Silverwood 2008-12-28

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

This game is everything I'd hoped it would be and more! If you loved the original Castlevania, then you'll love this even more! Same side-scrolling game play, same "talk to villagers" then buy items in the towns... monsters, level-ups, equip different weapons, find items, conquer areas (by killing its "boss"), it's great! 5 stars!!!

Evil Brian 2008-12-24

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

I've played every 2D Castlevania since SotN and this one, quite frankly, dissapoints. It has all the main trapping of a good typical Castlevania game (including Ayami Kojima's fantastic artwork), so I won't discuss it's finer points as everyone else here seemed to do that pretty well already.
- The glyph system is a new replacement system for weapons and as such is gimicky. There was nothing wrong with having weapons the character the character can pick up so why the need for Castlevania to reinvent itself. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

- As a guy, I don't want to play a female character. Bad enough we had veritably useless Charlotte in the last game.

- The glyph system is also a replacement for a spell system. Here it makes more sense. All the Castlevania's have had a spell system since Circle of the Moon though that one and Aria of Sorrow/Dawn of Sorrow did it the best. Here it's good but not great. Nothing revoluntionary.

- The levels are much smaller and much more broken up by having a combination of the map screen in Final Fantasy Advance/Tactics Ogre and the traditional maps that you navigate in the standard 2D view. There's many small levels here. Give me just one or 2 nice big levels to explore. Portrait of Ruin had a neat idea with the portraits that you could go in for mid-size levels. The overall level size here is smaller than previous games.

- The "magnetic-jumping" system is a blatant rip off of "Devil May Cry". This is just a gameplay gimick. I thought this was silly as Castlevania has never needed to copy some other game for a new gameplay dynamic. I didn't really enjoy using this at all. Give me some interesting powers instead like a short flight booster with vials I need to pick up for fuel or something like that instead of copying something from a well-known franchise.

Overall this is a decent game, and really, compared to many other games out there, it's much better, but this, folks, is Castlevania, and I have a higher level of expectation out of this team.

2/5 - Good effort but no cigar.

J. Viggiano 2008-12-20

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Much like a lot of people who have reviewed this game, I have played all the Castlevanias from the first one on. I found this game to be very limiting in the department of weapons/spells (in this game they are one and the same).

In the previous installments you had multiple different types of weapons to choose from in this game you get basic weapon type spell and then a "powerful" version of it, and that is pretty much it for the weapons. You also get assorted spells which I only found useful when perfoming the combo attacks.

I found the monsters were not properly scaled in that in some areas you could have a monster that is defeated easily, and then a group of monsters that you could thwack at for the better part of a minute and they would still be marching towards you (I am thinking of the grave digger specifically).

The sound track was a bit a lacking, I played a good chunk of the time with the sound turned low/off.

Some boss battles were absurd in the amount of damage that the boss could put out, and that in one of the battles (Goliath), the boss would bug if you strayed too far away from, and would basically one shot you with an attack.

For a hardcore gamer and fan of the series this is a decent addition, for a casual gamer who is looking for some mindless entertainment this might not be for you.

Pam Harmon 2008-12-16

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

This is a progressive game and very interesting. Have had to use the helps a few times but almost completed the game

Ggam Dizzle 2008-12-03

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

New to the Castlevania franchise, my first Castlevania game was on the DS.. Dawn of Sorrow. It was my favorite game for quite some time..

Portrait of Ruin followed, and I was somewhat disappointed. It's possible that it had in part to do with my extreme enthusiasm for Dawn of Sorrow that I felt that Portrait of Ruin fell short. I landed myself a nice 20th anniversary collector's edition though.

Fast forward to the present day. Order of Ecclesia was announced with much fanfare. I had hoped for an extravagant pre-order bonus in the likes of the Japanese release. We didn't get one, but what we did get was a beautifully animated, wonderfully difficult game that put its DS predecessors to difficulty shame.

The glyph system, a new feature in the Castlevania series, is a weapons/support system that the heroine Shanoa uses to gain features. Certain monsters leave behind glyphs when killed, certain statues retain glyphs when shattered, etc. They're scattered all throughout the game. Glyphs include rapiers, swords, blunt weapons, axes, bows, magic attacks, etc. There is a piece of equipment (I forgot what it was called) that allows the user to preset three sets of glyphs that the user can switch back and forth between using the L & R buttons. Up to three glyphs can be equipped: left arm, right arm, and support, activated by the R button.

At first, the controls seem clunky. Having to alternate buttons (X and Y) to use each weapon in each arm seemed awkward. Fighting became much easier when I realized that instead of alternating button hits, all I needed to do was to roll my thumb back and forth between the X and Y buttons to attack rapidly. This is, of course, limited by mana expenditure per attack.

These new features, new attack styles, new ways to obtain weapons and armor, etc. all have their counterbalances, which I believe makes the game difficult. Gaining gold is not easy, until much later in the game when a glyph is obtained that increases gold dropping. There is also an accessory equipment that raises gold drops. But it must be equipped as a glyph, in addition to the equipment that boosts the feature to maximum potential.

This leads to the age old dilemma in platformers: whether to grind it out for the things you need in stages you've already beat, or to find an even balance between gold increase, power stat increase, defense increase, and magic increase and to move through the game in linear fashion. Given the limitations of equipment, finding this sort balance makes beating the game without having to backtrack and grind rather difficult.

The experience curve is steep too. Constant playing and grinding netted me a whopping level 32! In which I still have difficult times beating bosses.

If you find the correct balance between glyphs to use for different bosses, different stat boosts for power ups, equipment that raise different stats, etc. the game would probably be a little easier. I didn't take the time to do that, so I blasted my way through the game using the strongest weapon I could find in every instance.

All in all, the game is hard, and in my opinion, it adds to the appeal of the game. Sometimes I forget to save because of the hassle of pressing Yes when I go to town to heal myself (yes, it's a hassle to me), and then I die, losing hours of gameplay. That frustrates me to a point where I would leave my DS sitting on my desk for days at a time without being touched. But I go back, because the game is deathly fun, and deathly hard.

I loved it.