Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

A great goth game glorifying glyphs 'n ghouls.
11/4/2008 5:28 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

How appropriate that it's Halloween while I'm typing up the review for Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, having just traipsed through creepy castles and forests to face off against flying banshees, giant bats and ghoulish zombies.

On one hand, the third Castlevania game on the Nintendo DS -- following 2005's Dawn of Sorrow and 2006's less impressive Portrait of Ruin -- returns to the series' roots as it's tough, big and full of hidden goodies, while it's also a clear step forward in the franchise with new gameplay mechanics, characters and level design. Despite a few frustrating moments -- namely, dying time and time again during boss battles or not being able to save the game when you want -- Order of Ecclesia is simply the best Castlevania on the platform, period.

As with past Castlevania adventures, Koji Igarashi's latest is all about defeating the evil minions of Dracula and hunting down the elusive vampire himself. This time around, however, you don't play as one of the Belmont clan, so you also won't have access to the bad-ass whip as in previous games. Instead, you play as a female fighter, Shanoa, who is part of the Ecclesia clan, another organization sworn to defeat the Count and his many malevolent followers.

In order to combat these enemies, you're introduced to a new Glyph attack system in which our heroine absorbs magical inscriptions from these large items -- left by fallen enemies or found strewn throughout levels -- and equips them in one of three places: the Y button (main Glyph), X button (secondary Glyph) and R button (back Glyph). Glyphs can be used as a weapon (such as the rapier you start with, or throwing knives, bow, axe and so on), to cast magical spells, or to summon creatures later on in the game. It took me a few tries to properly assign the Glyphs in the equip screen, so the game-makers could've made this task more intuitive, but you'll pick this up by the time you venture out of the castle and find more of them.

Once a new Glyph is absorbed, you simply press the Start button to equip it, and executing it is as easy as pressing the corresponding button. Executing Glyphs requires varying amounts of magic points that recharge over time. Because you can equip your glyphs in various ways and even combine them, there are more than 100 different attack combinations to unleash against enemies.

You will also acquire Relics that grant special abilities and provide helpful info. Relics range from simply displaying the name of the monsters you're fighting (in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen) and unlocking a double jump, to the "Serpent Tale," which lets you navigate underwater. Other Relics help you with your Glyph management ("Glyph Sleeve") and execution ("Glyph Union"). Because you're not given everything all at once, this serves as a nice dangling carrot as you run, jump, and fight through the many levels.