Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate

Developer: MercurySteam
Publisher: Konami
Release: 2013
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Genre: Metroidvania

Being a Nintendo portable spin-off of the high-end Castlevania subseries Lords of Shadow, Mirror of Fate is a beast of its own. High production values are crammed into the 2.5D metroidvania layout, as the traditional tactical/exploratory gameplay is overruled by some straight-forward action. Anyways, throughout the game its pros and cons come from the same place: a cinematic approach.

It brings an unprecedented (in Nintendo platforms, mind you) level of gore and horror to the series, and its flair for spectacle delivers. Regular skirmishes are as satisfying as bosses ones, the camera ensuring you’ll get the best seat while at it; the same goes for presenting new environments or showing off the gorgeous, eerie vistas—especially when strolling outside the castle.

Unfortunately its metroidvania-for dummies (or God of War players) level design has nothing of “Mature” in it and would serve a younger audience better. So would do the Quick Time Events triggered in certain situations, the player helplessly travelling back to 1983 for an involuntary taste of Dragon’s Lair.

And the double-edged sword thrusts on. Almost an interactive movie as it is, lore and fan service go terribly well together—while the same can’t be said about the controls, for the sake of not dropping presentation (and a few animation frames in the process) over gameplay.

Cutscenes are beautiful and work well due to running on the game's engine--but with cel-shaded textures.

Ups and downs here and there, the real game breaker still stems from that very same root. Bosses battles are preceded by seamless cutscenes, and even though they pump the upcoming battle up they grow plainly annoying over fail-and-repeat. Worse, they are unskippable. Worser, they can even glitch in preventing you from reaching areas where you fought a boss before, thus rendering a proper completion status unattainable without starting a new game—with the very same unskippable cutscenes along the way.

The later patchable HD version can rid it of some bugs, but not of the breed of such diverse creatures.