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chuckroDracula is dead, but that never stopped him before. He reincarnated as Soma Cruz, but Soma sealed the dark power away. Now, a strange sorceress named Celia has brought forth new candidates to become the reborn Dark Lord if Soma doesn’t want the job.
I think this was my favorite of the DS Castlevania games. Portrait of Ruin was clever with the character switching, but the segmented areas made it lose some of the exploration value; Order of Ecclesia had a great concept but was just too goddamn hard.
Part of playing this now was less about this game in particular (though I do enjoy it) and more about testing DS games on the RG552, which has a 5” screen wide enough that putting the two DS screens side-by-side is viable. And it worked pretty well! The screens are a little smaller than on a proper DS, but the graphics are clear and smooth and I didn’t have an emulation issues.
I played the no-touchscreen hack, which was not strictly necessary (the RG552 has a touchscreen that’s big enough to actually use—I could have drawn the sigils) but I was just as happy not to. Honestly, they don’t really add anything to the game. The best thing the switch to the DS added to the series was having a screen that always showed the minimap. In retrospect, I should have used the “fixed luck” hack as well, because I probably spent a full hour of my playtime grinding Great Axe Armors and Final Armors so that I could upgrade my axe all the way to Death’s Scythe. Thankfully, I didn’t need to grind any of the souls that unlock Paranoia and let you get to the best ending; I just lucked into them during normal gameplay. Really, this game has one of the most intuitive setups for unlocking the true ending of any game in the series.
Overall: I appreciate this game for being more of Aria of Sorrow, and the hack removes the innovations that I didn’t appreciate. It was a fun little revisit.
I think this was my favorite of the DS Castlevania games. Portrait of Ruin was clever with the character switching, but the segmented areas made it lose some of the exploration value; Order of Ecclesia had a great concept but was just too goddamn hard.
Part of playing this now was less about this game in particular (though I do enjoy it) and more about testing DS games on the RG552, which has a 5” screen wide enough that putting the two DS screens side-by-side is viable. And it worked pretty well! The screens are a little smaller than on a proper DS, but the graphics are clear and smooth and I didn’t have an emulation issues.
I played the no-touchscreen hack, which was not strictly necessary (the RG552 has a touchscreen that’s big enough to actually use—I could have drawn the sigils) but I was just as happy not to. Honestly, they don’t really add anything to the game. The best thing the switch to the DS added to the series was having a screen that always showed the minimap. In retrospect, I should have used the “fixed luck” hack as well, because I probably spent a full hour of my playtime grinding Great Axe Armors and Final Armors so that I could upgrade my axe all the way to Death’s Scythe. Thankfully, I didn’t need to grind any of the souls that unlock Paranoia and let you get to the best ending; I just lucked into them during normal gameplay. Really, this game has one of the most intuitive setups for unlocking the true ending of any game in the series.
Overall: I appreciate this game for being more of Aria of Sorrow, and the hack removes the innovations that I didn’t appreciate. It was a fun little revisit.
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Date: 2022-04-30 05:49 pm (UTC)Agree also re: Ecclesia. Basically, we seem sympatico on Castlevania and I'll be sure to check out any recommendations you make on this series in particular in the future.