Despite being generally maligned, I liked this a lot better than the first game! Spoilers and content warning for self-harm.
It’s no secret that this game had some difficulties. People who worked on the game have talked about a messy development cycle, an overbearing director, lack of support from Konami, and mass layoffs. The game itself can feel a bit disjointed or rushed at times, but on the whole the gameplay improvements, the new structure, and the setting won me over and I had a great time. Well, except for one thing I should mention up top.
About halfway or two thirds through my playthrough, I experienced a game-breaking glitch so bad I had to make a new save file. You see, I wasn’t sure how to trigger an autosave in the game as it’s easy to lose progress with a careless shutdown. So I pushed forward to the next plot-relevant area before backtracking to find optional stuff. When I eventually returned, none of the enemies had spawned in the new area, including one I needed to progress. I tried reverting to my last checkpoint in the menu, hoping that would jog the triggers; instead, the game locked immediately after I spawned and nothing could be done to advance. This is such a huge bug to happen after 12 hours of play that it speaks to the game’s troubled development, but it also just sucks as a user. I powered back to that point in 3 hours by turning down the difficulty, skipping cutscenes, and passing up collectibles, but it certainly put a cloud over the experience.
Luckily I overcame this and I had a better time than with LoS1 or Mirror of Fate. Gabriel/Dracula is at his most sympathetic, the combat has been tightened up with upgrade mechanics to incentivise trying out a broad variety of techniques, and traversal is more fun thanks to a more acrobatic protagonist with vampire powers. I got on better with the overall game flow too, as it’s now a more Metroidvania-esque thing in 3D, with maps! They also cut out most of the puzzles, which I don’t mind too much.
The open world is broken up by loading zones, masked by Star Fox Adventures-style busywork. It takes place in two distinct settings: one a near-future metropolis, built over the remains of Dracula’s ruined castle. It mixes modern trappings with gothic architecture and thus ends up feeling like Batman’s Gotham City, or at times the Warhammer 40K Imperium. The other is a dream version of Dracula’s castle, populated by embodied memories like a young version of his son, his dead wife, and his previous minions such as Japanese horror movie versions of the Gorgons.
The plot is a bit all over the place but basically involves the return of Satan 1000 years after his defeat in the last game. His demonic minions are using biochemical agents to turn people into ghouls, weapons to corrupt law enforcement, and false faith to mislead the populace and summon monsters. Zobek (with Patrick Stewart reprising his role) enlists a decrepit Dracula to stop them, regaining his powers along the way. You mostly get them from the dream castle, where the cursed blood, a representation of Dracula’s inner struggle with his dark nature, possesses creatures to try and stop him from abandoning his role as “Prince of Darkness”. As an excuse for exploring these settings the story works, it’s just handled a bit messily.
Along the way you meet some colourful characters, although many don’t stick around long and end up dying after a few minutes. The game can be abrupt about this, especially towards the end where a boss gauntlet rushes things to a conclusion. The DLC is an interquel where Alucard does some table setting for the events of the main game; in terms of plot it’s inconsequential but he’s fun to play as, there’s some new locations and enemies, and they bring back puzzles; I’d recommend it.
It’s worth noting an element that I found offputting: the game earns its R rating, not just with the copious volumes of goopy blood, the cigarette smoking, and I think one swear; the real actual thing that bothered me was the self-mutilation that Dracula does as a matter of course. To activate various mechanisms in the game world he has to give up some of his blood (they introduced this in the first game’s DLC, but here it just happens all the time without loss of health). Often this is accompanied by him tearing his own flesh or forcibly interacting with sharp objects. I get the purpose of this thematically, or maybe it’s just being edgy, but I often had to look away from the screen. There’s also a scripted scene early on where you’re forced to graphically slay and feed from a protesting family of innocents that Zobek has arranged for you to regain your vitality from your desiccated mummy-man state as seen in the first game’s epilogue scene. It’s unpleasant to say the least.
So aside from some issues, I had a great time here. The forced stealth sections and rat transformations are brief diversions, not game-ruining missteps. The story is not any more muddled than its direct predecessors. And they added a menu options to entirely disable QTEs! Apart from anything else about the game’s cool environments and smooth mechanics, this is a huge thumbs up from me and reason enough to recommend this one, although it’s hard to suggest it on its own given how much it references and builds on the other two games in the sub-series. Overall the three games are a fascinating and flawed but successful alternate take on Castlevania, and I’m glad I played them.
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