This release just shadow dropped out of nowhere this is great cause now you don't need a ds to play these castlevania.
This is available for steam,switch,PS5 and xbox-series x.
Castlevania Dominus Collection
This release just shadow dropped out of nowhere this is great cause now you don't need a ds to play these castlevania.
This is available for steam,switch,PS5 and xbox-series x.
I already have all the DS games, but I'm excited about it having a remake of Haunted Castle. Though, I'm disappointed this one isn't on PS4, when the previous Castlevania collections had been. I guess that's just the direction things are going now, but it stings knowing that the Switch is weaker than the PS4, so there's no reason why it couldn't be on PS4.
Who knows why no PS4,it wouldn't take much to emulate those games for the console.I all ready have a PS5 and Switch for this generation so i got two ways to play to the collection.I passed on DS for the time since i lost interest for portables to me i didn't find playing video games on a small screen comfortable anymore.I will buy the castlevania dominus collection asap since i all ways hear praise for castlevania order of ecclesia.Originally Posted by Aussie2B
Also this didn't take long LRG will be doing a physical release.
https://limitedrungames.com/collecti...nus-collection
Last edited by Tron 2.0; 09-14-2024 at 03:45 AM.
The new Haunted Castle sure is a nice entry, maybe not worth the price of admission alone but it's definitely up there. I prefer a more linear Castlevania. There's been the Bloodstained spinoffs along with some similar 8-bit style linear games, but never a 16-bit or arcade one.
At the end of the day it might not actually be better than Rebirth but it definitely looks better.
I preferred Ecclesia over the other two entries for the same reason. IMO it's quite a bit more linear than those, with the map broke up in separate specific stages rather than one big gigantic castle to memorize. I wasn't sure how far I got in it so to refresh my memory I dug my DS out. I vaguely recall I had gotten to a point where I got a bad ending because I didn't rescue all the villagers. I didn't actually get into playing it but it shows me at slightly above 55% completion with 8+ hours played.
The last save file was also dated 2008. No wonder I barely remember anything about it because it was 16 friggin' years ago. Nothing like looking at old save file dates to make you feel old as dirt and contemplate your mortality.
Last edited by Az; 09-04-2024 at 03:14 AM.
Yeah no kidding...I fired up Pokemon Ranch the other day and it said: "We haven't seen you for 12 years" or something.
On the topic of this - how do they emulate the touch-screen aspect of these? With a mouse? If I recall you had to use the stylus to do things like draw seals and whatnot (for Order of Ecclesia); not sure if the others had much more than a mini-map.
You are startled by a grim snarl. Before you, you see 1 Red dragon. Will your stalwart band choose to (F)ight or (R)un?
On Xbox/PS, there's a cursor that will appear onscreen with R2 and you can draw with the right analog stick. If you prefer not to do that you can just do a QTE button combo instead.
From my understanding the Switch version in handheld mode still supports the same touch screen actions. Not sure what PC does.
PS5 version can also use the touch pad as well from what I've heard. I haven't played it yet since I'm going to purchase the physical release. Atleast this one we didn't have to wait over a year for the LRG version to be announced, so I'll get to play it only four months late.
As much as I hate so much of what's being made for modern gaming, and I am super hyped about replaying these games despite already owning them on the DS, this generation of games is the worst. The amount of remasters we've received just this past year is staggering. I'm not 100% certain, but I have a good feeling that the ninth generation of games has had more remasters than every generation of games combined, at the very least it's got the most remasters out of every single generation and it's fucking ridiculous. The fact that there's so few good or great games on modern consoles that you can't play elsewhere that we're regularly hyped up about playing decade or several decade old ports instead of any of the garbage that releases now days is fucking ridiculous.
