Castlevania: Lords of Shadow/YMMV

• And the Fandom Rejoiced: To varying degrees concerning the involvement of Hideo Kojima and the cast of talented actors.
• Broken Base: The split sprang up around the increased emphasis on plot and presentation as well as the more action-based gameplay. Incidentally, these Base-Breaking issues have some uncanny similarities to a few that have sprung up with Metroid: Other M, an installment in the fellow Trope Naming franchise for Metroidvania which came out a few months before this game. Both games have had detractors who have lamented each game taking a page from Metal Gear Solid, in regards to each having longer cutscenes and such.
• Complete Monster: Satan, natch; he manipulates every atrocity in the game just to try to get back into heaven, and during his final clash with Gabriel, he repeatedly tries to break him, first by trying to appeal to his doubts and fears, then by promising to do horrible things to Marie. His ultimate demise is surprisingly much more satisfying than Dracula's. Zobek may or may not qualify, given that he was being manipulated, but he still did some pretty nasty things.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Pretty much all of the finishing sequences for the boss fights. Also, Gabriel's speech to Satan before the final battle and using the power of God to utterly obliterate him.
  • Practically every battle cutscene, especially in Chapter 1-2 if you manage to kill off both wargs on the white horse without getting hit down - that does not prevent you from being stopped in the middle way, though.
  • EU SUNT DRACUL!
• Crowning Moment of Funny: ... One must admit even the darkest Castlevania entry has one, too - Gabriel throwing the grenade back to the goblins upon his first sight of them!
  • "Down here, you bitch!"
    • Zobek also used the word "bitch" once in one of his narrations.
  • Gabriel's funny scream as he gets lifted to the final platform after defeating Dracolich.
  • Gabriel's little smirk before doing the classic "let go of the rope during tug-of-war" trick against the evil butcher.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The entire soundtrack is excellent, though very different from the upbeat music found in the series' 2D outings.
• Demonic Spiders: Swordmasters, who can dodge, block, and counter-attack on par with many of the game's bosses (some of whom, it should be noted, you will have less trouble with than a group of three Swordmasters.) Creeping Coffins can be demonic spiders as well (bonus points for actually resembling spiders), at least in groups. Ironically, the game's actual Giant Spiders aren't that difficult.
  • The Swordmasters being demonic spiders makes it incredibly cathartic when you finish one off by knocking it to the floor, stealing its weapon and stabbing it right in its irritating, ghostly face.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Castle is the second, not the final act of the game. The final act of the game is in the Land of the Dead. A massive, barren, and very very brown wasteland.
  • The DLC chapters are also considered to be subpar by many who enjoyed the game to buy it.
• Fridge Brilliance: Gabriel is rumored to be a son of the Cronqvist merchant family. Considering what became of the last Cronqvist we saw in the series....
  • Zobek is alive and well at the end, and talks to Dracula like they've been friends for a while. But then, he's the Lord of the Dead, a.k.a. Death -- of course he and Drac are pals.
• Fridge Logic: The Priest sacrificed Wygol Village just for the Holy Water subweapon? Sure, it's effective, but can the old man even use it? Or if this version repels vampires all on its own, how come it doesn't work that way on your belt?
  • Claudia is mute and talks to people through telepathy, she also converses with her Golem like that, which might be justified as he's an organic, albeit magical creature (At least he looks organic once you've taken off his suit of armor). But how the heck can she distract a Titan by yelling at him telepathically? They are just rocks and magical runes... or do they have a brain, do they feel pain? If that's the case, I think we're stepping into Fridge Horror territory if we start thinking about how the second Titan must have felt, lying around, shattered in pieces for decades...
    • Given that, according to the bestiary, the Golem is the magitek equivalent of a cyborg, that is the reanimated corpse of a mute killer seeking redemption by helping around an innocent ward, and that the Titans are magical creations of Claudia's people, it could be easily the Fridge Horror case with the shattered Titans being all suffering, broken animated beings simply too damaged to carry on their mission. Rather than a brain, Claudia's Gift may require just a living soul to work, afterall. Even if they were simply soulless beings, it would have had no sense making them unable to be controlled by the Gift, given that from what we could glean all Agarthians had telepathic and magic abilities, and Claudia just uses is as a stand-in for her useless voice box, but nothing prevented her from using the Gift for its intended purpose.
      • Another example of Fridge Logic could set in, as, if Claudia's telepathy could control Golems, she could have been much more effective than acting as a mere element of distraction. However, for every intent an purpose, despite she's older than she looks, Claudia is a juvenile member of an extint race, and if her father left her a magical zombie/robot/cyborg/guardian thing, it's because he felt her unable to fend for herself.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: In-game variation. Abbot Dorin: "I know who you are! You're sent by the devil! He told me! He always does! He mocks me with it!" Turns out he was right...
• I Knew It!: Many fans were speculating Gabriel would become Dracula before the game was even out.
