Castlevania Judgment is an ambitious but ultimately disappointing attempt at a 3D fighting game based on the iconic Castlevania franchise. While it boasts a roster of beloved characters and tries to incorporate some unique mechanics, the clunky controls, awkward camera, and questionable character redesigns heavily undermine the experience. Its Story Mode is short, and while additional modes exist, the core gameplay lacks the precision and depth necessary for an engaging fighting game, leaving Castlevania Judgment a lackluster entry into the series.

I played this on release. Just like everyone else, I was hoping this would be Soul Calibur 2 but with Richter, Alucard, Maria, and Trevor. Instead I got a really bad arena fighter with Yuri Lowenthall Alucard, awkward teenage years Maria, and Trevor (fuck yeah, got one).

It's completely obvious that the people who made this game had no idea what they were doing. If you're going to make a crossover of all the main Castlevania protagonists etc, then why would you also radically overhaul the character designs? Eric in particular is wholly unrecognizable. The gameplay seems untested too: Dracula moves at like half the speed of any other character with basically no way to close the distance and no projectiles that are effective from a full stage apart, so picking him is begging to be love-tapped and timer scammed.

Also I know that "どこを見ている" is a really common thing for anime characters to say when they dodge an attack but a literal translation of that line for three characters is pretty irritating. Where are you looking? Where are you looking?

Aeon's timer-dependent special attacks are a pretty cute idea I guess.

okay….hear me out

yeah three stars, what a surprise. well there’s higher ratings for it on this website, but you are looking at what game this is. if you’re not familiar with it though, which I’m assuming a lot of you aren’t since this isn’t as well known as something like Sonic 06 or Balan Wonderworld, basically Castlevania Judgment has a rather infamous reputation in the Castlevania fandom for….multiple reasons. back in the olden days whenever this game was brought up, people have always described it with very hateful content, saying how this is the worst Castlevania game to ever exist, with some declaring it to be so even nowadays. being a Castlevania fan myself and having spent almost 20 hours into this game (at least according to the in-game play time), all I have to say in response is:

you’re all overreacting lol

man I finished Castlevania: The Adventure and that’s at least 10 times worse than this, maybe even more. Castlevania Legends is so boring that I’d have more fun lying in bed and thinking about better uses to spend my time. hell, I played Haunted Castle of all things, have you played Haunted Castle? I sure hope you didn’t. I don’t know much about the Lords of Shadow Castlevanias outside of the 3DS one running at 10 FPS, but didn’t they reboot the entire timeline and try to be a knock-off God of War? the point I’m making here is you can do a lot worse than Castlevania Judgment, believe me. so yeah what the hell, the Internet lied to me?!?!?!?!?! here I was, planning to write a review, tearing this game apart one-by-one by dissecting and describing every reason why it sucks, but I’m instead writing a review about why this game isn’t the worst thing to ever come out of Castlevania, while also still giving some actual criticisms and how it could have been improved, funny how life goes sometimes. to those of you who are still reading all this, go grab a beverage and some snacks, this is going to be a “MUCHO TEXTO” review.

this game has a Story Mode, and this is where most of this game's dialogue comes from so this will be a long one. so there's this Aeon guy, not much is known about the guy other that he governs over time, but he discovers that Galamoth, the well-known antagonist of the hit game "Kid Dracula", is sending his minion, the "Time Reaper" back into the past to destroy Count Dracula himself. this is obviously a bad idea since no more Dracula means the entirety of history gets written, assuming the Time Reaper destroys Dracula when he first came into fruition, so in retaliation, Aeon sends thirteen characters from different points of history into a time rift and has them all battle it out to give the winner "what they desire" as well as deciding who will be the one that's capable of defeating the Time Reaper. yes, Aeon is somehow able to mess with time and bring anyone that he wants into a time rift, even Dracula and Death are able to be yanked out of their timeline. imagine being the Castlevania equivalent of Satan only to be summoned against your will by Male Bayonetta, I suppose time manipulation is no joke.

well Aeon’s bringing along a bunch of powerful Castlevania characters to take care of the problem that’s good, but there’s a couple of holes in his plan. like I’ve said earlier, Aeon brings in characters from whatever point of history he felt like taking them from, but isn’t exactly the smartest idea. the Sypha in the rift is from a time before she met Trevor and the others, Shanoa and Carnell are also brought in before or right when their adventures are supposed to start, and Eric is brought in while he’s still a bratty child. wouldn’t it make more sense to grab all the Castlevania characters when they’re in their prime instead of when some of them are assholes that are still figuring things out? I guess you could say they were brought in early to learn a lesson and have the whole experience turn into the people they would become, but I’ll tell you right here a lot of these guys don’t learn a damn thing after all this, trust me I’ve seen all the endings. hell, a few of them become more egotistical when the journey ends, so on those rare occasions this did more harm than good. what baffles me probably more are the people he chose to bring into the time rift. some like Simon, Trevor, Alucard make sense. I mean they did defeat Dracula, Simon in particular defeating him twice by himself, but then he brings in child Eric, Carmilla, a generic golem? Carmilla’s a pure villain, I mean Death and Dracula are too but at least they have the power to take on the Time Reaper, in what timeline can G Cup Carmilla be considered a “Chosen One”? And “Golem”? why does a random golem hold a higher priority than someone like Julius Belmont who permanently killed Dracula or even Soma Cruz who’s Dracula’s reincarnation? what was bro’s plan here??? there’s no way this was unintentional since Aeon seems pretty confident from the whole thing judging from the cutscenes, so what was preventing him from going all out? Aeon my man, I don’t hate you, you’re neat actually, but your plan definitely could have used some time in the oven.

