Vital Stats

Genre: Platformer
Players: 1
Online: Item trade

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
ESRB Rating: T
Release Date: 10/21/08

Platforms

• DS

The latest in a long stream of Symphony of the Night clones, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia transplants the core gameplay tenets of that venerable PS1 game without rocking the boat too hard. Unfortunately, the sense of place that used to reward exploration gameplay has been replaced with a more homogeneous world, so there isn’t as much to see, even if there is plenty to do.

What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse
Castlevania has been around since the NES era, and although it enjoyed substantial popularity over the years, it wasn’t until the 1997 Symphony of the Night that it became a breakout hit. The 2D side-scrolling platformer was most notable for mixing exploration with character growth by impeding your progress with high walls, iron grates, and other obstacles until you hunted down an artifact that allowed you to circumnavigate the problem (double-jumping, mist transformation, etc). Of course, the necessary artifact was inevitably hidden in the scenic bowels of Dracula’s castle, usually behind a truly epic boss fight. Symphony of the Night‘s implementation of tired lock-and-key gameplay as a cycle of spectacle and empowerment was so much fun that gamers granted it partial credit in the platforming subgenre called Metroidvania.

At the time, Symphony of the Night was hailed by many as the swan song of 2D gaming. 3D was in vogue, and the next (ill-advised) game for the franchise was slated to add that extra dimension. What the doubtful didn’t count on was the migration to handhelds and the half dozen Castlevania games that would try to recapture that magic on the small screen. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is heir to that line, and is bound to it.

Konami has mostly dispatched with the Belmont clan this time around and instead opted to focus on an organization that picks up the slack in their absence. The so called Order of Ecclesia makes up for their lack of holy vampire-slaying whips by using glyphs, magic symbols that allow the user to conjure weapons and spells. This run of the mill clandestine organization is home to Shanoa, an amnesic orphan who will fight to the death to see the order’s will done, even though her memories are lost shortly before the game begins. It’s a cliché smorgasbord; try to look surprised by the inevitable plot twist.

Transylvania, Wallachia, Whatever
Forget all that, though–Castlevania’s rich storytelling has never exactly trumped its atmospheric world and exploration-driven platforming. The world is broken up into a series of disconnected stages, each accessible from a world map. This isn’t typical for the series, but it cuts down on backtracking and fits the bite-sized gameplay of the portable format better.

More importantly, the disconnected stages seem to have allowed the series to reclaim some of its sense of place. Series veterans may recall that the last series game, Portrait of Ruin, was most widely criticized for its bland, repetitive environments. Order of Ecclesia isn’t up to the standards of Symphony of the Night, or even Dawn of Sorrow and there’s still plenty of cut-and-paste level design, but each stage feels more like a location than an empty vessel for enemies and items. It helps that stages like the prison island and sunken pirate ship aren’t just series staples, but the change is more ubiquetous than a handful of gimmick levels.

The downside is that the disconnected level structure is outright incompatible with Metroidvania-style exploration. Instead of learning to navigate through a continuous world and revisiting obstacles to overcome them as you grow, you’re instead shuttled from one linear stage to another. Even Dracula’s castle, the largest and most substantial level in the game, is broken down into a series of teleport-points with only a handful of branching paths among them. Konami has made a good faith effort to seed items and obstacles throughout the levels to reward backtracking players as their characters grow, but the mostly simplistic level designs just serve to cast what should be hidden goodies as pointless bloat.

Speaking of bloat, the RPG elements in this installment have been expanded to include sidequests. One of the game’s stages is a town populated exclusively by needy citizens who think you have nothing better to do than kill x of y and farm random drops. These sidequests are fortunately optional, but completing them yields some of the better items and equipment in the game.

Vampire Killer
The level design may be a bit on the tepid side, but the action as you progress is not. The glyph system in Order of Ecclesia replaces traditional inventory for weapon and magic management. Shanoa can equip one glyph on each hand, and activating it with a button press conjures a weapon or spell effect. Many of these glyphs simply emulate the melee weapons and items you’d see in any Castlevania game, but the glyph system changes traditional combat in two fundamental ways.

The first is diversity. Weapon and magic glyphs occupy the same slots, so you’re free to mix and match whatever suits you at the moment. In principle, this means that you can enjoy the speedy short-range of a rapier without sacrificing the ranged heavy artillery offered by magic. It’s not quite that flexible in practice (attacking by alternating hands is faster than attacking with just one, so mismatching glyph speed comes at a cost), but an early game item that lets Shanoa switch among three sets of equipped glyphs keeps the action labile.

The second is strategic depth. Glyphs are intrinsically magical, and they deplete Shanoa’s magic meter every time they’re activated. That means regardless of whether you swing a sword or cast a fireball, everything taps the same limited resource. Shanoa’s magic replenishes rapidly after a half-second lull, so you’re never without offensive options. However, you’ll have to carefully pick when to unleash an unending tide of death so you’re not caught unarmed when you need it.

You’ll need it too, because this game is hard. Enemies deal substantial damage, and several bosses will kill you in 4-8 hits. Fortunately, even though fighting is difficult, it’s worthwhile to see the excellent enemy designs. Many familiar enemies from the Castlevania series return, remixed in difficulty for that moment of surprise when you can’t drop a skeleton in one hit, but the real stars are the newcomers. Many of the new bosses and enemies are enormous, multipart monsters that animate like paper dolls. Most dominate the screen, forcing you to work around them as you try to tear them down. Unlike prior Castlevania games, Order of Ecclesia reaches past movie monsters and into more traditional mythology as with the rusalka, as well as more novel creatures. These epic battles are definitely the highlight of the game.

The enemies aren’t the only novelty in the game, however, as the soundtrack has almost completely severed ties with the rest of the series. It retains much of the same mix of gothic, techno, and rock as other series games, but is completely fresh. Diehard fans of the Castlevana themes needn’t worry, as they can obtain records throughout the game that can substitute chiptunes of the more ubiquetous melodies for the background music. It’s an an extremely accessible way to let the player control the soundtrack, and it’s a pity it’s not available in more games.

What is a Man? A Miserable Pile of Secrets!
The Castlevania series has been victimized by the success of Symphony of the Night, and the series DS successors have been little more than progressively paler imitations. However, Order of Ecclesia undoes some of that atrophy through impressive enemy design and some slight, but fundamental gameplay tweaks. It’s unlikely to turn your head if you’ve tired of Symphony rehashes, but it’s a competent platformer with good music. It’s the perfect game to span the doldrums when nothing exciting is out.

What It Costs: $28

What It’s Worth:
•To The Hardcore: $25 (play)
•To The Genre Fan: $25 (buy)
•To The Casual: $0 (skip)