I'm glad we got Tactics Ogre Reborn, Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion, SaGa Frontier, and Theatrhythm Final Bar Line because these are actual remakes, or at least in the case of SaGa Frontier, the game was actuallly finished. Tactics Ogre Reborn imo is the first 10/10 game I've played in a long time, literally perfecting the original Tactics Ogre and what is debatably the best TRPG of all time, it's worse than Brigandine Grand Edition and The Legend of Forsena but I would say it is better than everything else. Crisis Core has more modern PS2 like action gameplay that feels incredible to play, a game where the single player is already great(with a rough story) but the mission mode as bad as it might sound with 300 different missions that have you go through the same areas, new enemies, new items, 80-90% of the accessories and materia are locked behind this really good bit of extra content.
tl;dr, while I'm super hyped about these games as I love the Castlevania games and I really want to like Order of Ecclesia a lot more than I did when I've played and replayed the game on the DS and 3DS. The game feels so much like exploring a world like Castlevania 2, except the trial and error bosses and just how linear the game was just something I couldn't get past. However, the thing I hate about modern gaming is that when it comes to new games, whether it's AAA, indie, whatever, is that there are so many mechanics that are often used to pad everything out. If it's not aimless open world, it's procedural generation, if it's an indie game and it's a more explorable world, it's often times padded out to hell whether they add dying as a means to grow more powerful, or dying and losing everything you have on you or partially what you have on you, or massive text dumps that you read for 20-30 minutes before moving on, etc. You hardly play a game now days, indie or otherwise without spending an hour of bullshit just to get out of the tutorial and if you were to skip all of that you'd only see about a few minutes worth of content.
So I'm pretty hopeful that finishing them again now, it'll finally click and I'll really like them because they're not everything I hate about modern gaming, they're actually games I prefer to play, game styles that I enjoy. I watched a review that explained that the linearity of Order of Ecclesia is basically removing all of the back tracking to take away all of the time wasted by having to go back and forth between all these different areas, essentially fixing what they felt was an issue in SotN, CotM, HoD, AoS, etc, which I do agree with CotM and HoD that the map layout causes a lot of timed wasted during back tracking, but I felt that SotN, AoS, and DoS did fairly well not requiring you to constantly waste so much time outside of new areas. I've played through HoD just as many times as I have any others and the amount of travel time and the amount of dashing back and forth through these areas despite using the best route possible, it takes so damn long. So based on the review what stated about the linearity, I actually never thought about it like that, so not only am I playing more classic style game development, but also playing the game in a way that I never actually thought about as being a reason for the change, all I thought was, less exploration and these games are just way too linear for their genre.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
Y'know, I've never really touched any of the handheld Castlevania games. I think I played a bit of one probably a good 11 years ago but I'll be dipped to remember which one and if it was on GBA or DS. I've read about the DS games and I know at least one of them had touch screen controls, which was a turn off for me then. Years later I can tolerate it (I do enjoy "Metroid Prime; Hunters", hand cramps not withstanding and I did like "LoZ: Spirit Tracks" until it got stupid for me) but the 'Vanias never came back on my radar.
@kupomogli: I think modern games are being sold as "experiences" more so than "games". Open world, crafting, grinding (or paying) to get virtual clothes for your avatar and of course online play really is a huge draw for the average gamer these days, it's mind boggling. My 22-year-old stepson gets a thrill from grinding for items in "Identity 5" (I think it's called). He'll schedule himself for special events to get the virtual tchotchkes and will gloat about it with his siblings. That and "Ghenshin Impact" (at least for a time) were his peanut butter and jelly. As for my other kids: they have access to a Nintendo Switch and a healthy supply of games of various genres AND can (and have) checked out games from the library. For those limited time games from the library you'd think they'd play the snot out of it, right? Nope-most of the allowed game time gets funneled into certain games in Roblox. They can spend a HUGE chunk of time in a game that just has.....dancing.
I dunno, like the song says "times they are a-changing". It's still video entertainment however you slice it but it's definitely turning into virtual toy boxes more so than the games we're used to.
@YoshiM Yeah, my two cousin's kids all play Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft. Whenever they get money it goes into those games and this is what they've all been playing for years. You'd think they'd get burnt out on the games.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
The handheld Castlevania games are the true successors to Symphony of the Night - much moreso than all those PS2 games that got released. All six of these games are at least decent, if not great. If I had to rank them:
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow +
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (these two go together - the DS is obviously more refined but they're the same formula and they're awesome)
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (the last by a long shot - it's really a rough game...something about none of the Circle of the Moon staff worked on this so it seems more primitive)
Absolutely worth a play - it's amazing that Steam has all of this now. I have them all in original format so have not purchased, but if anyone doesn't this is a great way to get them now - it's a great price for a set of great games.
