Let's Fail Play Okami Part 32

I've been playing persona 3 FES lately.

an interesting enough game, back when I was still in possession of a psp I found this little gem and absolutely adored it.
Now that I have an emulator i decided to try the "definitive version" of the game, and boy, I was missing out!
I never did finish the game though, which is a shame, but now I can at least give it the old college try!

for those who don't know, persona 3 is a turn based rpg with dungeon crawlery elements and a social simulator that fold together quite nicely to make a very addictive game.

but the real reason to be playing this game is its story, persona 3 is touted as the one with the best plot in the franchise.

and sure, I guess mitsuru's "plot" is rather sizeable but the plot on yukari is a little to small for my liking.

and don't even get me started with chihiro's "plot" or elizabeth's, I mean, at least yukari and mitsuru's plots look better when they're in a battle dress.

GODDAMMIT I'M TALKING ABOUT BOOBS IF YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED IT OUT BY NOW!!!

anyway, that aside the ACTUAL plot is supposedly pretty dark.

I've already kinda experienced spoilers, so I have a good idea of what's going to happen, but that said there's nothing quite like experiencing it firsthand.

and now, I shall proceed to upload the next part of that walkthrough.

LoS2, Beyond the End: Exploring Castlevania, Bernhard's Wing

Hopes And Dreams Ultimate Demotivational Edition

There's a joke in here somewhere, I'm sure of it.

here's a taste of the dark lord zero book 2: Heaven's nonexistent chapter.

The story deals very heavily with the continued arc of the main plot, which reached its climax in slumber, in book 2, heaven you get a more clean explanation of just what is actually going on.

this, of course, is the meat of the story.

Inspired by the games castlevania, devil may cry, shin megami tensei and final fantasy, the dark lord zero's primary story is a time-loop story.

Chapter 0

Castle By The Sea.

“Biiiiig brroooooo!!!” Lizbet cried as her wings carried her through the castle, past the glimmering white concept streams lazily spiraling around the pillars like luminescent smoke and easily passing the guards stationed at these pillars, most of which were archdemons or orcs of considerable size, lords in their own realms, but here in the castle by the sea, they were nothing more than simple guards.

Dracula rested easy on his throne, preparing to dispense with the concept of “the dark lord dracula” now that the charade had finally been lifted.

“Is it time?! Is it time?!” she squealed, her pink leathery wings flapping once to stop her approach and twice to have her land.

She was a succubus, a Therese succubus, her people were originally from a universe called “charon's blood” and when she was but a child her mother, formerly a succubus queen, had been taken by the order of the round, a group of demon hunters dedicated to eradicating demons across space and time.

It had been he, the lord of castle nihil, back when he was still constructing the castle's time machine, that had crossed the time-space continuum for the first time to rescue her when her incessant cries in the cell she'd been kept within managed to bleed through nihil's audio channels to irritate him.

For three days he, already quite depressed by the pain of his eternal existence and the insurmountable tasks before him, had finally hit a breaking point with the toddler lizbet's crying, and he invaded the facility she was being kept within in a dark fury, slaughtering everyone in it, the knights of the round included.

When he found his way to her cell, he rescued her from her fate, but ultimately managed to doom her to remain in the castle as a result, for the construction of castle nihil had been incomplete at the time, thus her rescue had the side effect of negating her presence in time itself.

Lizbet was, for all intents and purposes, reduced to a mere concept, only real within the castle.

Eventually he managed to repair the damage, granting her her freedom after many years, but by then? The damage had been done.

Lizbet had spent much of her young life looking up to the dark lord of time and space as an older brother, worse still, she had become intimately familiar with the details of his prior life as “zero” the black wandering swordsman.

Because he remembered what he had done as the dark lord from the perspective of “zero” he'd been forced to preserve time and space by becoming the very being that his past self had seen.

This of course, wouldn't have been as much of a problem had this been due to a normal time-loop.

The problem lay with the fact that the entire universe had been created by that time-loop.

Zero's futuremost self had sent him back in time, all the way back to the beginning, to the point where there was no universe, where there was no time.

The universe had been created not by coincidence, but by zero's despair.

The etheric void, the realm of eternum and the endless oceans of magic and light proved to be a fertile ground indeed for establishing an entire reality.

And thus was the cold of space formed from the cold space that was zero's despair, thus were stars formed from his sense of hope.

The universe wasn't some marvelous glorious realm of infinite possibilities.

The universe was zero.

And zero was the universe.

This was the secret that kulil had neglected to tell him when he was younger, that all of creation was the result of a time loop, an unstable time loop perhaps, but one so dependent on zero's actions in his future that it would be destroyed if he so much as stepped a single toe out of line.

Zero was creation itself, his soul formed much of the universe, in perhaps the height of irony, he'd always hated actors, seeing them as frauds who earned their keep by pretending to be something they're not.

Zero was quite literally the universe's greatest actor, and his was the leading role, he was the villain, he was the night. He was the very darkness that men in space suits feared would enter their suits and boil their blood.

Zero was darkness itself.

And he was tired of it.

Millions of years spent perfecting the act, becoming creation's greatest villain, and worse still, he had so much work to do.

He had to finish what he'd started.

But first, he had to remove the costume he'd been wearing for so long.

Rising from his throne, he moved down the steps and away from the time machine, quietly concentrating.

Removing a concept was difficult, especially a powerful one such as this, but he needed to remove it now, for it was needed elsewhere.

“fare thee well then, prince of darkness. You've played your part to perfection.” he began, and he grimaced as he punched a hole into his own solar plexus, reaching for the gathering energies.

“what is a man?” he asked, quoting his concept's iconic phrase.

A flash of vibrant light filled the air, surrounding him as he removed the concept fully from his current form, throwing it on the floor as the glow subsided.

“but a miserable pile of secrets?”
the words weren't entirely hollow to him.

He was nothing more than that, secretive, rarely affording the luxury of full honesty to anyone, himself included.

“what are we gonna do with it?” lizbet asked moving close to pick up the concept.

Zero bent low to pick it up.

“I have a servant who can make good use of it. Vlad! To me!”

a man stepped into the room then, a romanian noble from the looks of him, and lizbet cocked her head in curiosity.

“the concept was formed from this man's history.” zero explained. “he is but one vlad dracula from one timeline.” he looked at vlad, who stared at the orb, tenative.

“Kneel.” he ordered, and vlad the impaler did precisely that.

“You're aware of the terms of your contract?” zero asked him.

Vlad said nothing, merely nodded.

“speak damn you, or I discard this power I've agreed to hand you!” he warned.

“My men need power now. Long have I prayed for a miracle.”
“your plight is of no interest to me. You will serve me. Do I make myself clear?” zero asked, his form bleeding angry shadows as he spoke, and almost immediately his pretense of a human appearance vanished, his hands turned to jet black shadow claws and a black haze formed around his body.

