Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Carmilla

Boy Carmilla has come a long ways since her original creation. Carmilla was originally created by the Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu in 1872, which predated Dracula by 25 years. She wasn't presented as any sort of Vampire lord at the time. In the original novel she was just a mysterious young woman who befriend other young women. She would live with them and during the night she would drain their blood. It was a fairly simple tale but captivating.

Well here we are 139 laters and Carmilla has done pretty well for herself. She is now Lord of the Vampires. This still leaves me wondering where Dracula is in the grand scheme of things. I am starting to get a suspicion, but that will have to be saved for another time. I think she's supposed to be displayed at sexy, but I found her rather unattractive looking. Maybe it was the inhuman eyes. Or that there was no subtlety to her sexuality. It was pretty blatantly obvious from the moment you met her.

Carmilla initially tries to seduce Gabriel. She offers him treasures, pleasures, power, and immortality. The things that a Vampire typically offers. Gabriel will, of course, have none of that. So Carmilla tries a different tactic. She tells Gabriel that he is on a fools errand. The God Mask cannot resurrect the dead. Surprisingly, this is the first time anyone has mentioned that the hoped for resurrection might not work or that it might even be a bad idea to try. I mean, how often does this sort of thing actually work out the way you want it to? Carmilla's is trying to destroy Gabriel's hope and since hope is pretty useless anyways (just ask Kratos) she is obviously wasting her time. So get ready for the weakest, lamest boss fight I have yet to encounter.

Round 1. Carmilla summons normal Vampires while she hides in a protective shield and occassonally throws lightning at Gabriel. I don't know when Vampires learned to be all Sith Lord-like and started throwing around lightning. But if I think about it, Dracula used lightning on a regular basis in the older games, so I will let is slide since there is precedence for it. The round is lame. Vampires are pretty easy enemies especially if you are nailing them with holy water and since Vampires drop holy water you should find yourself with a pretty nice supply of the stuff. Go nuts, this round is a cake walk.

Now the last Lord of Shadow, Cornell, also had an easy first round. Then he transformed and things got tough. Carmilla gets half of this right. She transforms and while Cornell was a cool looking Werewolf, Carmilla is a lame looking Vampire. She has a very anorexic look and I just can't take that seriously. She's also an almost boringly easy fight. I was kind of shocked by how easy she was. Her attacks are fairly limited, easy to predict and easy to dodge. I never had to work during this fight. I was almost always getting neutral orbs so I always had full health.

I don't think I need to provide any more description of Carmilla than that. She has a third round, but it is even easier than the second. Get ready for her for death though. That is a really long, drawn out scene and very cool at the same time. Just be ready for the Quick Time moments, you don't want to repeat this event. It is way too cool to have to do it twice.

With the boring Carmilla dead Gabriel acquires the second half of the God Mask. Pan shows up and Gabriel gets to vent some steam for a moment. He's pretty peeved that the Lords of Shadow are the original founders of the Holy Order and that he has to kill them.It was nice to see some genuine emotion on Gabriel's face for a moment. It didn't last long enough however. Quickly Pan sends Gabriel on his way after the 3rd Lord of Shadow. I wonder who that will be?

And supposedly there will be some questions answered here too.

Heavenly Sword - Stupidest. Henchmen. Ever.

Have you ever watched the original Ninja Turtles cartoon? The main villain was a guy named Shredder. He had two henchmen, Bebop and Rocksteady. They were both morons. The difference here is that Bebop and Rocksteady were supposed to be morons. King Bohan's henchmen are supposed to be competent warriors. Only one of them is supposed to be a "moron". Instead all three of them are morons.

