Castlevania: Lament of Innocence review

When there is a mythology established for an ongoing series like Castlevania it’s almost inevitable that the writers would want to tell an origin story. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence is that game, where Koji Igarashi decided that we needed to know where the Belmonts came from, what the Vampire Killer whip is, and who Dracula was before he was Dracula. It’s a really neat idea and could have led to providing insightful context to all the other Castlevania games. I’m not going to say that it necessarily failed to do that, but let’s just say the story aspect of this game certainly could have been a lot better. As for the gameplay, Lament of Innocence is finally the realization of Iga’s dream to make a 3D Castlevania game. Since this game came out after genre-defining 3D titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Time or the original Character Action Game Devil May Cry, Lament of Innocence leaves me wishing it drew more inspiration from other titles, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game. There’s fun to be had with Castlevania: Lament of Innocence – but it’s not really another one of Koji Igarashi’s masterpieces.

In the late 90s, 3D games were sort of the new and final frontier for gaming, and a lot of IPs were making a transition to 3D during the hype. Classicvania sort of made the leap during the N64 era, but it was by no means the same thing as Symphony of the Night. While Lament of Innocence was very late to the party, it still had to answer the question of how an “Igavania” Castlevania should look. “3D Metroidvania” – assuming you don’t count Zelda – had only just been attempted before a year earlier with Metroid Prime, but the development of Lament of Innocence was probably well underway before that game’s release. The answer they came up with for this Castlevania was to make it sort of a Character Action Game, and for that they came up with a level structure that better mirrors the Mega Man series than it does Symphony of the Night. Taking after Devil May Cry they also decided to go with a fixed camera, which causes issues with the also-included exploration aspects.

The game’s progression is literally that the lord of the castle wants you to defeat five bosses before he considers you worthy to face him – and then you face him. To meet these bosses there are five teleporters that take you to different themed parts of the manor, which you can access in any order. Each boss defeated gives you an orb that both activates the vampire’s complicated key system and grants you bonus powers when you combine them with your Belmont candlestick powers. There are no abilities that are required for progression, and there’s only one ability that you need to access some very optional secrets, thus it could be argued that Lament of Innocence isn’t really a Metroidvania at all.

The candlesticks that litter the castle are possibly the biggest indicator of the identity crisis that Lament of Innocence seems to have. You can get one of five sub-weapons from these candles, which are powered by hearts that also drop from candles. These weapons are especially powerful in this game, and the modifications the orbs provide make them even more versatile. However refilling your hearts is a sort of slow and tedious process. Whipping candlesticks is sluggish compared to the jump canceled attacks you could perform in the 2D Castlevania games, and most heart pickups can only restore two at a time. Thus, it takes a while to refill the over one-hundred max you’ll have by the end of the game if you use sub-weapons freely. The candles are really an artifact of Classicvania where the limited number of them in a level was a crucial part of the meticulous design. In this game it’s just an added grind. Heart-based attacks had already been dropped from the Igavania games with Aria of Sorrow in favor of a regenerating magic system, so it’s a little odd to see them make a return here. At least, there’s no other explanation for them being part of the design other than the obvious thematic necessity since the main character of Lament of Innocence is the first Belmont vampire killer.

Aside from the sub-weapons, combat is all about performing combo attacks with your whip. Interestingly unlike other Igavania titles, you do not level up in this game, but instead at a seemingly random pace you unlock new whip skills. These whip skills are button combinations that chain regular strikes into special abilities. Spamming heavy attacks is still pretty effective throughout the game, but trying out whip skills is generally more powerful and helps to keep the combat interesting. Knocking regular enemies into the air and then slamming them down has a satisfying crunch to it, and it’s the part of the game – aside from the music – that I recommend the most. It’s a system that works well for enemies susceptible to stun, which unfortunately doesn’t include the game’s bosses. Most of the bosses either have some kind of gimmick you have to address, or just aren’t affected by stun at all. With the agility at which they move around the stage, trying to chain together a combo while the boss is open to attack is basically a foolhardy practice, so it was back to heavy attacks for me. There is of course the high chance that I’m not skilled enough to unlock the true potential of Lament of Innocence’s battle system, but I am fairly confident that similar ideas had been done better even in the era that the game was released.

Even if the combat was perfect in every other way, the fixed and uncontrollable camera would surely have been your greatest enemy. Any time I tried to strafe around a boss to get a better angle, I found myself often running off screen, or running the boss off screen, so that I couldn’t properly see attacks to dodge them. This camera is especially frustrating during the game’s few platforming sections when it would whip around in just the right way to throw me off from my target. Add in a gimmick where you use your whip to awkwardly “swing” between poles and I’m forced to say the game would have been better off omitting platforming entirely. Even the exploration is marred by the camera, as you might expect, since you can’t get a better angle on what is in the game’s rooms. This is exacerbated by the game’s copy-pasted level design, which makes rooms very samey and unmemorable – although the map system helps a lot with this. All that said, discovering secrets is still quite rewarding. While jumping everywhere just to see the tops of ledges is a rather poor way of executing exploration-based gameplay, obtaining a special whip or new accessory is still a lot of fun. In fact, even though I’m portraying most of the game as an awkward mess – because it is – it was still a mostly enjoyable experience.

The story could have made up for my gripes about the gameplay, but the awkwardness pervades that aspect as well. I don’t usually complain about graphics, but the attempt to translate Ayami Kojima’s amazing art style into 3D resulted in some very strange looking characters – specifically Leon Belmont’s lover. Combine that with some expected forced-sounding voice localization and it’s hard to take anything in the story seriously. Even ignoring the presentation values, they really lost a lot of opportunity to add emotional impact to the narrative. Most of the exposition is done in the game’s intro and then is dumped on you only once you finish the fifth boss. Had they actually built up who the characters were, establishing their motives, and giving Leon more personality overall, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence could have been the best Castlevania story of them all.

Lament of Innocence for me is a lamentation about what could have been. I wish that such an important part of the Castlevania ethos wasn’t used as a game to experiment with new ideas. It would have been better if they had saved it until after they had a more experienced team, after learning from the mistakes of other projects. At the very least, I wish they had spent a little more time with the game’s story presentation. I can only speculate about what went wrong, but taking the game on its merits alone rather than trying to judge it for what it’s not, it’s not the worst thing you can spend your time on. Combat is fun at times, and exploration is still fairly addictive. Castlevania fans might still get a lot of enjoyment out of this one.