now that was just the plot summary, each playable character has their own route to go through, with a text introduction at the beginning, a cutscene with Aeon, then another cutscene every three Stages until Stage 10 is completed. I’ll quickly summarize what the stories are like in order of who I went with. hoo boy, these stories are something let me tell you. Alucard’s is nothing too special for the most part, he just goes around defeating Dracula’s two servants, Carmilla and Death. he has another good old conversation with Death over how he’s not rejoining their side with a bit of daddy issues in between until he faces against his dad himself. interestingly enough, he’s the only one that faces Dracula at all during the story, so I’m guessing Alucard knocked his dad out of commission for most of it.

Maria’s is definitely the most controversial, as everyone always points out how Maria spends her time obsessing over how the other female character’s breasts are bigger than hers, well she does do that….twice. wow you all really exaggerated Maria’s storyline I thought she’d be doing it every three minutes or something but it’s only twice. even then I find the whole thing more amusing than cringeworthy due to just how unexpected it is considering the character and franchise this is coming from (“THOSE ARE A SACRED GIFT”), but yeah that’s all she really does so lol.

Simon’s quest has him facing off against the three legendary warriors who have defeated Dracula before him, Sypha, Grant, and Trevor, the latter being his own ancestor. out of all the characters, I’m assuming Simon’s is the canonical one as his and Aeon’s dialogue sounds the most natural out of all the stories, being on the box art probably hints to that too. Simon’s pretty chill, I’m glad to see the game give his character respect despite the strange redesign he got. now let’s move on to a character that wasn’t given respect, Sypha!

wow, Sypha has no chill in this game. she antagonizes Cornell for being a creature of the night even though he clearly states he’s on her side, as well as accusing Shanoa of being a vampire, making herself no better than the people who’ve accused her kind. I don’t normally say this, but man what a hypocritical b||eeswax.|| she doesn’t learn anything from this btw.

Grant is living the life, he helped play a part in defeating Dracula and is now a respected hero who’s rebuilding Wallachia, but it just isn’t enough for him. “Man, I should have tapped that ass.”, Grant thinks to himself as he chooses not to go to Sypha and Trevor’s wedding. thankfully after a battle with Trevor, he is able to come to a conclusion and learns the true moral of the story: “bros before hoes”.

Golem, I like you, you’re a very charming guy, but man is your story pointless. Golem gains a soul as he’s sent in the time rift and tries to search for a way to become human. he meets Carmilla and starts calling her “Mama” and goes into a schizo babble about how she said he can become human, this is the only time this game’s story made me genuinely cringe believe it or not. Eventually he decides to give up his humanity, and upon being sent back he is destroyed by an unknown hunter. what a waste of time, I sure hope you didn’t choose to beat the final boss with this guy because wow. Golem was definitely put in just to have a heavyweight fighter in the game.

Maria’s story is always the one that gets criticized, but I don’t know, I think Eric is the true disaster of this game. His desire is to prove that the Alucard Spear can be just as useful as the Vampire Killer, that’s a fine goal and all, but god damn does he go about it in such a dickish way. “I don’t care if you created this spear, I’ll beat your ass for underestimating your creation!” “Ermm, your whip is actually trash! My spear’s way better!” “You’re more powerful than a Belmont? Too bad this spear’s more powerful!” Eric learns nothing from this, in fact he only becomes even more cocky after the whole thing, this is supposed to be one of the good guys?

why is Carmilla here, what was Aeon thinking? well obviously the game needs its fanservice character but I could at least use an in-game explanation. Carmilla only exists in this story to be a b||eeswax||, that’s it, I don’t know what you were expecting.

Cornell on the other hand is pretty cool, even if I haven’t got to his game yet. the time rift has trapped him in his werewolf form so he has to find a way out and maybe attempt to find a way to remove his curse. he finds Sypha and Carmilla along the way and deservingly beats the crap out of them. Death informs him that there’s a way to fix his curse and while Cornell believes him, he tells Death he will find the cure on his own terms, then he beats up Death. nothing of note really happens here, but it’s a neat first impression of Cornell’s character.

speaking of nothing of note, Trevor’s about the same. he faces Simon, meets up with an old friend, and beats up someone that doesn’t know him yet (it’s Sypha). Shanoa’s still cool as always but she doesn’t do much either, she goes off to face a few people that previously took down Dracula and that’s about it. wow, the second half of these stories are pretty filler.

