4/5 ★ – Diluted_Thought's review of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Ultimate Edition.

In my initial review for the game I gave it a score of 10 but as time has passed and I've finally got around to revisit this title I recognize some of the flaws I had forgotten all about. To start, this game has a ton of puzzles. Most of my memory revolves around the combat so when it came to the puzzles I completely spaced it. Also the combat upgrades never felt all that useful or even powerful as combos could easily be broken even by low level enemies. These extra moves really only made sense during one on one battles with, again, low level monsters. Another big frustration is that this titles has NO AIR DODGE. That might seem like a stretch to some but when performing air combat or jumping to reach a higher point on an enemy you quickly get swatted down or in some cases, such as the fight with the Forgotten One, the enemy or boss will perform an area of damage attack or explosion that you cannot get away from while airborne. Its frustrating to say the least. I did finally get to play the DLC chapters for this game and boy were they not something I cared for. A majority of the content was puzzles, puzzles and oh more puzzles. Hardly exciting. But the Forgotten One battles were pretty damn great and incredibly hard. I did like how they added motion comic cinematics and had Gabriel become the narrator for the last part of his adventure here. This game is still a lot of fun and it still has an amazing assortment of bosses that make "Lords of Shadow" a must play. I also had to stop multiple times throughout my playthrough to take some amazing screen shots. This game is still beautiful 15 years later. That said, I don't think I need to revisit this one again. It was a great memory and I'm glad to say it still mostly lives up to it.