Schlocktober '21: Castlevania: LoS: Mirror of Fate HD was made by Metroid Dread's developer. It's 'meh.'

SCHLOCKTOBER '21:This October I have been playing a number of games with Halloween appropriate themes, focusing on older and less appreciated games in my backlog. These aren't necessarily horror games but rather games with strong horror elements. I've decided to blog about these games and whether I think they're still worth playing as a seasonal treat or the gaming equivalent of an apple full of razor blades.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD has a title worthy of a Japanese visual novel. It’s an HD port of what is essentially a hand held spin off of a spin off series and it shows just how complex video game branding has gotten. This is originally a 3DS follow up to the first Lords of Shadow game, released 3 years later and then ported to the consoles of the time as a very late 7^th generation digital only title. It is also kind of a 2D Metroidvania, though it’s more like 3 separate Metroidvanias and the backtracking and accessing new areas aspect is perhaps the least satisfying part of the game.

Mirror of Fate does not take up where the last game left off, and that’s kind of a problem because the first game ended with a massive and bonkers cliffhanger. This would be addressed in Lords of Shadow 2, but this was 3 years later and the decision to tell the backstory instead of addressing the huge twist probably contributed to Mirror of Fate’s mixed reception and lack of a legacy even though it’s arguably the last “traditional” new Castlevania game ever released. It was an odd decision to create a new series to rethink Castlevania and then make it in the old style with a plot that could have come from any of the older games.

In Mirror of Fate you start as Gabriel Belmont in a short prologue that takes place before the first Lords of Shadow and you kill a few demons, as Gabriel does, before fast forwarding to take on the role of Gabriel’s grand son, Simon. This version of Simon Belmont is the son of Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belanades (the couple who serve as central characters in the Castlevania Animated series) and is a burley redheaded fellow with wicked scars. He has come to Dracula’s castle to slay the vampire and discover what happened to his father, who disappeared fighting Dracula when Simon was just a boy. After Simon’s story plays out you are thrust into the boots of Alucard, Dracula’s son, who Simon meets several times during his quest and who has his own reason for hating Dracula, and then after Alucard’s quest you play as Trevor and learn the events that sealed his fate.

This triple protagonist structure is mildly interesting from a story perspective, but problematic in terms of gameplay. All three protagonists have different versions of Dracula’s castle, with significant overlap, and certain places only they can go. They share some upgrades, such as XP (which automatically unlocks moves as you level in this game instead of letting you buy them a la cart) and health/ammo, but they each have different subweapons and magic attacks and you must discover each of those as you go through the story, meaning that twice in the game you get rebooted to a fresh character and have your powers stripped away. This means that if you get used to Simon's protection and auto attack spells you will find yourself having to learn to play without magic again when you get Alucard, and then discover his mist and werewolf forms, which are his magic. Prefer one character's spells or subweapons over another's? Too bad. The game breaks up its arsenal and you get whatever the chapter wants to give you. This gives the game a very strange rhythm for a Metroidvania, especially given how short it is. You constantly feel like you’re gaining power and then losing it and having to rebuild, and while this frustration is thematically appropriate for the story, it’s still frustrating.

In general it seems like the game is very focused on telling a story, even though it’s not a particularly compelling one and doesn’t take up a huge amount of the runtime. There are fully voiced stylized cut scenes and lots of scrolls to read on the corpses of other Brothers of Light. It all plays out pretty much as you think it will as soon as you meet Alucard, and it’s fine for what it is, but if the game was split into three separate sections in order to tell this tale it definitely was not worth it. I have a feeling it was more about parallel development (each section could be made somewhat independently) but I haven’t looked into it enough to know, and the game isn’t worth researching.

The game’s graphics were clearly made with the 3DS in mind. Simple PS2 quality polygons and textures have been shined up a bit for the HD release, but the environments have a lot of depth that would have looked good in 3D and don’t really translate well to a purely 2D presentation. It’s not a terrible looking game, and on the 3DS it was probably quite a looker, but it hasn’t held up nearly as well as the first Lords of Shadow, since it can’t do the big sweeping camera tricks that game had and it doesn’t have nearly the variety or creativity in its environments. This is Dracula’s castle as we’ve seen it before, and while the bosses are creative and the enemies look fine, it’s all pretty pedestrian. That goes for the sound as well. Voices and sound effects are fine and the music is also okay, but if you're looking for those classic Castlevania tracks that have defined the series since the NES you won't find them here. It's all just...fine.

The gameplay is at least a bit more novel because it tries to blend the Lords of Shadow 3D brawling into a purely 2D affair and it kind of works. You have a lot more whip combos and options here than in most 2D Castlevanias and because the game is 2D it’s easier to keep enemies in front of you so the combos have more value than they did in the first game, which was all about sticking and moving. There’s plenty of platforming and traversal in this game, but it’s again pretty combat focused and while the combat isn’t anything special it’s entertaining enough that the game is still fun to play. It also manages to bring a surprising number of features of the first game, including executions of damaged foes and even a titan style boss, along to the handheld. There’s nothing special about the gameplay and it’s nowhere near the sublime ridiculousness of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, but clambering around, slashing baddies with your whip, and solving the various puzzles is still a decent time and I would say this is definitely not a bad game, it just feels a lot more average than we’ve come to expect from Castlevania. The movement, the level design, the combat, they just lack polish and all seem a little stiff and in need of a bit more time that they didn’t get. The God of War PSP games had the same sort of second-rate feel to them and it’s not uncommon for a handheld spin off game so it may just be a budget and hardware thing. It’s worth remembering that the 3DS controls don’t allow for precise action the way a true controller does due to its little disc, so this may have been the best they could do given the hardware and budget and it’s hard to fault them for it. The game plays fine.

And that’s my overall feeling about Mirror of Fate. Despite its strangeness and the baffling decision to make it three mini campaigns, which undermines a lot of the joy and fun of map exploration and power building that’s core to the Metroidvania experience, it’s still a fine little game. I enjoyed it well enough; it was not a chore to play in the least and it had some okay story beats and interesting little areas. It’s a forgettable, disposable, piece of entertainment, and if it weren’t the last new 2D Castlevania game it would just be a footnote in the franchise. But it is the last new 2D Castlevania, and in those terms it’s kind of a disappointment, especially from the developer of Metroid Dread. This franchise deserved more than this, but Konami is Konami and so we got a ‘meh’ instead of a triumph. Oh well. At least we still have Bloodstained.

Schlocktober Rating: Fragmented schlock.

Mirror of Fate is a very average game. It’s nowhere near enough to be a guilty pleasure but it’s not good enough to really enjoy it on its own. Its fractured structure makes it all feel more insubstantial than if it were a single game. If you have 4-5 hours to burn and you want something with Castlevania flavor it gets the job done okay, but it’s not worth seeking out. If this were a Halloween candy it would be a cheap chocolate bar that’s broken up in the packaging. If you need a chocolate hit you can eat it, but it’s kind of unsatisfying and a little frustrating because it could have been so much better.