Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

"Are these games getting progressively worse...?"

The Castlevania series has been around for a good two decades or so now, and like most series that have been around for that long, there are bound to be some evolutionary features thrown in to keep fans coming back for more. The earliest games were simple enough; You were a member of the Belmont clan. A family of Vampire-slayers who have vowed to take up the legendary holy whip when the evil Lord Dracula threatens to return to this world to wreak havoc, and command his minions to begin attacking the surrounding countryside. That said, these first games were fairly basic; slash at your enemies with the whip, while avoiding their attacks, and collecting powerups that would enhance your whip, or give you secondary alternate weapons to use. These games were MOSTLY linear (though there is some exception in Castlevania II and III but the ultimate goal was to find your way through each level, cutting all manner of dark foes down, and once more put Dracula in his place.

This would change in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Gone were the linear levels, and Whip-wielding Belmonts. The series was rebuilt from the ground up, borrowing elements like the map-based completion (similar to the Metroid series), collecting powerups and abilities similar to platforming games, and adopting the Level up and equipment systems most commonly found in RPGs. This new hybrid Castlevania was an instant hit, and to this day remains one of the most proclaimed games of all time.

Since then, Konami has attempted to recapture everything that made SotN such a prominent game with numerous other "Castleroids." Since Symphony of the Night we've seen three of these castleroids on the Gameboy Advance, and three more on the Nintendo DS, including this most recent installment, Order of Ecclesia. While the post SotN Castlevania games have certainly developed their own followings, and have attempted to add new features and game play elements, most feel that they simply have not captured the mood and feeling that was present in SotN. So, would Order of Ecclesia be able to shine above all the other Castleroids, and match the experience found in SotN? Well, read on...

Graphics - 10/10:

For 2D graphics on the DS, can we get any better than these? If anything in these Castlevania games keeps getting better, it is certainly the graphics. After playing Ecclesia, I went back to play a little bit of PoR and DoS, and noticed that the graphics look sharper, and just all-around more detailed. I think they're doing an increasingly better job at creating a darker, moodier atmosphere in each game. Going back and looking at past games, the character models tend to look less detailed, and in some of the other handhelds (such as parts of Harmony of Dissonance and Portrait of Ruin certain areas just looked too colorful and out-of-place, and the character sprites tended to look a little washed out and unrefined.

Enemy models and sprites are done pretty well also. You'll see a fair number of returning enemies that appeared in previous games, but not so many that it feels like they're ONLY using recycled sprites. Like previous games, there's a mix of 2D and 3D enemies. The 2D ones are quite fluid and animated very nicely. The 3D ones are interesting, and work pretty well for the most part, but in some cases their movements tend to be a little bit clunky, and almost robotic in nature. It would be nice if this was smoothed out at in some future installment, but it's not a particularly huge, detracting issue here.

Another interesting note is that Ecclesia tosses out the use of the "typical" anime style that DoS and PoR used for it's character designs and artwork. While I personally don't mind anime, I know there are those who do not prefer it. Even at that, the style of anime used in the previous two games was quite bland, and actually, quite generic. This game returns to a style that certainly creates more of that gothic, dark tone, and really sets the stage for the game. Really, it only makes sense that a game about Vampires, and monsters have dark artwork that draws you in, rather than colorful, cutesy character designs.

Areas also look very nice, and there are quite an abundance of them, too; Underwater areas, forests, ruins, buildings, and of course, Dracula's Castle. Each place is very nicely detailed, and easily distinguishable from another. In fact, I found that this version of Dracula's castle was one of the most organic-look, and intriguing designs for the castle to date. It's just a bit of a shame the castle itself wasn't a little bigger.

Overall, Ecclesia certainly doesn't disappoint in the graphics area. It takes everything you've come to expect from these games, visually, and somehow makes them even more detailed and interesting. It is certainly a step up from the recent past installments.