Death’s isn’t much to write home about either but I do like the idea of Death being the one to face the Time Reaper as the Time Reaper is basically Galamoth’s Death so having the two big bad’s most respected servants duke it out is pretty awesome.

Dracula is just pissed throughout his entire story. after being sent to the time rift, he spends his time getting revenge on people like Maria and the Belmonts who’ve defeated him before in the past. of course after that he also has to deal with the being that’s trying to destroy him in the first place, and he succeeds in doing so if he’s the one you’re playing us, honestly good for him. imagine the complete embarrassment Galamoth has knowing the being he sent to erase Dracula from history was destroyed by Dracula himself.

lastly, Aeon gets his own tale to end things off. Aeon is the only guy to face off against every character in his storyline, which makes sense since he’s trying to determine who is the one capable of taking on the Time Reaper. but since you’re playing as Aeon, after you defeat everyone Aeon expresses disappointment and goes “wow this was a waste of time you all suck I’m going to deal with the Time Reaper myself” and does just that, well he doesn’t say those exact words but you get what I mean.

so that’s what Castlevania Judgment’s storyline is like, would you believe me if, despite all that, I still find this game’s story entertaining? yeah it’s a trainwreck, but a glorious trainwreck, one that I can’t bring myself to look away from. it is amazing just how wrong it gets some of the characters, to the point where it transcends from being cringeworthy and instead borders on hilarity. even with the flanderization of some characters, the rest seem pretty faithful to how I expect them to be. the plot, while probably just an excuse to get people excited over a motion-controlled fighting game on the Wii, isn’t too bad either. the idea of summoning a bunch of Castlevania characters into a singular point in time and having them face off against a common foe is very cool. Konami probably thought so too since they brought back that idea in Harmony of Despair and Grimoire of Souls from my knowledge. the concept is great, but the execution clearly could have used some work judging from everything I’ve described before. did you know that even though Galamoth is the one responsible for the events of Judgment, he’s not mentioned by name or even shown once during the entire game? why not? it seems like such a huge missed opportunity. maybe have a boss fight with him right after the Time Reaper, though the Time Reaper is pretty annoying to fight so they’d definitely have to nerf him so you don’t have two ridiculous battles in a row. I’m guessing the possibly strict budget prevented him from even appearing, rather unfortunate. a less arcade-like story route could have benefited the game too, for better or for worse. the cutscenes only occur during the beginning of a Stage, and even then only a few of them are unique since the less important battles reuse the Versus Mode banter. wouldn’t it be great to see more than two characters interact at the same time? I for one would love to see the wonderful mess of all the Judgment interpretations being in a single room together. maybe the voice acting would have cost too much if everyone spoke more than three lines per cutscene so that might be why we didn’t get something like that. I also appreciate that it doesn’t take itself completely seriously besides the whole “all powerful being wants to destroy the timeline” plot, where else are you going to find a game about a mummy-looking dude moping about his best friend marrying a hot woman?

if there’s something that I genuinely don’t like here is if you want access to the final boss, you need to complete everyone’s Story Mode to unlock the True Story Mode. granted each Story playthrough is only about 20 minutes long so realistically it’ll only take you 4 hours to get there, but the thing with True Story Mode is it’s pretty much identical to the regular Story Mode, all the same battles and cutscenes and all except you fight Aeon a second time, face the Time Reaper, then get 30 seconds of ending text for your character. first off, don’t do this with every character, just bring your favorite character to face the Time Reaper and consider the mode completed. second off, why even have the regular one to begin with if True Story Mode is the exact same but with two added fights? the only reason I can think of is to artificially pad out the game length, which is probably the likely answer. speaking of game length, I guess I should finally move on to how Judgment actually plays.

GAMEPLAY. THIS IS THE GAMEPLAY SECTION for the people that didn’t want to read those paragraphs of me describing the game’s story here you go. let me get an important detail out of the way: please don’t play with the Wiimote and Nunchuck. I don’t know if you heard or anything, but you don’t need to use the Wiimote to play through this game. Judgment supports the Classic and GameCube controller just fine so yes, even though the game was based on the idea of swinging the Wiimote like a whip, that is not the only way to play, so you can try to treat this like a traditional 3D fighting game. I don't know what it’s like to play this with motion controls but it’s probably pretty terrible so I guess only do so if your curiosity’s gotten the best of you. you start off the game with 10 of the 14 playable characters. Shanoa, Dracula, Death, and Aeon have to be unlocked by completing their True Story Mode campaign so if you don’t want to go through all of that, whoops. there’s actually another way you can unlock Shanoa and Aeon, and that’s by connecting your Wii to your DS with a Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia cartridge inside it. I bet all you Pokémon Battle Revolution owners forgot the Wii could do that. each character has a neutral combo where you just press the attack button repeatedly, a directional combo that involves using the left stick then attacking, a jump combo where you press the jump button then attack, Finisher/Special Attacks that involve both the A and B buttons, a charge attack that has you hold the A button and attack with B, and a guard breaker by using the Left Trigger and the B button. like traditional Castlevania, you can also collect Hearts in the stages to power up your Sub-weapons which depend on what character you’re playing as (Simon can use the Cross and Holy Water, Maria gets Gale Force and Bat Swarms, Shanoa has Jagged Earth and Gravity Circle, etc.). they’re not too powerful on their own so most of the time you’ll want to use them to keep combos going, although there’s a chance you can find the Double/Triple Shot items by breaking objects in the stage which will let your Sub-weapons twice/thrice respectively, from my experience if you manage to get the Triple Shot Cross, you’ll have an easy time zoning out your opponent as long as you have the Hearts available, just remember that the Double and Triple Shot won’t stick around when the next Stage starts.