His face was now mostly featureless and his head bled darkness in a raw torrent, one side of his face sported seven glowing eyes that all glared simultaneously at the man kneeling before them.

“I….I will come when called.” vlad replied.

“will you serve me though?” zero asked, leaning forward so that vlad could look fearfully into his eyes.

Vlad surprisingly enough, returned the glare with one of his won, matching zero's fury.

“I would do anything for them. Even if it means serving the lord of darkness instead of the lord god.”
“good. Then take this concept, formed from the imagination of a man who saw your bloody history and transformed into a nightmare. Take it and become that legend as accurately as you can.”

he pressed the concept into vlad's skull, and it began worming its way into him.

Stepping back, he watched as vlad hit the ground, clutching his chest and screaming as the concept eagerly began whittling away at his spirit.

“there are dozens of vlad tepes draculas I can use for this task, but I chose you specifically, because you happen to be in the very world I grew up.” zero explained. “you will be the one ruling my future world. I fully expect you to lord over it, and the creatures of the night in my honor. Now that the arch spirits ichi set upon it have been removed, you'll find no opposition.”

Vlad's skin was like ashen marble, his appearance had changed wildly, his eyes glowed a vibrant red and he now sported fangs.

But there was more to him now.

Vlad, having been married to his counterpart's concept, was now complete, he was, for all intents and purposes, dracula himself.

“Now go.” zero bade, opening a portal.

“devour, destroy, rule. I have extracted you from the past that you might rule the world of the future I have created. One filled with magic and darkness. Forget the past. Forget those mortal bonds. You now exist to devour all the glory you can find, and drink deep of the life that lives on that planet. Go forth, lord dracula. And claim your prize.”
the newly reborn vlad stepped into the portal before turning to face zero.

“will we meet again my lord?” he asked.

“Yes. And when we do, you will die.” zero promised.

Dracula didn't bother hiding his grin.

Once he was gone zero settled onto his throne, backhanding the refilled goblet of blood, having no further need for it now that he was no longer married to the concept of dracula as he had been before.

Lizbet leaned in close. “Big bro, did he realize what you meant?” she asked.

“he will...but first thing's first! We have to find my past self and finish the time loop.”
“what do you remember of it?” she asked.

“Nothing.” he admitted. “I can't recall a single detail of what occurs during the time after I was whisked away. I only vaguely remember waking up to be faced with myself, and then being forced to fight for my life against...someone….a serpent headed being, a lizardman perhaps? Gods it's been two hundred billion years, just preserving this memory has taken much of my effort.”
he leaned into the throne and began summoning glowing orbs that held an image of each timeline he needed brought up.

“not this one.” he grumbled, discarding it with a clawed hand and bringing up another.

Lizbet settled onto the armchair and watched her adoptive older brother continued ceaselessly searching the timelines for his younger self.

He was relentless, and the speed at which he sought out every timeline would put most supercomputers to shame.

But, for all his effort, finding the timeline would be the ultimate game of finding a needle in a haystack.

Time was vast, time itself being formed of zeros sense of perception.

Time was an endless recording of everything, one that could be altered, one that could be destroyed and rewritten. It was both a record, and the reality.

“what about your mom?” she asked.

“you mean my wife?” he replied.

“okay she's both, but...can't she help?” lizbet asked, leaning forward, and zero shook his head.

“Lil can do nothing this time. If she interferes and aids my future self in finding my past, the universe will destabilize.”
“I still can't get over the look of shock on little bro's face!” she squealed and she began blushing as she thought about.

“you were so cute back then!”
“Lizbet.” zero began.

“Little bro?” he asked, seeming more offended by that than the actual notion of her drooling over his younger self.

“Yeah! After all you're the older future part right!? So to tell you both apart I'll call him little bro and you big bro!”
zero stared at her silently for a few moments before calmly turning back to the task at hand, his glowing set of eyes blinking a few times as he quietly mumbled “shoot for the fucking stars sis.”

for the next ten years he sought out a countless number of universes before reasonably concluding that he simply wasn't permitted to find his younger self for the time being, deciding it would be far more prudent to leave things to chance.

After the tenth year within castle nihil had passed, he summoned talra on an unrelated matter.

“talra.” he began. “I have a few things I require of you.” he explained as his right hand and the universal nexus's strongest swordsman knelt before him, his silver wings folded around his form as his ghostly white hair spilled over the floor from the simple act of kneeling.

“Yes my lord?” he asked, his voice regal, yet low-toned.

“there is a world that has caught my attention, supposedly it's saturated with magic. I suspect that baihu might be preparing something there. The fluxuations of magic usually precede a great sealing and I want to ensure that I have someone on that world when it gets cut off from my time machine. Can you do this?”
“of course my lord. But...might I make a request?” he asked.

“of course.”
“the dragoon who has accompanied the other heroes of light has paid us a visit, it seems he's been separated from his friends and wishes to find them.”
“they won't be on that world.” zero warned.

“no, but….I'd like to take him along on the task. It may prove useful to show him more workings of the universe, so when the time comes and he's faced with zero...”
“zero will be pressed into killing him.” the dark lord reasoned.

“we have to turn the heroes against him. You know this.” talra explained.

“Indeed. Very well, bring him along, but keep his enlightenment...minimal. I don't want him realizing the truth. Understood?”
“he'll make a valuable ally for the time being, whatever this arch-crystal was, it gave the four heroes incredible power.”
“it was destroyed for good reason then.” zero said with a sigh and as the dragoon entered, zero blinked a few times, wondering.

When had this person died?

He didn't recall killing him, but then again a lot of his memories were missing due to the taxing nature of being transformed into the universe's foundation.

“where is the master of time?” angrosa asked, his bull-horned helm hiding his features behind an faceplate modeled after a dragon's head, the eyes themselves glowing white from within due to the magic of the armor.

“he is sitting on his throne, hero of light.” zero explained. “I have many forms, I am malleable. You honor me with your presence o' chosen of the crystal. Tell me then, would you aid me in something?”
angrosa shrugged. “i guess, I kinda need your help for finding the others.”
“I'll aid you.” zero explained. “but first I wish to show you something important.” he rose from the throne, carrying with him the globe that permitted him to see specific worlds.

“in this universe there are powerful arch-spirits that choke the soul streams of various worlds and can render entire universe branches….inoperable, dead. Their intention is to destroy and disrupt all of creation you see.” angrosa took a closer look at the orb.

“this world is showing signs of an arch-spirit's presence. If you would, could you go to that world with talra here and investigate? It probably won't take very long, and if you do find the spirit, the reward for defeating it will be great.”
“these things actually want to destroy the universe?!” angrosa asked, alarmed.

“as much as it pains me to admit it, yes.” zero said with a slow nod.

“they are a threat to creation itself, but one I'm quite used to dealing with. While you are away I will find your comrades and send you to them.”

