REVIEW: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

Scribbled on November 4th, 2008 by Jonathon Howard
Filed in Nintendo DS, Platformer, Reviews

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (OoE) is the twenty-eighth title in the long running Castlevania series, and the third to be released on the Nintendo DS, and the first that doesn’t require stupid uses of the touch screen and stylus. OoE is also the first game in the series that makes improvements on the system that Konami has been using since the 1997 PSX game, Symphony of the Night. Simply put OoE is the best the series has seen in over 10 years.

What makes this game so much better than that half dozen Gameboy and DS titles before it? The combat. Gone are the days of manpowering your way through the game by grinding against early, easier foes. Every boss, every enemy, every battle you face requires thought on your part. Strategy has entered into the equation as you must determine which weapon will do the most damage to which enemy. Gone, too, are the mindless jaunts looking for rare weapon or armor drops. All this meat has been added to an entrée that has always looked and sounded good, but now looks and sounds great - oh and no silly stylus required!

OoE uses a new magic/weapon system, called the glyph system. Shanoa, your character, absorb these glyphs from statues, the environment, and select enemies (mining is minimal), she can equip 3 of them at a time, one to each of her arms as weapons, and a third for summons, stat changes, miscellaneous. Each weapon is effective against certain types of enemies, a good example being that blunt weapons like hammers work best on skeletons, and slashing weapons like swords are better suited to fleshy enemies. You can equip different weapons to each arm to create super attacks, combine your fire glyph with a sword glyph and get a flaming sword, equip your hammer glyph twice and get a huge mallet. There are numerous combinations, some are simply near, while others (combine things with the various dominus glyphs) are truly devastating. With the change of weapons comes the changes to enemies. Even skeletons and zombies, long the filler of Castlevania games, are difficult in the beginning and hurt you. This is a big change from just coasting through areas until you reach the boss, easily defeating him after deciphering his pattern.

Speaking of bosses, the ones in OoE are killer! It isn’t enough to memorize the boss patterns, as the bosses have a huge amount of hit points and can slowly wear you down to death, so you also need to discover which of your weapons is the most effective. Once you’ve memorized the pattern, and discovered the boss’ weakness, the boss battles become easier, though still challenging. The good side to this is that every enemy you defeat feels like an accomplishment.

Another big change is the level design. Much like Portrait of Ruin, the game takes place mostly outside of Dracula’s castle. You’ll find yourself traipsing around what I assume to be the Transylvanian countryside before making it to his castle, unlocking new areas and saving members of the local village. Levels come in two varieties: simple straight shot levels, and large areas with multiple paths and secrets. The simple levels serve to introduce you to new enemies as well as allow you to gauge whether or not you’re prepared for the next level, which will be one of the larger ones. The game also requires, at times, backtracking to pick up glyphs or rescue villagers that were out of reach when the level was originally played. At first, this bothered me, until I realized what the short levels were. The backtracking that was required in previous Castlevanias were just watering down the gameplay, requiring you to play the same areas, over and over again, without ever adding anything to the game. The new layout is an attempt to get around that problem, and it works moderately well. They do stretch out the game though through the villagers you rescue. Each villager will send you on multiple quests. None of these side-quests are required, but some of the more exotic loot and armor is only available through completing them.

I guess I’ll end this with the audio-visual quality. The sprites are large and well animated, and there seems to be much fewer recycled sprites, and a great deal of new ones - or else rare ones from older games. (Medusa heads are only found in 3 rooms in Drac’s Castle?!) The character and boss designs are also great, with a whole stable of new bosses to fight - except for longtime stalwarts Death and Dracula - who are the last two bosses as always. The music is good - I’ve caught my head bouncing on a few occasions. Though there isn’t anything as good as ‘Bloody Tears’ or ‘Vampire Killer’, but you can find or buy records though in game that allow you to play these older classic tunes whenever you wanted to.

As for the story, it goes like this: a special religious order was created to destroy Dracula after the disappearance of the Belmonts, except they only power they’ve found that can hurt Dracula is Dracula himself. A whole village is kidnapped, and you need to rescue all of them; you don’t have to, but you won’t get the “real” ending unless you do.

This is a good Castlevania game, the one long time fans have been waiting for, it finally does justice to SOTN and in some places (combat, level design, at times even graphics) exceeds that game. I’ve been enjoying this game and will continue to enjoy it after beating it with the unlockable characters and the Boss Rush mode.

NOTE: The game attempts to use the DS’ Wi-Fi capabilities but it really doesn’t matter. You can set up a store on-line to buy items or purchase them from others, but in my opinion, there’s really no point to that.