Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
Jan. 17th, 2012 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroLeon Belmont (possibly the earliest known member of the family, but who can keep track?) gives up his title and charges into a haunted forest to save his girlfriend from a vampire named Walter. A friendly alchemist named Rinaldo gives him a magic whip to help him out, and then he’s off to the monster-killing races. Oh, and Leon’s best friend Mattias figures into this somehow; but I’m sure the fact that he’s pale-skinned, power-hungry and a master of mystic secrets means nothing.
I generally like the 2D Castlevania games. It took me a while to get into this (and it’s probably for the best the game isn’t that long); I had specifically chosen it over other 3D options because the story is a critical part of the mythos.
The plot isn’t quite as involved as it seems like it should be. (Yes, I realize I’m playing Castlevania and that’s an absurd statement.) After the opening sequences, you can go through long segments of exploration without any further development or explanation—it’s mostly cutscenes when you meet and defeat bosses that spur you to go back and talk to Rinaldo, the one noteworthy NPC. (It’s because you can do the stages in any order, so the plot dumps are self-contained depending on which section you did.) Then there’s the big melodrama twist when you’ve done all five, and a giant infodump between the two final bosses. This game does, in fact, show the origin of the Vampire Killer whip and the Belmont Clan’s feud with Dracula, but if you’re not paying really close attention then that all seems to come out of nowhere at the end.
And the translation and the voice acting are pure Ham and Cheese. Melodrama cranked up to eleven. “I will kill you, and the night!” (This is not helped by Leon’s plastic action-figure hair.)
The uncontrollable camera is nonetheless pretty much okay, as they were pretty good at setting it to rotate and show the things you want it to show, and directing your character is pretty intuitive. This doesn’t mean I didn’t find a couple of platforming sections extremely frustrating, of course. (I had much more trouble with jumping off at the wrong angle than I did with timing whip strikes to swing over things, for instance.) I feel like I talk a lot about edge gravity, because it can really make a difference on how frustrating a platformer is, and the fact that Leon will not walk or run off ledges (you need to jump or get knocked off) really makes a difference here.
The graphics are very dark, which can lead to some difficulty seeing both monsters and doors. Doors get marked with floating blue arrows to make up for this; and the map is really useful. Fighting shadow wolves in dark hallways is really troublesome, though. (Our TV setup is such that light shines through the windows onto the TV in mid-day. That makes the game effectively unplayable because the graphics are so dark.)
I was concerned that the battle system would be much more difficult than it ended up being. There are no experience points or levels like the portable Castlevanias, but you can stock up on healing items and get better defensive gear at the store after each level. You can also do the first five levels in any order, if you find one particularly challenging. (You need to collect the colored stones from each boss in order to enter the final area and challenge Walter). Leon has a bunch of tricks (including a decent number of combo moves) and unlocks more as you play, including flying kicks and additional whip combos. Until the final section, most monsters won’t give you serious trouble. The last segment bumps up enemy strength and requires you to go slowly and carefully to survive.
The levels themselves aren’t that bad, though. The mazes are not particularly confusing, and most of the gameplay is entering a room, and then needing to kill all the monsters in it to advance. Sometimes there a switch to flip or a trap to avoid, or hidden doors to find. (Most of these lead to optional goodies like HP Max Up items, new relics you don’t really need, and bonus bosses who guard elemental whip upgrades.) The real challenge (as is often the case with Castlevania games) is the bosses, who each have a gimmick and can kill you in a few hits—oh, and you can’t change your equipment or use items from the paused menu screen—you need to use the real-time item window, which means dodging the boss’s attacks while also trying to heal!
The game limits you to only one subweapon at a time, a feature that irritated me in Harmony of Dissonance, too. You can change orbs on the fly to change the subweapon ability (and heart cost), which gives a huge amount of variety by late game, but this still would be better if you didn’t have to go back to whatever map spot had the subweapon you wanted to switch to. I ended up pretty much sticking to the Axe for the entire game, once I got the feel for it.