“sure, alright, count me in!” angrosa said with a laugh.

“then while you're at it maybe you can find zero?”
“I'm afraid zero is a harder one to catch.” the dark lord explained. “He is beyond my grasp, indeed, he is powerful, quite powerful.”
“so not even the lord of time can destroy him?” angrosa asked in surprise.

“Only those chosen by the crystal stand a chance at defeating that villain.” zero said, and were his face capable of smiling, he would surely have been grinning wickedly at the words.

“alright, if you do find him-” angrosa warned.

“Oh don't worry chosen hero of the crystal, I'll send you to face him in a fight to the death. Your friends too if I can find them in time!”

with that zero opened a portal to send angrosa and talra through, talra turned to shoot him a concerned look but zero ignored it.

“look after him.” zero bade. “and kill baihu when you find him.”

talra nodded and departed after angrosa, the dragoon among the four heroes.

“and now...” zero muttered. “we wait.”

More on Okami

The orochi fight was definitely a gem for me.
the whole game is super long, but it has moments such as the sequence involving orochi and "worrier" susano'o that really stand out.
I'm not done playing it of course, but so far I'm loving it.

a sequel to shin megami tensei iv is coming out

smtiv: final appears to be a sequel's sequel, like final fantasy x-2 where you play as a different protagonist set in the same universe.
supposedly you'll meet flynn, lucifer, merkabah, and isabeau as the story progresses, they were the original cast of the first smtiv.
I for one loved iv for its world presentation, but felt the story's characters needed a bit more to them, so being able to revisit the game with a new story looks to be exciting!
I don't know the release, but here's the trailer.

a full lords of shadow 2 walkthrough in a single video

It's the entire game in one massive, full length six hour walkthrough.

My Opinion of undertale so far.

Undertale is an amazing game because it is rife with details, for example saving a loading will result in characters you've killed recognizing that you've killed them,

However, it goes farther than that, the characters in this game are sublime, and the writing is amazing.

The combat is a simplified bullet hell mixed in with rpg elements, which is nice.

also, papyrus is best husbando.

This game is an interesting one because it turns a fourth wall break into a game mechanic that extends across all of your playthroughs and can even permanently lock you out of the true pacifist ending if you play it like a normal rpg, toby fox did an amazing job with this thing.

this is what a lot of people truly want from videogames, games that challenge their senses and destroy their expectations by ignoring conventions, and toby's wildly popular rpg is so well made and well written that you'll easily overlook the simple graphics.

Ghost Battle (Undertale) -Dual Mix-

Undertale is awesome.

Vergil is broken as fuck the squeakquel

for anyone who just wants to be an overpowered halfdemon katana wielding demigod, vergil is your go-to character.

fun fact, the dark lord zer0's protagonist is based largely on vergil in terms of his fighting style and appearance and vergil was part of the inspiration for his character, the other part being final fantasy's auron, who shares his personality with zero.

here's a preview of the dark lord zero.

here's a quick chapter from the book, to better give you an idea of what it is you're in for.

I also edited it and lowered the price, so hold off on purchasing until it's been updated.

Chapter 5

Hunter in the fog

“My power wanes the deeper we go.” lil warned, her fog gates losing strength before vanishing altogether.

“Lil?” zero replied, turning around, suddenly realizing that she could no longer reach him.

“what on earth-” he muttered.

Her words now began to ring truer the deeper into fog ridden jackson hole he walked.

Gunshots could be heard from a distance, and, hand on his sword, he proceeded to move deeper, passing a small church on the hill just next to the main road that passed through the city proper.

The skiing hill was somewhat visible, but not as much as he'd like it to be, and as he continued through the city, burning cars and countless wrecks came into view.

What appeared to be the police were busy fighting off more werewolves, these being more developed and attuned to their newfound physical prowess, their regeneration making them a very clear threat.

But their cardiac muscles don't regenerate, he thought to himself, and as he made his way past various blood stained vehicles, now parked in the middle of the roadway, gunfire rattled off their forms as the police engaging the werewolves continued missing the agile creatures.

As much as zero hated it, he couldn't assist them. He'd have to use the distraction they provided to continue his investigation of the town, and try his level best to sneak through, as opposed to fighting in the streets.

Moving to all fours, he placed the sword on his belt loop, quietly and calmly snaking through the vehicles.

One of the doors opened, and a line of intestine oozed out of the vehicle, a green ford bronco form the looks of it, and he frowned as he heard a transforming human's bones cracking from within.

Those who weren't dying were becoming infected, he reasoned.

But with what? Kulil had told him that werewolves weren't real, there was no more reliable source for a fact than a divinity, and kulil fit that bill by admission.

Could it be that something she wasn't aware of, impossible as it seemed, was influencing these events?
If so this could only mean that the werewolves weren't really werewolves, they were artificial ones.

That didn't make the reality of the lycanthrope poking its newly formed head out of the vehicle any less jarring, and with a quick, vicious strike he decapitated the hapless creature and moved on, its body spilling out of the car, the intestines belonging to another body that fell out with it.

Further along the road, a werewolf jumped atop the roof of one of the cars, its burning red eyes scanning its surroundings as zero quietly moved around the front of a truck, slowly picking his way out of its field of vision just as it turned his direction.

Snarling, he could hear it advancing, the vehicle further up shuddering as it slowly moved in for what it assumed to be a kill.

Sniffing the air, it crawled lower as zero moved to the right side of the vehicle.

Just then a well placed shot from a police officer in the distance entered its skull, resulting in an explosion of gore and brain matter.

The head tried and failed to properly regenerate, and zero took care to make note of that detail, decapitated werewolves, or at least werewolves missing a good deal of their skull, wouldn't regenerate.

Which could only mean that a sound bone structure, or at least some semblance of one was needed to regenerate.

Were zero to remove a bone of some sort then damage the flesh, it would compromise the regeneration process.

Which could only mean that the marrow was needed, or perhaps the bone structure itself.

Another shot was fired, and another werewolf jumped back, hopping away like a rabbit before falling down, its upper body unmoving as its lower body twitched and jerked, as though trying to drag itself away.

The next shot took out the head, and zero had to admire their cleverness.

It was then that a howl sounded forth from the center of the city, near town square, and countless werewolves began racing through jackson hole, across rooftops, over bushes and shrubs, through stores, they ignored the police officers, tearing through the streets with abandon and knocking aside any and all who dared to stand in their way.

One officer was cut cleanly in half by a sidelong swipe from a lycanthrope as it raced past, his upper half crawling for a few seconds before he died from blood loss.

Gathering in the park area, the largest and most formidable of these creatures, a great silver furred werewolf, began slaughtering the pack that it had called.

The more bizarre sight was the reaction the pack had to this, they seemed entirely eager to die for their alpha, and many began biting and clawing at one another for the macabre privelege.