of course you can’t have a modern fighting game without some cool super moves and this game has plenty. the Wiki cites them as “Super Finishers”, though some YouTube videos seem to call them “Hyper Attacks”, I don’t have a clue which term is correct so I’ll refer to them as “Supers” from this point forward. during a match you have this Skill Gauge or Hyper Gauge (they really couldn’t decide on a single term for these) that fills up whenever you or your opponent take damage. you can use it to perform some unique techniques like Cornell’s Rage Mode or Golem’s pretty good roll but if you can get it to full (which is really easy to do it’ll happen at least once a match), you can perform a powerful Super by pressing the X button. every character has their own unique Super move and animation, almost all of them take around 15-20 seconds to finish so they can be a bit of a pace-breaker, especially if they’re successfully landed all the time. this is when you realize Trevor is the most based character since his Super only takes 9 seconds. Trevor knows that your time is precious so he makes his finishing move quick and painless. if you not playing as Trevor though, you might as well bite the bullet and make sure you have a beverage or snack to consume while you wait for the animation to play out, unless you’re playing someone like Golem or Aeon whose Super takes too long to pull off, at that point you’re probably better off not using it.

okay now all good fighting games have to have some extra modes to keep you occupied, well this one’s got you covered. there’s the Story Modes I’ve already mentioned, but there’s also Arcade Mode which is a more traditional version of Story Mode where it’s all fight, no talk. there’s also eight stages instead of ten, no monsters to fight at Stage 6, no Time Reaper at the end, and it keeps track of your time during the whole thing. at the end you get to register a name and your time in an in-game leaderboard that you can show off to your friends or the internet, but odds are there’s not really interest in getting any quick times online, the last submission was sent over a year ago trust me I checked. a Survival Mode is also here where you’ll fight against an endless amount of characters until you eventually lose. this one has even less demand as there’s no category for it at all on the speedrun website, on top of that the only footage I could find for it on YouTube is some sort of mod where the player character is the Time Reaper. I’m not kidding. besides that there’s the traditional Versus Mode which is what you’ll probably be playing if you somehow manage to find a friend who willingly wants to play this game with you. just remember that Shanoa, Aeon, and the Castlevania duo aren’t there from the get-go, make sure you unlock them beforehand so Shanoa bro won’t back out on you. and of course you can’t have Castlevania Judgment without the amazing and spectacular Viewing Mode, where you can listen to unlockable music and sound effects, as well as JPGs of the characters’ artwork that you can easily find nowadays with a quick internet search, in higher quality!

the main mode that I want to go into detail about however is Castle Mode. you know how most Castlevania games are about venturing into Dracula’s Castle until you meet and battle him at the very top? well this is kinda like that. in Castle Mode, your goal is to traverse through 30 different rooms, the last one being where Dracula resides. there’s no 3D hub for you to move your character around, it’s more similar to something like Super Mario Bros 3.’s overworld where you go over to level-to-level with some divergent paths to take. now don’t go thinking the different pathways are optional rooms, you need to do all of them. even if you reach Dracula’s room, it will be sealed off until every other room has been completed, no skips. what helps bring some variety in these rooms is that you’re not always going to simply defeat your opponent to complete it, there’s an array of different objectives that you’ll have to do in order to progress through this mode. sometimes you’ll have to collect a set amount of items from crates or candles, sometimes you’ll just need to collect Hearts instead. other times you’ll have to string up a long enough combo against your opponent, or maybe you’ll need to land the finishing blow with a Sub-weapon, or even a Super. on some occasions you’ll even need to activate a stage hazard to move in, and by a stage hazard I mean only just the one from the Clock Tower stage. on the topic of Clock Tower, you’ll probably also have to ring out your opponent either there or another stage by knocking them into a pit (yeah you can do that in this game I couldn’t find a good opportunity to bring it up). to put it simply, there’s a few other things besides winning a match that you’ll have to do in order to move on, some easier than others. getting the Clock Tower hazard room is basically a freebie, unless you’re playing as Dracula who has terrible mobility you should have almost zero problem completing that one. the Sub-weapon/Super objective isn’t too difficult either since your opponent will always stay alive even at 0% health until you finish them off with how the game tells you to, the Super variation is a bit more challenging if you end up missing but the earlier ones always have your gauge at maximum so you’ll have more chances to mess up early on. depending on your character, the combo objective will either be simple or an absolute pain, especially later on when the combos they ask you to become much longer. if you want a tip from me: hold on to the Gravity Circle Sub-weapon. using it on your opponent once will guarantee you a 9+ combo, trivializing this specific objective. the early Heart ones are easy at first since your opponents are just easy to deal with Zombies, but odds are near the end you'll likely have to deal with collecting a lot of Hearts while having to deal with a Trevor Belmont that’ll not only never leave you alone, but also try to steal away the Hearts on the ground, oh yeah there’s a time limit too. while typing this I also remembered there’s another objective where you have to make sure objects in the stage aren’t destroyed during the time limit. the problem is that your opponent is going to try their hardest to make sure those objects are smashed so you’ll have to try and hold them off in a corner for a good while, yeah that one sucks.