Overall: It’s fun for a bit, and it’s not that long, but it can be very frustrating if you’re not great at 3D action-platformers. If you’re a fan of the series in general but can’t get into the game, try to find the cutscenes on Youtube. “So bad they’re good” does accurately describe them.
I generally like the 2D Castlevania games. It took me a while to get into this (and it’s probably for the best the game isn’t that long); I had specifically chosen it over other 3D options because the story is a critical part of the mythos.
The plot isn’t quite as involved as it seems like it should be. (Yes, I realize I’m playing Castlevania and that’s an absurd statement.) After the opening sequences, you can go through long segments of exploration without any further development or explanation—it’s mostly cutscenes when you meet and defeat bosses that spur you to go back and talk to Rinaldo, the one noteworthy NPC. (It’s because you can do the stages in any order, so the plot dumps are self-contained depending on which section you did.) Then there’s the big melodrama twist when you’ve done all five, and a giant infodump between the two final bosses. This game does, in fact, show the origin of the Vampire Killer whip and the Belmont Clan’s feud with Dracula, but if you’re not paying really close attention then that all seems to come out of nowhere at the end.
And the translation and the voice acting are pure Ham and Cheese. Melodrama cranked up to eleven. “I will kill you, and the night!” (This is not helped by Leon’s plastic action-figure hair.)
The uncontrollable camera is nonetheless pretty much okay, as they were pretty good at setting it to rotate and show the things you want it to show, and directing your character is pretty intuitive. This doesn’t mean I didn’t find a couple of platforming sections extremely frustrating, of course. (I had much more trouble with jumping off at the wrong angle than I did with timing whip strikes to swing over things, for instance.) I feel like I talk a lot about edge gravity, because it can really make a difference on how frustrating a platformer is, and the fact that Leon will not walk or run off ledges (you need to jump or get knocked off) really makes a difference here.
The graphics are very dark, which can lead to some difficulty seeing both monsters and doors. Doors get marked with floating blue arrows to make up for this; and the map is really useful. Fighting shadow wolves in dark hallways is really troublesome, though. (Our TV setup is such that light shines through the windows onto the TV in mid-day. That makes the game effectively unplayable because the graphics are so dark.)
I was concerned that the battle system would be much more difficult than it ended up being. There are no experience points or levels like the portable Castlevanias, but you can stock up on healing items and get better defensive gear at the store after each level. You can also do the first five levels in any order, if you find one particularly challenging. (You need to collect the colored stones from each boss in order to enter the final area and challenge Walter). Leon has a bunch of tricks (including a decent number of combo moves) and unlocks more as you play, including flying kicks and additional whip combos. Until the final section, most monsters won’t give you serious trouble. The last segment bumps up enemy strength and requires you to go slowly and carefully to survive.
The levels themselves aren’t that bad, though. The mazes are not particularly confusing, and most of the gameplay is entering a room, and then needing to kill all the monsters in it to advance. Sometimes there a switch to flip or a trap to avoid, or hidden doors to find. (Most of these lead to optional goodies like HP Max Up items, new relics you don’t really need, and bonus bosses who guard elemental whip upgrades.) The real challenge (as is often the case with Castlevania games) is the bosses, who each have a gimmick and can kill you in a few hits—oh, and you can’t change your equipment or use items from the paused menu screen—you need to use the real-time item window, which means dodging the boss’s attacks while also trying to heal!
The game limits you to only one subweapon at a time, a feature that irritated me in Harmony of Dissonance, too. You can change orbs on the fly to change the subweapon ability (and heart cost), which gives a huge amount of variety by late game, but this still would be better if you didn’t have to go back to whatever map spot had the subweapon you wanted to switch to. I ended up pretty much sticking to the Axe for the entire game, once I got the feel for it.
Overall: It’s fun for a bit, and it’s not that long, but it can be very frustrating if you’re not great at 3D action-platformers. If you’re a fan of the series in general but can’t get into the game, try to find the cutscenes on Youtube. “So bad they’re good” does accurately describe them.
