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A lot of the appeal has to do with the gameplay. To say the least it's a lot more I suppose, active than a lot of other platformers. Even more so than the first person shooters that seem to dominate the market, or even a lot of third person action games, like Prince of Persia. Despite its nature as a two dimensional game, the requirements of fast button mashing, quick reflexes and timing to avoid harm and various obstacles are more essential to gameplay than in most three-dimensional games.
Generally you face off against various demons, monsters, undead, and a lot of them are unique or highly unusual. Some classics like zombies, golems, imps, ghosts, skeletons and animated suits of armour make their appearances throughout the series. Then there are the more unusual enemies, like the Peeping Eye, a floating eyeball with a tail, and the numerous variants of Skeleton, which range from the basic Skeleton which throws its own rib bones at you to Skelarangs, skeletons which wield and throw boomerangs at you.
While much of the enemies and characters are shown as sprites, they are nonetheless graphically appealing.
Plot-wise, most of them aren't bad, but they often get quite repetitive. Guy arrives at castle, blank blank blank, gets the Vampire Killer, a metal whip with the power to exorcise evil, and then goes to kill Dracula in some incarnation or another. But there's still some kind of hidden appeal behind a number of the games that makes people come back for more. A lot of the series concerns Dracula, the lord of darkness, and the Belmonts, a family of vampire hunters who thwart his attempts to plunge the world into shadow. This fight between light and dark carries on throughout the centuries, fought by different members of the Belmont clan, as well as various other personages.
The surroundings often involve some sort of castle. Some however, attempt to break away from the dreary castle surroundings, sometimes with success. The castle is a complex and labyrinthine mix of rooms and passages with various obstacles and enemies, and sometimes the sub-levels are so completely different from each other you wouldn't know that it is actually part of the castle. A lot of backtracking is usually required, as you may unlock some new ability that suddenly makes a previously-unaccessible area available, but thanks to a system of save locations which also replenish health and teleport waygates, you can easily travel around the castle once you find them.
The DS touch screen has opened up a lot of opportunity for entirely new and different games, though with the possible exception of Portrait of Ruin, the series has not really done anything with that.
The reviews of each individual game will be in order from most favourable to least favourable:
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Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
I really liked this one. Really Really Liked this one. Liked the characters, liked the surroundings, liked the enemies. Point is, I liked it. ALOT. If you are only getting one of the Castlevania titles for DS, this one is a must-have. In fact, if you're getting a DS, you have to get this game.
Order of Ecclesia takes place during the early 19th century, and involves a secret organization formed to combat the forces of darkness at a time when the Belmonts, whose traditional job was to fight Dracula, disappeared. The player's character is Shanoa, a female member of the organization who has the power to absorb and utilize various weapon runes to fight her enemies. Shanoa was intended to receive the Dominus rune, a rune powerful enough to defeat Dracula, but the ceremony was interrupted by another member of the organization, Albus, who stole the rune and fled, and Shanoa loses her memories and effectively her sense of self as a result.
One of the key features of this game is that it successfully breaks away from the castle and places you in new but nonetheless highly atmospheric environments suitable to the game. The enemies have been redesigned and toned down visually as well to reflect this change.
Plus compared to the other ones, its hard. Not absurdly hard, but challenging. No longer can you simply just go for the biggest, baddest and most powerful weapon available and proceed to smash your enemies to bits, but you have to make intelligent use of different weapon runes. Blunt weapons like hammers or maces are excellent for destroying skeleton monsters and armour-plated foes, but are next to useless against fleshier creatures or ghosts. The key to playing this more than the other games (in which these weapon/armour types were present but not as significant) is to switch between different sets of runes to fight different enemies, something that becomes much easier after acquiring the Rune Sleeve ability. Potions and various other items are a lot harder to obtain and seemingly, less effective, so you can't expect to pause and go chugging them down once your health hits 10 hp.
