Castlevania ~ Order of Ecclesia Anticipation Thread

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Sun May 18, 2008 10:20 pm

man i want hearts

and the stat up items hidden all over the place

What the gliff is up with all this lame stuff.

like high heels + halfnekkid
yeah great way to fight teh vampierzzzz

btw what is up with castlevania

there's never any vampires

Erinu · Post by **Erinu** » Mon May 19, 2008 5:28 am

Oh cool, it's OK to have a random female protagonist in the new Castlevania game but it isn't OK for Sonia to be one. Trash.

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Mon May 19, 2008 6:59 am

Turrican wrote:Castlevania is no work of art - the amount of new stuff and recycled stuff comes from the games' profitability in the current situation.

The profitability of the series will drop to zero when more and more fans are turned away by lack of new content or by being fed unfinished beta releases like PoR.

It's a short-sighted decision. Sure, churning out half-assed, recycled products may be profitable in the short run, but it will hurt the franchise as a whole in the long turn. Unfortunately, most manager types in charge never think further than the next quarterly sales report.

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Mon May 19, 2008 7:21 am

But recycled enemies are awesome.

At least if you change their attack patterns enough.

Main thing is just bosses though.
like
DEATH

what you mean he doesn't rely as heavily on minscythe spawns any more?

ONOZ

Some of the new enemies are lame anyways. Like uh, the huge armor things. They try to be bosses and fail.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Mon May 19, 2008 7:26 am

It's a short-sighted decision. Sure, churning out half-assed, recycled products may be profitable in the short run, but it will hurt the franchise as a whole in the long turn. Unfortunately, most manager types in charge never think further than the next quarterly sales report.

Also, in ten years no one ever says "man, they really maximized profit in that game."

Dante · Post by **Dante** » Mon May 19, 2008 9:23 am

I completed 'POR' all quests and got that 'Warriors Revive' Spell(all the Nes Belmonts' thought it was a good game.. That Vampire Sister Boss fight was overly hard, far harder than the last boss..

Didn't like Aria of Sorrow due to the Boss Stylus drawing thing..

As somebody else said a Medusa Head or a Skeleton is just that.. You had Frankinstein, Medusa and Death on the early Nes games and the Haunted Castle Arcade game, and there's only so many horror characters you can use..

I saw the pictures on Magic Box and would buy it on the day of release, like the Idea of a Female main Character

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Mon May 19, 2008 9:49 am

Herr Schatten wrote:
Turrican wrote:Castlevania is no work of art - the amount of new stuff and recycled stuff comes from the games' profitability in the current situation.
The profitability of the series will drop to zero when more and more fans are turned away by lack of new content or by being fed unfinished beta releases like PoR.

It's a short-sighted decision. Sure, churning out half-assed, recycled products may be profitable in the short run, but it will hurt the franchise as a whole in the long turn. Unfortunately, most manager types in charge never think further than the next quarterly sales report.

Except I know around two kind of PoR haters: UFO and you. UFO represents a broad group of typical fan that whine, but only to always buy in the end. And it's easy to see why - claim a quality drop all you want, nothing in the market has the same care of pixelart, not even Nieborg's Contra 4.
And you Schatten - I think you too talk more from a pixel artist perspective than from a gamer in this case. Everyone who forgets the reused sprites and gets to the game will see that PoR was more challenging, more varied, longer, and refreshing mechanic-wise in regard to its predecessor. Heck they managed to make dual heroes usage fun in the game.

In short - if the series stays consistently excellent gameplay-wise, I'm afraid the people rejecting it for a bunch of reused graphics is a very small minority. Remember, the most loved game of all is still SotN and that made a great use of Rondo's graphics too.

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Mon May 19, 2008 10:06 am

Turrican wrote:In short - if the series stays consistently excellent gameplay-wise, I'm afraid the people rejecting it for a bunch of reused graphics is a very small minority. Remember, the most loved game of all is still SotN and that made a great use of Rondo's graphics too.

Actually, I don't mind the reused graphics all that much, as long as they look decent. It's true, I cringe at the sight of the scanned-in and downscaled cave backgrounds or the badly cropped trees. I'd have prefferred recycled graphics over these awful stand-ins anytime. It's sad to see in some parts of PoR how good the game could have looked if it had given enough development time to apply the same level of detail to the whole game.

But PoR didn't only contain placeholder graphics, it also contained placeholder level design of the blandest kind. And that's just inexcusable.

PoR clearly has been rushed out the door a good 6 months before it was finished. I don't know why I should encourage Konami to repeat this practice.

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Mon May 19, 2008 10:19 am

Herr Schatten wrote:But PoR didn't only contain placeholder graphics, it also contained placeholder level design of the blandest kind. And that's just inexcusable.