if you end up failing an objective or lose all your health, not only do you lose your Sub-weapon and Hearts, but you’re also sent back to your last checkpoint, meaning there’s a chance you’ll have to redo some rooms all over again. every six or so rooms you’ll run into a room that lets you save your progress and restore health when you complete it, which is the only way to fully replenish your health in this mode outside of losing. you can go back to this checkpoint to save and restore every time so don’t make the same mistake I did during my first attempt where I not only didn’t realize this, but also had to backtrack to the rooms I skipped, so yeah save often. a thing that’ll make that a little annoying to do is sometimes when you move around the map, you’ll have to go through an enemy ambush. the early ones are very easy since you’ll only have to face off against Zombies and Mermen, but when you complete more and more rooms Iron Gladiators and Minotaurs are added into the mix and they can deal a ton of damage if you’re not careful, especially if they have the attack boost added to them. oh yeah later on the rooms you go in will buff your opponents such as giving them attack boosts, no knockback, or even regenerating health while you’ll have restrictions in comparison like decreasing health and attack power.

out of all the modes, Castle Mode feels like the most creative and replayable of the bunch, though I do think there could have been a little more improvement. the only enemies you’ll ever fight in the monster rooms are nothing but Zombies and Mermen, with an Iron Gladiator or Minotaur at the end. why stop there? why not add some Skeletons or Axe Armors? They’re very iconic Castlevania enemies so I’m surprised they weren’t included. hell they could have added Medusa Heads in the Clock Tower stage, I mean yeah they’d be annoying to fight but you can’t have Clock Tower without them. the lack of monsters is a little disappointing, I’m sure it couldn’t have hurt to have added at least a couple more to increase the variety. another thing that surprised me is that the second-to-last room is always a fight against the enemy monsters, wouldn’t it make more sense to battle Death instead? I mean he’s Dracula’s second hand man and they already have him as a playable character, it just makes sense. you know I actually can’t think of many more improvements at the moment, this mode is just really solid, perhaps the best part of this game even. if you don’t have other people to play with and have no interest in experiencing this game’s interesting writing, Castle Mode should be your go-to way of playing the game. I’d actually recommend doing this with multiple characters since completing it with the character you chose unlocks their artwork and theme song in the Viewing Mode for you to view and listen! (cough cough internet)

after all of this you might be wondering: how is the character balancing? a bit wack. now I’m not saying that it’s completely all the rails like, I don't know, Super Smash Bros Melee. where half of the characters aren’t that great (SSBM you’re cool but you’re also messy), but I think it’s safe for me to say that some characters are a lot better than others. as someone who’s played every character in Story and Castle Mode, as well as the big mistake of using every one for True Story Mode, I was able to make my sort of personal in-game tier list of our 14 fighters, mostly based on 1v1s rather than their capabilities in Castle Mode. my tier list went something like:

Dracula tier: Dracula
the OP ones: Maria, Cornell, Eric, Shanoa
the good ones: Grant, Trevor, Sypha, Aeon
the okay ones: Death, Alucard, Simon, Carmilla
slop tier: Golem

I wasn’t kidding when I said Golem’s only here to be a heavyweight character. if you ever played a heavy character in Smash, imagine that but worse. at least in Smash the heavies are still really fun to use, here Golem has three good moves: his two dash attacks and his roll, everything else is….not good. most of his moves are two slow to be worthwhile and his slow speed and big size means he’s going to get juggled a lot, especially against the higher level CPUs, don’t even bother using him for Castle Mode unless you can stomach using him for so long. Golem was built to be juggled by Grant DaNasty, what a jobber.

