The first Castlevania Lords of Shadow title was a pleasant surprise as the first of the many attempts to bring the series in to the 3D action space to do so successfully and based on the hands on time we had it looks like the sequel is going to be that much better.

Again stepping into the role of Gabriel, now transformed into Dracula himself, the demo has the players dealing with an assault force of holy warriors who crash into Dracula’s castle with undead murder on their minds. The weapon set that Dracula deals with is very similar to what players had last time around courtesy of an all purpose gauntlet that can provide the chain whip weapon that does some different things depending on which power you toggle on. Additionally, a sword provides a weapon handy in disarming foes of thier shields. As with the last game you cannot succeed if you just keep one weapon or power going the whole time. Combat requires savvy switching between weapons and powers so you can use all of them in tandem. This looks a bit complicated at first glance but is actually a fairly elegant system that shouldn’t feel foreign to players of the previous game as well as God of War fans as the combat is fairly similar there as well.

The fighting itself was fast paced and interesting with enemies showing decent AI and attack patterns. Unfortunately, at least for the demo, it seems like the combat is also made up of a seemingly endless stream of enemies from whatever source they arrive in where you beat a batch and a bunch more flood out like they are in some kind of holy clown car. This is kind of annoying and a fairly lazy way to design levels but this may just be a convention of the demo.

Boss platforming makes a return in the demo as well and Dracula is forced to climb a cathedral while being assaulted by a flying angel enemy. This is very much like the large scale boss fights of the last game which itself borrows from the Collossi in Shadow of Colossus but it is refined from the first Lords of Shadow game insofar as it is challenging but much more forgiving and much less tedious.

This large scale boss encounter is also not just limited to platforming and includes a liberal helping of combat along the way while incorporating outside environmental hazards and attacks into the progression further up the tower. In this way, the encounter was throwing a lot at the player in terms of climbing, platforming, fighting enemies, all while luring the flying angel foe into shooting particular spots in the environment so you can move forward. There is a lot going on and the player has to keep a lot of balls in the air to progress but I never found myself frustrated or wanting to quit.

As touched on above, the controls are intuitive and comfortable with button layouts that do not leave the player cursing the controller for failure. The responsiveness was good and I never found myself searching for the right buttons. This is fairly important in a game that asks you to do so much all at once and it does it very well.

Obviously this is only a demo but so far Lords of Shadow looks solid with some meaningful improvements over the original game without losing what makes it special and what makes it fun to play. There wasn’t much in the demo by way of the exploration in the previous game but hopefully that will also be intact. If it is and the improvements shown in the demo remain consistant then Lords of Shadow 2 should one to pick up.