At the end of Capter 1 you finally use the Heavenly Sword. Here Nariko gets to use what is referred to as stances. She has her normal stance (using attacks buttons normally), ranged stance (pressing L1 while attacking), and heavy (strong?) stance (pressing R1 while attacking). This actually makes combat far more interesting yet cheap at the exact same time. Normal stance can only block Normal attacks and the Heavy stance can only block heavy attacks. Rnaged attacks only block during specific occasions so far. The issues I have is that enemies seem to randomly change attack styles to hit you. The same attack can be used in Normal or Heavy stance which makes it hard to guess which attack type to block against. It really sucks if three guys are attacking you in Normal and then someone suddenly throws in a Heavy.

In-between Chapters Narkio speaks to the player again. She complains that I have made her a killer. I would like to point out that she killed 700+ people on her own before she actually used the sword so she should just stop whining!

Chapter 2 has you battle 2 different bosses. This is where my first paragraph comes into play. First you will encounter the Flying Fox. I prefer to call him the Stupid Peacock instead. He primps, he preens, he moves like a chicken, he has an annoyingly nasally voice and he isn't scary in the slightest. I was actually doing just fine against him until I encountered the Quick Time Event. Thanks for the warning by way. These QTEs are kinda nice in that if you screw up you can recover. I seem to fail the first time round because I'm not expecting the QTE to occur. So I had to repeat it.

It's not a hard fight and I can't take the guy seriously. He declares Nariko isn't strong enough to entertain him yet so he leaves. I felt like I just wasted 10ish minutes.

Shortly afterwards a cutscene occurs where Bohan is addressing Flying Fox and his other two henchmen Whiptail and Roach. Whiptail is some bizarre snake lady. She really reminds me of Jennifer Coolidge. The final henchman you actually saw a snippet of earlier and that's Roach. Roach is the big, dumb guy. I hate the big, dumb guy. It's a character that I have never, ever liked. Roach also happens to be King Bohan's illegitimate son. Roach worships Daddy, but Daddy can't stand Roach.

The cutscene with these three is just moronic. I don't really know how else to describe it. They argue, they bicker, they insult each other. King Bohan stares at them like a moron with no thoughts in his brain. He also seems to like Flying Fox even though he yells at Fox for failing to get the sword. It's just dumb. Would I be scared to in the same room as these four? Yes. But only because I think they might eat me, not because I actually fear them. These aren't villains you love to hate. They're just villains who you hate. I want to kill them so they're out of the storyline.

Thankfully I get that chance. At the end of Chapter 2 you get to fight Whiptail. This is an okay fight, but the fixed camera angle can really screw you over. You fight Whiptail in a long canal and the camera focuses on her. Now if Whiptail gets to close one of the back walls while in close vicinity to Nariko, the camera will jump back and forth between angles making it very hard to see what's going on. QA really should have been on top of this and design should have found a way to fix it. Give it to the tech team if you have to.

At the start of the battle Nariko rescues Shen, her father. Nariko is also told that Shen tried to kill her when she was just born. Shen confirms this. Nariko turns her back on her father and her clan at this point. Basically the only she has for living is killing Bohan. The dialogue between Nariko and Whiptail is great. Whiptail keeps trying to provoke Nariko and Nariko keeps throwing it right back. Now I'm starting to like Nariko.

There's a Kai shooting section here that I want to talk about. To me, this should have been the tutorial level for using Kai. Kai has to protect Shen while he walks, injured, down a long bridge. I actually found this section to be a little fun. The enemies come one at a time early on giving you a chance to really learn the bow. You also have plenty of room to shoot the enemies. The difficulty slowly escalates at an appropriate level. Eventually more enemies start appearing at the same time and you have to adjust how you fight. It's really well done.

Back to Nariko's battle (Kai's section actually interrupts Nariko's battle with Whiptail). When the fight ends Whiptail goes down with the sword through her. Problem is Nariko is also knocked out. It's actually King Bohan who finishes off Whiptail by snapping her neck. While I doubt Whiptail would have recovered from her injuries, Bohan snaps her neck and finishes the job. Bohan then claims the sword and Nariko is taken prisoner. End Chapter.

I actually don't remember what Nariko said this time and I don't really care. Chapter 3 is up next.