Carmilla felt like the character type that has weak attack power but great speed and combo potential, however there’s already a character in this game that does that better and his name’s Grant, I just could not get a feel for Carmilla. forgive me for yet another Smash comparison (can you tell I don’t really play other fighting games) but her playstyle reminds me a bit of Bayonetta so she could probably be dangerous in the right hands, I’m just not the person to do that. As for Alucard and Simon, I’m grouping the two of them together since they’re basically the beginner characters, though Alucard is a little better in my opinion. Being the jack-of-all-trades they’re not terrible but they also don’t have anything amazing, though an interesting tidbit about Alucard is that he’s the character that’s used for Arcade Mode speedruns, so maybe he has some secret sauce I haven’t found yet. as for Simon, Trevor’s a better whip wielder overall, which is ironic since Trevor doesn’t use his whip as often, I guess he’s just a better character. Death seems like he’d be pretty powerful which would make sense because he’s….well Death, but I don’t know he’s just alright. his scythe moves are quite fun to use but I couldn’t really find anything else that’d make him amazing, R.I.P.

Aeon’s another character that’s probably amazing when given to someone who knows what they’re doing, I am not that someone. Aeon has this super cool Hyper Beam type of attack that I saw him perform on the game’s highest difficulty, but I never really figured out how to pull it off so you’ll have to find out how to do it yourself, I don’t know I guess Aeon’s playstyle is too big brained for my goofy ass. Sypha’s kinda average in most aspects except for her spells. Frost Wall into Icicle Blades is all you need to deal with CPU opponents for the most part, and Fireball into Triple Blaze is also nice for zoning, though these moves probably won’t be as effective against an actual player. whipping with Simon feels like you’re slapping your opponents, but whipping with Trevor feels like you’re hitting them with a metal pipe. Trevor just feels way more powerful, which makes sense since he probably has more experience with the Vampire Killer, plus he also has a really good dash attack where he just PUNCHES you complete with an “ORA” if you switched the voice language to Japanese. Grant’s whole shtick is moving around fast and locking you with a bunch of combos. on top of that he has the easiest Super to land as well as a dangerous attack known as Thousand Edge that can eat an opponent's HP away if you can manage to land it. Grant's a pretty great pick, plus his CPU is a pain in the ass to fight against.

Shanoa has a lot going for her, her neutral bow attack is good for zoning, a lot of her attacks can combo into each other, and she has the best guard breaker attack to the point where using it as a combo finisher can be viable. that said, you still need to put in a little work if you want to make her a menace. having a Sub-weapon to keep up combos will help though. then you have Eric where you don’t really need much work at all, that goddamn Alucard Spear has ridiculous range! Eric’s very straightforward just maintain a moderate distance and keep spamming your regular attacks and your opponent should go down eventually, maybe even mix a guard breaker in case they’re blocking, maybe Eric was right about his big dumb spear. Cornell is solid on his own but the thing that puts him this high is the Rage Mode that’s powered by his Skill Gauge. Rage Mode gives him not only a more powerful moveset that goes through blocking, but it also give him super armor for its entire duration. don’t even bother with his Super, a single Rage Mode duration will help take over half of your opponent’s HP with else. The thing holding it back a bit though is it takes about a second to activate, which means you’re wide open to being attacked and making you have to activate it all over again. once it ends it’ll also leave Cornell vulnerable for a brief second so there’s a chance you’ll give your opponent a free combo starter, that said the positives outweigh the negatives in my opinion, Cornell is excellent. I’m glad Judgment continues the trend of Maria Renard being OP because yeah she’s OP. all of Maria’s moves are at the very least good and her special moves are excellent. Suzaku Call is great up close and is a free lead into Byakko Call, the two moves are very spammable and with Byakko Call if your opponent is blocking then you control it to move away from them and give yourself some distance. there’s a chance that Maria will crash during the end of the move that I’m not sure what the specifics are of how it happens, but if it occurs it does leave her open for about three seconds which might be her only true downside outside of her regular attack leaving her in a floaty position if it misses. oh yeah her guard breaker lasts a good while and can be used to end off combos–ok nevermind Guardian Knuckle is the best guard breaker. and now for her best move, “Seiryuu Call”. this is ridiculous lol. it’s insane how spammable this move is, that combined with its great power means that it’s possible to win by just spamming waves of water at your opponent for the whole match. well it’ll be a little difficult to pull off against higher level CPUs but the monster room becomes freebies if you’re using Seiryuu Call over and over, I love water.

lastly we end things off with Dracula himself. just three words. Hellfire. Dark Inferno. Dracula has a lot of moves but for the most part, these two will all you will need to net yourself an easy win. Especially spammable, good damage, hell you don’t even need to move to win, you can just stand there throwing out Hellfires and Dark Infernos all the time, that’s what I did for his Story Mode. if that is still not enough and you’re still dealing with the CPU’s treachery, Dracula has a little he can where he floats in the air by pressing the jump button, and now his attack button sends fire pillars from where your opponent is standing and they do ridiculous damage. there’s a chance where they can still somehow reach and attack you which sends Dracula back to the ground, but you can just jump right up and continue scorching them in no time. I guess being #1 is a little debatable but if you’re able to decimate your opponents without even touching the control stick then that’s good enough for me. now there’s a reason my tier list is focused on 1v1s, and that’s because Castle Mode is a whole other ball park. Dracula’s goes from the best character to the worst when you need to use him for something other than battles. remember the freebie Clock Tower objective? that’s one of the most difficult things for Dracula to do! his movement speed is so slow that there’s a good chance that he won’t be able to escape from the falling gears in time and ends up getting ringed out. slow speed means collecting objectives is also a pain in the ass, and boy there sure is a lot of them in Castle Mode. how ironic it is that Dracula has the most difficulty going through his own castle, even Golem does a better job! anyway that’s my personal tier and I know what you’re thinking: “What the point?” well yeah fair I mean, who the hell’s playing Castlevania Judgment in 2023 whose name doesn’t begin and end with “K” and “B”? I just thought I’d give my overview/advice on all the characters and mechanics to show that the gameplay is actually more solid than most think it is, now it’s no Tekken or anything, but for what it is, I think this game did a serviceable and acceptable job.