And plot-wise the game is actually pretty well done. How well? Go find out yourself. All I will say is that one of my most enjoyable moments playing the game was when reaching the final stage of one of the boss fights. I managed to reach the top of a tall stone tower, and an elevator. I got inside the elevator, with the boss just below me, and then activated the elevator. I very clearly heard Shanoa say "Go to Hell", and then the elevator dropped, crushing the boss to death at the bottom of the tower.
It's a bit short however, but still enjoyable. And did I mention hard?
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Portrait of Ruin has to be my second favourite of the DS Castlevanias.
In Portrait of Ruin, the Second World War had just ended, and the suffering of millions has allowed for another Dracula's castle to be created by a vampire named Brauner, who intends to absorb Dracula's power and take over the world. The player is actually two characters: Jonathan Morris, a descendant of the Belmont family and their martial traditions (though in spite of this, is unable to make use of their signature weapon), and Charlotte Aulin, Jonathan's friend and a spellcaster.
Scattered throughout the castle are various magical paintings by which Brauner controls the castle, and you must enter these paintings and then destroy the bosses inside. This allows you to cut away from the damp and dreary castle into varied environments such as an Egyptian tomb or a Victorian-era town.
While playing, you can actively switch between Jonathan or Charlotte depending on your situation or fancies. For day-by-day slugfests with the hordes of monsters that occupy the castle, Jonathan's martial prowess with various weapons is preferable, while Charlotte's spellcasting abilities are useful against bosses or for when you need that extra firepower. You can have both out at the same time, and the secondary character will be partially controlled by AI (or another DS if you link up with someone else).
The player can also make use of the stylus to control the AI character along with the character they're playing as at the moment, though this is EXTREMELY hard and I have yet to get the hang of it.
Some puzzles and various obstacles require the usage of the two characters, from jumping from a partner's shoulders to reach higher spots or to push heavy objects. Despite this, you can pretty much get through most of the game playing as one of them, but it feels so much more rewarding to play with both and switching between them. It may take some getting used to, but I eventually found that the controls are pretty fluid for this kind of play.
My only real problem with this is the retarded voice acting and the fact that they shout "JONATHAN!" or "CHARLOTTE!" each time I switched between them. Luckily I solved that simply by turning the voice volume down to 0. Ah, bliss.
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
The first Castlevania game to be released on the DS.
Dawn of Sorrow takes place in the year 2030..-ish (I'm not too clear on the details) sometime after the events of Aria of Sorrow, which was released for GBA. The main character is Soma Cruz, who is the reincarnation of Dracula. After being attacked by a priestess who seeks to awaken Dracula from within Soma, Soma heads to her castle (a reproduction of Dracula's own castle) to confront her about her plans to create a new Dracula.
The key feature to this game as well as its predecessor is Soma's ability of Soul Dominance. Soma is capable of absorbing the souls of his defeated foes and utilizing their abilities. He can also combine those souls into various weapons to transform them into much more powerful ones. A good hit with me is the wide variety of abilities that you have access to, and some of which lend a sort of richness to gameplay.
The biggest problem though, is that souls appear randomly, based on a factor of your character's Luck (which actually doesn't seem to affect anything that much). Some more powerful souls are nigh-on impossible to obtain, but they're still desirable because they're the only means by which you can gain more powerful weapons. The end result is that you practically wind up repeatedly grinding for certain souls you need, which then gets boring and repetitive. In fact, it got so frustrating that in the end, I just gave up on it.
Dawn of Sorrow actually is a really good game. But once again, gathering souls pissed me off that much. And then this is compounded by how the DS touch screen is employed. In every boss fight, once you bring them down to 0 health points, you have to draw a seal on the screen. If you fail to do so, they will revive once more with 50% health. Problem is, you have to do this fast, and without mistakes. The end result is that if you're unlucky, or unskilled, or you make a mistake, you may end up fighting a boss several times before you finally get it right. In my opinion, the seal-drawing is at best an unnecessary addition.
My verdict? My only real problems with this are the seal-drawing and the soul-grinding. The game is fun, but eventually as you go on it actually becomes tedious because of these latter two elements.
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And that's my review. If you don't have a DS, then go get one. That is all.
Edited by AllStarZ, 05 March 2009 - 23:26.
