Explore Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2’s Mastery System in new trailer

Konami demystifies the “adaptive combat elements” of their newest ‘Vania.

The new system is integral for combat, as Dracula awakens in a weakened state and must gradually extend his abilities. Gamers can gather experience points by killing foes and solving puzzles, and then use them to enhance the abilities of the game’s three main weapons: the Void Sword, Chaos Claws and Shadow Whip. Each weapon is governed by a ‘skill tree’ system, wherein players cleverly level up their weapons.

The more the player uses a specific weapon to execute key combination attacks, the more their power grows. Experimentation is rewarded with increased power as challenging attacks are perfectly implemented. The new trailer highlights how these attacks reward the player, devastating those that dare defy Dracula.

There’s certainly a lot more going on this time around in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Dracula’s attacks are pretty varied. Each of them is based off of the powers he’s always had in the Castlevania series too, which is really cool. Kind of a new school/old school thing going on there.

That his powers in general are tied into those weapons is a pretty neat idea as well, and since they all kind of come from him it makes sense too that they’d be the keys to leveling him up. Neat stuff, especially the fact that you can eventually become one massively powerful vamp.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is available right now for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC from Konami and developer MercurySteam.