Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 is the biggest disappointment since my son.
The game starts off with a lengthy tutorial wherein some holy folks are trying to bust down your castle. You're a fully powered Dracul, the Dragon Prince of Darkness here so I was expecting to maul everything without any sort of effort. Nope, you still have to dodge pitiful human attacks and such just like Gabriel did in the first game. That was disappointing as hell. They didn't even give you the beginning to feel like the badass slayer of Satan you were. In fact, so far at no point does Dracula feel awesomely powerful except when fighting the Shadows of the Colossus sized bosses. I was apparently too weak to fight these buff human guards called Golgothan Guards in the future, but then I'm transported to the past where I'm capable of one on one'ing a 10 story tall super Medusa. Nope, in the future, all you get to do is fucking stealth around these guys, usually as a rat. There are VERY, VERY lengthy stealth rat segments that suck the fun out of the room like that one relative that you just can't relate too and hates every thing you like and do.
Now, I get why the game has to depower you after the beginning, you can't just start as the awesomest and stay that way. What I don't get is that I am buying ALL the exact same attacks he had in the first game. There doesn't seem to be a single new attack combo or anything, it's all identical. Really disappointing.
I've been reading a lot about how the lead designer of the game (nee lead writer and principal owner of the dev studio) got a gigantic ego after people liked the first game (it was not perfect, but it was good) and clashed with the lead art designer (who left) and refused to listen to any gameplay criticisms of any kind from anywhere in the company, so I am not surprised that the game is, so far, not fun.
The only saving graces so far have been the big boss fights, which are as ever, great knockoffs of Shadow of the Colossus and God of War boss fights and the music is, as the first game, top God damn notch, but not really in flavour with Castlevanias of the past. From what I've read there too, Konami thought that the music in older Castlevanias was too feminine* (A criticism I do not understand, it's some of the best music in the history of video games) so they wanted as few references to older Castlevania music as possible. Since it was composed primarily by a woman (Michiru Yamane), I take that to mean that they don't want a woman composing the music anymore.
I'm only a few hours into it, so I'm going to give it some more time and hope it improves. The first game had a rough start too. Oh, and here's a little bit of a spoiler about the story and how dumb it is. The city you wake up in in the present day is called Castlevania City. No fucking joke.
*feminine like this diddy