You are startled by a grim snarl. Before you, you see 1 Red dragon. Will your stalwart band choose to (F)ight or (R)un?
Is Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance really the worst game of that lot? It's actually the only game from that list I played, I do own some of the other games mentioned but I haven't played them yet. I forget how far I got in Harmony of Dissonance but it was a fair portion, I ended up trading it to another collector who was looking for a copy. I forget what I traded it for but it was for something I wanted more, I only traded it because I thought I'd find another copy but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe I have a record of the trade still saved somewhere.
In any case I don't remember it being bad, I thought it was pretty good from what I played.
At the risk of putting words in Calthaer's mouth I don't think he was implying that it was a bad game, just subjectively the worst of the handheld series. On its own it's an excellent game but just outshined by the others.
No, it's definitely the worst for several different reasons. The first and biggest issue is the movement, the physics specifically. Juste has this sort of moon jump where he's incredibly floaty whenever her jumps and don't even think about attacking while you're in there air, it then locks you into place so you're now following whatever trajectory of this moon jump you're on. Juste "Michael Jordan" Belmont.
The map design is pretty trash because many of the same enemies are scattered in multiple areas of the map. There's a specific path that you'll be going through, but there are some areas you can go through early so the areas will be easier, but then some areas that you have to go through later and the enemies are also easier. Once you get a third of the way or a half of the way through the game, and this is both on normal or hard difficulty, the game's enemies will just start dealing low damage against your character and only one area in the game, the starting area on the B castle has enemies that will deal reasonable damage to your character.
However, Juste also has a dash. IGA clearly didn't understand the reason for the backdash so he added a forward dash too, a forward and backdash that you will never not use instead of your normal movement. Even if you're not a speed runner you're going to just be dashing to attack cancel and backdashing to attack cancel repeatedly and then dashing again to move where you want to go etc.
The level design isn't "bad" it's actually rather good I think. It offers a lot of platforming throughout but when the physics of the character suck it's meh. The real problem with the level design is that it's rather lazy. IGA was like, you know what, we can make the game twice as long by adding a second duplicate castle just like on SotN. There are some changes between each castle but they're mostly identical and again as I stated, the balance is just lost less than halfway in that it just turns easy.
The bosses are actually good and the thing I do like most about the castle is all of the references. As someone who thinks Castlevania 3 isn't very good because it's just unfairly difficult, there's a lot of references to that game specifically, but there are also references to other games. The giant bat if you've ever played any Castlevania game with a bat boss for one, but it's basically like the version in Rondo of Blood. The skeleton and cyclops bosses are references to the bosses in Castlevania 3, they don't play the same, but they're pulled straight from there. Then the Pazazu boss is also from Castlevania 3 and this one plays more similar to how the boss does on that gam e There is a section in the castle has a statue of Dracula's final form on Castlevania 3 while if you return to that same section in the other castle, it shows Carmilla instead.
The problem is that hte game just feels like you're just filling up the space to get 100%, dashing and attacking, dashing and dashing, just just the goal to collect everything and fill the entire map. I've played it many times so that could be my experience because of that, but the controls are just so bad and the game is padded out to include double the content because hey, SotN did it.
Now. I'm going for all the trophies on Castlevania Advance Collection so today I just decided to go and finish Julius mode on Aria of Sorrow. The character plays a lot like Juste but better and worse at the same time, he can attack and still move in air so you can attack and then move backwards to have your whip hit enemies and stay attacking the same direction without turning around. He has no backdash but he can just phase through enemies(although I've heard other people think this is just him running around enemies) instead of backdashing. He also goes like four times the speed of Soma and his jump is extremely floaty, so this is the reason why what could have been a great mode was pretty much ruined.
In Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow, Julius, Alucard, and Yoko are actually given speeds of movement and physics proportionate to Soma, so that it still feels like the main character's movement. The characters can't collect anything, but this right here and how the characters play make the mode as equally good as the main game. Dawn of Sorrow is already the best game in the series, but it's also got an extra mode that is just as good as the original game. Amazing game.
