Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow Mirror Of Fate

"Castlevania: Mirror of Fate" is the first ever game for the 3DS from the popular "Castlevania" videogame series, which first made its appearance on the NES. The game takes place 25 years after "Castlevania: Lords of Shadow," which was released on the PS3 and Xbox 360. In this game, you get to play as several of the Belmonts, such as Gabriel, Trevor, Simon, and Alucard, through each of their time periods as they discover their eventual future fates. If you are a true fan of the videogame series, this is the perfect game for you, but it may not be suitable for younger audiences or those that have not played any of the other games.

I have played most of the other "Castlevania"games and must say that "Mirror of Fate" had a very different feel on the 3DS. Maybe it is either the smaller screen or the 3-D or several other factors that may have contributed to this feeling, but it was a difficult to fully explain. The 3-D was surprisingly really good for this game and they used the depth in some interesting ways, but it seemed to be more effective at about 50-60% than having the 3-D set at full strength. Also, I loved the cell-shading cut scenes, but was disappointed with the voice acting and how the character's lips would not always move like old-school English-dubbed kung-fu movies. In addition, each scene had lots of detail, but it was difficult to see everything on such a small screen, which I assume can be remedied by buying the 3DS XL. I guess I am more used to seeing all the fine details Konami puts into all of their games on the home systems on my bigger TV screen as compared to the 3DS. Lastly, which is on par with the other "Castlevania" games, the music was awesome, but was lacking during some of the action stages.

A couple of game elements that I was not pleased about were the actual gameplay, the game's pacing, and the controls. "Castlevania: Mirror of Fate" felt more like a mash-up of "God of War," "Dante's Inferno," and "Uncharted" than an actual "Castlevania" game. It seemed to focus more on exploration, combos, and hanging from cliff to cliff than telling a good story and scaring the heck out of me with hordes of enemies as I jumped from platform to platform like the older games in the series. The puzzles and the boss patterns were fairly easy to figure out making this an unusually easy and short game to play through but with very slow pacing. Lastly, the controls were a bit frustrating because there is no way to change to your liking, I wasted lots of my secondary weapons by accident because the controls did not feel logical and using the stylus was useless. This made me want to throw my 3DS on several occasions because I would end up using the wrong weapon on an enemy or waste a secondary weapon I would need later on in the stage.

This was a decent 3DS effort by Konami, but it was in no way a game changer for the "Castlevania" series. Some of the older elements you've grown to love with the "Castlevania" series are still there, but "Castlevania: Mirror of Fate" doesn't feel like a complete full-on "Castlevania" game. If you are a fan of the series and want to find out more about the Belmont Family story, you should check this game out. However, I am still a bit torn on what to think about the actual game. For those reasons, I am giving "Castlevania: Mirror of Fate" a "C-."