Gadgetory

what's up Tech fans Kevin here at Tech tomorrow we're finally seeing some major PC game releases and today we're talking about the sequel to one of my favorite series reboots castlevania lords of Shadow 2 now this is the third and final entry in the lords of Shadow trilogy so the important question is of course does it bring a satisfying conclusion to it we're going to find that out today on tech o tomorrow now where the first game left us off we saw the main character Gabriel Belmont transform into the longtime series antagonist Dracula who you're still playing as in this game so what this means is that the first game basically serves as one gigantic prologue to the events of this one not only changing the main character to reflect his new vampiric nature but also moving the setting from medieval fantasy to modern day combos work identically to the first game and several Dracula's attacks are the same during his time as Gabriel while you no longer wield an actual whip attacks consist of lashing out at your opponents with one made of blood now there are a few changes to the game to reflect your newfound vampiric powers first off the fact that you can now finish off enemies by sucking their blood and regaining a little bit of health one of the more noticeable changes is to the game's magic system before all that happened was that your whip would glow either a red or blue color and gain some kind of special benefit like healing or increased damage alongside getting some new moves this time around however you still have access to basically the same two powers but now they also change your weapon into being either a sword or gauntlets offering an entirely different moveset which is a good change of pace boss fights are for the most part fun and unique with each one having little rules you need to learn over the course of the fight one thing I am a little saddened by is that there aren't really any giant fights in this one like there were in the first occasionally you have to grab ahold of an enemy or climb up their side for a moment but it's nothing like taking on and climbing the giant golems of the first game despite that missing however what boss fights we do have are still enjoyable and are varied and short enough to keep them interesting now another returning mechanic in this one that hasn't seen too many changes is its platforming with with the exception of one or two little annoying bits is solid throughout the entire game you almost never find yourself feeling lost and there's always a reason to go back to locations later with new abilities to get new power-ups and new explorative skills are added at a healthy pace this one is a bit more nonlinear than the first four rather than picking levels that you proceed through in a linear fashion there's just two big locations you travel through and revisit including options for teleportation to help speed things up now aesthetics is another area that the game continues to excel at from its predecessor especially in its backgrounds and lead character designs some of the enemies and monsters are fairly plain but every major character is really detailed and locations jump between either being absolutely gorgeous or so-so as I said earlier the game is divided into two locations the modern-day cityscape which is for the most part the weaker of the two visually and Dracula's castle which has some of the most interesting and beautifully designed backdrops well it's not the most graphically intense game it does manage to run nice and smooth on our system which includes an i7 4770k processor and an msi gtx 780 twin frozer we saw an average of about 98 frames per second on 2560 by 1440 and 155 frames per second on nine to twenty by ten eighty while having all of the game settings set to max so as I've said combat and visuals are really solid in this game and are by far its biggest strengths however once you get past these two things you come upon two glaring problems first off the writing is just a lot weaker than the first games which is a shame considering how much that one built up the story in mythology several events happen with zero explanation characters come off more stock and flat and despite still having some great voice talents including Patrick Stewart the dialogue just doesn't work this is all made worse by the fact that the ending which I won't spoil is just entirely too short unresolved and in some ways defeats the purpose of what the overarching story was originally about this one also does draw a lot of its plot from the events of the 3ds tidal mirror of fate though thankfully the game does give you a quick overview of the events at the start of the game otherwise those that skip that side entry would find themselves completely lost then we come to my biggest complaint and grievance with this title stealth segments now personally I am a huge fan of stealth games and games that are focused on that mechanic but it never really made sense to me why a third-person action game focused on killing things and fast-paced action would try to shoehorn in stealth segments that break that all up so in this title even though you're the Prince of Darkness and over the course of the game kill some of the biggest most ridiculously powerful monsters there are these regular guards that you are just never strong enough to fight ever and so you're forced to sneak by them by possessing rats turning into mist or just staying slightly crouched in the shadows I'm not over exaggerating when I say that not one of these segments was enjoyable and each time the game started building up some great momentum there was always a stealth segment interrupted and bring that fun to a halt despite these two glaring problems I do have to say that overall I did still enjoy lords of Shadow 2 removing the stealth segments would have done wonders for my final thoughts and while the story was a lot weaker in this one it was still bearable enough to allow players to enjoy its combat doing one straight playthrough will get you a bit over ten hours of fun that the game can easily be worth more that if you focus on tackling it special challenge modes find all its collectables and upgrades and of course if you want to play through it again with the unlocked heart or difficulty if you're a fan of the first reboot or you just want another third-person action game to knock enemies around in then lords of Shadow 2 is worth picking up at some point though I personally recommend waiting to have a price drop or two before feeling like you truly get your money's worth playing it now for full price has a good chance of just leaving you with a bit of disappointment especially if you played the first game and got hyped up so that was our review of castlevania lords of Shadow 2 if you happen to pick the game up already let us know your thoughts on it in the comments and if you haven't picked it up and you want to you can check out a link in description to grab a copy for yourself if you enjoyed this video please make sure to let us know with that like button and if you're not a subscriber yet then you should be we have more game reviews on the way including thief and South Park the stick of truth until then I'm Kevin protecting tomorrow we'll see you later