I'm not bored, am I? Wait, let me check the cover to this game again - Yep, this is a boring Castlevania game.
User Rating: 4.4 | Castlevania PS2
This game plays like a lame rip-off of Devil May Cry. That overrated game, in my humble opinion, is boring and repetitive. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence has no excuse for being boring, however. I've never rolled my eyes at a Castlevania game's presentation before, not even the awful N64 games, which I feel were limited because the actual N64 system was lacking. The levels in Lament of Innocence are bland and the enemies are unimaginatively designed, even if some of them are inspired by the earlier Castlevania games. This game is either tried too little to be exciting or came too late, if you can understand me. I think that back when this game was initially released it was arriving too late, and was relegated to existing as one of those "me-too" titles that comes after one game succeeds at developing a new, refreshing method of gameplay - the aforementioned Devil May Cry, which I've always felt was a work in progress, not nessarily the outstanding action game most praised it for being. I find X-Box's Ninja Gaiden a much more fulfilling game that took what DMC started and improved it - and made it more fun to boot. Quite frankly, this Castlevania game is much too simple. It has all the elements for a good action game, but somehow it manages to feel uninspiringly dull. Halfway through what I assumed was the first level (the game sort of lead the way to this level), I was asking myself, "It's got to get better than this, because I want to turn this game off for good." It never got any better. Each level has a pattern of being too big for it own good, which lead to me being driven to shut the game off, for fear that I may pass out from boredom. As the game plodded along, its presentation resembled something made just to keep Castlevania fans from forgetting what a great franchise it has been. Yes, I've been a fan of Castlevania since 1988, and know full and well that this series, from the original Castlevania to the brilliant Symphony of the Night, has been consistently excellent. But this game, with its derivative gameplay, bland environments, and lame enemies is just not a very fun game, IMO. One thing that truly annoyed me about this game: The player cannot manipulate the game's camera. Enemies can take pot-shots at you, while you can't see them. Important jumps cannot be seen because the camera pulls in too close to the the main character, and not the whole environment. The game's camera is just another example of how uninspired this game is. 
