Castlevania has always shown its stay for the 2D realm until Lament of Innocence. After playing Lament of Innocence, the game created a whole new level of seeing what a real 3d game should be.
Let's talk about the engine for Lament of Innocence. The creators were so into capturing the detail. It's tough for players to go through the game without noticing the small details in architecture of the stages and the movement of the water to the lights hitting through along textures that were involved to create such a masterpiece. The part that was most disappointed was still the engine couldn't create the infinate realms of Dracula's castle as with the 2d style where they could build exotic backgrounds such as the infinate staircases in one of the old 2d stages. The 3d engine still has limits and boundaries by isolated the character to rooms and rooms.
The Character and monster designs were incredible when looking at the animation and the motion of Leon Belmont. He was able to pull off these motion capture back handsprings and flips. With the engine, the game adds in the ability to dodge from monster attacks that require skill and reaction that makes the fun atmosphere of the game along with the Leon's special abilities of whipe techniques and combos with special abilities and different weapons. The whole whipping and dodging away from monsters adds more action. Furthormore, they adjusted the system to be more real time where potions have to be used during the actual gameplay along with the equipment changes during the play.
The normal gameplay isn't at all challenging though. The difficulty and full fun factor of the game comes from the ability to play this mode called Crazy Mode. There are usually empty halls in the normal mode, which destroys the action yet in the crazy mode, mnonsters are tougher and those empty hallways are filled with monsters. Konami also offers two hidden characters in this game, which starts to become a neat tradition passed down from Castlevania to Castlevania.
The storyline of the game is really important cause Leon is the first Belmont and show how their bloodline is born. The story of dracula becomes more traditional like the stories we hear of Dracula in the movies and books because players will find why Dracula has turned to this side of darkness and the belief in God affects it. The origin of the legendary Vampire Killer Whip is told.
I don't know what's left to tell.. I'm really impressed with this engine because it felt really good to bash monsters with the whip and dodge around. I hope this engine improves. I hope this engine becomes adopted for other games because I'm imagining thoe MMORPG games could use this 3d engine and combat system to cause a revolution. Most contemporary generation MMORPG are using the Unreal Tournament engine, which is decent, but I think this engine deserves a lot more attention.
We won't see another home console castlevania in while because the creator of this engine is planning on using for other games, which I cna't wait to try out.
Oh yeah, don't compare this game to Playstation's Symphony of the Night. All Castlevania games have their own unique systems, which makes the series one of the best and always changing. Konami puts alot of effort in this series unlike the Final Fantasy series from Square Enix.
That's it. I hope I helped.