After finishing Julius mode though, I went back to Harmony of Dissonance and started playing Maxim mode. Maxim also moves faster than Juste, around twice the speed. But there's a difference here. Maxim isn't quite as floaty as Juste. He's a little bit floaty, but he's also got some gravity to his jumps. Additionally when attacking with Maxim, the attacks are so quick that you don't lose your control. Him moving twice as fast as Juste means that you're not going to use the backdash and forward dash for movement, you're just going to normally move and you'll only use the dashes for evasion. This really does make the experience with Maxim, despite having free roam over the entire map a much better experience. Additionally, Maxim and Julius mode make the two characters deal preset amounts of damage per boss they defeat and they gain more defense the more HP ups that they pick up. With Julius, he's already over powered so you're only killing eough bosses to increase his damage to defeat the last boss. You could go straight to the last boss and finish them off without powering up, but I defeated a few bosses and still fiished it in 25 minutes. On Maxim mode, enemies hit hard. Very hard. It's like if you were playing a regular Castlevania game and every enemy hits the exact same amount per stage, so there's a pretty good level of balance when playing Maxim mode over Juste mode. tl;dr, Maxim mode is better than the main game on Harmony of Dissonance. Julius mode on Aria of Sorrow is trash, Julius mode on Dawn of Sorrow is just as good as the already excellent main game(not in Advance Collection) Also in the Dominus Collection, Portrait of Ruin's extra modes are once again feeling tacked on rather with how everything performs, Order of Ecclesia's Albus mode is decent
Then the final game on the Advance Collection(or the first game) is Circle of the Moon. The enemy AI is a little bit boring compared to HoD and AoS, where they move forward a bit, attack, repeat, or just pretarget your character with your attacks, or continue doing the same actions over and over, etc. But it works well for how the character attacks. Now. Nathan also has a moon jump, but it's weighted. You don't feel super floaty with this jump, you drop back dash immediately and you can also move while you're in air. Infact, a little trick I use when attacking in CotM is that I'll jump backwards, move forward and attack, sort of giving yourself a bit of evasion and movement to mask your recovery time rather than just being flat on the ground the entire time. Your recovery time is still the same, but it's about to end when you hit the ground, so you can then your action.
Circle of the Moon doesn't have extra characters, but the same exact character with different mechanics for that character. You've got Magician mode where your character starts with all the cards in the game at the very start, much lower strength and defense values, but a massive starting intelligence stat. Most attack spells use the attack stat for damage but some spells do use intelligence. Warrior mode is the next mode and that one you do not start with any cards nor can you gain any cards but you do start with higher strength and higher defense. Thief mode you start with lower stats but you have a massive luck stat. Then the final mode called shooter, you start with massively reduced stats in every area but your heart skills take off a much higher amount of damage. Additionally you can pick up a second dagger which turns your dagger into the homing dagger subweapon. I feel that these modes are better than every other version of extra characters except for Dawn of Sorrow's Julius mode which is again, just as good as the main game but with different characters.
When it comes to the Advance Collection. Aria of Sorrow is a great game, Circle of the Moon is a good game, Harmony of Dissonance is playable, not very good, and Dracula X is kind of a bad game because of just how unfair the level design and a lot of mechanics, but I probably like it more than Harmony of Dissonance. I'd rate both a 4/10 though as neither are actually "bad" but they're just meh for some reason or another. 5/10 to me is not average but your average good game, where 4/10 is your mediocre, and then bad and unplayable are 1/10-3/10. To me it's stupid that 8/10 is your "good games" from journalists, even Youtube videos, 7/10 is mediocre, and then everything 6/10 or less is considered bad and you almost never see less than a 5/10. Why do games need six points for bad, one point for mediocre, and three points for good, one of which is almost never going to be used? Isn't it better to have a very wide range of what a good game entails so you can see the difference of a 5/10 good game and a 9/10 good game. They're both good, but reading an IGN review, you see an 8/10 and you see a 9/10, there's not a very big variance to really tell you how much better. When 90% of good games fall under the 8/10 at IGN or Metacritic, you really see no relevance at all in the review score to tell how much better or worse games are than another similar game to give you an idea if you'll even like it. Anyways, just my thoughts on the scoring system and how broken it actually is.
