Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia — Takes more inspiration from Contra in not only the bosses.

If you’ve been following the Castlevania franchise, you might notice that every recent game is like the development team’s response to criticisms that people often have about the previous entry. It’s where Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia doesn’t differ from its predecessors, in being another effort to evolve the series to keep it from becoming too stagnant.

But to arrive to solely that conclusion about OoE is to misunderstand its full intentions. OoE may have a lot in common with the previous games, but it’s probably the biggest leap the series has taken in some time.

When Dracula X Chronicles (which included a remake of Rondo of Blood) released for PSP in 2007, fans who played the game either remembered or discovered how good the original style of Castlevania was when done right. It was a tough game that demanded skill and strategy more than the “Metroidvania” titles did. In other words, they thought it felt fresh in a franchise whose progeny was becoming somewhat samey. Similarly, there were also fans who like the Metroidvania titles a lot more than the original ones, those who still appreciate the gigantic leap in style that Symphony of the Night offered.

Therein lies the thought process that birthed Order of Ecclesia. One of the most standout aspects of the game is how it cleverly fuses the styles of old and new together to mix things up. Whereas you ventured through the monolith that was Dracula’s Castle in the previous games, this time, as female protagonist Shanoa, you’re required to wander through a number of locations that aren’t the main destination first. The level design takes ideas from Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, though mixes it up with Metroidvania elements.

The designs of these locations have quite a bit in common with the original games, requiring you to start at one point and end at another. You still have the ability to level up during the quest, and the controls of the game feel like a Metroidvania title, which provides a nice sense of variety. In other words, it’s the perfect response to Portrait of Ruin‘s fun-but-often repetitive level structure.

It also has something else in common with the old titles: the difficulty level. Metroidvania titles have been known for being generally on the easy side, a trait that never left when SOTN established it. But this game breaks that mold: it’s quite tough, and sometimes a tad brutal. But not at all in a bad way, as it actually seeks to exploit a commonly used but never focused upon gameplay aspect of the previous games: the necessity of using specific weapons against specific enemies. Sure you could use electricity against mechanized enemies before, but you could still get by without exploiting any weaknesses without too much of a problem. This time around, it’s imperative that you use and abuse the system, because ignoring it will leave you seeing the Game Over screen very often.

Not to say that won’t happen anyway. You could be adjusted to everything above, and still easily perish. But that’s good, because usually your death is just a signal that you’re not good enough yet, and this game requires as much as a test of skill as Rondo did. It’s not on the “push you to the limit level” that a game like Contra 4 is – though that’s mainly because of not dying in one hit, the ability to carry healing items, and save points scattered around — but it comes close enough that you won’t want to make too many mistakes. Shanoa tends to take more damage than previous main characters.

The real new aspect this time around deals with how you obtain items, most importantly Glyphs. Glyphs can be acquired by absorbing them from either enemies or certain locations. It’s also possible to absorb one while an enemy is in the middle of casting the spell, though that’s something you’ll only want to do when there aren’t too many enemies on the screen at the time; they tend to hit hard. At the same time, it’s something you’ll want to do, since many of these are the best spells in the game, especially if it’s coming from a boss.

Glyphs completely supplant weapons this time around, and enemies no longer drop them. Raising your luck is only used to get armor or items you otherwise wouldn’t want to spend a plethora of money on at the shop. Shanoa can equip one Glyph in each hand, and you can either, for example, use two swords at the same time or mix things up. You’ll also need to switch pretty quickly between three different set-ups to fight against distinct enemies, which is more necessary (and harder to master), than it sounds.

This game also has a main hub in the form of a village, though it’s initially unpopulated. It’s your job to rescue all of them that have been imprisoned throughout various levels. The villagers help you in obtaining some of the more rare items and accessories that can be a benefactor in facing some of the game’s tougher enemies. Most of them are pretty easy to find, but you might have to go out of your way to get a few; they’re locations are never tough enough to locate to warrant any complaining.

Shanoa is the centerpiece of the game’s plot, which overall takes itself more seriously than PoR’s – as in it actually takes itself seriously. It still isn’t any good, but has its intriguing points. Shanoa is on a quest to obtain and unite the three Glyphs of Dominus for the Order of Ecclesia, which will supposedly help in preventing any further resurrections of Dracula. If you’ve played a Castlevania game before, you can pretty much guess how the entire plot will unfold.

Fitting in with the darker tone of the game is the new artwork, this time drawn by Masaki Hirooka (Espgaluda). His style has more in common with Ayami Kojima’s, though it doesn’t emit as much of a Gothic vibe as hers. Still, it’s vastly preferable to the low-budget anime tripe that infested the last two titles.

The music is right on the same level ad Dawn of Sorrow‘s soundtrack, providing a mixture of fast-paced and melancholy tracks, depending on the level. For instance, slow-moving underwater levels tend to have slower-paced tracks (the track “Azure Wanderings being the best example of these), and areas with intense fighting situations have the faster-paced tracks. The music isn’t quite on t
he same level as PoR, as it’s missing the contribution of the excellent Yuzo Koshiro this time around, with him being replaced by Yasuhiro Ichihashi (who did work on Dracula X Chronicles).

This franchise practically needed Order of Ecclesia to come around to show fans that Castlevania still has a life ahead for itself in terms of potential. It’s definitely not a gigantic jump in innovation for the franchise, but at this point, does it really need that? Of course not! The series has been perfectly fine adding incremental updates between each installment while remaining in its pre-established comfort zone, and it can be fine remaining within that…for now, at least.