As the great silver alpha tore its pack to shreds, it turned to view the police slowly approaching, their guns trained on it.

Baskerville let out a long, hungry howl, and they open fired as he bore down on them.

Zero slowly approached the square, expecting a small army of werewolves or worse as he made his way past the parked police vehicles.

What he encountered was one, seated atop a pile of the dead, the werewolves having turned back to their human shape.

In one of his clawed hands he held a policewoman, who was still struggling and shooting into the beast's chest, to no avail.

Baskerville had already torn off her shirt, exposing her bare chest to the cold fog soaked air, and was taking his time with her, biting her shoulder to elicit a pained cry.

It was then zero noticed that all of the bodies were female.

Not a single male corpse could be seen outside of the ones clothed in police uniform.

“Hey, fido!” zero shouted, and baskerville's ears perked up as his silver fur, fur that had transformed in the few days he'd been killing bristled while it slowly turned to regard zero.

“you gonna eat that?” he joked, gesturing to the officer.

Growling angrily, for the werewolf surely recognized its assailant, it casually tossed the officer aside, her back snapping as she struck a tree, killing her on the spot.

“Man, I've seen some low beasts in my day.” zero laughed. “But this.....gotta say, it takes the cake.”
snarling baskerville leaped forward, and zero wisely sidestepped.

The werewolf came on, claws swiping.

This wasn't a newly transformed beast, quite the contrary, this one was entirely used to his form, and each attack was measured, each blow more careful than the last.

More than once the werewolf's strikes would pull up short, as if baiting out a reaction or testing zero's reactive limitations, and zero knew all too well that his opponent was measuring him.

He jumped over a raking talon as it passed low, baskerville's maw shooting forth.

Leaning to the side as the maw came in, zero gave it a savage uppercut, content to hear the jawbone cracking.

But baskerville wasn't as sensitive to pain as the females it had turned, and it pinned zero down.

About to deal the killing blow, for surely it held the advantage, it glanced down when it felt a stinging, burning pain in its chest.

Zero twisted the sword, just to make certain that he destroyed as much cardiac tissue as he could, and, barking angrily, baskerville staggered back.

And the fog grew thicker around the two combatants as baskerville, his adrenaline the only thing keeping his body in its current shape, roared and charged once more, his attacks now savage, desperate.

Just what zero was hoping for.

One arm shot in, and zero's diagonal counter tore the limb free.

The next arm reached out, as though grabbing for his neck, and zero wisely ducked under the blow, turning with the ducking motion and performing a quick, but forceful close range overhead slash.

Baskerville rolled away as zero held the blade in that stance, pointed to the side before turning to regard the alpha lycanthrope, its limbs now completely gone.

Something was wrong, zero realized, he was certain he'd destroyed the werewolf's heart earlier, yet here it was, still pressing the attack.

The werewolf was hardly defeated by the earlier exchange, which made matters worse, and it raced forth, its maw wide open.

Taken by surprise, for he hadn't expected it to attack again, he found his weapons knocked free and suddenly he was struggling against the hot, snapping jaws of that fanged mouth, its hot breath spilling over his face as he held it back by the throat.

The werewolf's mouth made visible clicking sounds as it roared and barked, its maw mere inches from zero's face, its saliva pooling over his face while its blood spurted freely from those two wounds, twin waterfalls of thick crimson crashing down on either side of his black trenchcoat as he held the dying werewolf back, the beast's heart likely having been repaired during the fight.

Finally, baskerville went limp, and zero, seeing the feint for what it was, didn't relent in his tension.

His guess paid off, for baskerville went mad in his arms, renewing his attack one final time, pulling in closer with every last ounce of its strength before finally going slack for the last time.

The blood stopped pouring from its stumps in regular intervals, now falling freely in a tiny, mute trickle, and zero heaved the silver haired fiend off of him with a look of disgust.

As it slowly began to revert to its human form, zero's eyebrow rose.

“the rapist.” he remarked, suddenly realizing what it about the werewolf that had seemed so familiar.

All of the werewolves had been female.

It had slaughtered them all, if its presence atop their bodies was any indication.

From a distance, he heard clapping, and he bent low to collect his weapon just as a silhouette approached in the ever thickening fog.

Those awful golden eyes shone forth with an inner light even as the fog became thick enough to darken the daylight.

“We meet at last.” came the noble voice of the fog borne specter, its form so veiled in the mire that the only thing he could determine about it was that it was human.

And even then, that was a shaky foundation of evidence he was seated upon when he looked at those awful golden eyes.

He leveled his sword at the figure.

“Who are you?”

This is of course a long story featuring many elements from my favorite videogame franchises, the character of "baskerville" is a lycanthrope transformed by the main antagonist with the collective concept of "lycanthropy" in the dark lord zero universe, ideas and figments of the imagination have to be real in other realities and worlds, and the main antagonist can acquire them in their malleable state and use them for his own ends, baskerville to this end, is a serial killer transformed by the concept of lycanthropy, and is himself a symbol of werewolves in general as people have imagined them to be.

My book, inspired by castlevania, final fantasy, devil may cry and shin megami tensei

the book can be found here.

The dark lord zero, book 1, is an introduction to a universe already ruled by the ultimate evil, a being who wears the image of every villain the human imagination can concoct on a whim.
a being whose reign extends across space and time, he appears before our main protagonist when said protagonist tries to unseal the magic within his world.

In the dark lord zero, the main character, zero, is a wandering swordsman guided by the goddess of night and death, it's very much a journey that extends to countless worlds as the hero uncovers the true nature of his reality.
originally the larger plot was inspired by castlevania lords of shadow 2's game mechanics, the characterization borrows elements from both devil may cry and persona, and the universe is based on a mix between shin megami tensei and final fantasy themes, so fans of any of these games may enjoy the book.
Book 2 will be coming out later, it was originally planned for a longer arc, but I decided to chop it up for the sake of getting it out there.
Book 2, heaven will focus on the dual journey of a being called "reaper" as well as expand on some mysteries I leave open in the story of book 1. don't miss it!

AND BUY MY DAMNED NOVEL!!!

Lords of shadow, a silent retrospective

Lords of shadow is the series that basically ended castlevania, and I don't say this in the usual "it's all the reboot's fault hurr" kind of way, I mean it's literally the last official branch of the castlevania series before konami went bat-shit crazy and decided that giving boobjobs to crosses on a pachinko machine was somehow a good idea.

But just what is lords of shadow really? was it a "reboot" reboot, where it was trying to replace the oldschool castlevania titles? or was it just a foray into a bold new take on the series quietly sequestered into its own canon?
the answer is the latter, insofar as I know, but it's more complicated than that, so let me explain.