Last edited by kupomogli; 10-03-2024 at 06:35 AM.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
Thank you for that explanation. I guess Harmony of Dissonance is somewhat easier than most other Castlevania games, maybe that's why I played it longer than I have with most other games in the series. I tried playing Aria of Sorrow when I first got it but got stuck early in the game and just put it aside to come back to later, it was really early like 5-10 minutes into the game and I couldn't figure out how to proceed past a certain point. I'm sure if I watched a youtube video I could figure out the issue pretty quick, I just don't know where my copy is currently as it's packed like most of my games. Somewhere I also have Circle of the Moon and Dawn of Sorrow, just more games to get to eventually.
So a friend shared his PSN account with me to let me download some games and I downloaded Castlevania Dominus collection. I'll own the game in late February at the earliest, but nice that I can atleast play it now. I don't emulate a lot and when I do I don't put a lot of effort jumping through hoops to play certain games, so I've never played Haunted Castle. Here are my impressions of Haunted Castle and Haunted Castle Revisited.
Haunted Castle is a bad game. There are some good mechanics to it, the whipping is a lot faster, but there will be a bit of shit detection iif you whip fast as sometimes things you hit when you repeatedly whip don't get damaged triggered, so it's best to whip slower at some points. The game is very trial and error, I don't think there is any wall meat but if there is I haven't found any. I've only got to the third stage becuase you only get three continues, and by continues it means three lives. There is an option to change it to unlimited, but I didnt' know this until I quit playing. I can beat the first stage without dying and I can get through most of the second stage but I can't beat it without dying, especially since the boss just homes in on you, you can only sometimes avoid it. You can get another whip in the second stage, this whip doubles the damage of each attack, but after getting it once I never got it again, not sure how I actually got it.
Haunt Castlevania Revisited looks just amazing, very beautiful game, but can you believe the game is even more jank than the original Haunted Castle? I know this game has been getting a lot of praise from the community because it's the first new Castlevania game in a long time, but Haunted Castle Revisited also isn't a good game. Now granted I did play the game on hard difficulty, so if playing the game on normal at some point later on changes my opinion of the game drastically I'll give an update.
As I said though, Haunted Castle Revisited is even more jank than the original Haunted Castle when it comes to jumping and attacking but you do have a bit better manueverability. You get whip upgrades throughout the level but they only last a few swings, there's so much shit coming at you at all times, more so than the original Haunted Castle and even though you have atleast better manueverability, you can't whip as fast and it just sometimes feels impossible to dodge some things. Despite not dying on the first stage on Haunted Castle, on Revisited I wasn't able to do that.
Castlevania Dracula X on SNES is a better game. Haunted Castle Revisited is an amazing looking game, but it's a very poorly designed novelty. I'm certain most of the audience Castlevania fan and non Castlevania fan just throw praise at it simply because it's a bonus add on to an already amazing package and only the most hardcore Castlevania fan, you know the ones, the ones that play little outside the same shit repeatedly to the point that they can do world record gitched speedruns flawlessly and likely already have 1800 hours playtime on Haunted Castle Revisisted.
*edit*
I just finished on normal twice, it's a bit more forgiving than hard but I'd say it has a few of the same complaints. Maybe saying it was worse than Dracula X was a bit much, on hard difficulty, absolutely, but playing on what's considered the normal difficulty with an extra difficulty for those that want to play it sure.
*edit again*
So I just finished Haunted Castle Revisited on hard mode, it took me five continues. I did complete the second level without dying. Three of those continues were on the sixth stage, just the bridge, one continue was at Dracula because that was my last life, the other continue was probably at the fourth or fifth stage. I'm still not sure if I like this better than Dracula X or not.
Then again seven continues, let's just put as much shit on the screen as possible without it lagging and call it a hard game. That's not hard, that's bad design. But whatever, they did put a lot of effort into it because the level design itself is actually good and again, a pretty amazing looking game, just not a very good one.
Last edited by kupomogli; 11-14-2024 at 09:22 PM.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
That sounds a bit rude. If it's what they enjoy, I don't see the problem. Also, only robots can speedrun games flawlessly.
I don't know which revision was used in the collection but part of the game's kusoge reputation comes from that Konami liked to jack up the difficulty for their games for the western markets, to varying degrees of dickishness. Sometimes they just made Hard difficulty required to see the ending (compared to Normal in Japan), and sometimes they did Contra: Hard Corps.
