I didn't see a Castlevania thread here so I decided to make one for everything about Castlevania. This is easily one of the best franchises in gaming. Right now I am playing Order of Ecclesia, below are my impressions:

am about 8 hours in and loving every second of it. The varied locations work so well, it gives the game a sort of Simon's Quest vibe without the suckiness. The glyph system works very well, it allows you to really customize your character and make it so magic can be treated the same as a normal physical attack, normally you have your weapon and magic is secondary, they kind of evened it all out. Its also not as overwhelming as some of the other systems that have so many spells or weapons that so many end up as useless, here you have your 10 basic types of attacks/spells and you find updated versions as you play so you hardly find something thats useless. I really like the third slot, which alows for special skills like summoning familiars, stat buffers, or even transforming you into an enemy character. The best one is this bubble that lets you grab onto certain points and slingshot, it comes into play on some boss fights which makes the battle so much better.

Yeah its taking elements of all the past CV games like this but what is setting this one apart from the rest, aside from the outside the castle game world, is how fined tuned everything feels. They took how many years of this formula and refined it so you are only getting the best aspects of the gameplay. The difficulty is perfectly set as well, its hard as hell when it should be, it rewards leveling up noticably, using the right type of attack has a dramatic effect. Its a game where playing strategically makes all the difference and in some past CVs it felt like you could just plow through the game with a few powerful attacks.

Not to mention it has side quests form villagers, again its been done before but this game does it right. There are some neat quests like taking a picture of a rare monster. Each villager has specific rewards like one gives health items, one gives armor, etc. My favorite is a dude that gives you classic CV1 music that you can play at any time!  The bosses in the game have been so well done.

I guess the only complaints I have is that the game is kind of linear. Yeah you can choose where to go but you always progress from one location to the next. It elminates backtracking which is fine but at the same time it doesn't allow for that feeling of exploring, of not knowing which direction to go next, of discovering an area you are not ready for. Maybe this all changes when I get to castlevania but so far its been small areas divided into sections.

Other than that, love it, I think its surpassed Dawn of Sorrow as my favorite handheld CV game.

And since we have a thread for it let me express my extreme and utter disappointment for that god awful Castlevania Judgement.  I knew it was getting bad reviews but I still felt I needed to try it. Even if it wasn't a great game surely there was something good about it.

Nope.  Nothing.

Not a god damned thing.

Controls were freaking non-existant.  Stories for characters were horrid.  Levels were usually pretty bland with an exception here and there.  Voices were bad.  Christ. . .  Grant's voice work was right on par with Richter from SotN.  

Really I can't say enough bad things about the game.  Normally even if I find a game that sucks to high heaven I still won't tell people to skip if they just want to try it.  Just rent it.  But not this.  Don't even borrow it from some poor soul unfortunate enough to have picked up a copy.  It's time you will never get back.  

darthhomer said:

Foolz said:

I've never played a Castlevania game. Don't kill me.

Your punishment is to go play one.

Play one illegally if you must.

Sounds like a good description

travo said:

Is DoS the first GBA CV game?  That game was so good.

No that is the first DS game.

I am in Dracula's Castle, keeps getting better. I found an exit that lead to two new areas which are like challange arenas, freaking awesome.