Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

When it was released back in 2010, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow shook the franchise to its core, switching genres while rebooting the entire storyline. For instead of being a Metroidvania, focusing on the exploration of a labyrinthine environment, the game followed the old God of War approach of creating awe-inspiring set-pieces punctuated by brutal action. Naturally, Pierre, the purist, was so insulted by the project that if he didn’t hunt down and drink the life out of everyone involved, it was only because his human slave, Guillermo, begged him to stand down. That, and Kojima having worked as an advisor during development, as Pierre really likes Metal Gear.

Here, we control Gabriel Belmont, a knight of the Brotherhood of Light chosen to save the world after his wife was killed by a beast and an evil spell cut Earth from the heavens, preventing souls from moving on. His task, as it’s laid out by his colleague Zobek, is to kill the Lords of Shadow – three supernatural beings that rule parts of the world – and acquire their pieces of the God Mask, which is fabled to grant so much power to its wearer that they would be able to counter the spell and even bring back the dead. Gabriel, then, sets out on a journey to both avenge and save his dead wife.

The story puts the spotlight on Gabriel and his inner turmoil. He’s presented as an ambivalent figure that is both savior and destroyer, a man who must be of pure heart but is also consumed by unmitigated anger. As Zobek describes him, Gabriel is a “knight in shining armor with death at his side.”

Zobek acts as a narrator, telling us a little about Gabriel and his quest before each level. This is a great narrative choice, as it gives Zobek a creepy edge: the character talks as if he’s right there, watching Gabriel’s actions and deeds from afar, hidden from sight, spying on us. So, even if his words show that he’s rooting for Gabriel, they also push us to feel there’s something off with him. After all, as Pierre can attest, if someone is stalking you from a distance… beware their intentions.

The issue with his narration, however, is that the things Zobek says can rarely be seen on the screen. Take Gabriel’s inner struggles, for example: Zobek will tell us about them, but the cutscenes with our hero will rarely show them to us. So, when Zobek narrates that “a steely resolve has taken hold and compassion is now gone from [Gabriel’s] heart,” we must simply take this crucial emotional shift on faith, as there’s not a single scene in which Gabriel is given the opportunity to display his inner change.

Gabriel, being a stoic, introspective character, only aggravates the problem, as he rarely speaks and uses few words when decides to do so, never giving us much to chew on. So, since Lords of Shadow’s story is about the protagonist’s inner struggle, dealing with how his vengeful nature corrupts his heart and turns him into something akin to the very monsters he destroys – being all driven by violence –, it’s not exactly great that the things Zobek narrates are much like Pierre in a way: we can’t find their reflection on the screen.

When he’s prowling Paris’ rooftops at night looking for food – usually right-wing sympathizers, bullies, or people putting ketchup on pizza – Pierre often wonders if the person who wrote the cutscenes and the one responsible for Zobek’s narration and site texts are two different people who really dislike each other and never spoke during development. For there are very few moments outside the narration that depict Gabriel’s inner conflict: we have one in which he sees himself as his wife’s murderer while wearing the God mask… and that’s it? This vision happens early on, too, and is never brought up again by the character.

But even if the main cutscenes mostly ignore this thread, the rest of the story keeps following Gabriel’s transformation into a corrupted being nonetheless. Some of the monsters he finds, for example, may even foreshadow this tragic outcome: Malphas’ backstory – told only by Zobek, of course, and some scrolls – tells of a powerful woman who was brought down by love and grief. In other words, even though you would be totally unaware of that if you’ve been skipping the narration and side texts, it’s all moving toward a final battle taking place inside Gabriel’s heart, and one that the knight may very well lose.

When the time comes to deliver, however, Lords of Shadow backs away. Here we must go into details, so a red spoiler warning is due. Just skip ahead to the next red sign if you’re allergic to spoilers or, like Pierre, lactose-intolerant.

* Spoiler Warning, You’re in Danger *

The game’s climax is a fight against Satan himself, but true to form, as we’re dealing with Lords of Shadow’s cutscenes here, instead of being presented as the culmination of the protagonist’s inner struggles, the battle is framed as an epic fight for the fate of the world – Gabriel seems at risk of dying, not of turning into a monster: the danger is outward, not inward.

This is especially baffling because the elements that lead to a great final psychological clash are all there. The villain is no one other than Satan himself, a character deeply connected with notions of corruption and temptation, being himself a good figure who eventually fell and became monstrous. During the climax, Gabriel’s psych is said to be standing on the edge of a precipice, but instead of giving the last push, manipulating the knight into doing some horrible action, Satan just tries to beat the guy to death.