• Most Annoying Sound: Claudia's constant reminders to find the four Crystal Shards in Chapter 2-7. It doesn't help that her telepathic voice uses the exact same audio filter as a certain Guildmaster.
• Nightmare Fuel: The 11th Chapter - literally the final area. Falling from the platforms (though not lethal this time) and the cutscenes of traveling between portals just give you breath-stopping creeps.
  • Gabriel's murder of his own wife and Claudia under the influence of the Devil Mask counts too. Being mind-controlled to do something so horrific?
• Ruined FOREVER: Younger Castlevania fans who only played 2D IGA titles really want their maze-castle back. Some of said fans have cited "new" additions such as environments outside the castle, 3-dimensional combo-based fighting, and the absence of Dracula as an opponent as some of the reasons why this is not a "true" Castlevania. In fact, if anything, Dracula is the protagonist.
  • They gotta blame it partially on Hideo Kojima, the developer of Metal Gear series involved in this game's production. To some fans, this game is more of Metal Gear Solid: Lords Of Shadow.
• The Scrappy: Chupacabras. If players weren't annoyed that they stole your items and then made you play Hide and Seek, they were even more annoyed with the fact that it's a completely different creature with the name of the South American myth slapped on it.
  • Also, on a side note - Chupacabras had been in Castlevania since Symphony Of The Night, although they suffered from a Dub Name Change and are called Cave Trolls in the western versions. Now this game introduces another sort of Cave Troll: A sort of cute mixture of a gorilla and a tapir, whose first appearance doubles as a Crowning Moment of Funny, as well as a Bait and Switch Boss.
• Tear Jerker: The ending. "No...please, stay! Stay with me!"
  • There are a hell of a lot! The tragic death of Claudia and her Black Knight at the hands of Gabriel. Later, Pan's Heroic Sacrifice. Finally, the revelation of the horrible truth about Marie's death!
• That One Boss: The Silver Warrior aka Pan, at least in the first phase when you have no magic to heal with. He has lots of fast attacks that are difficult to predict, and to kill him you have to complete a quick time event that manages to be quite difficult despite consisting of only one button press, because the ring you have to watch to get the correct timing is moving very fast across the screen.
  • Cornell, also. The hardest boss in the game, moreso than the Silver Warrior or even Satan!
  • Olrox is just like Cornell: a brutal Lightning Bruiser. Unlike Cornell, he gives no warning before using his charge attack. On top of that, he has a separate attack that will change direction mid-blow to hit you. Even worse, his battle comes right after That One Level, the Clock Tower. And finally, when he gets low on life, he uses corpses stored in coffins around the room to restore a large portion of his health, and he's practically guaranteed to do it at least 3 times before you manage to destroy the corpses.
  • As you'd most likely guess from his name and the fact that he's described in story to be extremely powerful, Forgotten One is a hard boss, but most of it unfortunately relies on Fake Difficulty: the segments between the 2 fights are supremely annoying timed platforming gauntlets not suited for the game's physics or controls, any weak points beyond the first one require you to jump to hit him, where you're unable to dodge anything, none of his attacks can be blocked, most of them have very similar tells and getting your Focus Gauge high enough to get any Neutral Orbs off him beyond the first weak point is an exercise in futility, very few of his attacks leave him open long enough to hit him at all and only a select few leave him open long enough for you to actually hit him and back off before the next attack, every time you take off enough of his health to trigger a QTE and the next checkpoint involves a different minigame where you need to figure out what you're supposed to do on the fly or risk losing all of your hard-earned progress, neither of the stages you fight him in have any Neutral Orb fountains or Health Fonts, and to rub the constant dying in even further, the game uses yet another ill-timed Shout-Out ("Avoid fighting like a dairy farmer.") as one of the "tips" you see when you die.
• That One Level: The Abandoned Wing in the Reverie DLC, where you spend the majority of the level sprinting across the surface of the water while trying to avoid being eaten by aquatic horrors. Not only does it require precise timing, not only do the ice platforms break if you stand on them for more than a couple of seconds, but Gabriel has a habit of falling into the water mid-sprint for absolutely no reason. This level has caused more than a few players to Rage Quit.
• The Untwist: The trailer makes it clear that "there is no resurrection! Only the living death you see before you!"
• What Could Have Been or In Name Only (it depends on who you ask, hence it's presence here): Prior to the game's release Konami announced the game as simply "Lords of Shadow," so as not to compete with Castlevania Judgement.
  • In addition to the "What Could Have Been" side, the game was originally going to reboot the franchise by being a remake of the original Castlevania with Simon Belmont as the main character. This leads to Fridge Brilliance when you notice that Gabriel Belmont's armor is similar to the armor Simon Belmont wore in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. Brilliance: Simon Belmont was the hero of the first Castlevania game in the original series, while Gabriel Belmont is the protagonist in the first game of a new Castlevania series. The similarities in their armor may have been made to reflect on that!