Castlevania: Lament of Innocence

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Castlevania: Lament of Innocence is a 3D game released for the Play Station 2 in 2003, which serves as a Prequel to the rest of the Castlevania series.

In the late 11th century, during the Crusades, Baron Leon Belmont's fiancée is kidnapped by a vampire named Walter Bernhard. Under the urgings of his bedridden friend Mathias Cronqvist, Leon renounces his title and leaves behind his sword to rescue his love. Luckily, in the vicinity of Walter's home, he comes across the alchemist Rinaldo Gandolfi, who gives Leon the Whip of Alchemy. Thus begins a journey that in one way or another codifies and justifies the many elements of the Castlevania storyline.

Lament Of Innocence provides examples of:

• The Bad Guy Wins: Albeit, not the bad guy you were expecting... Yes, Dracula wins.
• Badass Boast: "THE BELMONT CLAN WILL HUNT THE NIGHT!"
  • "I'LL KILL YOU AND THE NIGHT!"
• Batman Gambit
• Big Bad Friend
• Bishounen: All over the damn place. Even a random White-Haired Pretty Boy as a dungeon boss.
• Bloody Murder: The Forgotten One.
• Bonus Boss: The Forgotten One, a skinless demon so huge Leon needs to ride an elevator to reach it.
• Chekhov's Gunwoman: Elisabetha Cronqvist, as her death drives Mathias away from God, which ultimately leads to him becoming Dracula. In other words, Elisabetha is the initiator of the Castlevania series.
• Church Militant: Leon's background in the Crusades.
• Cool Old Guy: Rinaldo, who takes Leon's Lawful Stupidity in stride.
• Copy and Paste Environments
• Creepy Centipedes: The Undead Parasite
• Cue the Sun: After Leon destroys the castle.
• Darker and Edgier: Hoo boy. This game is damned close to Gorn territory... especially The Forgotten One.
• Defector From Decadence: Leon, for Lawful Stupid reasons.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Not only does Leon whip Death to... himself, he also explains why he could.
• Distressed Damsel: Sara. She doesn't make it.
• Downer Ending: It's sort of a Foregone Conclusion, being the origin of Dracula. But things don't end well for Leon at all. He lost not only the woman he gave up everything he was to save, but also his best friend, who sacrificed his humanity to become the infamous dark lord.
• Evil Redhead: Walter.
• Fan Service: The Succubus. Also the metric ton of Bishounen
• Final Boss: It's not Walter, or Mathias. For once it's Death.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The Whip of Alchemy gets Fire, Ice, Lightning powers after destroying the respective elemental bosses for each. You retain the ability to switch between them after the whip becomes the Vampire Killer.
• Four Is Death: Death has 4444 points of health.
• Gorn: If the Bonus Boss isn't one of the goriest boss battles in all of video gaming, it comes pretty damn close.
• God Is Good / God Is Evil: Mathias's motivation to become Dracula is his belief that God Is Evil.
• Gorgeous Gorgon: Despite being a disembodied head covered in scales and snakes, Medusa's quite attractive.
• The Grim Reaper: Surprise! He's the Final Boss!
• Hey It's That Voice: Walter is Jamieson Price and Mathias is Crispin Freeman. Succubus is Wendee Lee.
• Hijacked By Dracula: The Man Behind the Man, Mathias, becomes Dracula in the end. Not really a surprise since this is the origin story for the Belmonts.
• Horny Devils: The Succubus.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Walter makes a hobby of inciting others to hunt him. Possibly with a hint of Who Wants to Live Forever?, as it's indicated that he developed this hobby out of centuries of boredom.
  • He's not stupid, however. Until the creation of the Vampire Killer, Walter is seemingly invincible
• Immortality: Mathias sees it as a big middle finger to God.
• Lawful Stupid: Leon "I don't belong to the army any more, so it wouldn't be right for me to take an army sword with me to the vampire's castle..." Belmont.
  • Of course he had plans to take weapons from dead hunters in the area to compensate. So it's not entirely stupid, but still.
• Lost Forever: The Soulless entries in your encyclopedia, since they only appear as part of a boss fight. That said, you'll probably hit a few just by failing around wildly, so it's not a huge concern.
  • Not exactly. It's the same thing with The Forgotten One's Maggots, but both entries can be retried on Boss Rush.
• Love Makes You Evil: Played straight with Mathias Cronqvist and subverted with Leon, who finds the very trope ridiculous...
• Metroidvania
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nice job making Dracula, Leon!
  • It was not Leon who made Dracula, actually. It was Mathias Cronqvist who started it all.
• The Night That Never Ends: Thanks to Walter's Ebony Stone, the castle and surrounding vicinity is forever cloaked in darkness. That is, until Leon killed it.
• Philosopher's Stone: It's important to the backstory. There are a couple of vampire-enhancing alchemic stones going around that were made during failed attempts to create it.
• Pimped-Out Dress
• Powered By a Forsaken Child: The Vampire Killer is made with Sara's tainted soul.
• Prequel: To the rest of the Castlevania games.
• Pretty in Mink: Mathias's big fur collar. Unf.
• Promoted to Unlockable: Joachim.
• Rewarding Vandalism
• Secret Character: Joachim Armster, the one time in the series you get to play as the villain. Leads to a Mirror Match in the dungeon where he's the boss.
  • A second secret character is Pumpkin, who appears to be a small child wearing a pumpkin-headed Halloween costume. While he uses Leon's moveset (to the point he is seeing pulling himself up ledges in the air; leon would touch them, but he is smaller...), he has different stats (making him more of a Glass Cannon), an unique subweapon that mixes and matches Leon's subweapon attacks and gets his own end credits sequence.
• Slouch of Villainy: Walter.
• Start of Darkness: Dracula's feud with the Belmonts.
• Stripperiffic: The Succubus.
• Taken for Granite: Medusa explains her motivations for once.
• Treacherous Advisor: Mathias.
• The Unfought: You never do get to face Mathias.
• Unwitting Pawn: Almost the entire cast, really. Walter's habitual games combined with Rinaldo's alchemy and Sara's sacrifice enable Leon's defeat of Walter, which allows Death to steal Walter's power and give it to Mathias, who then uses it to become the king of the night, Dracula. Oops.
• Wake Up Call Boss: The Elementals, especially the first one since you won't have the whip of the opposite element yet. While not incredibly difficult, the require more skill and a defensive style than the typical area boss.
• Whip It Good: The Whip of Alchemy which becomes the Vampire Killer by the end of the game.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Joachim Armister.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Not Leon.
  • Played with in Walter's case as well. Rinaldo says early on that he is bored with his immortality and plays his twisted games with mortals simply as a means to pass the time.
• With This Herring: Subverted. Once you get the Yellow Orb from the Succubus, the Dagger subweapon gets a nice power boost at a very reasonable cost.
  • Played straight though with Leon rushing into the demon-infested castle unarmed. (Good for him he ran into Rinaldo...)