As a franchise, Castlevania has suffered a rocky relationship with home consoles, at least up until 2010’s Lords of Shadow reboot. While transitioning to 3D was a struggle for Castlevania throughout the PS2 era, portable installments that retained the classic side-scrolling gameplay with Metroid-like exploration elements flourished during those dark times. However, with the success of Lords of Shadow, Konami is finally pushing for a reinvention of Castlevania in the portable space. Enter Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate, a 3DS title developed by Mercury Steam — the same team behind Lords of Shadow.

We have no doubt a lot of folks would be happy with Konami  churning out another Symphony of the Night-esque Castlevania on portables, but change is good, right? Unfortunately, so far, the answer is no. This comes from someone who liked Lords of Shadow, by the way. Mirror of Fate undoubtedly has the look and feel of a Castlevania title, but the experience is marred by a erratic framerate and sloppy gameplay mechanics. Additionally, while the visuals are passable for an average 3DS title, the amount of on-screen jaggies with or without 3D on make for a distracting experience, especially given the small screen size.

Presentation-wise, you can tell at first glance the title has been kicked up a notch from previous Castlevania entries on the portable format.  The 2D art of old was beautiful to look at, but often contained many recycled sprites, likely due to budget constraints. This time around, Konami has went with 3D graphics on a 2D plane, a first for a portable Castlevania. That said, the visuals are really the least of my concerns.

The gameplay demo at E3 was unfortunately rather short, but it was enough to get a feel of the game. Herein lies the main problem with Mirror of Fate: it’s just not fun to play. While Mercury Steam has  tried to recreate the combat system used in Lords of Shadow on a 2D plane, it doesn’t work well. In general the movement feels stiff, or restricted. Ultimately I found myself frantically button mashing to kill enemies. It didn’t help that most of the time it felt like my attacks were doing nothing, which was extremely evident during the first boss fight. Predictable counters from the AI hardly make combat situations compelling as well.

Granted, it’s not as if Castlevania ever had extremely deep combat, but that’s not why I’m knocking it. The lack of feedback in tense situations,  plus a frame rate that dipped down into the mid 20s whenever 2 or more enemies came on screen, made chipping away at foes feel like a complete chore in this Castlevania. This is something that used to be fun.

Beyond that, the current control setup seems clunky. While basic movement and attacks are fine, platforming elements raise questions. When latching onto objects to swing off of the game requires players to press R — you can’t simply point the analog stick upwards and use the normal attack button to initiate this. Additionally, to start swinging while hanging still from a platform, you have to press B. It’s not possible to simply move the analog pad left and right to gradually gain momentum. We’re not sure why simple actions like this are mapped to dedicated buttons. Why not adopt a style similar to Super Castlevania IV on SNES? Which, by the way, is more than decade old.

If Mercury Steam can clean up some of the technical faults — mostly in regards to the framerate, I’d say there’s a solid experience to be had with Mirror of Fate. It’s not a terrible game by any means, but long-time fans may be disappointed. From what I’ve played so far, it feels like a step back from previous entries on DS in terms of gameplay. It also remains to be seen if the game will retain deep exploration elements from the IGA-produced Castlevania titles. There was a mini-map displayed on the bottom DS screen with several winding paths and corridors, so that leaves hope. We’re fast approaching the Q3 2012 release, so I wouldn’t say it’s early in development. There’s not much time for polish left. And considering Lords of Shadow suffered from performance issues of its own, that doesn’t exactly instill us with confidence. This might be the first portable Castlevania I’m passing up on launch day.

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