Wii-Tards.net : We Never Finish Anyth

Castlevania: Order of the Ecclesia on the Nintendo DS is to date the latest game in the series of platform games which contain RPG elements. Once more it’s easy to compare to the earlier outings like Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, but to the game’s credit it tries to be different and or remix known formulas…

The plot of course involves Dracula but there’s no Belmont or anyone related in this one (I think it’s around the time where Richter went loco or something so there’s no-one to fight Drac.) You’re this cool battle maiden called Shanoa and is chosen by your Order (Of Ecclesia) to be “The blade to banish all evil” to destroy Dracula once and for all. Of course, everything goes wrong as a rival member of the order called Albus feels dissed since he was promised to be the chosen one and disturbs the ritual where Shanoa would absorb an entity into the rad magic tattoo on her back and get control over [Dominus], the power to vanquish evil! Oh and Dracula too.

Shanoa goes bleh and loses her memory while Albus gets all crybaby about being 2nd place and robs all of [Dominus]‘s glyphs and runs off. A fetch quest begins that spans all over the countryside. The story is really nice as it’s separate from anything Belmont and yer playing a girl this time, too! …a girl who loses her memory and has no personality whatsoever until right before the end of the game. Thanks IGA. You really hate women doncha? (Bring Sonia Belmont back you misogynist bastard!) ….. Sorry. The other supporting characters do their thing and there’s a whole slew of people to rescue too, which is a variation on the Quest system. Some of em have  really crazy dialog, which kinda bothers Shanoa too, funnily enough.

Shanoa tests out her Allure glyph on this old guy.

The games artwork ditches the anime catch-all style for instance, choosing a bit more of a traditional style while not going overboard with the feminine style of Ayami Kojima from Symphony of the Night-fame. I was really surprised with this as it really sets the game separate from the others. The sprite set is a little too familiar though, even with the new fresh band of bosses which  are pretty impressive to fight. The backgrounds are even blander this time though, and kind of nonsensical. In the earlier games the backgrounds usually are cohesive and really mesh well together with the rooms, so that’s kind of a disappointment, since the art is pretty okay, and some areas really stand out like walking over shipwrecks to cross a goddamn ocean, and the 3D waves look really pretty. The DS’ power is oddly being under used in alot of places.

The music seems to be totally new for the most part, and is quite high quality and listenable. The mansion background music is pretty awesome. If yer a silly purist and want some traditional castlevania songs, Konami has a little gem for you. Either bought or dropped as a rare items, old records can be found which can be played at anytime during gameplay. 8-bit renditions of your favorite classic castlevania tunes! Voicework is quite decent, with a fully voiced introduction and your usual grunts, reactions and quick quotes from your characters. Both are now available in English and Japanese right in the option menu, so no silly secret code this time.

The game has the usual elements like your life/magic bar and the heart counter which used to power up sub-weapons. The combat system has yet another overhaul, and although it’s once more random drop collecting from monsters, yet using them in the game is totally another thing. Basically by absorbing enemy glyphs into your back, you will gain that ability, like getting a spear from a Spearman or a magic fireball from a ghost. So far so good, until you find out you have two separate attack buttons. Each can be assigned a soul, so the combination are quite out there. You can time the attacks in a certain rhythm so you can combo a knife and a sword quite smoothly after each other, for instance, but these drain your magic meter which makes a return as well.

Wow, we had that since Symphony of the Night! I hear in the distance. Well wait, there’s more. You can combine two attacks into one super-attack! Of course, not EVERY weapon combination will get you a new attack, which is indicated by a meh-kind of blast attack. When you do get the combination right, though, you get wacky attacks like huge scythes, hammers and screen filling swords.  One of the fun things to do in the game is to see what ridiculous attack you can produce. My favorite combo is a rapier and the laser beam. BAM, Laser Sword outta nowhere.
Sadly, these attacks uses hearts, and the amounts vary of course how devastating the attack is.

Here Shanoa nonchalantly shows her new
’100 Swords out of Armpits’ ability.

There’s a second use for the glyph system which varies alot, similar to the yellow souls in Dawn of Sorrow. By holding or pressing the R button, they can give you healing regen, magnetic slingshotting you around, give you an experience/money boost or speed you up greatly. This slingshotting you around the place is a new gimmick and a weird one at that, required to get you through the game in certain parts.

