The Castlevania series, other than a few black sheep, has always been a quality series. In the recent years, handheld consoles have been getting lots of high-quality Castlevania love, especially the GBA and the DS. Now comes the latest in the series on the Nintendo DS.

This one does keep the usual Metroidvania style, but does a few things a bit differently. Is this game still as high-quality as previous DS/GBA Castlevania titles? Read on to see!

Story
This game takes place… actually I have no idea when. It seems like Mid 1800s, but it’s still pretty cryptic in that aspect, what with modern lighting, gasoline powered chainsaws, color cameras, robots… Yeah, it’s pretty cryptic as to when it takes places, but somewhere around 1865 sounds just about right.
Anyways, whatever year it is, the Belmonts are nowhere to be seen, maybe hiding or something until Dracula comes back to life, and a few other organizations are preparing to fight Dracula if he comes out and the Belmonts aren’t there to take care of him.  One of those organizations is Ecclesia, which seemingly only has 3 members. One of the members is Shanoa, a woman who can absorb “Glyph”, which basically let her use magic. So in the beginning of the game, Shanoa is preparing a ritual to seal Dracula forever, but is stopped by Ecclesia member Albus, who wants to prove himself worthy of going through the ritual instead of Shanoa. As a result of his interference, Ecclesia loses the Dominus glyphs which are supposed to be used to seal Dracula, Shanoa loses her memories and emotions and must start her training anew, and Albus is gone missing, Dominus glyphs in tow.
So basically, as Shanoa, you have to find Albus and the Dominus, as well as save the villagers that Albus kidnapped and imprisoned. I think the story is quite enjoyable, a few okay twists and everything just works well.

Graphics
The graphics are really nice. The sprites are well drawn and detailed (though, like most castlevania games, the sprites don’t have faces). The environments are really nice looking. Most are pretty dark and creepy, and overall give off a pretty good atmosphere. Last but not least, the enemies  look pretty nice. You’ve got the usual zombies, skeletons,  medusas, Death, axe armors, Frankenstein monsters and a couple other Castlevania staples, you also have a few new things like the big scary faces, Leatherface straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, weird screaming spirit girls, Nightmare (weird horse things), giant starfish, (historically accurate)Giant Enemy Crabs, shadow wolves and a few others. Monster design is overall really well done.

Sound
The sound is great as always. Monsters reacting to attacks or other of their sounds/talking/screams. Lots of creepy sounds too, of course. Shanoa’s voice acting is also pretty good, even if there’s not that much. Finally the music is great. It really has that classic Castlevania feel to it, and usually fits the atmosphere pretty well. Not much more to say here, the sound is great, as expected.

Gameplay
Ah, the gameplay. If I would describe it in one word, I would say “superb”. Map navigation is pretty much the same as older games, you go from room to room fighting monsters, some doors hide boss battles, and some rooms have breakable walls or floors or something to find hidden rooms or items, and finding save points and teleports. The basics from the various “Metroidvanias” hasn’t changed much, but some other gameplay elements have changed. The biggest difference from the previous titles is the Glyph System.

Glyph System
The big difference here is the Glyph System. Though it shares some similarities to the Souls system from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow,  it’s still pretty different. For instance, Shanoa doesn’t use weapons. Her attacks all stem from her use of Glyphs. Swords, rapiers, hammers, lances, fire, electricity, ice, light, darkness, all of the attacks come from the various Glyphs she absorbs.
Basically, you equip one glyph on each hand(Y button and X button) and one that can have various effects(used with the R button). Glyphs equipped to the hands can be used in combos by quickly alternating between the two buttons. Depending on the glyphs equipped, the rhythm to switch between each glyph is different, but proper switching enables to swifter attacks and better combat. Normal attacks uses MP, since all the attacks are basically magic based, so you can’t just attack non-stop, but MP recovers automatically fast enough.
In addition to that you have Glyph Union. With proper combinations, you can use different Union attacks, which combines two Glyphs to use a powerful attack. All combinations of the same glyph will have it’s own Union, but other combinations might create really powerful attacks. Those attacks use hearts, and a large amount of them, so they should only be used when they are really needed, especially in the beginning when you haven’t found many Heart upgrades.
Finally, as you kill enemies with glyphs(or find “Drops” items which boosts attributes), your attributes for each type will go up, eventually boosting their overall power. Not much more to say on that aspect, but basically the more you use a weapon type, the more powerful it gets.
The Glyph equipped to the R button can have various effects. The most important in the beginning let’s you latch on magnetized… things… and send yourself flying in whatever direction you want. Some make Shanoa transform into a few enemies, some give you stat boosts, one lets you fly, one lets you walk through certain walls. Basically, some of them are important to move on, the others can be use to complement your fighting style.

Quests
There’s quite a few quests in the game, given by villagers once you save them. The quests are mostly “go find X number of X items” and a few “kill X number of enemies”, but there are a few others, like “draw a waterfall” or “take pictures of a monster” or “find my cat”(though there’s a bunch of non-quest cats to find). Those quests give money, various items, or expand the inventory in the shop. So if you want some of the better equipment or just more stuff overall, doing quests is a good way to do that.

Equipment
Not much to say about this. Differently to previous Castlevania games, you don’t equip weapons, since all the attacks are handled by Glyphs. So you have armor, shoes, helmets and accessories. Most of the armor pieces can be found in the store after doing quests, and most accessories are found in treasure chests in dungeons, though a few can be found in stores when you do certain quests.

Going to different dungeons
This game, at first, doesn’t take place in Dracula’s Castle, which is currently nowhere to be found. So until you can actually go there, you go to various other locales, which range from forests to seas to caves to creepy dungeons and mansions. Those appear on a map, where new places appear when you complete previous areas. Very simple, but a different approach to the usual “going to different parts of Dracula’s castle”.

Overall, the gameplay is excellent. The Glyph System works really well, the combat is great and fast-paced, quests are fun to do, and exploring every area is good too.

Difficulty
This game is hard. Easily the toughest “Metroidvania” game in the Castlevania series. Except for the first boss, the bosses are all pretty tough, and each boss is harder than the last. They all have patterns, or at least visual/audio cues as to what their next attack will be, but it’s pretty tough figuring that out on your first try, and then evading their attacks isn’t always exactly easy. Not only that, but after a while bosses start doing a LOT of damage. One of them in particular, when I had 500 HP, did over 100 damage for each attack, around 160 damage for his “medium” attacks, and one of the attacks doing over 200 damage, you can imagine how fast I could get killed against him.
But it’s not just the bosses, even normal enemies can be a problem. Though not as bad as bosses, they still do ridiculous amounts of damage. Though it’s not too bad anyways, what really adds to the difficulty is the incredibly small amount of save points (which recover your HP). There is a LOT of distance between each save point, which are, for the most part, just next to boss rooms. Though some teleports help, most of the time they would still send you to a monster-filled room before you can get to a save.
If you want a challenge, this game definitely delivers.

Overall
So yeah, the game is awesome… Not much more to say here. Good characters, nice story, good graphics, nice soundtrack, incredible gameplay and really good difficulty. If you’re a Castlevania fan…. well you should already have it by now… If not, it’s worth trying out, though if you’re new to the series i’d pick up a different one to at least get used ot the gameplay. Overall great game, another masterpiece on the DS.

jobocan Games, Review