The Art of Castlevania - Lords of Shadow (Lords of Shadow 2) Hardcover – Illustrated, 28 Feb. 2014

I will be straight up honest and say I haven't played any of the three Castlevania LOS games - I just have a real tendency to pick up art and design books that catch my eye, and this is definitely one of them; The Castlevania series has always had a real knack for more esoteric monster designs beyond the lead villain himself, and the fascinating thing here is that they both ground the designs slightly and still really run with them; The designs of the various Belmont characters are grounded in the eras they originate from, explained in the commentary running alongside the imagery, whereas the monster designs are all really exotic and wonderfully done. They really do a good job of explaining the intent and desire of the developers, including their influences; A number of people (including Jontron) accused them of ripping off Shadow of the Colossus with the design work for some of the more prominent enemies, but the commentary explains that the design and play style of those encounters was intention, making it more of a homage. Beyond this, the book comprehensively covers all three games, and as mentioned elsewhere, even includes the full map of a stage from Mirror of Fate, which really helps show the thought process and manner in which they figure out the level of challenge and layouts.It is a genuinely stunning art book. All the imagery is crisp and clear, and typically printed across a full page or across a double-page spread. I am a huge fan of this book and really want to play the games because of it - by contrast I was utterly disappointed with the Assassin's Creed IV art book by the same publisher. At the time of writing the book is £12.00 from Amazon themselves. Seriously - this is an absolute bargain for any fans of the games or anyone who loves great design work.

When I saw that Mercury released an artbook of the Castlevania universe I knew I had to own it - and it has not disappointed at all!Actually, when I ordered it I thought it only had art from Lords of Shadow 2, but turns out it got art from both Mirror of Faith and the first Lords of Shadow as well! If you're a fan of art and the Castlevania universe, this is a must-own!

In this volume we find dozens of prestigious artworks on the trilogy of Mercury Steam, the book is really superb, inside there are dozens of wonderful sketches and conceptual images. If you loved the art of Lords of Shadow, this book, can not escape it. I also bought the limited edition of this artbook. Excellent quality, binding etc.

Really great and exciting book. The layout of the art is really well planned and looks amazing on the pages. All the stuff inside is so nice and professional. I also like the comments (there is actually many of them <3 ), which are very interesting.

My son loves it

Fantastic for medieval/gothic landscape studies. As a picture book for fans, some area's of the game's excluded some enemy designs also missing.Overall a pretty awesome book for both collections and art studies.

Fantastic!

An excellent art book detailing nearly every aspect of the Lords of shadow series.