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Thursday 6 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY
So, I didn't talk about the bosses last time. I've beaten this game already, but showing off this one part of the game is always fun. Once you have beaten the game, you unlock the "Boss Rush" mode, which basically takes you through all of the bosses in order. You're timed while doing this and if you do it fast enough, there's a reward waiting at the end. I think that this is a VERY nice addition to the game and I'm surprised that many other games don't have it. I mean, isn't a lot of the fun of a game in the boss battles? Bosses present the hardest challenge to the player, and it's kind of a drag to have to play through the game again in order to fight the bosses again, which is especially true in Castlevania because the bosses are usually pretty difficult.
Also, when one beats the game, they unlock the "Julius" mode, where they can play as the character Julius Belmont who is more like the traditional Castlevania hero because he uses the signature whip and sub-weapons. This mode, however, is extremely limited. There's no dialog and no items -- not even healing potions! What you see is what you get! Of course, you do start out with 800 health, which never changes, but certainly gets you by. The only way to make Julius stronger is by defeating the bosses in the game.
One of the things that I like about this game is the multiple endings. There are some weird books one can find hidden away in the castle. They refer to three different powers one should use when fighting the final boss. If you don't use these three specific soul powers, or even change out of them, you spoil the ending. The story goes that there is a man, Graham, who thinks he is Dracula. He goes about the castle collecting power, and you must fight him in the end. When you defeat him, his body emits a kind of darkness that your character, Soma, is either possessed by (when you use the proper three souls) or just passes over. The "bad ending" is where you've defeated Graham, but there is very little closure as to how your character came to possess the unusual power of soul stealing (or whatever it's called). The "good ending" is where you are possessed by the power of the castle and you realize that you ARE Dracula! It was kind of obvious, what with the demonic power and all, but you still want to be surprised. This way, you unlock the final area - the chaos realm - where you fight the chaos that binds the castle together, then you get to watch the cliche scene of the castle falling apart. Altogether, it's a really cool storyline, and I consider it to be a bit better than, "you are a Belmont, a Vampire Hunter! Banish Dracula! GO!"
DESIGN
BOSSES: The bosses of this game aren't as hard as the other Castlevania games I've played, namely Circle of the Moon, but they still have their challenges. Death, in particular, was really hard. Although Graham was pretty anti-climactic, he's not exactly the last boss. There's also Julius and Chaos. Julius Belmont is a very tricky one to beat because he's so darned fast. Chaos is pretty hard to predict, but then again, it's in the things nature... But by the end of the game, you've learned your lesson and stocked up on health potions, so there's not much risk involved.
ITEMS: In this game, you can at least buy some potions so that you don't have to farm zombies like other games. They're essential to beating some bosses for the first time, as there are many attack patterns that are just painfully difficult to dodge. The best items in the game come from completing challenges and finding the secret entrance to the forbidden area, which is, yet again, much better than having to farm zombies. Also, there's a bit of pride one can take from having one of every item in the game.
COMBAT: Enemies have set health, experience, weaknesses, and resistances that you can look up once you've collected their soul. When you attack, the damage you cause is expressed by a number that rises from your enemies' feet. The only suggestion I would make here is to have some sort of health bar for enemies, but that might just muddy up the scene. Your character has the typical Strength, Constitution, and Luck attributes that go up when levels are gained. It's a pretty basic RPG, but that's what makes it so beautiful. There's nothing weird like "Charisma" or "Spirit" to deal with. Your health is represented by a bar at the top left corner of the screen as well as by a number just to the left of that. This is useful because there isn't often a variance in the damage monsters deal to you, so you know exactly what you can take. Of course, there's no such number that represents the magic meter, which is annoying when you want to cast a spell one last time and find you can't. Overall, however, this doesn't affect gameplay very much.
DIFFICULTIES: There's a hard difficulty setting, but I found it to be...easier. The items and souls (thank GOD) one collects throughout the game carry over, which actually makes beating the game a breeze. There's a ring you really need to get in order to find all the souls -- the soul eater ring -- but it costs $300,000, which isn't that hard to get once you play the game a second time around because you don't need two super duper awesome swords that cost $50,000 each. Also, the hard difficulty allows access to certain silly items, like the silver handgun and Death's Scythe. It's an okay bonus, but there's really not much of a difference. I found that once you collect all the souls, do the Boss Rush in under two minutes, and get all the items, there's no point in ever playing the game again. You've probably run the game into the ground by beating every single monster twenty times to get their soul, not to mention you've also done the Boss Rush enough times that it's easy, but that's another reason why I like this game. When you're done, you're done! The game cuts back a lot on busy work, even though you spend a good deal of time farming some really tough monsters for their souls, but it sure beats the hell out of collecting them all twice or something.
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