The demo opens after the events of Castlevania: Mirror of Fate, as Dracul (the former Gabriel Belmont) has been weakened by the combined efforts of both Alucard and Trevor Belmont. The demo starts with an attack on Gabriel's castle by the Brotherhood of Light.
The game quickly gives players control to run the ropes of a very brief tutorial, covering the bare bones of combat and overall basic gameplay. For those who have played the original Lords of Shadow, Gabriel is stripped of his Light and Dark magic here, but the Void Sword and Chaos Claws replace them respectively. Attacking with the Void Sword warrants Gabriel with ability to regain his health from each strike, while attacks with Chaos Claws break armored foes' defenses with its increased damage output - at the cost of being slower than the Void Sword. The Combat Cross is absent completely, but Gabriel has a Blood Whip by default that mimics a lot of those basic attacks.
Much like Kain in the Legacy of Kain series, Gabriel can feed on the blood of stunned foes with a well-placed button prompt to restore health as well. Sadly, this method doesn't build as much health as merely using the Void Sword. I wonder what purpose this ability will have in the full version of the game when players can easily rely on the Void Sword to restore health instead. My only guess at this stage is players won't start with both the Void Sword and Chaos Claws at the beginning of the game and have to acquire them, much like how Light and Dark magics were acquired in the original Lords of Shadow.
One thing that the tutorial does NOT cover is art of Perfect Guarding. In the original Lords of Shadow, this was cued by a huge flash of white light along with the game going into slow-motion. Perfect Guarding allows Gabriel a free counterattack when done successfully. This is a technique that should be mastered in its fullest to dispatch a lot of this series' foes with minimal effort, along with Dodging.
FYI, this is NOT me playing... I'm still unable to capture gameplay footage until I buy another computer in the next month or two...
After dispatching a few minor foes and stepping outside of the castle, Gabriel is faced with an enemy that looks a lot like the Silver Knight that gave many players issues in the original Lords of Shadow - for the sake of this article, I'm going to simply dub him "The Golden Knight". I personally didn't never see what was so difficult about that boss fight as it was one of my favorite boss encounters in the original game. The Golden Knight sports a similar pattern, maneuvering around the arena at high-speed while throwing out hard-hitting attacks. This is where Perfect Guarding and a successful Dodging is key. Evade his attacks and pummel him with a combination of the Void Sword and Blood Whip after Dodging his attacks.
The latter half of the demo consists of avoiding The Golden Knight's arrows as Gabriel maneuvers around the Brotherhood's mechanical golem by the use of this series' Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and Shadows of the Colossus-style platforming, while stopping to break through a gate after disposing of more the grunt soldiers that opened the demo.
I wonder how many people caught the line from the beginning of Symphony of the Night when Gabriel exits the castle...
For my first attempt at this demo, I cleared it in less than 10 minutes. That was even shorter than the original Lords of Shadow demo... I was hoping that Konami would give us a bit more to chew on before the retail release here. (Sighs) Anything is better than nothing I suppose.
There are a few things that annoyed me with this demo that were minor concerns but I'll bring them up anyway. I hope the particle effects from weapon attacks are reduced a bit before the final release as it was a bit distracting to see the pending enemy attacks and react in time while the huge flashes onscreen with a proper Dodge or Perfect Guard. Another thing was the lack of a lock-on button. I thought developers learned enough from that mistake from last year's DmC: Devil May Cry. Call me nit-picky, but when it comes to action games in this genre, I want to pick my own targets and not rely on the game engine to do. More often than not, the game tends to pick the least threatening adversary to target at the worst case scenario.
Again, these are VERY minor concerns as I'm still pleased with what I have played so far. This is still the Lords of Shadow game I thoroughly enjoyed in its original debut and I'm anxious to see where Gabriel/Dracula's story goes on from here.
(Looks at wallet) I might be VERY tempted to buy this Collector's Edition... I still have the Collector's Edition for the original game on my bookcase. (Shakes fist) This is going to be a LONG wait until the end of the month...
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