the second one's a boss battle. It definitely bridges the gap and explains what happened to Gabriel, so I recommend playing through or catching a play through on YouTube for the story elements alone. You also get to play as Laura, which is <3

I played the first one (Laura is pretty cool, especially with the charge attacks)... 'was undecided about whether to get the 2nd pack, given the price. It's a long, meaty boss battle then? 8)

I loved the twist at the end of the main story, but I did wish they had given more of an explanation of just how things got to that point, (without the DLC). We could see the direction things were going, but there was a missing piece of the puzzle.

The DLC, Mirror of Fate and Lords 2'll wrap it up. I think thatt he ending was to make sure that you got that there was much more to Gabriel's story than what was given in the first game

Yeah... I suspect Mirror of Fate - and LoS2 - will cover what happened in the DLC in broad strokes, for those who didn't play the extra content in the original. I remember reading an interview with the developers, who said they were "taken by surprise" at the response to the game, and that the DLC was a bit hastily put together as a result (rather than something they had originally planned). Still, it seemed like it needed something extra at the end as a step to the final cinematic. Either way, I'm very eager to see how the story plays out. :)

As an aside: that final battle at the regular (non-DLC) end of LoS was fantastic I thought. Wasn't difficult after realizing the "polarity shifts", but it really did a good job of bringing everything you had done in battle to that point together.

lol Cool thing is that when you fight Pan, he's training you on how to take out Satan. He heavily points out the need to learn how to dodge and use one Magic against another. It's really well-done and he had to die anyway, so he died training and testing Gabriel's abilities, and alongside him, yours.

The DLC was a lil weird with the Forgotten One being stronger than Satan, or on par, but it worked to give Gabe his vampiric powers and a better bridge to the ending and Mirror. Also explains why he's so damn strong in LoS2, and how he can claim being Dracul, when simply only having the power of Carmilla under his belt (he absorbs The Forgotten One's power in the DLC)

They honestly have done so much with the series, I am rehooked on a series that I've always been hooked on lol

It's also on XBox!

Oh, hmm, well, someday! :)

I haven't played Lord of Shadow, but my understanding is that it's impossible for both Lament of Innocence (for PS2) and Lords of Shadow (PS3/Xbox 360) to be canon; they directly contradict each other. From the video, it sounds like it's contradict mirror of fate as well.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence told the origin of Dracula and how the Belmonts got involved with him, including how and why the Vampire Killer whip was forged.

lol The Lords of Shadow series is a separate, alternate canon. It isn't a retcon or reboot like so many want to say it is, it's just another take on the CastleVania storyline. Both timelines are legit and separate.

I have to agree with y'all here. As much as I like the non Belmont and Metdroidvania games... when you look back and realize anime school boys and school girls are taking place the place of an ancient order of vampire hunters you need to step back and realize how we all lost sight of what Castlevania was supposed to be. I'm not saying that they had a lot go in regards to the seminal titles.... but... well....

...

... just look at Castlevania: Judgement. Look at that and tell me something didn't go wrong here :X

We don't talk about Judgment. But Cornell looked hot, loved his design on there haha