I'm writing this review within minutes of finishing the game and before I write my Portrait of Ruin review because I need to get this off my chest now.
I do not like Order of Ecclesia.
Now, I didn't come into the game hoping I would dislike it, in fact this has been one of the Castlevanias I've been looking forward to the most, though that's more thanks to Shanoa's design and the artstyle than anything else.
My problem with Order of Ecclesia however stems from two things: The heavy limitation on the player's arsenal, and the sluggish pacing of boss fights.
By heavy limitation what I mean is that the game kind of neuters an element of prior Igavanias that I was a big fan of, which is customizing your build, and this comes from the unorthodox way in which weapons are handled.
Unlike in say, Symphony of the Night where you can simply find or buy a Sword of your choosing and use it, Weapons in this game are tied to Glyphs. Glyphs have a random chance to drop from enemies, and when they do, you collect them by holding up on the D-Pad.
Getting a Glyph grants you a new weapon, but the variety is incredibly slim, and it is dependent on how far you are in the game. You can only get certain glyphs from certain enemies, and those glyphs are only gonna be as strong as the enemies at that point.
Which then results in the incredibly sluggish boss fights. Most of the bosses in this game take forever to kill, even when you're using their weakness and avoiding their attacks.
A pinnacle example is the boss Brachyura, the giant blue crab boss in the Watchtower. By this point in the game, I had access to Vol Fulgur, a lightning spell, which happens to be Brachyura's weakness. However, even while I was dodging its attacks, and firing away, the fight still took upwards to 5 minutes of just repeating the same mundane pattern. My friend Simon, who was watching me, commented on how the fight looked extremely fucking boring, and he was right.
Sure, there was the rewarding cutscene of crushing the Crab with the spiky elevator at the end, but it was still a bunch of meandering just to get to that point.
That's not even bringing up the worst boss in the game, probably in all of Castlevania to be frank, Eligor.
Holy fucking shit this is one of the worst bosses I've ever experienced in a video game. It's like the devs saw Shadow of the Colossus and thought they could recreate a Colossus battle on the Nintendo DS.
Suffice to say, it is a fucking miserably slow and drawn out fight where you have to hope to god that you don't get knocked off his back once you finally get through the front legs, underneath the body, and the hind legs because if you fall you will have to do an entire section over again.
Of course the limited weaponry doesn't help in the monetary regards either. I spent most of this game completely fucking broke because you can't sell Glyphs. Now, the game tries to balance this out by having quests and allowing you to sell little knick-knacks and gemstones, but it's really not enough to be able to afford a suitable amount of potions and food to survive your next encounter.
That is because Order of Ecclesia is very difficult, and difficulty isn't something I absolutely despise but when I don't think it's done well or the challenge isn't made enjoyable then I just don't care for it.
At first it wasn't so bad because the game segments into stages, playing more to Classicvania design rather than Igavania but then at the last minute the game shoves a traditional Metroidvania area on you and its where the problems of the game seem to just skyrocket.
The reason the systems worked before was because you didn't need as much supplies for a level that would only be like 5 minutes, but having to go through an entire Metroidvania section is a lot more than that, especially when the enemies are much harder than they were before.
The funniest thing is that the boss fight before they shove Dracula's Castle in felt conclusive, it felt like an end point, but then the game just keeps going and going and ugh I just burned out hard.
I recognize this review is extremely rambly but I genuinely don't think I can write an organized review about a game that I just wanted to stop playing by the time I got halfway through Dracula's Castle.
Doesn't help that several levels of this game are just straight fucking lines with no interesting platforming whatsoever.
And the kicker is, the Glyph concept is inherently cool. Having every attack be tied to your MP means you would theoretically have to manage how you attack, providing a deep sense of strategy to every encounter but... MP regenerates so fast in this game that it might as well not even fucking matter, wasting a interesting concept.
Honestly this game gets hard carried by its plot and aesthetic alone, everyone has a really good design, and for once it's an amnesia plot that I think is interesting, even having one of the more melancholic endings the series has had.
I would never want to play this again though, god no. There's just no fucking point. It has nowhere near the build variety of either Portrait of Ruin, Aria of Sorrow and especially Symphony.
Even if it fixed the menuing problem that Aria had, I would still much rather have regular equipable weapons that I can sell than what we have here.
This game just feels like a mess, and I feel like dogshit for playing it.
