This latest installment of the Castlevania series will more than likely appeal to fans, but to anyone else, the game will come off as a simple hack 'n slash with a few neat touches. This game is hardly a must-buy, but if you’re a fan of the genre, you might consider picking it up when the price drops a bit.
You play as Hector, Devil Forgemaster and ex-servant of Dracula who turned against the infamous vampire. (Purists need not worry, you can unlock Trevor Belmont as a playable character. Yes, he has the whip.) You are, to make the story simple, out on a quest to kill your fellow Devil Forgemaster (who remains loyal to the now-deceased Dracula) Isaac, who has goaded you into doing so by having your girlfriend burned as a witch.
The game is extremely hack n’ slashy – you plow through level after level with your sword/ax/spear/whatever you have at the moment, crushing a wide variety of monsters and bosses with your imposing might. The game is a bit more deep than that, but anyone looking for shocking originality is going to be disappointed...it more or less sticks to the basics of its genre.
What makes this game a cut (pun not intended) above the similar, but mediocre games that clog your local rental store is the wide variety of ways that the game allows you to approach the simple hack n'slash template. One example is the Devil Forging feature that is somewhat central to the gameplay. Your character, as a Devil Forgemaster, has the capability to summon a variety of Innocent Devils, or friendly monsters controlled by the AI. As you progress, you can level up and evolve these allies to more powerful and more versatile forms. They help immeasurably, especially during tough boss fights when you might otherwise find yourself overpowered.
Then you have the monsters. There are a LOT of them, and the AI is pretty good. Some of the variations that you encounter as you progress through the levels are simply beefed-up palette swaps, but most are truly unique and present an array of challenges for you to overcome. Some are annoying (Flea Men), some are cunning (Dead Baron), and some will lower your self-worth with their crushing attacks (High-Level Demons).
Another way the game mixes it up is through its very appealing weapon system. Some monsters drop materials (like bronze, steel, etc) which you can use to create weapons, armor, etc. for yourself. Different weapons do different amounts of damage and have different combos and attack patterns. You'll find yourself constantly tinkering to find the best weapon combination given the materials you've got. It's actually quite a bit of fun to mess around with the weapon-creation system, and the designers deserve a lot of credit for that.
That said, the same designers also let this game ship with some considerable gameplay flaws still present. Levels are large and expansive, but also needlessly complicated, with critical plot points and ability-unlocking items scattered seemingly-randomly around a given map. This creates the unfortunate need to run endlessly around a map looking for the one point you haven't explored yet, or to find that one item/scroll the plot has dictated that you desperately need. Since the maps are large, and since the means for moving between the maps is time-consuming, this quickly becomes annoying, though it doesn't ruin the experience. Those without patience will not be pleased, however. There are a few other glitches. Ghost-type enemies, apparently intentionally, do not have to deal with clipping- they can float right through walls and through the floor. I understand the concept, but it's needlessly frustrating to be attacking a ghost that fades halfway through a wall, rendering it effectively invulnerable. Again, such problems (and small issues plague this game) don't ruin the gameplay, but they make it a great deal more frustrating and less enjoyable.
The graphics on this game look ok, but they're nothing special. The background art is mediocre, the character and enemy renders are pretty good, and there are some nice cutscenes. The game is more or less par for the course for an X-Box game.
The game could have used some work in the sound department, though. There is some highly questionable voice acting for some of the game's characters, but that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is the game's soundtrack, which sounds like it was made with the SNES in mind, and to make it yet more annoying, it repeats over and over and over and OVER again inside a given level until you long for the original soundtrack from the NES Castlevania. The SFX of swords clanging, monster groaning, et. al., manage to make up for these failures in part, but nothing can quite overcome the overwhelming madness of that repetitive, MIDI-esque soundtrack.
Other than unlocking and playing Trevor Belmont, the game has no replay outside of just going through it again, and you'll likely start to tire of the hacking and slashing long before you finish the game for the first time. I recommend playing a level, putting the game away for a while, playing something else, and then picking it up again when you're in the mood to cut/hit/smash some stuff.
Overall, the game is a solid effort, but is not really anything special. You might fill a good week with some pretty fun gaming. The title is better than most in its genre, but that's not because of the particular excellence of this game so much as it is due to the pervasive mediocrity of most of the other games. I liked the game's attempts at innovation through the weapon system and the devil forging bits, but ultimately, you're just going to be mashing the X button nearly all the way through the game. That's not to say the game's a tedious bore, it's just that in this day and age I'm looking for newer and better things from this genre and this series.