Another change that’s quite apparent is the location system. Introduced in Portrait of Ruins, locations are now separate from each other, but this time there’s no hub system. You can directly select your next location from a map screen.  You have yer swamp, Mansion, Cave and prison and whatnot, they’re all quite short and contained, but still requires backtracking to them. This gets kind of annoying as you have to switch maps to see which areas are yet unvisited whenever you get a new progressive ability.

Portrait of Ruins was noticeably harder then it’s predecessors, but Ecclesia really kicks things up a notch, as you will curse at certain bosses for being a bit too hard-ass. Seasoned players might even get worked up at the difficulty curves at certain points. While leveling properly is assured, grinding won’t help you out too much. Enemies are usually your standard fodder, but the specialized enemies like Spearmen and (Theme) Armors can ruin your day. Area hazards like guillotines and iron maidens (really) also play a bigger role now, which cut quite a bit off health points off you and pretty much bounce you into instakill if you’re not too careful. But the main frustrations are reserved for several of the bosses, which have quite extensive patterns and methods of killing you off quickly. The first one which is a Giant Enemy Crab will really set you up for the rest of the bosses as it’s quite a hurdle in the beginning to overcome. Abusing the Glyph combo system can get you a bit ahead, but not by much, so prepare some potions.

Stupid enemy names are nothing new in Castlevania.
Frisky Skeleton is a fresh entry in this list though.

Since weapons are decided by your glyphs, equips are now only reserved to protective gear and enchanted equipments like speed boots and such. Nothing much different here, but the way to get the best ones is a change:The Quest system introduced in Portrait of Ruins is still in this game, but now quests are opened up by rescuing these villagers from their peril. On the map there’s this abandoned village which you can fill with these villagers you save, and each has a quest for you to solve for em. This explains the weird drops and unique events in the game, like collecting yarn and grabbing a kitty from somewhere random. Doing these quests are usually fun and easy, but there are some true bastards in there (some drops are as bad as MMO drops) They of course give you amazing rewards and are worth your time in the long run.

Finishing the game gives you a few new options like a New Game+ which is nice and still has the level-cap options.  Choose Max Level 1 on hard if you really hate yourself.  The usual Boss Rush appears too with all those lovable bosses to go trough, yay. Another nice bonus is unlocking Albus to use in the game. Yeah, that emo dude from the main story, which is awesome because he HAS A GUN. A magic gun too. His version of the game is just like any extra character in a Castlevania game, a straight romp trough the levels with no stories tied to it. He has alot of strange abilities that are useful one way or another, like huge magic bullets and freezing stones. The funnest to abuse is the warping ability tho. While it takes a large chunk of magic, this lets you use the touch screen on the DS to place Albus wherever you want. Well, shift him wherever you want him to. Expert use of this lets Albus dash throughout the level with the speed of stupid. After all that, there’s still the Wireless modes, where the Shop mode makes a return for you vampire slaying capatalists out there. This can be done either over local wireless or internet. New is the two player race mode. While in Portrait of Ruin had a rudimentary coop mode, Race mode pits you against another player to reach the finish. There are several stages for this which is neat, but still kinda barebones.

For a seasoned vet of the series like me, the genre is really showing it’s age, and while I enjoyed this game alot with it’s crazy weapon system, the hard difficulty and awesome bosses, apart from the new changes there’s no real surprises. Apart from Shanoa being an (initially and ultimately) interesting character and the game having a weird shade of Simon’s Quest (Shanoa’s dialog before entering Drac’s castle is uber camp and I love it) it’s still platform romping and leveling up which I don’t mind, but this might bother other veterans looking for something completely new. This game is a great entry point though for any newblood Castlevania fans, altho the difficulty might test them.

One of the evil bosses Shanoa has to fight.
This one happens to be REALLY evil.

If you can look over the flaws of having stale leveldesign and threading no true new ground, you’ll probably blindly get this game anyway, you zombie. The game is pretty much the genre chipped to perfection, and could be said to be one of the best games the DS can offer.

This game gets a rating of  Yelling Albusses.