Ah well, what better way to go into Silent Hill I guess.
I do not like Order of Ecclesia.
Now, I didn't come into the game hoping I would dislike it, in fact this has been one of the Castlevanias I've been looking forward to the most, though that's more thanks to Shanoa's design and the artstyle than anything else.
My problem with Order of Ecclesia however stems from two things: The heavy limitation on the player's arsenal, and the sluggish pacing of boss fights.
By heavy limitation what I mean is that the game kind of neuters an element of prior Igavanias that I was a big fan of, which is customizing your build, and this comes from the unorthodox way in which weapons are handled.
Unlike in say, Symphony of the Night where you can simply find or buy a Sword of your choosing and use it, Weapons in this game are tied to Glyphs. Glyphs have a random chance to drop from enemies, and when they do, you collect them by holding up on the D-Pad.
Getting a Glyph grants you a new weapon, but the variety is incredibly slim, and it is dependent on how far you are in the game. You can only get certain glyphs from certain enemies, and those glyphs are only gonna be as strong as the enemies at that point.
Which then results in the incredibly sluggish boss fights. Most of the bosses in this game take forever to kill, even when you're using their weakness and avoiding their attacks.
A pinnacle example is the boss Brachyura, the giant blue crab boss in the Watchtower. By this point in the game, I had access to Vol Fulgur, a lightning spell, which happens to be Brachyura's weakness. However, even while I was dodging its attacks, and firing away, the fight still took upwards to 5 minutes of just repeating the same mundane pattern. My friend Simon, who was watching me, commented on how the fight looked extremely fucking boring, and he was right.
Sure, there was the rewarding cutscene of crushing the Crab with the spiky elevator at the end, but it was still a bunch of meandering just to get to that point.
That's not even bringing up the worst boss in the game, probably in all of Castlevania to be frank, Eligor.
Holy fucking shit this is one of the worst bosses I've ever experienced in a video game. It's like the devs saw Shadow of the Colossus and thought they could recreate a Colossus battle on the Nintendo DS.
Suffice to say, it is a fucking miserably slow and drawn out fight where you have to hope to god that you don't get knocked off his back once you finally get through the front legs, underneath the body, and the hind legs because if you fall you will have to do an entire section over again.
Of course the limited weaponry doesn't help in the monetary regards either. I spent most of this game completely fucking broke because you can't sell Glyphs. Now, the game tries to balance this out by having quests and allowing you to sell little knick-knacks and gemstones, but it's really not enough to be able to afford a suitable amount of potions and food to survive your next encounter.
That is because Order of Ecclesia is very difficult, and difficulty isn't something I absolutely despise but when I don't think it's done well or the challenge isn't made enjoyable then I just don't care for it.
At first it wasn't so bad because the game segments into stages, playing more to Classicvania design rather than Igavania but then at the last minute the game shoves a traditional Metroidvania area on you and its where the problems of the game seem to just skyrocket.
The reason the systems worked before was because you didn't need as much supplies for a level that would only be like 5 minutes, but having to go through an entire Metroidvania section is a lot more than that, especially when the enemies are much harder than they were before.
The funniest thing is that the boss fight before they shove Dracula's Castle in felt conclusive, it felt like an end point, but then the game just keeps going and going and ugh I just burned out hard.
I recognize this review is extremely rambly but I genuinely don't think I can write an organized review about a game that I just wanted to stop playing by the time I got halfway through Dracula's Castle.
Doesn't help that several levels of this game are just straight fucking lines with no interesting platforming whatsoever.
And the kicker is, the Glyph concept is inherently cool. Having every attack be tied to your MP means you would theoretically have to manage how you attack, providing a deep sense of strategy to every encounter but... MP regenerates so fast in this game that it might as well not even fucking matter, wasting a interesting concept.
Honestly this game gets hard carried by its plot and aesthetic alone, everyone has a really good design, and for once it's an amnesia plot that I think is interesting, even having one of the more melancholic endings the series has had.
I would never want to play this again though, god no. There's just no fucking point. It has nowhere near the build variety of either Portrait of Ruin, Aria of Sorrow and especially Symphony.
Even if it fixed the menuing problem that Aria had, I would still much rather have regular equipable weapons that I can sell than what we have here.
This game just feels like a mess, and I feel like dogshit for playing it.
Ah well, what better way to go into Silent Hill I guess.
kirbb
8 months ago