Hmm, no. The linear stages + main hub were the earliest game decision they took. You don't frequent Dracula's Castle as much as I do, otherwise you would have welcome that too. I assure that after Circle, Harmony, Aria and Dawn to have something different than the usual castle with intertwined zones was a good change of pace. All the paintings were more streamlined and gave a better emphasis on the action side of things.
True, it wasn't the most amazing thing. They tried to blend the old stages of classic Vanias with the new formula. The succeeded only in part. However, that was the main drive of the new episode, not a rushed decision.

I agree that stage design is crucial for the series.

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Mon May 19, 2008 10:31 am

Turrican wrote:They tried to blend the old stages of classic Vanias with the new formula.

Nothing wrong with that idea, it was the execution that was lacking, though. The new linear stages could easily have been as good as those in the old Castlevanias, if they had been given proper time for finetuning. As they are, they are a half-finished mess in far too many places.

Necronom · Post by **Necronom** » Mon May 19, 2008 12:47 pm

JoshF wrote:
It's a short-sighted decision. Sure, churning out half-assed, recycled products may be profitable in the short run, but it will hurt the franchise as a whole in the long turn. Unfortunately, most manager types in charge never think further than the next quarterly sales report.
Also, in ten years no one ever says "man, they really maximized profit in that game."

Konami themselves do so surely. Even in 10 years.
The main reason for such "short-sighted decissions" is not Konami's attitude or business approach but the simple fact that contrary to film and literature barely anybody in this business is interested in doing games that are relevant for more than 1 or 2 years. The whole videogames industry - especially consoles with their rather short life cycle - is based around "short-sighted decisions". Even when nearly "destroyed" by shitty output most franchises can be rebooted. Sega for example lost a lot of Sonic fans in the past but they don't care because they'll gain new ones with the DS RPG and Unleashed. 90% of videogame franchises, including Castlevania, are designed as cash cows from the start.

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Mon May 19, 2008 1:10 pm

Yeah but Castlevania has always been treated with a special care. It's not common to have a 20+ years series with so few quality slumps. I would label "bad" just the N64 outings and Legends. There's still a share of "mediocre" (Curse of Darkness, Adventure) to deal with, but the core bulk of the series is great.

And there's milking and milking... Surely Castlevania is living on its hardcore fanbase, but certainly it's not yet to the point of Megaman EXE 17.963,6 Black and Red versions. And it never went as downhill as Sonic (then again, almost nothing can go as downhill as that).

Frederik · Post by **Frederik** » Mon May 19, 2008 2:37 pm

What I liked about PoR was the fast pace, and the choice between all sorts of weapons and the classic whips. I mean, the Nebula and the flamewhip were just huge fun. And those speed-up boots helped that pace, too. And since I hadn´t played SoTN at that point, I really enjoyed these beautiful sprites like the Minotaur. Also, many tracks were really energetic, especially the remix of "Iron Blue Intention". I also highly enjoyed the arena stage for pure hack`n`slash, and playing as Richter has never been so much fun to me.

But I agree on the occasionally horrible background graphics, and even more on the "bland room next to bland room" layout - at times it feels very redundant, like useless extra padding in an effort to make the game longer. It just isn´t nearly as organic as in DoS or as majestic as in SoTN. I devoured PoR the first two days I got it, but don´t see myself replaying it as with DoS. Charlotte was ridiculously underpowered, btw.

What also bothers me in retrospect is that those portrait levels didn´t have a very Castlevania feeling about it - I started the series with Circle Of The Moon, so the "Metrovania" aspect is important to me; and those Portrait levels didn´t feel like an organic, meaningful part of the castle to me.

Anyways, I´ll still buy this one, and reserve two days for extensive poopsocking with the obligatory flaming headache afterwards

There is just nothing like grinding through a new Castlevania for hours upon hours, and even if I won´t play it again, that´s worth my money for once.

moozooh · Post by **moozooh** » Mon May 19, 2008 2:44 pm

I started the series with Super Castlevania IV (which is still my favorite part of the series), but after playing most other arcade-style 'vanias, I was kind of disappointed in them. On the other hand, since I've always been an avid Metroid gameplay fan, the metroid-style 'vanias appeal to me greatly. I like to play AoS just for fun from time to time, as I did with SCIV in the past. Though I guess the latter was more immersive, probably because it had to be played through from start to finish (or at least that was how I liked playing it the most). So naturally, I don't mind either style as long as it doesn't have the awful pacing HoD had.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Mon May 19, 2008 3:32 pm

Erinu wrote:Oh cool, it's OK to have a random female protagonist in the new Castlevania game but it isn't OK for Sonia to be one. Trash.

High five!

Of course, as I said earlier, I bet this is the doing of Konami USA. Could even be a case of Iga's "look it's first in my faked-up timeline of teh games = move over old games." Sonia was supposed to come VERY early, however, so I'll have to see how this turns out.

Cromarty · Post by **Cromarty** » Mon May 19, 2008 8:20 pm

FrederikJurk wrote:Charlotte was ridiculously underpowered, btw.

Really? I remember finding Ice Fang very early on and getting by almost the entire game with it.
She didn't have enough worthwhile spells, though..

