Lords of Shadow is a subtitle that many fans of the Castlevania franchise have come to fear. The first game to take that name changed the series direction to one more focused on action and spectacle. The level design that was based on exploration disappeared in favor of a much more furious combat system. Several old games were similar to the Metroid franchise because of their grand environments, feeling of desolation and little sense of direction. Lords of Shadow, on the other hand, remembered God of War, with its protagonist fighting with long chains, dismembering his enemies and climbing enormous structures. Mirror of Fate tries to reconcile the two genres, merging the Lords of Shadow combat system with the exploration of a huge environment.
Mirror of Fate’s plot is pretty simple, based on revenge and the idea that it is a need able to endure for generations. The story involves the tragic Belmont family and its eternal struggle against the vampire Dracula. Trevor Belmont wants to take revenge on his mother’s murder and so he leaves for the vampire’s grand castle with the intention of destroying him. Simon Belmont wants retribution for the death of his father, Trevor, and travels to the castle to discover his fate. And the enigmatic vampire Alucard wants revenge for the curse put in him by Dracula.
Mercury Steam showed with the first Lords of Shadow that it can create tragic characters; characters who lose everything they love and fight because they have nothing left in their lives. Mirror of Fate follows exactly this guideline – and even the villain is humanized with the inevitability of his despair. Destiny is a recurring concept in the game and a shadowy masked figure serves as its personification, accompanying the characters throughout the dungeons of the castle, dictating their actions and pointing the way.
On the other hand, the developer has also proved that it has no idea of how to build an efficient narrative. If in the first Lords of Shadow there was an epilogue so absurd that it came out feeling more like a joke rather than a hook to a sequel, Mirror of Fate presents a narrative structure that sabotages all the conflicts and twists of its story. Since the developers have chosen not to follow a chronological order, players will first follow Simon Belmont, then Alucard and finally Trevor. Thus, when playing with Simon the player will know that Trevor has failed in his mission and, when commanding Alucard, attentive players will already notice the plot twist of the last act. Even more alarmingly, and completely unacceptable, is attesting that the climax of the game – the final battle against Dracula – happens at the end of Act II, in Alucard’s plot. That is, as Mirror of Fate concludes with Trevor in Act III, the game ends in the most anticlimactic way possible.
This structure still has negative impacts on the characters’ evolution regarding gameplay. Mirror of Fate is an action game with a similar system to God of War with dead enemies even releasing red energy orbs that serve as experience. While in the first Lords of Shadow players could unlock new attack combos, buying them with these red orbs, in Mirror of Fate progress is automatic and the experience gained makes the character level up and achieve new pre-determined attacks. This design, while fitting the theme of inevitability of the story, is extremely limiting. In addition, as the story accompanies the journey of three distinct characters, Mercury Steam has even chosen to make this system static. That is, the attacks that Simon learns, Alucard will know. And the level that Alucard is at the end of Act II will be Trevor’s level at the beginning of Act III. Besides making the combat repetitive, since Simon will fight in the same way as Alucard and Trevor, this choice does not make any sense within the narrative structure – Trevor could never be stronger and more “experienced” than Alucard, for example. Far more effective would have been if each character had its own style of combat, which would guarantee both diversity and cohesion.
However, for this to have occurred, the game certainly would have to be much bigger than it is, since it can be easily completed in just ten hours. The castle presented is large enough, no doubt, but it lacks complexity. That is, the player will cross various halls and courtyards with extreme agility, since there is little to do in them, besides moving onwards killing what is in the way. If Mirror of Fate has excellent puzzles, they are in very little quantity, since they are relegated only to Alucard’s story. The game would also have benefited from having more inspired set pieces, such as the intense sequence in which Trevor must escape a huge landslip caused by the fall of a bell, since such moments insert the energy that an action game must have.
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