Part of the appeal of the classic Castlevania games that was sadly lost in the transition to the newer games focused on exploration - commonly called Igavanias - was the difficulty.

While the exploration aspect of Igavanias is fun, what I most enjoy about them remains the same thing I love about the classic Castlevanias - the music, the combat and the atmosphere.

For me to enjoy a combat system to its fullest there has to be some sort of challenge in which I can measure my improvement so that's where the Igavanias I have played before fail for me... and why I played Order of Ecclesia before the other games as I heard this was the hardest Igavania.

Order of Ecclesia takes a more linear approach to level design but it still incorporates exploration to smaller degrees which works better for playing in short bursts - perfect for a portable console.

The benefit of the game being more linear is that the combat is better balanced and some bosses can pose a genuine threat to your patience. Speaking of which, I found all of the bosses to be creatively designed and fun to fight against; the enemy variety was also good.

Even without taking the difficulty into account, I really enjoy the combat with the glyph system which lets you experiment with two different weapons/spells- or two of the same - and rewards you for attacking with one and then the other; this adds a small layer of mechanical complexity.

Because Shanoa is going to all sorts of different places saving villagers the atmosphere doesn't have to limit itself to "Dracula's Castle" and while I don't think this is necessarily better, it is interesting to see something different and it was perfectly executed.

Gamer moment but it's also easy to enjoy this when the soundtrack is this good and Shanoa is hot.

If this forever remains the final Metroidvania entry by Koji Igarashi and his team for the Castlevania series, what an incredible swan song it is.

Order of Ecclesia is a breath of fresh air when it comes to difficulty, especially compared to the previous games which were a piece of cake. The boss fights in this game are genuinely some of the toughest in the entire series, but they are challenging in a fair way, unlike the bosses in Circle of the Moon.

The weaknesses for enemies and bosses in Order of Ecclesia are now much more important, which means I have to constantly switch between my equipment slots. This, combined with the glyph system that has been streamlined compared to the souls' system from the Sorrow duology but still has layers to it, adds a whole new level of strategy to the game and makes combat the most engaging in all of 2D Castlevania for me.

The game's structure pleasantly surprised me, especially the hub village that gradually becomes more alive as you rescue villagers from different areas. It reminded me of Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, but with a way better execution. Moving from one area to another feels like embarking on a journey through a vast land. The stunning visuals and incredible soundtrack, which is already a trademark of this series, further enhance the experience.

This journey is made even better by the emotional tale between Shanoa and Albus. Their story isn’t mind-blowing, but it's enough to make these two some of my favorite characters in the whole series. I genuinely care about their personal journey, even if the mystery surrounding it is predictable. Despite that, the end game is still incredibly satisfying.

I really believe that Order of Ecclesia is in my top 3 favorites in the series. However, I'm constantly debating whether this or Aria of Sorrow is my favorite Metroidvania game in the entire series. But one thing is for sure, it will go down as my favorite Metroidvania game on the Nintendo DS, and it's the perfect way to wrap up my Castlevania journey that I went through for over 2 years

Unreal game, much more difficult than the other DS releases and entirely rewarding. The music is beautiful from start to finish and the enemy designs are so imaginative and fun, each one offering new ways to take advantage of the glyphs. The artistry is amazing and unique monsters like the jersey devil, references to bubba sawyer etc from minds that understand the unique aesthetics and hallmarks of horror and folklore.

Order of Ecclesia, as the rest of the Castlevania games, holds a distinct gothic aesthetic and feel with a great stand alone story which was engaging both in character and lore. Very fun side quests too which helped the world building.

