Well, heres my opinion. I'm conflicted. Its the best 3D Castlevania game and not a bad modern action game, but it has weak music and its not until the mountain fortress before its starts becoming visually impressive, and then you still have to wait for the vampire section of the game before it delivers on the Gothic visuals the series is known for.

Its story is not very good until the twist ending, but the Castlevania games have never had good stories. You never fight Dracula, the Mummy, Death, or Frankenstein's monster, so I don't know if calling it Castlevania was even necessary. Most of the character building is narrated to you by Patrick Stewart, and the enemies rarely need a stronger strategy than "attack attack, dodge, block and counter". In that order specifically. That sends them into a blocking stance, you dodge the unblockable counterattack, and then block their normal attack afterwards for massive damage. They try a bunch of stuff that never quite sticks, like mounted combat and Shadow of the Collosus boss battles, which they discard by the fifth act. Most boss battles are QTEs and not even button specific, so completely pointless.

Did anyone else play this?

Syd Lexia wrote:

Read the twist ending on Wikipedia. That seems it could be canon. Other than that, what a load of crap. Kojima is a pretentious, talentless douchebag and shouldn't have been let anywhere near Castlevania. I hope they'll keep making handheld games that follow that primary Castlevania canon.

I almost kinda like the twist ending. Its never going to work for the sequel, but story wise its no less than anything else the series has done(hey, heres dracula, take care of that wouldya?).

I really really wish they would just make a proper giant modern 2D castlevania. Rendering enemies in 3D takes a lot more effort than people realize, what with all of the AI and whatnot. A sprite takes more effort to draw but its got a much simpler pattern to program and you have a fricken 10+ year library to draw from, it wouldnt be hard.

Really though its not a bad game. If I had to get pissed at it, it would be over the sort of gall that goes into complaining about how much a series has gotten stale, then stealing wholesale from other videogames while forgetting the big draws for the original.

Syd Lexia wrote:

The original NES one is probably the toughest, though I haven't played Rondo or the MSX game, so I can't say that 100%. Dracula's Curse was fairly tough depending on which paths you took and who your helper was, but I beat that as a kid. I never beat the original as a kid. The game was super easy until Level 4, at which point things got considerably tougher.

Ive beat 1 and 4 and draculas curse legit of the original types. 3 murders me, but it might be on account of taking a bad path or bad character.

Syd Lexia wrote:

TheRoboSleuth wrote: Syd Lexia wrote: The original NES one is probably the toughest, though I haven't played Rondo or the MSX game, so I can't say that 100%. Dracula's Curse was fairly tough depending on which paths you took and who your helper was, but I beat that as a kid. I never beat the original as a kid. The game was super easy until Level 4, at which point things got considerably tougher. Ive beat 1 and 4 and draculas curse legit of the original types. 3 murders me, but it might be on account of taking a bad path or bad character. Um... 3 is Dracula's Curse?

Wait I mean the one that came out on the supernintendo after 4. Most embarrasing.