Lords of shadow is a branch of the castlevania universe that changes some things around.

in this universe, the belmonts, the titular protagonist family of the original games, are actually a fusion of the cronqvists and belmonts,

The cronqvists, if you didn't know, are the family of the villain of the original castlevania series, mathias, who eventually betrays his dear friend leon belmont, the first belmont to hunt the night (though not the first belmont of his line) it's his betrayal which ultimately creates the now iconic feud between dracula and the belmonts.

However in lords, the cronqvists are only mentioned once in a discreet journal entry, and are implied to be related to gabriel, as gabriel himself is rumored to be an "abandoned bastard child" of the cronqvists.

In lords of shadow you're placed in the dead center of the end of days, literally the end of the world, the apocalypse, but lo and behold the end of days is not some great triumphant battle, rather it's a perfectly natural, even quiet death by throttling from three different factions that have united together to slowly stifle mankind out of existence in the most efficient way possible.

the dark lord of the lycans sends his minions to hunt humanity down,

the vampires prey on any stupid or stubborn enough to remain within the collective expanding territories of the dark lords

and the final lord, death, collects their souls to ensure that none escape to heaven to inform god of earth's plight or gain access to eternity.

in this world, carmilla, death, and cornell are the leading villains, three powerful immortals called the "lords of shadow" who have managed to separate their spirits from their bodies to become pure-hearted godlike beings while their bodies remain behind to govern the world as they see fit as dark lords.

the premise here is that the lords of shadow have been at this for a while, literally a thousand or so years, and it's just now gotten so dire that mankind is ready to die fighting, as death recently enacted a spell that could separate the earth from the heavens, leaving mankind totally alone in a dying world.

Gabriel belmont gave himself the belmont surname, he is the first belmont and it's up to him to find out what precisely caused the spell, as nobody really knows it's the lords of shadow for certain, it's just implied, a lot.

Gabriel is ruthless in combat, and he carries with him a powerful anti-monster weapon called the combat cross, which is one of a kind and made for him, and him alone.

he belongs to a brotherhood dedicated to protecting the people by killing the horrors the lords of shadow and satan have spread across the world, and it's gabriel's duty to uncover the truth.

and nothing else.

I repeat, it was never gabriel's duty to save the world by defeating the lords of shadow, his specific task at the beginning of the game is, and I quote "find the guardian of the lake and uncover the truth behind the heavens being closed off"

it is here right when he finds out, to some degree, that the lords of shadow hold the key to this nightmare that a certain zobek appears and tells gabriel "sure! sure! this can only mean that you must find the lords of shadow and slayificate them to death!!!"

with zobek outright saying their power will give him the ability to bring his wife, who died really recently, back to life, the forlorn gabriel has his motivation to not only ignore his prior orders, but strike out, alone, with nobody even knowing he's doing this, and kill the lords of shadow.

zobek explains there's a prophecy about a pure-hearted warrior defeating the lords of shadow and taking their power to become the second god of the universe, god's steward as it were.

naturally, this is a tempting notion.

However, along the way gabriel encounters a woman named claudia, the last of the aghartians, and her black knight protector, and after defeating the last obstacle to the first lord, he sorta...kills her in his sleep.

this leads us to question our manly, broodsome hero, and more importantly, it leads him to question himself, even zobek appears to be shocked during his narration, if one could fake shock that is.

during the journey we see just how much damage the lords of shadow have done to the world, they literally ended a modern era, as in, dialed civilization back to medieval times.

that's no small thing, and when gabriel confronts cornell, cornell gleefully informs gabriel of the problematic nature of his situation.

the lords are themselves victims of a higher treachery, they're merely the remnants of the founding members of the brotherhood, they themselves are like their own beings who just happen to have been left behind in the founder's bodies, confused, frightened, and very, very hungry for answers.

naturally, the three lords gang up and conquer the world as quickly as possible, as zobek himself says "victory is the natural objective of every creature on this earth, they will kill and die for their kind to dominate" and that's really all the lords of shadow are doing, trying to own the world they were "reborn" in.

they are divinely separated darknesses left behind, dark halves of the saintly founders left to rule the world. however the larger problem presents itself.

if gabriel kills a lord of shadow, the founding member, who is currently a supreme and pure-hearted spirit in heaven, will also die.

sure it doesn't seem like a big deal, but gabriel himself shows outrage at the idea that having to kill a villainous fiend like cornell will result in the death of a saint somewhere else, it's a very real dilemma to the morals of a hero already being made to question himself.

gabriel then proceeds to violently impale cornell through the skull with his own hammer and gets a piece of the "god mask" which is basically our macguffin of the story, and don't expect too much by way of explanation, it's not gonna happen, it just exists.

traversing through the lands of the vampires reveals a feud going on between a monstrous feral witch and another witch off somewhere else that came to a head and ended in tragedy for the not-as-evil-as-you're-lead-to-believe-malphas, but it's just a subplot added for detail.

gabriel finally finds his way to castlevania after making his way through wygol and after acquiring holy water, which is a very special weapon, the crazy abbot vincent dorin (who looks identical to his classic counterpart by the way) outright tells you what's going on.

but since he's an old priest we just assume he's crazy and ignore him, much to the amusement of the true antagonist later on.

after meeting laura, carmilla's adoptive daughter and getting on her good side after almost being one-shotted by her lighting, we find our way to boobs- er I mean, carmilla, dark lord of the vampires.

she attempts to seduce gabriel after explaining the motivations of the lords of shadow a bit more thoroughly, which is that mankind is ruined, the lords are just trying to survive, and they decided the best way was to just take over and let vampires, werewolves and (coughs) undead have the world.

gabriel is surprisingly iron-willed here, he doesn't even let carmilla lay a single tempting finger on him, and she's so offended that he'd choose a dead woman over a...uh....another dead-ish woman, that she decides to kill him.

things don't go as planned.

Later, pan, the guy who basically gave gabriel access to the place that told him the lords of shadow needed to die, appears and gabriel and pan have a confusing exchange in english that says basically nothing before pan opens a gate through a very, very, very important mirror and gabriel is in the land of the dead.

after dealing with a certain witch (who zobek then murders offscreen because he doesn't like witches who kill servants of god) he then goes to the front gates to the land of the dead.

before gabriel leaves though,  baba yaga gives us our next tip about the true antagonist, he's the "king of the angels" and much like vincent before her, she's alluding not to god, but someone else who fits that criteria.

it's here we find out by way of many scrolls that the land of the dead has a lock on it, you can't just walk in, you HAVE to be evil, meaning that death is well aware of the prophecy about a pure-hearted warrior, and he had since devised a clever remedy to it, make the way impassable for anyone pure of heart, you either commit a mortal sin or you go home, there is no other way.

in this way there's no conceivable means to correctly fulfill the prophecy, so it seems like the third lord has won the fight before it's even begun.

there are several hidden scrolls explaining why this is a problem in more detail hidden throughout the level, and one that outright wonders what sort of monster would be able to fulfill the prophecy on death's terms.

