Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 17th February 2009

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Time to take on Dracula?

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Details:

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	Action
	Nintendo DS
	Konami
	Konami

12+

Out Now

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia serves up a retro hack ‘n’ slash playing experience, that jogged my memory of playing the series on consoles of by gone years. Despite offering a classic side scrolling hack fest the more casual gamer may be put of by the games unforgiving difficulty.

In the game you take the role of Shanoa, a member of the Order of Ecclesia who was destined to be given a special Glyph that would give her the power to defeat Dracula and his horde. However, the ceremony to allow Shanoa to absorb the glyph is interrupted by Albus, the Orders chief researcher, who steals the glyph for himself and in the process wipes Shanoa’s mind. Now Shanoa must track down Albus reclaim the glyph as well as try and stop Dracula and his minions running rampage.

Order of Ecclesia introduces several new elements to the Castlevania series on Nintendo DS. For the first time players are able to leave the monotony of Dracula’s castle behind and do battle with the forces of evil across several different environments which adds a new level of variation to the series. Levels themselves are also designed better then in previous games with a much more linear path through them, instead of the incessant backtracking of previous titles that had you constantly scrawling back through levels time and again! Although, it should be noted this hasn’t totally been eliminated from Order of Ecclesia’s play.

The most notable addition to the game is the glyph combat system which allows Shanoa to absorb various glyphs that give her the power to wield them as weapons. For instance Sword glyphs allow Shanoa to wield a sword and an Axe glyph allows her to throw axes at enemies. A glyph can be assigned to the X, Y and R buttons allowing you to create weapon combinations that suit your playing style. However, not all glyphs act as weapons, such as the Magnes glyph that generates a magnetic field around Shanoa allowing her to catapult her self up ledges, across gaps and even repel enemies.

If I have one gripe with Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia that is how unforgiving the games difficulty is. In the early stages of the game things seem pretty straight forward, however the difficulty soon increases in a steep curve. Boss battles too are fairly epic and will take some patience to clear, and unlike in most games that offer a save point after battling a boss Order of Ecclesia doesn’t, which can be more then a little annoying if you meet your demise in the subsequent action after having just managed to defeat a boss after the tenth time of asking. This makes the game largely in accessible to the more casual gamer, who is likely to become far too frustrated to enjoy the game.

Visually Order of Ecclesia looks pretty good, and is one of the better looking Castlevania games to hit the Nintendo DS. Environments in the game are well designed and many of the games enemies are freakishly disturbing! The games visual design is complimented with an excellent sound track that helps add an element of intensity to the gameplay.

Order of Ecclesia serves up an improved playing experience that will please both Castlevania and retro hack ‘n’ slash fans, however its foreboding difficulty spoil the overall package making the game fairly inaccessible to the more casual gamer, which is a shame as an enjoyable playing experience is to be had!