Order of Ecclesia
 

So, I got this game, and I don't know if I like it or not.

Its such a huge departure from Castlevanias. Like, suddenly the stupid archer skeletons and the Spear Knights are like...dangerous. Plus the 'Big Castle, Go Explore' formula just got shot in the head in favor of giving you an overworld map with several 'locations' to go to. I played it for an hour and I'm already at my 7th one, I think.

I don't know what to make of it. I keep dying like crazy against the stupid crab boss in the Lighthouse, and it's beginning to piss me off. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. After all, I almost smashed my copy of DMC3, and now its one of my favorite games of all time.

It is markedly hard than the other two Castlevania DS games. I'm not sure how many times it took me to beat the giant skeleton boss...or, at least, to beat the giant skeleton boss and get past the annoying spotlight part int he prison.

I don't really mind the separate locations part...it's basically the same thing as the different areas in the "big castle" in the other Castlevania games...only with an overmap.

That said, I'm not sure I like having annoying bosses so early in the game. That's usually reserved for the end games in my, admitted, limited experience with Castlevania games.

...I am so not looking forward to seeing fight Death. Nope, nope, nope.

Oh, sweet, a hard Castlevania?! It's been a while (though I did have a little bit of trouble beating a couple of bosses in Dawn of Sorrow while in Julius/Yoko/Alucard mode).

Is it as hard as your average Contra game?

In a different way, obviously.

I dunno I was just such a huge stickler for the other DS Castlevanias that suddenly making it intensely difficult and taking out the exploration/adventure and collecting as the focus of the game really puts me off.

Phew glad I'm not the only one who's finding this a lot harder than the last two (and Castlevania X, at least the early parts), I thought all my RPG playing lately had made my reflexes weak.

Also fuck the crab, it killed me viciously til I went a farmed me a second axe crest.

Shit, I hadn't thought of him.

Still I'm enjoying it quite a bit, the loss of exploration is annoying, but the difficulty is nice, I think I would have been disappointed if it was easier.
On the exploration, the Caslteroids have never been quite as much about exploration and isolation as Metroid is to me, so I'm not nearly as angry about it as I was with Fusion and Prime 3(where the linearity pretty much killed them both for me). It helps to think of this as a hybrid between the Castleroids and and the Old Castlevanias I think.

What has annoyed me is the lack of some of the finishing touches that the other earlier games had. Like her not being able to sit down. But at least they've spent time debugging it, I haven't heard of any gamebreaking glitches like PoR had.

Played it. Finished it. Didn't like it.

Was it more difficult than other Castlevania games? Yes. But once you figure out the patterns of all the bosses it's a pretty easy romp (after dying a couple of times I managed to beat the crab with only getting hit once). However, the game for me was too short. I found myself finishing it and going "wait that's it?" I won't spoil anything, but I didn't care for the ending either. I've played pretty much all the Castlevania's on handhelds up until this point, and I would put this in the middle honestly. Yes, it's a fresh idea with the glyphs and the new characters and it's definitely difficult. However, once you get past that, it's just mediocre really. The backgrounds are pretty, but no much prettier than any of the other DS Castlevanias. It's just...with all the hype they were putting behind this game (holy crap a girl main character and oh my god a new way of attacking!) I expected more. I certainly enjoyed playing it, but it left a filmy taste in my mouth at the end.

Good to know I'm not the only one who feels that way. I'll finish it because it's good review material, and because I'm still thinking it could surprise me.

Portrait of Ruin was like Castlevania sex, and I instantly put it at #2 behind good old Symphony of the Night.

I prefer the old castle exploration. You hear that, Portrait of Ruin?

But the game seems pretty good so far...Although it's a bit hard, yeah. Some bosses aren't a matter of learning their pattern, it's a matter of learning how the heck do you dodge their attacks which cover areas way too big.

The glyphs, I didn't really find so great at all. There's 3 levels for each kind of weapon and I think 2 for each spell element, not counting the buffs. That's very, very few. On that matter, geez, what the heck happened to all the relics? You get the one that allows you to see the name of the enemy you just hit, which appears in the upper screen already before that and the double jump relic. Possibly you also get the one that allows you to do the slide, but I don't remember ^^'.

Portrait of Ruin felt too short and too easy. It was a fun romp while it lasted, but I wish it had been about twice as long, and twice as hard. I like Symphony of the Night, and I had it on my 360, but I was never able to beat it because my 360 got the Red Ring of Death, and when I got it back, I just had the demo again...

Um, you can slide from the beginning of the game actually. There are more relics don't you worry