So in my latest replay, only because I was showing a friend Haunted Castle and Haunted Castle Revisited. I completed the original Haunted Castle in about 10 continues(added quarters, I used them to gain full health,) Haunted Castle Revisited on normal difficulty in one continue, and Haunted Castle Revisited on hard difficuty in one continue. I'm going to say the hard run with one continue was likely luck, and it doesn't change my complaints to the game itself, but I will point some more things out.
The boss design to Haunted Castlevania Revisited is actually really good. Now, with the jankishness of going from ducking attack to jump, Medusa is probably the hardest boss outside of Dracula's second form and Frankenstein on hard, and there is a little bit of hit detection issues with Dr Frankenstein that sometimes doesn't trigger him getting hit. Additionally, if you hit Frankenstein and he stops hitting the wall, you can't just go kill off the hunchback that appear, if you don't attack for so long he'll still hit the way, so you're kind of screwed if you have a lot of hunchback that you need to clear out but you have to keep attacking Frankenstein so he doesn't hit the wall and so he charges at you. Even then though, the boss design is actually really good even if a little easy.
It's just the stage design that just so much coming at you at all times. The first stage, second stage, and last stages are the two hardest, and I know there's meat hidden around somwhere, but I've only ever found the hidden meat in the third stage. There is a hidden meat somewhere in the second stage that I found when using a holy cross, but I never found it again so I don't know exactly where it's at. On the third stage, the first meat is just right there. The second one is just after you get past the falling chandeliers, there's a glowing orb, and the third is on the last screen just before the boss room either exactly where or just after the eye that drops the rolling eye enemies.
At this point though I'm thinking that yes, it's a good remake, and it's not as bad as Dracula X. But I have one more new complaint, while normal throws less crap at you, it could be harder, and hard mode throws a lot of crap at you for difficulty, there's no middle ground.
It did at least take me six different play throughs for it to become more playable, but that doesn't exactly make it good, it just means that I've memorized much of the game. I can get through the first stage of the original Haunted Castle without dying, is it good now? Absolutely not.
Last edited by kupomogli; 11-16-2024 at 11:36 PM.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
Kupomogli has done an excellent job of explaining in detail why Harmony of Dissonance is the least-strong of the handheld Castlevanias.
I didn't buy Dominus - do have the Advance collection and the Anniversary collection. I think I'm actually enjoying the Game Boy "Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge" more than Harmony of Dissonance. Personal preference, maybe - I really, really liked the GB II.
You are startled by a grim snarl. Before you, you see 1 Red dragon. Will your stalwart band choose to (F)ight or (R)un?
I've got an updated opinion of everything Dominus now.
Starting off with Dawn of Sorrow. Still a great game, but, my opinion has actually changed from it being the best to the worst in the Dominus collection. But it does still have Julius mode, which is equally as good as the normal game, probably better, and my explanation will explain why.
So during this replay I got the axe soul early on, I got the student witch soul early on, and those were pretty much the only two souls I used until I got the frozen shade soul. I used the devil soul on bosses to increase the amount of damage I dealt. The drop rate of souls are so ridiculously low, that you have play the entire game with whatever you pick up. When I was trying to upgrade my weapons late game I was spending 20-30 minutes picking up some souls and just quit, I eventually just went with what I had. Aria of Sorrow has a pretty low drop rate as well, but not this low, it doesn't take that long to get the souls you want to use.
I've also got to say that, the level design here is probably one of the weakest in the exploration games. It's very linear in many of the locations, but also requires a lot of backtracking. So there's no cutting in between a lot of areas, it's literally teleporting to the closest location and walking all the way back through the entire area to get where you want to get. This is also true for Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance as well. The bosses are better only because they're more fair. You don't die in a maximum of four hits, but I'd say that they are the worst bosses in the collection.
Julius mode has an opening story based on Soma turning into Dracula and Soma being the final boss. The benefit of Julius mode is that Alucard can change into a bat, so you don't have to worry about any backtracking. You can just cover the map however you please, the characters have plenty of great skills to use, you don't need to get lucky for a soul drop to play with skills you enjoy using. Whether you want to play with the classic Castlevania sub weapons, Alucard's fireballs and the Alucard sword, and then Yoko has lightning, fire, and ice skills. You get to swap to three characters with three different sets of attack animations and Alucard actually plays better than Soma does with a sword. Alucard can even do the down forward slash which Soma can't. No other character can actually.
