Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD
20 Achievements
12-15h
Quick as lightning
Finish the game under 3 h. 30 min.
2.3%
How to unlock the Quick as lightning achievement in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD - Definitive Guide
It seems to me that if you hit the start button and sit in the game's menu, the clock STILL ticks!!
I had to go AFK for a bit so I hit the start button and parked on the in game menu, figuring that the clock would stop since I was not "playing" the game. Needless to say that this is NOT the case. I went AFK for about an hour and then finished up the game. To my surprise I didn't get the cheevo at the end of the credits. I looked at my final time and saw that it was 3:36:47. I knew for a fact that I finished the game around 2.5 hours.
IF you need to go AFK for any amount of time, just quit out to the main menu. The game saves an incredible amount of times (not on Hardcore) so you won't miss much, if anything by going to the main menu.
Please learn from my mistakes and current understanding of this finicky cheevo.
MISSABLE
You should attempt this on your second playthrough of the game. You keep your level and non-story upgrades from the first run, which should help out tremendously, and you'll also be familiar with the layout of the game. To improve your speed, any time you aren't forced to battle you should run from enemies. You can also press twice to skip cutscenes. You can check your current time when you are selecting your profile after loading the game.
For the most part the game is linear so quickly pushing forward is optimal, however, there are two times the game forces you to backtrack. In Simon's campaign when you reach the teleporters, use the left one. This will take you to the area with the orange ghost. Once you get the ghost, push forward until you find another teleporter. In Alucard's campaign as soon as you get the demon wings, go back until you reach a teleporter. This will take you to the theatre. Go back one more area to the kitchen, where you'll find a blood orb in the same room you obtained the mist power. Go back and use the teleporter then continue towards your objective.
Note: Dying and restarting from a checkpoint will continue the counter on the timer. If you find that you have failed a section many times, consider exiting and re-entering the game to reset your timer to where it was when you first started a checkpoint. This is very important if you are attempting this on a Hardcore playthrough, which has a lot of time between checkpoints.