I just finished Castlevania: Lords of Shadow last night and I must say that this game is fucking epic!  
 
Here's the stages I went through with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow:  

1. I missed the credit deal on Amazon.com and thus decided then not to buy it.  
2. Watched Giant Bomb's Quick Look and was kinda glad I didn't buy it.  
3. Downloaded and played through the demo and was really glad I didn't buy it (P.S. The demo sucked!)  
4. Read some reviews, they were pretty "mixed" but overall it was getting a solid 8 out of 10 on Metacritic.  Slightly confused at this point.  
5. Watched The Angry Video Game Nerds initial impressions and again, back to being satisfied that I didn't buy it (but why was I still looking at this point?).  
6. One of my favorite video gaming friends bought it and showed it to me over Kinect Video Chat.  I said, "Dude, I so need to get that" and he said, "Hell yes, you do!"... but really I was thinking that I still didn't want it.  
7. Then, all of a sudden I said, "fuck it" and decided to buy it, thinking it'd be Curse of Darkness all over again but at least I could get some Achievements out of it.  
8. Played through to about the 6th level.  Kinda just "meh'd" at the game.  It was boring.  Didn't touch it again for 2 weeks straight.  Slightly miffed about my purchase.  
9. Picked-it-back-up this weekend.  Played through the whole thing.  Fell in-love!  This game is epic!  So glad I have this game!  Came to Giant Bomb to tell people.  

Well I got the Collector's Edition on launch day just because it had the Castlevania name on it. I started playing it just recently because I was too occupied with Fallout New Vegas before, but I have to say that the game is a lot of fun so far (I'm in chapter 5). There are definitely some quirks to the game, but the overall experience is really positive for me.

Well for me the issue isn't the pacing so much as.. well.. I feel like I've beaten this game like in 4 other franchises. I'm absolutely done with god of war games and their clones.  Plus it's was Kojima's studio AND Castlevania, I was just expecting so much more, I guess.

I loved it. 
I remember it getting really good reviews from most places too.

This game is fantastic, and its really a shame people are just shrugging it off as a God of War clone. It's so much more than that.
 
GamesRadar's review is what sold me on this game. I got done reading that and then went and pre-ordered the CE on Amazon.

I loved the game in general, it wasn't really the "pacing" per se that bothered me about it, but rather that all of the environments felt so disjointed.  
 
Chapter X - this is the swamp chapter
 
Chapter Y - this is the forest chapter
 
Chapter Z - this is the snowy mountain chapter
 
It lacked a bit of flow from one chapter to the next.  The Patrick Stewart read interludes between chapters were dreadfully written.  Otherwise I really enjoyed it, the ending was a total mind-fuck and I am looking frward to the next one.  

"

1. One of my favorite video gaming friends bought it and showed it to me over Kinect Video Chat.  I said, "Dude, I so need to get that" and he said, "Hell yes, you do!"... but really I was thinking that I still didn't want it.   "

I agree, the game is friggin' epic. 
I disagree, The pacing was just fine. 
I liked how the game starts with you trying to figure out whats going on. Yeah it can be a little disorientating but it also gets you right into the action. You're essentially dropped into this world and some dude says go kill these people for the sake of good, And it works.

I bought it on a whim the other day, played up to defeating the Shadow of the collosus rip off boss, and have not touched it since, is there anything more to it than just this over and over again interspersed with shitty goblinesque fodder?

Uhhh pretty sure every game has a slow start unless your a halo call of duty duecher.

I don't understand the complaints about 'pacing' in Lords of Shadow.  The entire game seemed plenty fast paced to me.

 
I love Lords of Shadow; every act is something completely different from the last and the amount of detail is great.  So far i'm at chapter 8 (of 12 i think) but the games story and gameplay really push me through, so i don't really have a problem with the pacing. It is unfair to just label the game as a God of War clone; because its so much more. And Gabriel is a much better  protagonist then Kratos, with a real story and a reason to go on this adventure. Playing the game on Knight (hard) difficulty, makes it really challenging but also really rewarding when you beat a boss character or hard enemy. The combat is really deep and with all moves you can unlock it keeps feeling fresh.
 
The only two things that could've been better in my opinion are the camera; sometimes the enemy your fighting is off screen which can be a problem, but most of the times the "fixed" camera works well. The other point is some of the invisible walls, at the start of the game i was trying to find secrets anywhere and when you run along each wall to find a hidden passage you'll notice a lot of area's where it looks like you can walk to or things you can climb up on; but you can't.  
 
Something what i thought was kind of weird design wise; the evil demons that live inside crystals you break; i've got no problem with that, but the design!? Seriously? That totally felt it didn't belong in the game.

Something what i thought was kind of weird design wise; the evil demons that live inside crystals you break; i've got no problem with that, but the design!? Seriously? That totally felt it didn't belong in the game. "

There's a lot in this game that I wasn't particulary fond of. The camera was occasionally useless in battle, some of the puzzles asked you to do things you had no idea that you could do, like using the dash move to activate panels on the floor, or throw a flaming dagger at a switch without the need to even trigger the spikefloor trap in the same room. But some puzzles were genuinely fun, and while I felt the combat got a little repetitive with pretty much every new type of enemy falling to the same basic tactic of "blocking a blockable attack to build up focus then dodge and direct attack to keep your light magic full", it was at least aesthetically different.  (I should note that I played the game on "Knight" for the majority of the game, with the only exception being a few of the earlier levels
 
The story felt, at parts, poorly written even if the overarching plot was decent. I have no idea who Gabriel is as a character, Patrick Steward tells me he is full of hate, but he just seems somber and deadpan to me. My biggest pet peeve is the game's medival version of audiologs, the scrolls found on the soldiers. To believe there was this huge order, who's soldiers were somehow competent enough to get to the far off places you reach by the end of the game, yet you never ran into any of them alive, save for Zobek felt kind of silly. And there is of course the random portal reference which was just sort of embarassing.
  
I did like the powerups you got, and the feeling of the whip felt a lot different from the chain blades that Kratos had, which I really appreciated since I had been worried about that prior to playing it. And once I figured out how to use the counter block during a bossfight, essentially turning it into a cakewalk, I felt empowered.

My favorite part of the game was reaching the castle in the level were the sun is setting, and pulling of the curtains to char the vampires inside. You realize that the curtains in the old castle were all intentionally drawn to keep sunlight from getting in. A great and subtle moment I thought. 
 
As for the ending, I did sort of expect what would happen. But the way it did was way different from my expectations, and the final twist was totally unexpected and left me wondering were it could possibly go from here. For now I just wish the next game will incorporate more things that makes it feel like Castlevania, 2 subweapons, a small part of the "vampire killer" tune and a lot of borrowed names didn't feel like enough to me. The DLC will be very interesting.
 
(Also: Post number one thousand, woo hoo!!)