#3: Castlevania: Lament of Innocence

A dark origin story for one of video gaming’s most famous series

This review was originally posted on Twitter on August 6, 2018.

Initial release: 2003
Platform: Playstation 2
Developer: Konami

Konami’s first attempt at a 3D Castlevania since the disaster that was Castlevania 64 and the somewhat-better Legacy of Darkness. It’s… not bad, for a weak Devil May Cry clone.

It’s pretty — very pretty, probably one of the best-looking games on PS2. And the soundtrack is up there with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in terms of being absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately the game doesn’t really excel in any other areas.

While the combat is perfectly passable, it lacks the fast-paced, rewarding nature of its obvious primary inspiration, Devil May Cry. you’ll more or less be using the same combos over and over because the fancier ones simply aren’t worth the trouble — and the whip is SLOW.

There’s a big bestiary, but the majority of them can be sorted into a few categories that more or less behave similarly — and that’s not even counting the obvious reskins… or the million varieties of skeleton.

Unlike some of the preceding Castlevanias, there is no experience system. you occasionally learn new moves by killing specific monsters, but you always do the same amount of damage unless you have the right elemental whip or are using a relic that boost stats — which means every fight is a slog.

The game’s greatest sin, however, is the level design. Don’t expect a realistically-designed castle like, say, the one in the first Devil May Cry (just as an example.) Five levels connect via lift to a small hub area — and they’re all the worst in copy-paste environments.

Picture a collection of identical rooms connected by identical corridors, constructed in a confusing maze-like fashion, and you’ve got a good idea of what to expect. Every room was clearly prefabricated before level construction. There are very few actually unique rooms.

While you can always leave a given level and come back later, it’s not easy — you’d have to trudge all the way back to the lift, or use rare teleporting items. After the interlocking, non-linear paths players took through Symphony of the Night and the Gameboy Advance games, this is a major disappointment.

Probably the most entertaining feature is the subweapon/orb combo system. All the classic subweapons are back, and colored orbs that you can obtain by killing bosses (though one you can just find as a secret) can give them different behavior — some combos are quite powerful.

As always, subweapons are fueled by heart pickups, which are in every single stone fire bowl that lines every room — smashing them reveals the item, as is tradition. When your hearts are full, the pedestals drop $1 coins instead, which can be used at the shop.

The shop is kind of underwhelming for how central it is to the gameplay; most of the important items are ludicrously expensive (the best armor is 3x the value of the next-best) and many basic items (like heart potions) that one would think would be for sale simply aren’t.

While the plot is fairly minimal, it’s told through a number of cutscenes that detail the history of the Belmonts and the whip each generation’s hero uses, as well as providing an origin story for Dracula himself. If Castlevania lore interests you, Lament’s a good place to start.

The English voice acting is passable, a bit overacted but that’s normal for the early 00s. The character design is pretty cool. The box art is gorgeous. All in all, it’s a decent ~10-hour diversion that comes short of its ambitions but almost makes up for it in presentation.

-june❤

[I spent a great amount of time compiling “archives” of my reviews on Twitter, of which there are hundreds. But after two “volumes” worth, I recently realized that such a venture does the reviews a disservice (and also grinds my browser to a halt.) So I’m trying again, only this time I’m posting them one at a time. Where are reviews #1 and 2? They’re so short, they’re barely reviews — it wasn’t until this game that I started really diving into doing actual reviews. I plan to someday revisit them and write proper reviews. The same applies to some of the earliest WW2 games I half-assedly wrote my thoughts on. -june]