Against my better judgement will to save money, I went out and bought the new Castlevaina game last weekend. To say that my regret over the unnecessary loss of $40 has been absolved would be putting it lightly. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone without slaying a new incarnation of Dracula each year, and honestly, I know I would have broken down over the issue eventually. But it’s good! Better than ever maybe!
Okay, so maybe Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (ek-lee-sha) might not quite measure up to Aria of Sorrow, my personal favourite ‘Vania game, but it’s a lot better than the other DS iterations. And I’ve only played a couple hours! Separate, selectable stages are a refreshing change from one huge castle, and work better than Portrait of Ruin‘s levels-within-a-castle setup. Being able to hop to wherever you want in an instant is just a wee bit more convenient than having to make the trek to and from warp points. It also allows for a much broader range of stage types. Personally, I was getting a little bored with the same old main hall, clock tower, and underground cave thing with different art each year. Portait was a step in the right direction (and I’ll grant that it was a lazy step), and Order of Ecclesia takes it even farther with better results.
Order of Ecclesia‘s Glyph system is really neat too. It’s like an extension of Soma’s soul-sucking powers from Dawn of Sorrow. The heroine Shanoa can absorb glyphs from various sources (statues, defeated enemies, magic-wielding enemies, etc) and use them as weapons. In fact, they’re all she has for weapons. That’s right! You don’t collect a huge amount of swords, but rather are given a sword glyph that gets stronger as you use it. Same goes for other weapon types. You can equip one for each arm too, much like Alucard could in Symphony of the Night. Magic (offensive and defensive) is also equipped in these weapon slots, so you can keep one arm for physical attacks and one for magic, go berserk with spells on both, or whatever! There’s also a back glyph that gives all the oddball powers like magnetism and summoning. The catch is that every glyph eats up MP, so even if you’re just flinging knives all over the place, you’ll have to ease off once in a while to recharge. The good part is that MP regenerates real fast.
I guess after the last six 2D games in the series that it kind of goes without saying that this is a beautiful game. The spritework is just as detailed as ever, and animations are amazingly fluid. It’s not quite as smooth as say, Wario Land: Shake It!, but hey, let’s give credit where credit is due. Once again, the environments are a lot more varied than we’ve seen in a Castlevania game for a long time, and it looks like there are a lot fewer reused enemy sprites than usual. But then again, I haven’t exactly put two games side by side to make more accurate comparisons. So enough talk, look at the pretties!