would you believe I’m this far in the review and I haven’t even discussed probably the most controversial thing about this game? now if you’re this far into the review, you most likely know what all the character designs look like, and if you somehow don’t know then you can look them up right now and maybe perform a spit take. Fun Fact That You Might Already Be Familiar With: the character designs for Castlevania Judgment were done by Takeshi Obata, the artist of Death Note. this has nothing to do with the review but apparently this dude got arrested one time for possession of an army knife, can’t believe we live in an anti-knife society. now I haven’t watched Death Note myself, at least not yet, but as a first big impression of how Takeshi Obata makes character designs, this is….interesting. now if I was 2010 YouTuber, you probably hear me go “AAAAGH THESE DESIGNS ARE CRINGE AND STUPID AND NOT ACCURATE TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL”, however I will choose the more insane option and confess that I don’t really mind a lot of these designs. yeah they’re a little too busy and over the top, but bro we’re living in a world where people think gacha characters are peak character design you got no room to talk lmao. now I wasn’t a fan of Alucard design at first but looking back it seems neat, it’s like a fusion of Sephiroth and that Guilty Guy knight dude. this is definitely a hot take, but I actually like Maria’s design in this game it’s pretty stylish. that said, I'm willing to admit that that’s not Maria lmao, they have the same color scheme but that’s it. now for a colder take, Simon….yeah no I can’t defend that. his outfit looks way too goofy for my taste in my opinion and it doesn’t really suit his character, plus internet culture has familiarized me with Light Yagami and I can’t unsee him everytime I look at Simon’s face. Sypha kinda has some drip going on and it’s a funny departure from her original design which was “blue robe and hood”, nice design but we all know they only gave her that breast size just so Maria could comment on it. Grant is a similar situation for me where I actually like the design but it doesn’t suit his character in the slightest. I originally thought he was sent to the time rift while he was still a monster but no, the game makes it plain and clear that this Grant takes place after Dracula’s defeat in CVIII, so this design makes no sense unless Dracula really beat him up so bad that he has to go around looking like a goth hunchback mummy. If there’s one thing Golem shines at, it’s his design. not only is he obviously the golem enemy but he has cues and inspiration from Frankenstein’s monster as well which is also a Castlevania enemy, plus the purple lightning is cool too, you did good Golem. Eric has to be my least favorite of the bunch, now he doesn’t give you an eyesore or anything, in fact he’s the most normal looking of the cast, but I just can’t stand his interpretation in this game that he transcends to being the one I genuinely hate, also he looks like that dumb Fairy Type brat from Pokémon Scarlet & Violet so that’s not doing him any more favors. Carmilla looks stupid but she is the fanservice character so I guess that’s okay? honestly I’m not a fan of the pink, if it was a different color like red or black then she’d look a bit better. Cornell’s design is genuinely awesome, and probably the only one that’s actually better than the original design, not that there was anything wrong with the original. metal wolf demon, do you really need me to say anything else? if you’re a near-sighted person like me, then Trevor looks pretty cool from a distance, just don’t stare at his character artwork for a long amount of time, it gets pretty wack the longer you do so. now there was no topping Shanoa’s original design, but the one she has here is actually quite nice and one of the easier ones to look at. I’m not sure why she’s wearing a nun hood, but eh it works. Death’s okay, compared to most of his previous designs this one doesn’t compare, but if you treat this one like his second form designs where he usually looks more battle-ready, then I’d say it does the job. Dracula looks different every game so the only way you could mess him up is with a lame art style, Judgment doesn’t have that so he looks cool here. lastly being an original character, Aeon doesn’t have other design to compare to and he still ends up looking neat, though I’m mixed on the 100% white colors he has going on, his alt with the black and red color scheme fixes that problem, combine that with the Sunglasses accessory and he ends looking real dapper. oh yeah you can unlock cosmic accessories in this game for your characters by performing certain tasks in the game, most of them being found in Castle Mode. you know if you didn’t think the characters looked goofy enough, you can also slap cat ears on them or put a mustache on their face or put stuffed rabbits and beetles on their shoulders. you can even have Trevor wear the Eyepatch accessory, you know even though he already has an eyepatch on default. now you can give him mismatching eyepatches to make him look like an absolute dumbass! man people need to stop taking this game so seriously.

