We're at the end of January, and it won't be long before Konami washes its hands with this particular Castlevania saga with its release of Lords of Shadow 2. As tends to happen around this time, the game's trophies / achievements have popped up online, giving gamers a glimpse of the challenges that lie ahead.
Counting 16 secret ones (not listed), there's 46 in all, and you can check out the complete list below courtesy of Xbox Achievements. Potential spoilers lie ahead:
Chaos Collector - Recover 30 Chaos Gems
Classic Flavor - Cook a chicken in the old style
Claw Master - Increase the Mastery Level of the Chaos Claws to the maximum
Customer of the month - Spend a total of 20000 Experience Points at the Chupacabras' shop
Experienced - Gain a total of 10000 Experience Points
Expert Silversmith - Recover all the Void, Chaos and Life gems
Good customer - Buy an item at the Chupacabras' shop
Initiated in Mastery - Increase the Mastery Level of a weapon
Kleidos Champion I - Complete all the Reminiscences of Sapphire challenges
Kleidos Champion II - Complete all the Recollections of Ruby challenges
Kleidos Champion III - Complete all the Reminders of Amethyst challenges
Kleidos Champion IV - Complete all the Memories of Emerald challenges
Kleidos Hero - Complete all of the Kleidos challenges
Kleidos Legend - Complete all of the Kleidos challenges at "Prince of Darkness" difficulty
Life Collector - Recover 30 Life Gems
Multiple Pockets - Recover all the upgrades for the Relics
Philanthropist - Collect all of the art
Prince of Darkness - Complete the game at "Prince of Darkness" difficulty
Specialist - Gain a total of 50000 Experience Points
Start the path - Acquire a skill
Sword Master - Increase the Mastery Level of the Void Sword to the maximum
The Outer Limits - Complete 110% of the game
The path of the Claws - Acquire all of the Chaos Claws skills and upgrades
The path of the Sword - Acquire all of the Void Sword skills and upgrades
The path of the Warrior - Acquire all of the skills and upgrades
The path of the Whip - Acquire all of the Shadow Whip skills and upgrades
Veteran - Gain a total of 100000 Experience Points
Void Collector - Recover 30 Void Gems
Weapons Master - Increase the Mastery Level of all weapons to the maximum
Whip Master - Increase the Mastery Level of the Shadow Whip to the maximum
The game's producer, Dave Cox, also spoke with CVG recently, and discussed how the game's "open" exploration might feel a little...familiar:
"People say to us 'is this a Metroidvania style game," and I suppose in hindsight looking at it now, there are elements of that," admitted Cox. For those of you who are unfamiliar, "Metroidvania" has been the defacto, non-linear gameplay style of countless Castlevania games since Symphony of the Night hit the first PlayStation. The player is presented with a very open area to explore, but certain areas are left inaccessible until the player learns a new ability, gets a new piece of equipment, defeats a boss, etc. At that point, the player can then backtrack to previously inaccessible areas, and explore them at their leisure. It's been a big feature of the portable Game Boy and DS Castlevania games, like Circle of the Moon, Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow, etc.
Cox described further, "But I wouldn't say we've tried to model it on something like Symphony of Night, because it's very different. Certainly there's more scope for exploration and more scope for backtracking than there was in the original game, so it is closer to the classic games in that respect."
"When people say open world they generally think games like Grand Theft Auto," he began. "It's not really like that. I would say it's more akin to a Zelda game, where you start off in an enclosed area and the player is lead by the story, and as the player explores the world it becomes more open and it becomes bigger, with more aspects of exploration and more things to do. It opens up slowly; it's a gradual opening up. We don't plonk the player in the middle of New York and say "get on with it".
"One of the weaknesses of an open world game, I suppose, is that story can take a back seat. We didn't really want to do that: we wanted the story to be at the forefront because that's what we wanted to do, a story is really important to the team. We decided to take that approach instead of the GTA approach."
The Castlevania franchise has been around for close to 30 years now, but this will be the first time in its history that players will actually take on the role of Dracula, an icon of horror since Bram Stoker first penned the eponymous novel at the end of the 19th century. The game will also be one of the first to really show how the vamper interacts with the modern day world, instead of an obscure and distant Belmont ancestor flailing back and forth in a 2D castle.
Not much is known about the story so far, but since trailers seems to acknowledge the first game's ending, it's assumed that Zobek has indeed warned "Gabriel" that the acolytes of Satan are preparing for his return and that the two of them must the demon lord before he can take revenge on both of them. Zobek has promised Dracula that he can free him of his immortality if he helps him, likely at the hand of one of the vampire's own ancestors. The Mirror of Fate handheld game helped fill in a few gaps here and there. The game was also ported to consoles, so you might want to give it a whirl to catch up on the storyline.
According to Cox, the game will end the short but sweet Shadow saga. With it, Konami and company are "looking to provide series fans yet another nail biter, complete with Dracula's resurrection and the Belmont clan's desire for his final destruction."
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 will be released for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows PC on February 25.