Video Game Review: Castlevania Order of Ecclesia

As I sit and watch Kobe Bryant and LeBron James have a nationally televised pissing match, I look at my DS and realize that at about 2AM last night I finally beat Dracula in the most recent installment of Castlevania I thought to myself, "Self, you should use your new blog to review and/or complain about the games you play" I then replied "That's a good idea, that might also motivate me to actually FINISH the games I start to give them a proper bashing/ballwashing"

sidebar-yes, I sometimes speak to myself. I believe sane people call it "Thinking out loud" Believe it or not, some of the best conversations I have ever had have been with myself. Anyway...

I sat and thought about what I wanted to say about this game and I came to the conclusion that Konami and Koji Igarashi were not fucking around with this game. The last two DS entries Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin were difficult but not frustrating to the point of weaponizing your DS by chucking it at a nearby person/victim. This new game changes things by kicking you in the balls at every turn with overpowered REGULAR enemies and THEN steals a page from Kenji Inafune and gives the bosses in the game a case of MegaManboss-itis, i.e. they hit you harder than you have ever been hit in your gaming life, they have a ridiculous array of attacks that increase as you hurt them and ONLY HAVE one possible pattern to lead you to victory which you must figure out through trial and error and countless lost lives. The final boss, as usual is an exercise in patience and repetition.  

-sidebar #2- I don't like Cleveland's urine yellow retro sunday uniforms. They are pretty damn ugly. Even LeBron looks kind of whack and he has that aura of "cool" all the time.

Aside from this small issue, it still is modern Castlevania (or Metroid-vania as clever people on the internet call it) and inherently still has the fundamental gameplay where you somehow still have fun while exploring vast endless rooms and overcoming harrowing dangers. They change the weapons system to a hybrid weapons/magic system that works really well once you wrap your head around it. You assign attacks to each of your hands and each is controlled by a respective button and all attacks consume MP that regenerates quickly during moments of inaction.  The one issue that bothers me is that IGA felt that he need to add the ever popular "fetch quest" where an NPC sends you on a pointless task back to an area where you do not have any particular interest in returning to. These thing only add frustration, not "depth."

In the end, I can only say that if you enjoy Castlevania in the modern age since Symphony of the Night, then this game is for you. If not, then why in the hell did you click on this review?

Good Night and Good Luck

-Dre