if there’s something more understandable to be disappointed over, it’s that this looks like an early PS2 game. now I’m not saying that it's really a bad thing, I mean I enjoy how the environments here look even if the color choices could be more….colorful, but a big pet peeve I have is that all the character models have just one neutral expression. you have all these crazy and wacky looking characters and all they can do is make the same static face, having to rely on the voice acting to help them feel more alive. btw the voice acting’s alright, a lot of the English voice actors did work on previous Castlevania games so they got some experience, that said hearing the same voice clips during battle over and over as well as “MY NAME IS AEON!!! SHALL WE BEGIN THE FIRST TRIAL???” everytime you choose not to skip the cutscenes in Story Mode, it’ll get very repetitive so I wouldn’t blame people for switching to the Japanese audio. some good audio to listen to however is the music, and yes it’s probably one of the best parts to come out of Judgment. now this review’s already way too long so I’m going to half-ass this segment by posting the OST right here to let you pick your favorites and there’s nothing you can do about it there’s over 8000 words in this Doc I have no problems taking shortcuts at this point (fun fact the Vampire Killer track in this game is the exact same as the Smash one thought you should know that)

TL;DR for the readers that skipped through everything and scrolled all the way down here (I know who you are) this game is very flawed and I spent a lot of time critiquing it, but I still think the game does a bunch of things right to where I’d say I like it more than I dislike it, in fact I don’t really dislike it all that much I enjoy it a lot more than I should. I think one of the factors that helped out was streaming the game’s story to a few friends, we all ended up experiencing the whole thing blind so we kinda joked about it together and had some fun for the most part (until we got to the Time Reaper lol). can we move past the circlejerk about Judgment being irremediable trash with no good qualities, this isn’t 2010 anymore we moved past the AVGN clone era, at least I hope we did. is this game “cringe”? no, it’s CRINGEKINO. and so what? if I had the choice of playing through a generic AAA game with movie length cutscenes and a bunch of walking around with quiet noises in the background, or the choice of playing a game that is essentially 2000’s edgecore that makes a bunch of ridiculous and unique decisions, I’d choose the later in a heartbeat.

it’s not that bad. it’s no Citizen Kane of gaming but it doesn’t need to be. yeah there’s better Castlevania games and better 3D fighters as well, however this gets the job done and for the most part it’s harmless, well besides selling terribly. the game took a risk, it flopped, but damn I’ll say it was a fascinating shot. for me this game is a fascinating recommendation, especially if you’re already familiar with Castlevania. if you want to have a good time, gather some friends of yours (it doesn’t matter if they’re CV fans or not), try to have fun, and don’t try to take it seriously. if there’s something to take away from all this: try the game for yourself, and don’t let NPCs on the internet decide your opinions for you, just play it and form your own decision. anyway yeah I don’t know how to feel about this being the longest review I’ll write on this website, you’re definitely not going to find anyone else go into this much detail about Castlevania Judgment in the current year of 2023 (I’d like to be proven wrong though). to those of you who sat down and read the entire thing: thank you, and I’m sorry. to the ones that just skipped through most of it: I don't blame you.

“Well, besides having my heart ripped out, guess I did all right.”

Behold! Our very own Gothic Kusoge!

Nope, not pushing through with this. I finished Simon and Alucard's stories, that was it for me. There's NOTHING to see here.

All the cool stuff about this game, you can just check out on Google or YouTube.
Love the art, LOVE the music. Everything else is a trainwreck of the highest caliber.

Models look rough up close, eyes are just a flat texture so they don't animate during cutscenes(though that's not a big deal anyway since there's ZERO animation when characters talk to each other during Story Mode except for blinking. I'm not kidding.), the menu effects are following in the footsteps of Ehrgeiz, etc, etc.

I love how you can tell the dev team was like "Oh shit, we need a grappler character. Fighting games have grapplers, right? What do we do?" so they just added a random ass Golem enemy to the roster. Sorry Soma, maybe you should have lifted more weights instead of collecting souls.

It truly is a shame because there's a ton of potential for a Castlevania fighting game, but it was thoroughly squandered here. If only Konami wasn't morphing into a gargantuan mass of bullshit around that time, perhaps they could've eventually collabed with Arc System Works in the future for a truly fun fighting game spinoff. Sadly, that isn't the world we live in.

The Obata designs fuck tremendously and the soundtrack is peak, so check those out.

Judgment is a cheaply produced, bland mess that had the potential for so much more. Instead focusing on butchering established characters and offering nothing for it. It's gameplay is barebones, with like 2 of 13 characters being somewhat interesting to play. It's story mode is lazily slopped together garbage, with no actual "story" in the mode, and breaking up the monotonous fights with some monster fights with models ripped straight from the PS2 vanias. Hell even the final boss is a fucking palette swap of the penultimate boss to curse of darkness. Not to mention how stiff and lifefless cutscene animations are, with frozen models having only the jaw move up and down. I get castlevania has never had the budget to hit big releases, but this is the lowest the series has gotten.