Pan of course decides that if gabriel is truly determined, he needs to be tested. the knight's test is a fight to the death, if gabriel wins, he will be worthy of fulfilling the prophecy, if not, well, he wasn't going to be of much use anyway.

gabriel kills pan, but only because pan forces his hand, and after pan explains that blood has to be spilled and a mortal sin committed for the way to be opened, gabriel walks into the land of the dead with the blood of the old god who governed LIFE ITSELF now dead at his hands.

Pan, once loyal servant of god and heavily, heavily implied to be the old god responsible for the balanced cycle of nature itself, is dead.

that's a big deal.

gabriel merrily slaughters his way through armies of the undead and finally gets the final piece of the god mask after defeating "death"

and is confronted by zobek

and then suddenly you come to a startling realization.

Gabriel has, for all intents and purposes, turned his back on the brotherhood, having disowned them after fighting carmilla, zobek himself even observes that gabriel gives zero fucks about the brotherhood of light, who are the ones responsible for the hell the world has become.

but wait! there's more! it turns out that zobek has-

Pulled a zobek.

Yep, zobek was the real dark lord of the necromancers and lord of the dead,

meaning that death himself had been helping and guiding gabriel throughout his quest to vanquish those pesky lords of shadow rivals of his so that he could obtain godlike power and- you guessed it-

serve god as the judge of the dead.

wait, what?

it's not outright stated, but zobek is very, very pious, like, god-tier piety pious, the man is so holy that he is the one who guided the original founders to collect the power of the heavens in the interest of destroying evil, and that still hasn't change with zobek the dark lord.

there is nothing zobek wants more than to punish the wicked, he's been posing as a high ranking member of the brotherhood for ages because he's still quite loyal to god, he's just not loyal to mankind, and certainly not afraid to get his hands dirty.

this was implied to have been his greatest weakness when he was human, he was too righteous and the reason the lords even went on their crusade to the three places of power to begin with was due in part to god's displeasure with zobek's overzealousness in punishing evildoers.

it was meant as punishment, but the plan backfired and zobek became the personification of a holier than thou-god's-right-and-the-wrong-must-die mindset that people tend to associate with violent religion.

so gabriel dies pretty horribly at zobek's hands, leaving zobek with the god mask.

or...does it?

nope, turns out there's yet another twist in this list of twists, behold, the true antagonist of the lords canon!

the fucking devil.

literally satan himself is the guy responsible for the lords of shadow, though admittedly he's only responsible for giving zobek the ability to seal off heaven.

he is, by extension, also probably responsible for their original formation, but given how the god mask is probably part of "god's" plan, then it could be that god did indeed create the lords of shadow as implied from zobek's journal entry, though it's uncertain as to how, but he knew the power their corruption would create, leading to the god-mask, a mask so powerful it hides even the face of evil!

and just look at those crow's feet! they need a mask!

anyway, gabriel comes back to life and after a few moments of preaching, gabriel and satan come to blows.

but here's the funny part, the god mask only empowers those you happen to be looking upon with your greatest immediate desire of the time.

it just lets you see through god's eyes.

now what did satan want most?

godlike power.

what does gabriel suddenly have?

unlimited angel wing uses, unlimited magic reserves, incredible stamina.

I.E.I. Godlike power, satan even cries out in shock "is this the power of god?!" referring to gabriel suddenly gaining angelic qualities that we can be sure satan was wishing on himself.

but the mask doesn't work like that, it only works on people you're looking at through the mask.

it's a genius masterstroke, but one that merited pointing out because the devs never mentions it explicitly.

anyway, moving on, gabriel finds out this fact for himself, his dead wife takes the mask into heaven, everybody's happy.

except gabriel....lol

fast forward and laura calls on gabriel, begging for help, it turns out the lords of shadow had been keeping a seal on a super-powered demigod in check and it's up to the guy who killed them and satan to find his way to its prison and kill it before it can escape.

after traversing castlevania AGAIN laura an gabriel find themselves before the prison, and it's here that laura explains the bigger dilemma.

gabriel is a human, but the forgotten one's prison (yes, the same forgotten one from the original castlevania timeline) is uninhabitable, it's not explained very well, but basically the air is unbreathable, toxic, and the place is full of evil energy that will destroy a normal human with barely any darkness in his heart on the spot.

the counter?

become a vampire.

vampires enjoy a plethora of wonderful benefits, immortality, being dark by nature, immortality, never having to eat solid foods again....immortality.

reluctantly gabriel drinks her blood, then finds out he must drink all of it, killing her in the process.

so he does.

then he enters the forgotten one's prison, and it's here we find out that the forgotten one is an unstoppable god-like horror that cannot be stopped.

unless he's devoting most of his godlike power to breaking the seals on his prison.

this also means that it's only here, inside this prison, that the forgotten one can ever be defeated, once he's free he'll never need to use this much power and weaken himself like this again.

meaning this was only ever gabriel's one chance to kill this thing, killing the lords of shadow essentially locked and doomed him into becoming a vampire, to do anything else would have resulted in the world going boom.

and this thing is powerful enough to destroy the world in an instant.

confronting the forgotten one, it remarks on how weird gabby's soul is, he says the iconic second half of dracula's line from symphony of the night, and we're off.

from there it's gabriel relentlessly stalking the forgotten one to the final seal after wounding it, it's actually really imposing as to just how ruthlessly good he is at stealthing, literally being no less than four feet from the damned demon at any time.

the final confrontation ends with gabriel stealing the forgotten one's power and inheriting its station, turns out that the forgotten one was the literal sovereign over the elemental plane of darkness, with the forgotten one dead by gabriel's hands, he literally becomes the "prince of darkness" by taking its power.

enter the next act, gabriel has renounced his name as the first and "last" belmont and taken a new name, dracul, the dragon.

he has inherited castlevania by right of combat, but unlike his classic counterpart, he's not connected to it like the OG dracula was, instead he possesses lesser dwarves, the fleamen of the lords canon, and has them make whatever renovations he wants for the castle while he learns how to use his godlike power.

however, it's here that  a bigger twist is revealed, it turns out the brotherhood knew what gabriel was going to become all along, hell they even prepared for it, going so far as to feed the lord of the dead himself a fake version of the actual prophecy, the REAL prophecy simply says "he who kills the lords of shadow will inherit....their...throne...and become the....prince of darkness...."

well.

that explains a lot.

it turns out that a year before gabriel fought the lords, he was tasked with dealing with the current lord of the elemental plane of darkness (the forgotten one was...forgotten by his own subjects)

the daemon lord, as he's called, has the ability to control large structures and raise castles, pay attention because that detail is pretty important moving forward.

he captures the daemon lord and that's the end of it, but it's revealed that before he left on this task, he and his wife had a wonderful, wonderful-

yeah he got laid.

