Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

7.0Difficulty

For the most part, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on the default difficulty is pretty easy. However, every once in a while you will come across harder enemies and bosses that require you to learn their behavior in order to defeat them.

The difficulty score of 7 comes from multiple difficulty options: Squire, Warrior, Knight, and Paladin. The Paladin difficulty is locked until you beat the level on Knight difficulty. You may switch the difficulty of the game, which is great if you're having trouble with one of the levels or bosses.

8.0Hack & Slash Combat

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has a whole slew of attacks for you to learn. So much that it almost plays out like a fighting game. These skills/attacks are executed by performing a sequence of button presses. Depending on your current state(jumping, blocking, light/shadow stance), different attacks can be executed. I found the combat system in this game to be extremely fun. As you progress through the game, you gain experience points that enable you to unlock new attacks and upgrade the ones you've previously unlocked.

9.0Boss Fights

The first real boss fight in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is when I really fell in love with the game. The fight was somewhat frustrating and difficult at first, but once I learned the Titan's behavior, I was able to take him down quite easily. It was a blast.

Boss fights also have challenges, such as beating them within a certain time frame. The game allows you to replay levels and re-fight bosses. So if you're like me, you will spend quite a bit of time and have a ton of fun completing the challenges and perfecting your strategies for taking down the main bosses.

9.03D

Some of the scenery in this game is jaw dropping.

PC Controller Support

I played the game on Windows with an Xbox-360 controller. The game was initially released exclusively on consoles, so the controller support is great. I usually prefer playing PC games with a keyboard and mouse, but I never once thought that I'd enjoy the game more if I switched to my keyboard and mouse.

Behind/Over The Shoulder

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has an automatic/fixed camera, meaning you can't rotate or look around manually. As you walk through a level, you're put into different scenes where the camera is placed in different places and angles. Most of the time the camera is right behind you, but sometimes it's far away and pans left and right as you move. Some of the camera positions were frustrating, but for the most part I really enjoyed the camera angles. In some of the levels the designers really took advantage of having complete control of the camera. As you walk through an area, the camera forces you to see some of the amazing scenery that you might otherwise miss if you had manual control of the camera.

Achievements

The majority of the achievements are given to you just for playing mandatory parts of the game(lame). But there are quite a few that will take some work to get, if you're into that.

9.0Dark

The story in this one is more dark than previous Castlevania games. There's a certain point early in the game where you will learn that this Belmont has some demons.

8.0Fantasy

Vampires, the undead, talking horses, giant birds that take you places. Yeah, it's a fantasy story. ;)