Konami is looking to push the Playstation 3 & Xbox 360 to their absolute limits as they near the end of their cycle with the release of their successors the Playstation 4 & Xbox One. With the playable demo now in the hands of the public ahead of it’s release in two weeks, it gave us an idea of just how much of the hype it’ll be able to maintain.

Meet the Void, it can take life and give it.

THE GOOD: While the demo wasn’t as long as I had hoped it did pretty do what demos were supposed to do. Demonstrate the basic opening gameplay, give us a little exploration of the world, and even gave us a taste of a boss fight for a minute. The new controls as Vamp Gabriel were fun to mess around with. Light & Dark magic from the original title are replaced by Void & and Chaos magic with weapons to accompany them. For example, Void magic (if that is indeed it’s name) gives you the Void blade which takes the life of your enemy and gives it to you so you can heal, however no real damage is done to them. Chaos magic is a destructive force of power that will be used to break shields and deal heavier damage on tougher enemies such as bosses.

Chaos magic at work.

QTEs make their return in Lords of Shadows 2, these like in the original serve as an environmental event that when done correctly advances the current scene. A QTE of sorts will also appear when players need to suck the blood of their enemies for a small amount of health. The boss you fight in the demo was rather interesting, it was some sort of Arch-Angel character that chases you down throughout the level.

The first boss of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

THE BAD: While this was nothing more than an early stage demo, one thing I couldn’t help but notice was that there wasn’t much of a difficulty factor while playing. Maybe they dumbed down the difficulty for new players, or maybe it was just dumbed down for the demo? Either way, the only real challenge I felt was when I fought the Arch-Angel, and even that didn’t provide too much difficulty. Void magic also makes things easier than it needs to be, and hopefully come full product it’ll be limited to a degree.

Lord Dracula rises in Lords of Shadow 2.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: The Lords of Shadow 2 provided a lot of insight on what o expect when the full game releases in another week or so. Using Gabriel’s new vampire powers is extremely fun, especially the dashing that he can do. While Chaos and Void magic are interesting replacements for the original’s Light & Dark magic, they should be dumbed down a bit, especially Void magic, as it made things pretty easy. Speaking of easy, I didn’t really notice much difficulty while playing the game, but this could have just been the AI being dumbed down for demo purposes. Still even with the ease and Void magic issues, I’m looking forward to playing Lords of Shadow 2 upon the release of the final product.