Story - 7/10:

Early Castlevania games didn't rely on much story beyond "Dracula has been revived. It is your duty to hunt him down and slay him" and then thrust you immediately into the first level. However, it does seem like more and more story has been inserted into the Castlevania games, since probably Rondo of Blood, and certainly since SotN. Since then, Konami has been attempting to establish an in-depth timeline regarding these games, and give back story and explanation to a lot of things such as the origin of Dracula, the origin of the Vampire Killer whip, as well as a period of time in which the Belmont clan seems to have mysteriously vanished, and how other groups and people have taken up the mantel to stop Dracula when and if he should ever return.

Ecclesia is one of the games that falls into that category. As a game opens, we are introduced to a woman by the name of Shanoa, who is a member of the game's titular group; The Order of Ecclesia. It seems that the Order is aware of the disappearance of the Belmonts, and have decided to step in for them and attempt to stop Dracula's oncoming revival. In the opening sequence, Shanoa has accepted the responsibility of absorbing the "Dominus glyph," which is apparently a key weapon in the battle against Dracula. She decides to do this much to the disapproval of Albus, another member of the Order, who seems to have some deeper connection to Shanoa. Hmm. Albus is also displeased and shocked at Shanoa having been chosen as the person who would receive Dominus, since the Order's leader, Barlowe, seems to have made a prior promise to Albus that he would be the wielder of the Glyph.

Shanoa and Barlowe begin the ceremony (which involves the Dominus glyph being inscribed into Shanoa's back) when an infuriated Albus enters, stealing Shanoa's power (how isn't exactly explained...) and memories, and running off. This leaves Shanoa powerless, and the quest begins with Barlowe sending her out to find Albus and ultimately, regaining her memories and the power of Dominus.

From there, the game becomes extremely linear, both in gameplay and story, and consists of you chasing Albus down, absorbing various glyphs to regain your powers. You also spend much of the game hunting down various villagers from a nearby town, their importance is only vaguely hinted at, but you as a player will probably piece together who they are, from the various tidbits of info, and meetings between Albus and Shanoa. The story flows in an extremely formulaic way, and much of what happens is ridiculously predictable. The better part of the game consists of you finding Albus in various places and returning to Barlowe on occasion to get a little more information on what's going on regarding Dracula and the Order. There are a lot of really typical Castlevania story elements in here, such as a misunderstood character, a priest/cult (or equivalent) who thinks the world would be better off WITH Dracula, and general betrayal, manipulation, and misleading going on all over the place. Really, it all ends up sort of being nonsense, mostly because these games never really needed story to begin with. Since they want to include story, they should make them at least somewhat interesting, and not just regurgitate the same plot elements in every game, which is what it feels like they're doing here. I was pretty unimpressed with the plot in this game, but then again things like that aren't all that important in games like these.

The final problem I really have is with Shanoa herself. People want a good female lead (something that's really needed in RPGs) but what we end up are characters like Shanoa. She suffers from "Lennith Valkyrie" syndrome, in that developers seem to think that when players ask for a "Strong, independent" lead female, that equates to "Cold, emotionless, empty husk" of a person. Shanoa has zero personality, and is less a "character" and more just an avatar that fights through the game. As I mentioned, at the beginning of the game, her memories and powers are stolen, but apparently this also causes one to lose the very essence of her humanity. At numerous points throughout the game, an event will occur and she'll say that she feels like she should be emotional, but she just forgot how to. Forgot how to cry? Forgot how to smile? It doesn't even make sense, really, and just makes her a boring, lifeless character whenever she interacts with anyone else.

Control - 9/10:

Control in these games has always been quite fluid, and pretty easy to get used to, and there's no exception here. At first the button layout felt a little awkward, mostly because some of the basic functions, like normal attacks have you alternate between multiple buttons, but it's easy to get used to with a little time. However, the game makes no use of the DS' touch-screen functions at all. It doesn't really matter though, since in the two previous games the touch-screen elements felt tacked on and/or completely unnecessary, so they're completely abolished here. The game does, however, make decent use of the dual screens, displaying things like maps and enemy information on the upper screen, while the actual game is displayed on the lower screen. This is nice, but really nothing new, since both of the previous DS Castlevanias did almost the exactly the same thing. It is a useful element, though.