she was also pregnant while he was away,and the brotherhood, knowing what was at stake, moved in fast and informed her of what would happen, as PAN HIMSELF GIVES HER THE PROPHECY THROUGH A FRAGMENT OF THE MIRROR IN CARMILLA'S CASTLE!

turns out it was the titular mirror of fate all along.

who knew?

marie regrettably gives up her child, because she doesn't have a say in the matter, and gabriel later goes on to become dracula after zobek possesses him and has him kill her and he kills the lords of shadow with zobek manipulating and empowering him with relics when each lord dies..

forgot that detail, but it doesn't matter anyway.

trevor is raised to be the best brotherhood member he can be, stationed at a city at the foot of dracula's castle, he has a son, simon, with sypha, who is sypha belmont in this timeline.

it's later that the brotherhood informs him of the truth, dracula is his dad, and dracula, after having collected the forces of darkness sufficiently, has finally decided to embark on a murderous war-campaign to destroy the brotherhood of light when he finds out that zobek is still alive, since zobek was originally pulling the brotherhood's strings in the first place, dracula sees the threat a large army of anti-darkness can be to him and the slowly restoring world and decides it's high time to decomission them for the betterment of the world.

the brotherhood strikes back, and after repeated failed attempts, they ask trevor to do the deed, telling him the truth of his origins.

trevor is understandably pissed, not only is he now aware that his father is the newest and most powerful lord of shadow, essentially ruling the forces of the night that all three had been in command of, being the respected alpha of the werewolves thanks to killing lycanthropes, being the lord of vampires thanks to his own personal advancements in perfecting vampire blood to ensure that newborn vampires no longer appear bestial, and powerful necromantic spells provided to him by a "traitor" necromancer (the same one from the first game) dracula is the sole force of darkness and the most powerful one, being a demigod in terms of sheer power alone.

and he knows it.

he fancies himself the current sovereign of the world, god's earthly steward, and because he understands death from a afterlife-point-of-view having died and put satan himself into a chokehold just so he could preach him to death, it's safe to say that dracula no longer views death as a punishment, but a reward.

he has, for all intents and purposes, found his calling as the lord of castlevania.

trevor pretty much crashes into the castle and meets a being called the lost soul, who intends to guide trevor to his destiny.

trevor politely declines half its face off and renders it mute when it tells him the consequences of rejecting its aid.

after making his way through the castle, and with the lost soul seemingly "helping him" he finally comes to his battle with dracula.

then loses because dracula can use mist form, arguably the cheapest and most broken ability in any castlevania game.

trevor never tells him his name, but he does inform him of his lineage, dracula, confused, goes to the mirror of fate, which is the same mirror he once walked through to get to the land of the dead, and learns the truth there.

horrified, he rejects everything he believes about death and in his haste tries to return his son to life with his blood.

the effort appears to fail, dracula, having never learned his name, calls his newfound son "alucard" due to discovering his identity through the mirror, alucard is "dracula" which means "son of the dragon" in romanian, remember, technically dracula calls himself "dracul" so it's an appropriate parallel.

he then goes bat-shit crazy and sends the forces of darkness on a massive genocide campaign with but one goal in mind.

Make god pay for this treachery, this ridiculous, elaborate treachery which went so deep that it revealed to him that his very reason for becoming this creature of the night, his wife, was a lie to begin with, by killing all of his children and tormenting them forever.

dracula is now suffering from one of the most serious cases of existential confusion he's ever had to deal with, his own wife was shown to have hidden her pregnancy from him and knew what he would become, her spirit even went out of its way to guide him to becoming this monster he's become.

he became what he was for the greater good, but with his own son turned against him, dracula no longer knows what to believe in, he builds a tower and isolates himself in it while his castle begins falling into disrepair, his vampires and creatures of the night roam free and dracula hires a succubus to keep him fed with a healthy supply of warriors and spare women while he slowly waits for the last human to die, isolating himself in the throne room, locking the door with an advanced blood mechanism and all but throwing away the key.

years later, simon, whose mother died in the attacks, reaches adulthood, trains fiercely and surpasses his own father and gabriel in terms of skill and sets off for castlevania.

meanwhile, alucard wakes up, sees the name on his coffin and decides to keep it after realizing that he's become a creature of the night.

now with the aid of the mirror of fate, and fully cooperative after being trolled by it the last time for breaking its face, he proceeds to go to the tower to meet his father.

dracula is well aware of simon's arrival, and wants no part of the newly discovered lineage he unwittingly created, but he doesn't have the heart to kill them himself, and so he activates a trap once simon steps into it, but unfortunately alucard breaks to traps and meets his son for the first time in years.

realizing that his son is not only alive and well, but actively trying to discourage simon from fighting  him, dracula gleefully retreats to his throne room hoping for a reunion with the son he'd thought dead all these years.

simon enters the throne room first, and dracula, who knows simon will be the one to defeat him, tries to use the succubus to kill simon for him, however simon proves to be more than a match for her wiles, and when alucard arrives, dracula realizes one cold truth.

fate is a bitch.

dracula isn't dead however, and the combat cross used is just a replica, only powerful enough to de-constitute dracula, not enough to kill him outright.

so dracula, now a pile of ash, unintentionally fuses with castlevania while simon and alucard part ways.

this leads to the castle crumbling and falling for the first time in lords of shadow

this is because part of the forgotten one's power has something to do with keeping castles animated, but dracula never had this power until being de-constituted by the copy of the true vampire killer.

or rather, he wasn't aware of it.

many years later however, dracula returns and sets about collecting the forces of darkness to resume his campaign against the brotherhood, regaining a newfound tolerance for mankind thanks to the revelation that his son is very much alive and well.

he even goes so far as to incorporate them into his ranks, provided they cooperate.

by this time dracula has an incredibly dark reputation, and this has influenced his already broken mind, now he's struggling with two sides of himself, the "dracula" persona, which is basically just an act he puts on to keep the forces under his command in line out of fear of their master, and his true self, the broken, sad man who just wants to hide away in a well sealed throne room and let the forces of darkness do the killing for him.

many years have passed and dracula is tired, but he's determined to finish what he started with the brotherhood of light.

it's at this point that dracula has all but given up hope, he's no chosen of god, and if he is that can only speak volumes for the state the world must be in if its chosen savior is the lord of evil.

dracula is depressed, forced to put on a big act he wants no part in for revenge against a brotherhood that turned his own blood against him, dracula barely cares about maintaining the world, he's no longer a genocidal maniac, nor god's "harvester and world manager" that he was during trevor's chapter, he's just a sad, broken old vampire who sees no end in sight and is simply determined to build his own world, as it's really all he has left.

zobek is beyond his reach, satan is in another dimension, and to make matters worse, the power of the forgotten one has fused his very being into castlevania, turning it into an extension of his own inner turmoil, meaning the castle now transforms freely more than it had in the past. in fact it does so based on his mood to represent his mind through its architecture, it has, for all intents and purposes, become THE castlevania.

but there's a larger problem,

dracula can't leave.

because he's at odds with the false face he's put on for so many years, the castle has begun to take on a form all its own, it's very dependent on dracula, should he ever leave the castle, the castle and all his servants will die.

this is due in part to dracula's second "forgotten one" ability, he can bring back the dead.

specifically those he's ever killed, their souls go to him, this includes anyone he's killed when he was human, but he doesn't know this, so he just assumes it extends to his servants.

this also makes his closest servants much more reliable, as they're beholden only to him, and should they fall in battle, he need only create new bodies for them from the blood of the castle.

this is shown more than anything else during certain cutscenes and in-game, whenever a monster belonging to the "castle" faction comes into the real world, they rise from a pool of blood.

