Castlevania: Lament of Innocence

Dawn of the Hunter

NA release: 21st October 2003
JP release: 27th November 2003
EU release: 13th February 2004
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
AKA: Castlevania (JP, EU)
Official PS2 Magazine Review: 86%
Platforms: PS2
Version Played: PS2

With Castlevania finding its perfect home on the GBA, it meant that Konami had to find something new to keep Castlevania going on home consoles. Instead of trying to improve upon Castlevania 64, they decided to look at what was trending and go with that, with one big thing being Devil May Cry.

The story is the earliest Castlevania yet, and starts after a powerful vampire, Walter Bernhard, kidnaps the girlfriend of a high ranking mercenary that goes by the name Leon Belmont. The church denies his request so he quits, leaving his weapon behind. When he reaches the Forest of Eternal Darkness, he’s welcomed by an alchemist who gives him the ability to use magical objects, as well as a powerful whip – which is not yet the legendary whip used by later Belmont.

Despite some stiff voice acting, the story was quite interesting, with quite a few surprising moments (although one of them is a sad moment ruined by some funky music) and later events make up for the initial text crawl and opening conversation. To be honest, it’s one of the better parts of the game and gives some nice depth to things.

One mark of the quality of a hack n slash game is what to do when combat is optional. A great one will make you want to enter combat. Lament of Innocence, however, is a game where I found myself running past most enemies very quickly, only fighting when a room locks its doors and requires them to be defeated.

Part of that is due to how Leon’s whip just doesn’t have much impact. Combos are boring and sound effects are quite muted. It just doesn’t have the spectacle of Devil May Cry at all, and is much slower with more focus on stats and elemental effects. Frankly, fighting in Lament of Innocence is quite boring, and the rest of the game is running around or a couple of horrendous platforming sections.

This isn’t helped by the level design, which is small rooms and corridors, many of which are repeated. There’s not much of interest to see as you run past everything. Making matters worse is the abysmal camera, which uses stationary cameras that rotate to keep you in view. You mainly see the floor, and you’ll often have to fight off-screen enemies. It’s so bad that you’ll have to keep opening the map to see your orientation in a room and which way the next door is. I’m not joking – almost every single room will make you check the map.

The game is split into five main levels then a final area. You can get to the boss of each level and defeat them with no trouble (other than hunting for some switches), but unlocking secret areas requires backtracking though different levels to gain new abilities to unlock more stuff. But for the amount of slowly walking between places you need to do, it’s really not worth it

Lament of Innocence is an interesting story wrapped around dull combat and some atrocious level design and an even worse camera. You can unlock a few more characters, but they don’t help with any of the major issues the game has.

Poor

The first successful 3D Castlevania is a great, action-packed adventure. Veterans and newcomers alike should check this out
Official PS2 Magazine Issue #42

Remake or remaster?

Perhaps a remaster with better camera options.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Castlevania: Lament of Innocense