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So I'm now under the impression that Portrait of Ruin has the best castle design. At one point it would have been a complaint of mine, but I realize now that, I'm not walking back and retreading any of the same areas I once did. Yes, when I do need to go back into a painting I have to go all the way through, but the amount of time that you don't go back through the rest of the game, having to go back through part of a painting is nothing. Portrait of Ruin is also very generous when it comes to save rooms and teleporters. Despite the save points being generous the game is very hard. It's much more difficult than any of the past games so there's a lot of challenge here. I think that the paintings themselves are challenging enough to be fair but very difficult, the bosses however are a bit of a different story, the bosses are a bit too difficult. They're great bosses, but not one of them does not kill you in more than four hits. You've got four hits, that's it, and they've got a ton of HP. I finished the game on level 39.
The biggest issue with Portrait of Ruin comes from this same "soul system." Now on Portrait of Ruin, the drops aren't the problem, because even if you don't get the drops, you can purchase skills and you get many skills just by completing quests. The problem is that they decided to add this stupid leveling system to skills. So skills don't get to their powered forms until you max the level out. Now Dawn of Sorrow did this too by requiring more souls, but the souls even on level 1, were powerful or atleast competent. I was hitting each enemy once with a skill before killing them just to increase their experience after I defeated the enemy. A lot of times it would have just been easier to kill the enemy. Once I got late game I maxed the bible out in five minutes at a room I found the quetzacotl gave a high amount of points and just being very easy to kill really quickly. So you could go through the whole main game and not even bother, just go ahead and use Charlotte's abilities then level up the ones you late game.
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I haven't finished Order of Ecclesia yet, but yeah, I'm actually really liking it now that I'm not just dumping all over it because of its linearity. I'm going to just say that I think that this one is the best one, because unlike Portrait of Ruin and Dawn of Sorrow, it's not difficult to get all of the skills, they're actually very easy, very high drop rate, and there's no leveling required, the skills are already leveled from the start.
I still do have a complaint, and it's a pretty big complaint here, being that the game has you use your weapons to cancel one another out, and you can't cancel two different weapon types out. So you can't just equip a crushing weapon on one hand and slashing with another, if you want to just repeatedly cancel hits you have to use the same two skills. The game just so heavily relies on damage types and not just a few, you have too many damage types and not enough skill sets that you can swap between if you want to dual wield weapon or spells. You constantly have to enter your menu to change them because there's more than three per area. It's incredibly annoying, and again, I haven't yet finished the game, so this may get to be too much of an annoyance for my first statement above that I think that it may be the best in the series. It just hasn't got to that point yet and I do like the skill system better.
The best thing about this one is there literally is no back tracking to an area you want to go. Portrait of Ruin there wasn't either as there was always a teleporter near the painting you wanted to go to, but this is basically the painting system with a world map and no area to go everywhere.
The biggest problem in every single game is that IGA wanted to have some sort of gimmick to make them unique, and the thing is, you don't need to put in a gimmick. Having just one soul ability, making it easier to acquire, and not having to level it up works, it makes the game more fun, it cuts away all the level grinding, and it doesn't imbalance the game because what do you balance it for, do you make it harder because there are those people that will grind, do you make it easier because people won't want to grind. If the gimmicks didn't exist all of these great games would be better than they are. On Order of Ecclesia, the gimmick is 37 different types of damage, so weapons are either effective, super effective, or less effective. The other games kept it to a minimum and really only made effectiveness on elements or either physical resist or magic resist, not have 37 different types of weapon damage. Again, adding these gimmicks into the games just make them worse and they'd have been much better without them.
And even still, even with all these gimmicks that cause problems with the game mechanics, these are great games. So how much better would they have been if we didn't have these complaints? A lot better imo.
*edit*
Although I've played more of Ecclesia and I kind of take back what I said, the bosses are way too trial and error. I've got the medal on all of them without using the rewind feature so far, every boss outside of the end game, but even without that just beating the bossess are trial and error, once you get the patterns and you understand what their AI is going to do it's just eating through that damage sponge HP of theirs. So despite not getting hit the most recent boss took around five minutes of regularly dealing damage. That's the last boss outside of the end game, the end game which is 50%, the remainder of the game.
Last edited by kupomogli; 11-23-2024 at 11:10 AM.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
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