Gameplay - 6/10:

I'll say it straight out; I had very little fun while playing this game. There are a number of things worth touching base on, so I'll try to divide them up fairly...

First off, each of these games since probably Aria of Sorrow has had some sort of "feature" in an attempt to make the gameplay somewhat unique and new. AoS and DoS both had the "soul" system, in which you defeated enemies and absorbed their souls to gain new attacks, abilities, and power-ups. PoR had two characters, and you controlled one and could summon the other to help you do things like move objects, jump higher, or aid you in combat. EoO has the glyph system. The premise of this is most like the soul system of AoS/DoS: By defeating enemies, occasionally a glyph will be left behind. By absorbing the glyph, you'll usually be able to use a new weapon, spell, or familiar. Of course, glyphs can be obtained in other ways, since as absorbing them while an enemy attempts to cast a spell, and some glyphs you can simply find in various places throughout the game by simply breaking certain statues.

Therein sort of lies the problem. Nearly all of your progress through the game relies on getting as many glyphs as possible. Everything in the game, from weapons, to abilities that allow you to advance in certain areas relies obtaining these. Granted, the game does have a few "relic" items, like previous Castlevania games (these were generally items you'd find that would unlock specials like the Double jump ability and whatnot) but it has just a fraction of those when compared to previous games. The game also has no weaponry at all. Swords, knives, spears, axes, etc are not things that you can equip, but rather they are all glyphs. The same thing applies to spells. And familiars. And stat boosting abilities. And many other things. So, what's the issue then? well, ALL glyphs depend on your MP. Doesn't matter if they're a basic weapon, or a high-level spell. You can "equip" two weapon glyphs to the 'X' and 'Y' buttons, and attack by alternating between the two. Each weapon has a MP value associated with it, and by pressing the button, you expend that much MP. In a sense, it makes the game a bit harder since you can't just button mash (or you can, but then you have to wait for your MP bar to refill, which it will do automatically with some time) but you can also find yourself running out of MP and pretty inconvenient times. Especially if you equip the more powerful weapons and spells.

The game doesn't use sub weapons (most of the items that were sub weapons in previous games, like knives and axes, have been promoted to actual weapon glyphs) but the standard "heart" system is present in OoE. Hearts are consumed in conjunction with the weapon glyphs in that, by either equipping the same glyph twice, or by equipping certain glyph combinations, you'll unleash a powerful special attack.

That said, the game (for the most part) is fairly difficult. As you'd expect, most bosses have certain patterns they attack in, and you can use these patterns to your advantage by knowing when to dodge, when to attack, and if an enemy exposes its weak point at any given time. However, most enemies also have weaknesses to certain weapon types. For example, an enemy may be strong against piercing weapons like lances, but may be weaker to, say, an axe weapon. Or, they maybe strong against weapons altogether, in which case you'll have to experiment around with the various types of magic. Bosses tend to do a great deal of damage--in some cases killing you off in just two or three hits--so it may take two, three, four or so times to learn their patterns, and figure out how to exploit their weaknesses properly. It can be a bit of a hassle, but at least it ups the challenge. Even some normal enemies can be dangerous, if you're not careful, or run into too many of them at once, and dying in a room full of common baddies isn't really out of the question...