The fight itself is also designed to mirror Gabriel’s inner struggle, since we must keep switching between dark and light magic to defeat our foe. Gabriel has to maintain an inner balance, transitioning between his good and dark sides, without relying too much on either of them, to win. It’s a perfect battle, then, thematically speaking, but the cutscenes that precede and come after it do what they always do: ignore everything.

But Gabriel kicks Satan’s ass anyway, and all is well. Marie appears and says that God is merciful, so Gabriel is forgiven, for Zobek had revealed that it was Gabriel who actually murdered his wife – that vision at the beginning was kind of blunt, really, but to be fair, the game is not called Lords of Foreshadowing (God forgive me, too). But here’s the thing, Zobek also reveals that the knight was unconscious while doing the deed, being controlled by Zobek himself, who is one of the Lords of Shadow. It’s Zobek, then, who is to blame, as he used Gabriel as a tool to accomplish his dark purpose. In other words, God is not that merciful to forgive something that was not even a sin in the first place, is he?

This is the ending: Gabriel wins, all is forgiven, and the only rub is that he can’t actually bring his wife back from the dead, but just have a small moment with her before she moves on. Not the most dramatic or satisfying of endings – winning is anticlimactic when the narrative is building up to the defeat – but it’s not horrible or offensive. That is, until the post-credits scene comes absolutely out of nowhere, showing that Gabriel has somehow… become Dracula – a reveal with the same energy of one cinema’s most brilliant scenes.

Lords of Shadow gives the impression that its story was supposed to end with Gabriel losing his inner battle and turning into a monster – a vampire – to defeat Satan and save his wife, but somewhere along the way someone – who Pierre is gonna murder slowly, Guillermo and Kojima be damned – changed their mind, probably thinking that a happy ending would be more palatable to a wider audience. So, the game backed away from this tragic conclusion… without getting rid of its result. However, as Pierre likes to say, you can’t have the human and drink them too. Gabriel either wins his inner battle and remains a man or loses and turns into Dracula. You can’t have it both ways, Lords of Shadow.

Now with the happy ending, the game must offer a new explanation to the whole “the-protagonist-suddenly-turns-into-the-series-iconic-villain” thing with a small piece of DLC, which inevitably robs the reveal of any real build-up and reduces it to an arbitrary event disconnected from everything that preceded it: Gabriel turns into Dracula because now there’s this portal to this magical world with this huge menace that was never mentioned before. Since only dark creatures can enter its realm – because of reasons – Gabriel becomes a vampire.

In other words, this whole spoilery segment was just to explain how Lords of Shadow manages to do the impossible: it makes the transformation of the protagonist into a monster a random event in a narrative that was building up precisely to this outcome. Outstanding mind-boggling stuff.

* End of Spoilers, You’re Safe *

Let’s talk about the thing that pisses off Pierre the most: the game’s level design. For instead of a labyrinthine interconnected map, Lords of Shadow is composed of several somewhat linear levels, which vary greatly in complexity, size, and purpose. One day, Charles, the snob, questioned why Pierre would complain about linear levels in a Castlevania game if the classic ones are like that, (the answer is simple: Pierre didn’t play them; his first Castlevania was Symphony of the Night), but he questioned that silently in his mind, because he’s snob, not stupid.

There are levels focused on platforming and parkour – such as the one where we move back and forth between three towers to collect fairies to open a door –, while others contain a series of puzzles that build upon the same idea – such as having to guide beams of light to open doors or press switches to redirect currents of electricity. There are some stand-out moments as well, such as when Gabriel gets stuck inside a music box or when we must play a monstrous version of chess with a vampire. The variety does wonders for the pacing of the game and keeps things refreshing, as we rarely know what awaits us on the next level.

Just like in God of War, the scale of the environments also impresses. In a moment clearly inspired by Santa Monica’s classic game, Gabriel moves between huge structures by walking over the immense chains that connect them. The fixed camera angles are used to great effect, often making the protagonist a tiny pixel on the screen to show how the buildings and mountains that surround him completely dwarf the knight – if there’s one thing that Lords of Shadow completely nails, it’s the epic tone it’s going for.

