Bought Castlevania: Lords of Shadow at launch last year and had mixed feelings; enjoyable combat system but confusing and awkward level design and a weak storyline that to often fell on telling the player what is going on rather then showing. I played through it to the end and the ending was something else. Without spoiling anything, it left itself wide open for a sequel and in a good way. What I didn't like was that it left quite a few questions wide open that should have been answered first before the game ended. A lot of players felt this way too and Konami listened; last December they announced two DLC episodes for the game, last night the first DLC, Reverie was released on Xbox Live and PSN. I picked the episode up on PSN for 10 fun bucks.

The story is about the aftermath of Gabriel completing his quest, without spoiling to much, things are really screwed up and a new evil has emerged from. Remember Laura? She has called on Gabriel to come back to the castle where you defeat her mother. Instead of retreading on old territory, you will go through a puzzle that will introduce you to a completely new area of the castle. Here you will learn about its secrets and even take on the role of Laura in a few short but very neat sequences.

You will take on puzzles and long combat sequences. The puzzles are unique and interesting and with the exception of one (i'll get to that in a little bit) they are just the right difficulty for figuring out. The controls only got in the way twice and it wasn't that big of a deal for one of the jumping puzzles but this one puzzle... Okay i'm just going to spoil this part. You are in this clock tower, hanging from a wall with blades moving up and down and left and right. This was the worst thing I have ever been subjected too. Very precise timing, a camera that is panned out to far, and far to easy to get Gabriel killed.

The combat sequences felt like they were there to lengthen the game out; monsters are thrown at you in large numbers with upgraded health. Even Gabriel, fully upgraded, will have a difficult time quickly dispersing these monsters. The shame here is that there is no new mosnter assets, when the rest of the game used new artwork. It's monsters you've seen before.

Lords of Shadow was a challenging action platformer; the game is truly hard and requires some very fast reflexes. A lot more challenging then God of War III. So I knew what to expect going in. So can't say I was to terribly annoyed. I liked the puzzles that made you think and the combat was passable. What I really hated though was the ending; No boss battle and it ends in a To Be Continued... meaning it basically forces you into buying the next DLC if you want to see how it ends. You can almost see the ending of Reverie coming from the very beginning, it's kinda foreshadowed, although pretty subtle about the whole thing and in fact I bet most people will not notice it.

So, those who enjoyed Lords of Shadow, go ahead and get this. It's a nice extension, just keep in mind that you are spending another $10 next month. If you pick up Lords of Shadow, keep in mind that you need to beat the game first before you can do the DLC. It comes on as chapter XIII which is after the game is finished. This is a good idea though because it would spoil the whole story if you hadn't beaten the game yet.