The last big problem I have is basically the very layout of the game. Though this game is a "Castleroid," with map-based exploration, it does something fairly uncommon for these types of games. Whereas most of the post-SotN games has you simply exploring the inside of a giant castle (or two), OoE has you exploring the various areas surrounding Dracula's Castle, similar, oddly enough, to Castlevania II: Simon's Quest back on the NES. You explore various places such as mountains, forests, and underwater caves, and eventually make your way to the Drac's castle. In theory, this all sounds great until you realize that all the places are very, very tiny, with the exception of the castle. One of my problems with PoR is that most of the areas were pretty small, but still not nearly this small. In fact, a couple of areas are just basically a straight corridor of maybe a dozen rooms. That's it. That's the whole area, which leads you to wonder; What's the point? Couldn't those extra rooms have just been added to another area to make it bigger? I understand that they're going for variety of appearance and areas here, but some of these areas are just pointless, and serve virtually no purpose.

In fact, you're actually required to go through each and every area to unlock the next area, and there's very little reason to return to a previous area more than maybe once. That's what makes the game so linear, is that that there are no diversions at all. There are two hidden areas, but they hardly count, since you don't unlock them until virtually the end of the game, and they're more like puzzles or minigames than actual areas (although they do count toward the overall game completion percentage). There are also almost no breakable walls, and very few hidden rooms and areas within each larger area (how can there be? They're already so small to begin with). That's kind of the draw with these map-based Castlevania games. The ability to find a secret room or area on accident. Past games had breakable walls, ceilings, floors, platforms, etc which lead to all sorts of secrets. This game has a couple breakable walls, which might lead to a health powerup, or an accessory. It just feels like the focus of this game seems to be lost somewhere. There are actually little RPG-like sidequests you can do for the various villagers in the town, but these amount to little more than fetch quests, and basically just have you finding an item or something, and your reward is usually a little bit of money, or new items in the shop, or something. What the game needed was to have all of the smaller areas add up to 100% and the Castle be 100% on its own, since it was the most interesting area in the game, but felt like it was cut short.

The game as a whole is just very underwhelming, and restricting (exploration wise), and it really feels like the last couple Castlevania titles have been done in a hurry, just to get them pushed out.

Music - 8/10:

The music in Ecclesia does a decent job to set the mood and atmosphere, much like the graphics do. However, I didn't feel like the music itself was particularly memorable. Then again, I really haven't since maybe DoS. It certainly isn't bad by any means, and fits the areas fairly well.

Replay - 8/10:

The game does have a considerable amount of replay, although none of the modes are really all that exciting, and most of the stuff included are pretty much "standard" in these games by this time. Once you finish the game, you'll unlock hard mode, which allows you to play through the game again, except it's...harder, obviously. There's the standard "secret" character mode, but by the way these games play out, it's fairly obvious as who the secret character is. You can set level caps, do boss rush mode, sell and trade items over WiFi, and unlock the music tracks. As you can see, there is a pretty fair amount to do, but like the past Castlevania games, it's the same game as the first time you played it, just either a little harder, or with a different character...

Overall - 7/10

Initially, I was going to give this game a 6/10, but the last third of the game or so got a lot more interesting, just because it was so much bigger. I think that's the reason why I don't really care for these games that are giving us a bunch of tiny areas; I don't want to be led to my destination, and know where the definite ending to each area is. As nice as the variety of areas are, I want to be lost in one enormous castle, and not know what's behind each new door. Could it be a power up? A new area? Or a boss? Other Castlevania games have been just a giant castle, but still achieved a good variety by giving us water areas, and graveyards, and buildings and whatnot, so even though this Ecclesia gives us several different areas, but it is the same thing we've seen before, just in a disjointed way. The game leaves little interpretation to the player, and you're often led around through straight-pathed areas, and a story that fumbles around a little for also being too linear and overused. The glyph system has some interesting quirks, with both add and detract from the way battle plays out, but I find it does more adding than anything else. All in all, it's a sold game, but it just feels like the Castlevania series isn't really moving ahead at all. It's kind of been sputtering since maybe DoS, but if you liked the two previous games, and are a fan of these, it's probably worth it to check it out. If you're a casual gamer, or if this would be your fist Castlevania game, I suggest you look to a previous installment before hitting this one.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/14/08

Game Release: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (US, 10/21/08)