On my first time finishing this i gave 4 stars because the linearity kinda anoyed me, but replaying it i mostly didn't care about it, glyph mechanic is by far the most fun mechanic i've seen on this series so far(since i didn't played lament of innocence and curse of darkness too much yet), almost everything you get has it's utilities, from magic to physical, you can play this game in a lot of different ways with this, and i love the boss fights, probably my favorites from the series. Perhaps the only thing that really bugs me in the gameplay is how you can only get some equips if you get lucky and the chest spawns, i also don't care too much about the village side-quests, but the 2 extra locations, one being an enemies rush challenge, and other a platform challenge, are really awesome, by far my favorite extra from any castlevania game. Albus mode unfortunately is kinda boring for me, i didn't felt like it to finish. Visuals are pretty and OST as always with Castlevania has some amazing tunes, Dracula Castle theme being by far my favorite, and Shanoa isn't my favorite protagonist from the series because there's Alucard, but she's awesome, her speech when entering Dracula's castle is based as fuck

This is the first video game I ever emulated, and the first game I beat on an emulator, years and years ago when I was a kid. A lot of time has passed since then and I wanted to give this another go while playing through Zelda so I figured that was a good excuse. Dungeons and exploration become a bit of a slog especially near the end, but overall this might be the second most technically “perfect” game I’ve played after Chrono Trigger. Really encourages me to continue with the older Zelda games I haven’t played yet and give them a first try.

Logically speaking, this game is not good for the most part. It is way too unfair, essentially requires you beat the robot masters in a certain order, and also has insane screen crunch on the GBA(which is the only version I’ve played). But I love it, 33% for nostalgia reasons, 33% for “I get to play as Bass” reasons, and 33% for “Holy fuck this OST rocks” reasons(seriously the intro stage theme might be my favorite song from any MegaMan game). It being so unfairly hard makes me feel a weird pride that I ever beat this game at all, let alone when I was a kid.

you walk over tiles on a grid, get stopped by battles on random tiles, leave to the next floor once you run over every tile, rinse and repeat. that's about it. battles are the ATB flavor of turn-based combat against what seems to be a randomly selected preset enemy formation. both parties have physical defense and magic defense to protect their HP, both defenses auto-regenerate after every battle, and magical attacks are free to cast rather than being tied to a resource. abilities are active and passive and use a resource by taking up a certain number of slots; you gain more slots by walking over as many tiles as possible. you have to start from 0 and make it all the way down to floor 99 with zero meaningful developments -- no dialogue, no overarching narrative, no characterization, nothing.

there's really not much to it and I still somehow found myself losing track of time as I played it. I'd say I enjoyed it to some extent, mainly as a change of pace from all the action games I've played, but after 4 hours I'm on floor 11 and I feel like it's just not worth my time or effort. I haven't had more than one party member die at a time so I've never truly felt challenged or pressured, particularly to the point of having to strategize whatsoever. I wouldn't be looking forward to a party wipe either, I've read that you have to find your downed party with your underleveled B squad so it's like pseudo-permadeath with tedious strings attached.

I can't be bothered grinding out the monotony just to find out if the game might get even remotely engaging. it's not gonna happen. at this point I play it a lot like I did with "survivor clones" where I mute the audio and listen to some of the many albums I've been meaning to get to... and I truly despise the idea of consuming several forms of media at once so that's not really saying much. I play video games to get absorbed in them and take in every element, mainly the music and sound in this case and the lack thereof, not to zone out and juggle my attention between the game and a TV show, movie, YouTube video, whatever it may be unless I'm grinding post-game content or an achievement in one of my favorite games or something. I just think that nonsense should be reserved for mundane chores and work, and games shouldn't be a chore to play like this one is.

in fact while I was playing it I couldn't help but draw vague similarities to Vampire Survivors. not as in it's another mindless stimulant; if I had to choose I'd pick this instead every time, although it is funny how different critical reception is between the two. what I mean is that it's another heavily distilled and barebones approach to genre conventions. where Vampire Survivors is like watching paint dry for ~30 minutes just to unlock other stuff and upgrade stats between runs, this game is all about the dungeon crawling without the theatrics, atmosphere, worldbuilding, narrative, etc etc. I know there's other dungeon crawlers with a similar design but nothing about this one managed to captivate me.

I don't outright dislike Dungeon Encounters but it's a hard sell even to someone that'd be into it. I kinda like how bold it is in its minimalism, I just can't justify the time investment given the shallowness. if I want to play a dungeon crawler I'll play a blobber or whatever. if I wanted to play a JRPG with less story and more gameplay I'd play something like SaGa, it's got plenty more mechanical depth. in a time where we're spoiled with so many great video games out there and plenty more to come, I fail to find a reason to see this one to the end.