Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate: Noun of Abstract Noun

Went to GAME today: 2 copies received on Saturday, both sold.

Wow. Two whole copies.

Which is 100% better than the one copy of Chibi-Robo my local GameStation received back in the day. Which I bought.

Balladeer wrote:

Went to GAME today: 2 copies received on Saturday, both sold.

And they wonder why retail is dying.

All right, this is getting silly. Recommendations of online retailers? That aren't Amazon?

ShopTo gets my vote. If you order it now, there's a good chance you'll have it tomorrow:

http://www.shopto.net/search/?platform=&newsearch=Castlevania+Lords+of+Shadow+Mirror+of+Fate+%28Includes+3+Posters%29

Is the no-Amazon thing a protest over their no-tax thing?

Yep. I know that most companies probably do it in some way or other, so it's more an "If it ever gets found out you're ****ed, so watch your back" thing.

I'll have a peer at ShopTo. Thanks for the recommendation. (2nd EDIT: Gives me a reason to use the thanks button. )

EDIT: Purchased! Soon, my pretty. Soon...

No problem. ShopTo are cheaper than a lot of places mostly, their reward scheme is decent and they're fantastic at getting parcels out of the warehouse. Oh, and on more than one occasion (over the years) where I've had a parcel go missing in the post, they've sorted it out with no fuss at all.

Arrived! Good call Stu. I'll give it a look soon.

YASS! Even when I'm not buying something, ShopTo rocks!

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, because every review I've read so far has had a different opinion on how it plays out.

So far, I have two complaints: the lip-synching (as in, they don't even make an attempt at it) and the speed of the text. On the other hand, it's beautiful and I'm enjoying the combat. Even the voice acting, the downfall of many a game (hi Trine 2, didn't see you there), isn't too awful so far. I've certainly made copious use of the map feature: at the moment, the game is putting umpteen rappel points in my way when I don't have the rappel ability and rubbing its hands.

Just don't, as I did, see what happens if you jump into the green water. Turns out you die instantly. Huh.

Apparently there are a few moments where arbitrary rules come into play. I.e.: barriers that don't look particularly barrier-ish that kill you if you attempt to cross them before a certain skill is acquired, and so forth.

Have they fixed the frame-rate for the full game? I found it distractingly juddery in the demo.

The one such barrier I've come across so far was a cascade of screaming lost souls. Hardly arbitrary. And no frame rate problems so far.

I've realised that this is my 10th retail 3DS game, so I could fill in another Phillips ranking properly as opposed to using Pullblox and Picross e to fill up the slots. If one happened, of course...

Oh good! I did hope that the frame-rate would be alright in the full game.

As for lip-syncing in the cut-scenes: Saw a few examples of that in the video reviews I watched, and at the time I thought it was simply a mixture of lazy dubbing and bad sound editing on the reviewer's part.

I think I'm about to finally get the rappel device. Anyone who has it: do I have to go back through the whole bloody castle, rappeling all the little marks I made on the map, or will I backtrack through there anyway?

Balladeer wrote:

Even the voice acting, the downfall of many a game, isn't too awful so far.

Does this one feature the talents of Sir Patrick Stewart or was that just the first game?

Balladeer wrote:

I think I'm about to finally get the rappel device. Anyone who has it: do I have to go back through the whole bloody castle, rappeling all the little marks I made on the map, or will I backtrack through there anyway?

Think you backtrack. Or if you're me, backtrack, get lost, go around in circles for an hour, then find the way you're supposed to be going, then do a bit more backtracking (stupid samey looking castle...)

Thought that might be the case. Sigh. Thanks.

Buskalilly wrote:

Does this one feature the talents of Sir Patrick Stewart or was that just the first game?

I don't know, but given that Ol' Ginger Trevor is Scottish (or meant to be), I doubt it's him.

Balladeer wrote:

I don't know, but given that Ol' Ginger Trevor is Scottish (or meant to be), I doubt it's him.

I believe that's Robert Carlyle, which is pretty cool anyway. Sir Patrick was a villain I think, so he's probably not back.

Backtracking over! There was this one point where I kept rappelling directly into the green water below, and more than a couple of spike-related deaths. They really highlight how long the game takes to load...

I was stuck in a large room with three grapple points for ages. I could latch on to the first one, but couldn't move on to the next one because I was getting the timing wrong. Ticked me off a little bit.

I'm onto the second character now. The way they interact is pretty interesting.

Oh, and it turns out that old Ginger Chops wasn't Trevor but rather his son, Simon. It's confusing.

All aboard the Balladeers Does All The Posts Train. Choo choo!

I recommend turning the brightness settings up to 7 or 8, the backgrounds look even more glorious.

I've been reading up on this a lot and I think I'm gonna cave and buy it. Even though I can't afford it and I haven't finished VLR yet.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, is everyone still enjoying this?