Most of these levels offer multiple paths and hide secrets to incentivize exploration and decrease the overall linearity of the adventure. These secrets come in the form of power-ups that increase Gabriel’s health and magic bars, and item limit, offering tangible rewards for the trouble of going after them. The game only falters by making some of these secrets impossible to obtain until we have acquired a specific piece of equipment, as we have to replay the whole level again just to get it, which adds nothing but filler to the experience – this is not a Metroidvania anymore, after all. Stop trying to have it both ways, Lords of Shadow. Pierre is coming for you regardless.

The other collectibles are the scrolls of dead soldiers, which talk about the history of that particular place, register their last moments alive, or offer hints about how to proceed. They’re mostly fine, helping to build the lore and create a sense of danger, but sometimes they just fall flat, such as when they’re offering bland tutorials ten hours into the game: “If one is running low on Magic, it’s important to become focused again, as this is what makes the enemy drop Neutral Elemental Orbs,” a scroll of a dying soldier reads. When I die, I’ll make sure to leave a note on my notebook for those who come after, written in blood, saying, “If one is running low on Money, it’s important to become revolutionaries again, as this is what makes the enemy drop Prices.”

Although levels can be fairly expansive and offer multiple paths to the same goal, the game is generally bad at signposting. The fixed camera angles, for example, are great when it comes to framing the action in a way that emphasizes its scope, but they can also make it difficult for us to see where we have to go and how to get there. They make Gabriel small to better display the size and scale of its gothic castles, but in the process, the camera angles make the shining spot that indicates where we must aim our hookshot minuscule as well. Since the places Gabriel can actually reach in the levels are sometimes arbitrary, with invisible walls blocking him from getting to specific platforms, a clear visual sign marking the interactable objects is crucial.

Finally, we arrive at the combat. Gabriel has two types of attack that complement each other, a horizontal slash that hits multiple enemies, and a vertical one that is better when dealing with just one monster. It’s a God of War clone, in other words, but with an interesting twist, which comes in the form of the magic bars that grant Gabriel new powers.

Their basic function is a simple one: light magic heals Gabriel with each blow he delivers, while shadow magic increases the damage of those blows. We can’t activate both simultaneously, so it becomes a matter of assessing what is more important on the fly: doubling down on the offensive with shadow magic or healing Gabriel? To recharge these bars, we must acquire neutral elemental orbs, which come out of each blow we deliver if Gabriel’s focus gauge is full. So, we must be focused to… damn, that dying soldier was right. Still weird and a bit patronizing, but right. Anyway, to become focused again, Gabriel must hit and parry enemies without taking damage, as it resets the focus, which puts the spotlight on the need to read our enemies and become able to predict their moves.

Overall, the combat in Lords of Shadow is great, but there are still a couple of issues to be addressed. First, we have a problem with the controls, as blocking and dodging are mapped to the same button: we press it to block and add a direction with the analog stick to dodge. This means that it’s too easy to do one while wanting to do the other, especially if we are instinctively trying to change the direction Gabriel is facing while blocking – we’ll trigger a dodge instead. The second problem is that the whole focus mechanic makes encounters unbalanced: if we are having trouble against a specific enemy, it usually means that we can’t parry it or dodge it successfully, so Gabriel’s focus never increases, the magic bars never recharge, we can’t heal anymore and so, much like our capitalist society, become doomed to fail. It’s a system that punishes those who don’t play well and rewards those already great in the game, widening the gap between them.

Presentation-wise, Lords of Shadow certainly impresses with a striking art direction that creates some memorable gothic environments: Gabriel frequently finds screaming faces carved on mountains and stones, grotesque statues of beings formed of different animals, and a castle that is remarkably excessive in size, with pointed towers so immense that made Pierre remember the time he spent with his old friend, Big John. For no particular reason.

Meanwhile, the melancholic soundtrack composed by Oscar Araújo successfully mirrors the ruined state of the world, building a serious and somber mood. Pierre abhors it, accustomed as he is to the catchy, lively tunes of the 2D Metroidvanias. But this approach works perfectly in Lords of Shadow, as Gabriel’s journey is supposed to be a tragic one, even if the game’s main cutscenes never got the memo. The standout track is certainly Waterfalls of Agartha: from its very first notes, there’s a deep sense of hurt, a historical pain, old, never-healed, that tells of a place where things will never be fine again, even if they get better. It’s beautiful and heart-wrenching.

With its bipolar narrative, uneven level design and combat system, and impressive presentation, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a reboot as memorable as it is flawed. Maybe it’s for the best that Pierre didn’t kill anyone involved. Right, Pierre? Wait, of course they count. What do you mean they didn’t need the writers any longer?

August 17, 2025.

Review originally published on September 13, 2019.