500 years into his rule, the brotherhood of light finally decide to end the confrontation in an epic battle to the death spearheaded by a paladin, roland de ronceval.

the resulting clash was due to maps of the castle being drawn by survivors who escaped the castle dungeons, this also implies that the whole reason these maps exist is because dracula's state of mind began calming, thus leading to less transformations within the castle's structure.

sadly, dracula finally gets the revenge he was hoping for, as roughly 80 percent of the brotherhood forces are at the castle, the clash being their last stand.

in the middle of the night.

fighting the lord of darkness.

at night.

the literal prince of darkness, an apex vampire overlord.

at night.

plans were not drawn when this assault was thought out.

dracula destroys the fuck out of them, only to realize he has nothing left to do.

he can't reach zobek if the castle won't let him leave, and while he may be outdoors when he fights the brotherhood, he's still on the castle grounds.

with no way to leave, he can only stare helplessly at the smoldering cross as he's faced with the realization that his revenge will forever remain half-complete.

alucard appears and offers his father a way to acquire his revenge, and maybe even regain his son's loyalty.

pretend you're dead with his vampire killer forged sword sealing away his powers and disabling him, and he'll draw his enemies to the castle.

dracula, reluctantly agreeing, gets stabbed and enters the deep sleep, waking up 500-ish years later with no memory of what took place after the siege, during the time the castle's "inner dracula" persona has been in charge of the castle, which is in a half-formed state due to the crissaegrim and the long sleep fragmenting his memory, creating a separation of the two consciousnesses, dracula's subconscious has now become a new life form and the truest representation of "dracula" the series has seen so far, despite being a horrific blood golem.

zobek confronts dracula with an offer, he's no rival to satan, but dracula is and has always been, zobek offers him true death thanks to his restoration of the vampire killer, but only if he prevents satan from being summoned.

dracula reluctantly agrees after trying to hunt only to find a demon in his way and being bested by it in his weakened state.

zobek gives him an innocent family, and dracula, pushed to the edge when the father wounds him to the point where he risks de-constituting again, has no choice but to eat.

zobek explains that satan's children are trying to bring him back, while he does this, drac looks in on the dead family and whispers a few words of regret to himself before steeling himself and moving on with the bargain.

after investigating bioquimek, dracula is lead into the still-recovering dream castle to retrieve his void sword.

despite everything, tevor hasn't forgiven his father for what happened to him and his mother, this is in fact, alucard after he used the timeless vision ability on himself, he's guiding his father to where he's placed the powers, but he's doing so disguised in such a way as to fool his father into thinking that he's just the representation of his own guilt for what he did to trevor years ago.

handing dracula a white wolf medallion, he agrees to act as a guide to help dracula freely enter the castle, dracula, having lost his memories, isn't entirely sure what the dream castle is, worse still, the memory loss also affects the information in the book of dracul, which only gives us flawed information from dracula's own assumptive point of view.

only in revelations is the information reliable (the dlc, not the chapter)

dracula regains his chaos power and is forced to kill the heads of his dungeon, the gorgon sisters, when the blood of the castle fuses them together.

later dracula is faced with carmilla, returned from the dead by the blood of the castle, and it's here her affiliation with the mirror of fate is heavily implied.

as it turns out, carmilla knew what gabriel would become (implied) and wanted dracula for herself, not as a servant, but as a lover.

during los1 her attempts at seducing gabriel were very much actual attempts, and likewise it's shown that gabriel himself, while certainly iron-willed in his reactions, hadn't been wholly unaffected by her advances either, otherwise she wouldn't have even been in the castle.

now back from the dead thanks to inner dracula, she intends to serve inner dracula by using her own blood to take control of gabriel belmont, thus keeping him pacified for the castle.

win win!

but unfortunately another force is at work, one that helped alucard enter the dream castle to begin with, marie belmont.

Owning up to everything she did, she and dracula make up, and he sets off to defeat carmilla once and for all.

then he does.

later drac kills the acolytes, is faced with the toy-maker, who betrayed him after trevor's death and became one of dracula's greatest enemies during the simon and alucard arc of mirror of fate.

however dracula has been busy reforming thanks to his reconciliation with his wife, and he forgives the toy maker, sparing his life after the blood of the castle turns him against dracula.

he fights the second acolyte later on by luring him into the castle, where it becomes painfully apparent that the castle is its own dimension created by dracula's forgotten one power, just like the classic castlevania is half in a spiritual world and half in reality.

the two acolytes defeated and the mirror of fate restored, dracula patches things up with young trevor, who he still thinks is a dream-metaphor for his actual son due to his memory loss.

zobek, still not realizing how bad an idea it is to be in the same castle as dracula right now is, sends him to kill the third acolyte, and after dracula regains his memories, alucard reveals himself and the two happily prepare to defeat satan.

the acolyte vanishes and zobek, now able to read dracula's mind clearly, realizes the irony of his situation and that he unwittingly trusted dracula with crucial magic tracking information, meaning he can never hide or flee from his old friend ever again.

cornered and in the heart of dracula's domain, zobek gets the vampire killer and readies his last stand.

and is turned into a block of ice.

with that out of the way, the two go after satan, find him just as he summons leviathan, the old god responsible for destroying the world should god be dissatisfied with it, now a slave to satan, and after blowing it up, satan possesses alucard and fights dracula.

defeating satancard, dracula manages to scare satan into believing that he'd kill his own son to destroy him and chases him out of alucard's body, killing him.

with that said and done he revives his son and heads into his church.

and that's it.

the whole trilogy said and done.

lords of shadow was basically a castlevania for dracula, where you play as a different take on the villain, drac was always heroic in some capacity, but ill-fortune pushes him into being the bad guy.

lords is a combat focused evolution of the classics, los1 is basically the combat focused evolution of the stage by stage sidescrollers, mirror is a combination of the best of the sidescrollers, and los2 is an homage to symphony of the night, even sharing the same "father son" theme as its classic counterpart.

but in the end it was an experiment, would I want another one? sure, it'd be great, but will we get one?

no, not with konami out of the gaming business.

and that saddens me deeply.

well, that's it, that's all I got.

have a good one.