Mortificator · Post by **Mortificator** » Mon May 19, 2008 9:38 pm

Ed Oscuro wrote:
Erinu wrote:Oh cool, it's OK to have a random female protagonist in the new Castlevania game but it isn't OK for Sonia to be one. Trash.
High five!

Of course, as I said earlier, I bet this is the doing of Konami USA. Could even be a case of Iga's "look it's first in my faked-up timeline of teh games = move over old games." Sonia was supposed to come VERY early, however, so I'll have to see how this turns out.

The great thing about Legends story wasn't The Belmont With Tits, it was having her go out to kill Dracula and end up getting nailed by his son. Whoops! Even better is how that would retcon the Belmont family of vampire hunters into being bastard vampire half-breeds out to kill their grandfather.

Turrican wrote:Yeah but Castlevania has always been treated with a special care. It's not common to have a 20+ years series with so few quality slumps. I would label "bad" just the N64 outings and Legends. There's still a share of "mediocre" (Curse of Darkness, Adventure) to deal with, but the core bulk of the series is great.

You know, I just finished playing through Legacy of Darkness for the 64. It wasn't amazing, but I liked it. Runs fine in Project 64, if you want to give it a try.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue May 20, 2008 7:56 am

Mortificator wrote:The great thing about Legends story wasn't The Belmont With Tits, it was having her go out to kill Dracula and end up getting nailed by his son. Whoops! Even better is how that would retcon the Belmont family of vampire hunters into being bastard vampire half-breeds out to kill their grandfather.

It possibly would have made more sense if Resurrection was released. This reminds me to see about translating the Japanese version for possible differences...

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Tue May 20, 2008 7:37 pm

http://www.gamespot.com/video/945837/61 ... de;title;3

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Wed May 21, 2008 1:17 am

konami should just make Circusvania

It will feature awesome things such as...

unicycle wielding Death
True Dracula elephant form, complete water and peanut attacks
Clown Armors that attack with pies
Evil Glove enemies

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Wed May 21, 2008 1:18 am

If you break the right wall you can find the Rainbow Wig for +10 LUC

UnscathedFlyingObject · Wed May 21, 2008 1:49 am

They should just outsource the work to more capable hands. Like Nihon Falcom's.

UnscathedFlyingObject · Thu May 22, 2008 4:36 am

Iga listening to the fans?

It seems he made the main character female 'cuz people were bitching and stuff. Makes you wonder, though, why not decide to make all new sprites. That's what ppl and journos complain the most.

Wait, no. It costs money, effort and breaks the status quo. It's not good to excel.

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Thu May 22, 2008 4:55 am

Did someone sayhhhhhhhhhhh...

OUTSOURSHINGHHHHH??????????

also iga's just copying everyone else who's using lolis in their games
Seems to be a new trend in video gamezzzzzz

ITS AN EPIDEMIC

UnscathedFlyingObject · Thu May 22, 2008 5:19 am

Nihon Falcom could make shit into a five star game if they wanted to. I'm serious. It's a fact after they created YS Oath in Felghana. They don't fuck around like Iga. Here's some of the highlights of YS:OiF:

- All new sprites for every character and enemy (that's a fucking lot of new sprites.) And guess what, unique character portrait for every character!

- Little to no backtracking. Ppl complained about backtracking in YS6 and they could do nothing but please the fans.

- 3D hack and slash done right. Compare that to the shit Iga is putting out.

- The kitchen sink.

Plus, all done with a tight budget and in a limited market (Japan.) That's a lot of risk taking. They're my heroes.

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Thu May 22, 2008 5:41 am

^Whoah! Can you get that in english?

UnscathedFlyingObject · Thu May 22, 2008 6:00 am

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jCWYH8aV81k

kozo · Post by **kozo** » Thu May 22, 2008 7:04 am

UnscathedFlyingObject wrote:Nihon Falcom could make shit into a five star game if they wanted to. I'm serious. It's a fact after they created YS Oath in Felghana. They don't fuck around like Iga. Here's some of the highlights of YS:OiF:

- All new sprites for every character and enemy (that's a fucking lot of new sprites.) And guess what, unique character portrait for every character!

- Little to no backtracking. Ppl complained about backtracking in YS6 and they could do nothing but please the fans.

- 3D hack and slash done right. Compare that to the shit Iga is putting out.

- The kitchen sink.

Plus, all done with a tight budget and in a limited market (Japan.) That's a lot of risk taking. They're my heroes.

And you are mine. Falcom ownz me.

And when you say unique portrait for every person, it's true - EVERY single character, whether it's the hero or a random townsperson, has a name and a pretty picture and unique lines.

Oh, and check out Ys Origin someday. If you play as Hugo, it's basically a shmup on foot, options and all.

UnscathedFlyingObject · Fri May 23, 2008 12:46 am

I played YS6, YS:OiF and YS:Origin already

. I like Oath better, but Origin was not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Fri May 23, 2008 1:10 am

I meant "Is the game available in english"