Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - The End Of The Long Road

Chapter XII, there is a TON to be said about Chapter XII. This is the final battle of the main game and with it all of the twists are turns are to be revealed.It's got drama, fighting, betrayal, and true love. So I should stop wasting time with the intro paragraph. It is time to crack into this game and reveal all of the dirty little secrets that hide at the end of this tale.

Behold The God Mask

The Chapter starts off with the longest cutscene in the entire game so far and boy is it a dozy. Gabriel acquires the final piece of the mask and with it he can put the God Mask together. Once done Zobek magically appears. I'm serious, the guy is just suddenly standing there and Gabriel is just too stupid to question where he came from. Instead Gabriel is all like "We have the mask now we can bring back my wife." To which Zobek replies, "No you can't. I have betrayed you!"

That's right, be surprised. Zobek is actually a bad guy and I bet you didn't even see it coming. Oh wait. You did see it coming? From over a mile away? Really? It was that stupidly obvious? Yes, yes it was. Zobek's betrayal comes as a surprise to no one except for Gabriel. I mean, come on. The guy suddenly shows up out of nowhere, happens to have the right tools to help Gabriel. Tells Gabriel how to bring his wife back so he will go on this stupid quest. He is constantly pushing Gabriel but the entire time Zobek does next to nothing to actually help. Instead he follows Gabriel around and waxes poetic about the man from behind a bush while holding a shaky camera. He was very obviously evil.

And here is the Devil Mask

So Zobek shows up holding a different mask. This mask is not identified in game but it is called the Devil Mask.It looks sufficiently creepy and if you've been paying any attention it might actually look a little familiar. But I will cover that a little bit later.

Zobek dawns the mask and he turns in to the real Lord of the Necromancer. Now if he is the real Lord then who did I kill? The butler? And speaking of that how did Gabriel get the final piece of the mask? If Zobek is the third Lord of Shadow then the third mask piece should not have appeared until Gabriel killed him. But here is Gabriel with an intact mask. That kind of ruins the entire setup for the story in case any of the dev team is reading this.

So Zobek reveals that he has been the mastermind the entire time. Now if you were paying attention you should have recognized the Devil Mask. It was the mask that Gabriel was wearing in Pan's temple when he was shown killing his wife. Again it is not a big surprise to everyone except to Gabriel that it was Gabriel who killed his wife. But he did so under the influence of the Devil Mask. Gabriel also killed Claudia, the stupid mute who wouldn't shut up. So I can't condemn him for that. She had it coming.

So Zobek's master plan in a nutshell was, kill Gabriel's wife and use this to send Gabriel on a quest to kill the Lords of Shadow so he could resurrect his wife. Doing this would unite the God Mask that Zobek would then take from Gabriel and use to rule, well..... everything. I guess. *shrug* So far so good.

At this point Zobek kills Gabriel. (Ok, first off, Zobek rambles for a very long time. I was pretty bored by this point so I'm not going to cover every minute detail of his speech.) So Gabriel is dead and Zobek is congratulating himself on his victory when suddenly the real twist is pulled.

Zobek is hearing voices and the voice is claiming that it put all this entire idea into his head. Zobek then bursts into flames. Wait a second. Zobek is dead? And I didn't get to kill him. That is just lame. Alright, who stole my battle against Captain Picard? It's some veiny guy with yellow eyes and long, black, greasy looking hair. And he's yelling at God, who he calls Father. Wait a second!

So Gabriel is dead. At least until Marie shows up and says he has to go back and that it isn't his time. Gabriel is unconscious during this point so he has no idea what is going on. Gabriel is sent back and he gets to confront... wait for it... SATAN HIMSELF!

Doesn't he just look evil?

So the final fight is against Satan. I can dig it. But first I must talk a moment about Satan. I really like this version of Satan. This isn't the angel who refused to bow down before man. No, this is the angel who assumes that he should be equal if not greater than God himself. Why? Because he said so. That is why. There is an air of confidence around him. A sense of self assurance that what he desires is already his. I like it. It makes me want to beat his face in even more.

So here it is at last. The Final Confrontation. Now I would like to point out that Satan is a very solid boss fight. He is not cheap, he is just tricky. The only really issue I had came down to magic. For some unexplained reason during this fight Gabriel has unlimited magic. I didn't have that during the fight with Pan and Pan used the same concepts. The only reason I could think that the gave Gabriel unlimited magic is due to the rings that appear when Satan is stunned.Gabriel has to run through these rings and only the correct corresponding color will allow Gabriel to pass. This means you have to change magic and you have to have magic. Without it you cannot win the fight. It gets even worse the second time Satan is stunned since the rings move so changing becomes even more tricky.

Satan does have two moves I will call cheap. The first is when he places colored rings on the ground that will trap Gabriel. The are easy to break free from by using the correct magic and when you break free you can normally get a free hit. The second attack is that Satan calls in these Grim Reapers to help. These things can kill in a single hit or they just hit really hard and Gabriel was just that low on health. Either way, they feel cheap. Plus they are color coded to the magic as well. You have to use the opposite magic to kill them.

And that is the big thing with this fight. Satan will use Light and Shadow magic so Gabriel needs to use the opposing magic against him. This is not a bad idea. What cheapens the fight in Gabriel's favor is that Satan swaps often enough that Gabriel has ample opportunity to heal. This removes some of the danger of the battle. You still have to remain on your toes though. Satan can hit hard so you need to learn to dodge/block on a very regular basis. Also, don't screw up the QTEs or it's an instant death on Gabriel.

Wow, I have typed a lot and we are not done yet. Gabriel shoves Satan back into the Earth and calls it good. All of the trapped souls begin to move on. Marie shows up and Gabriel is all. "I have the Mask. Lets bring you back." And Marie is all "You can't. The Mask doesn't work that way." No, the Mask doesn't bring people back. It just makes souls tangible, so they can be touched. Probably inappropriately. Gabriel has to stay and live while Marie moves on. The guy is very sad about this. I'm sad that Dracula hasn't shown up yet. Instead Claudia shows up. She just stands there for a moment and then vanishes without saying a word. She probably figured that she deserved her death for being such a NAG!

And finally the credits role. But like any good Marvel movie you don't leave your seat until the credits have finished. There is a decently long scene buried at the end of the game and it raises a lot of questions.

First, Zobek is still alive. He enters some church looking for an old friend. The friend is of course Gabriel. But Gabriel has changed, a lot. He also calls himself Dracul. Now, I kind of guessed that Gabriel would become Dracula. I figured that Gabriel would make the same basic offering that the founders of the Order of Light did and that Dracula is what would be left behind. Doesn't appear to be the case, especially since Gabriel calls himself Dracul (The Dragon) instead of Dracula (Son of the Dragon). Not quite sure what that means.

This scene is very carefully crafted. Zobek and Dracul talk about the return of Satan. They are in a very old church. The type that Gabriel would have gone too. But it is revealed that they are in the modern day. I have no idea where. But there are skyscrapers and cars and neon signs everywhere. I must say, Gabriel really smacked Satan back down if it took him 1,000 years to recover his strength. Zobek wants Dracul's help against Satan and in return he will end Dracul's immortal life.

The scene ends with Dracul vanishing into a puff of black smoke and Zobek just walking away. There was no agreement made. Pretty bizarre ending if you ask me.

Final Thoughts are next.