Needs more Bald Space Marine, am I right? Manly men only play manly men characters!

Wow, that's too bad.  I feltt Portrait of Ruin had the best soundtrack since Symphony of the Night.

Here's the interview with IGA where he mentions wanting to do more 3D games: http://www.dsfanboy.com/2008/05/20/igar … -ecclesia/

And an IGN interview where he basically says the same thing: http://ds.ign.com/articles/874/874323p1.html

I always thought it was a neat twist to start off the Belmont clan with a woman, so I was disappointed by the retconning too. Still, points go to IGA for not making Shanoa A) totally titacular or B) annoyingly cute. Of course, a few years from now I'm sure he'll retcon Shanoa into a guy.

That ain't good enough.  We need the Man with the MACHINE gun.

Haha, "Shanoa"... Sounds like the name of a female rapper. The name and those clothes totally go with whatever jumbled period of history this is supposed to be set in. Maybe it's set in the Victorian period?

I see what you did there!

Me too.

I wonder if Angela's post was a veiled request for Sota Fujimori to return to the CV series? His re-arrangement of the X68000 OST is very similar in style to that FF8 track. Personally, I'd gladly take another Sota CV score (although the beats probably wouldn't sound so phat in a DS game, it'd have to be a console one).

no thanks. give me something simon/richter-like or even some ayami kojima lead.

I actually keep thinking "Shania" whenever I see the name. Heck, you can sort of make a case for Shanoa looking like Shania.

The game is supposed to be set in the period when the Belmonts disappeared. Specifically, I think it's right after Richter, so it should be around the 1800s. Which, yeah, means Victorian.

Strangely, I remember one of the reasons IGA gave for retconning Sonia was because he didn't think it was realistic for a woman to be fighting in that era (never mind that Joan of Arc actually predated Sonia). I wonder why he thinks the 1800s is more suitable for femmes fatales?

That's exactly as retarded as IGA's reason not to include a clock tower stage in Lament of Innocence because the know-how to construct those wasn't available in the 12th century (which it by the way was), but then he still included huge platforms moving on conveyor belts. Or how Yamane said she didn't use the electric guitar in LoI's score because it wouldn't sit right with the feeling of the era (like the guitar riffs in Symphony would fit better into the 18th century, huh...?), but then still included a lot of techno pieces (yeah, techno is so much more 12th century than electric guitar!).

I'm not trying to be a nitpicking prick here, I know that games are supposed to be good and entertaining first and foremost, and historical accuracy matters little. What I think is very humorous, though, is that IGA constantly comes up with these stupid explanations as to why he changes this or that in the series, and it's just so laughably bad, he trips over his own explanations and edits of the CV storyline. IF you make it a point of making something historically accurate, you should at least do some background research, otherwise it really defeats the point. What I wonder is why he even bothers with this when it matters so little in the context of the game.

For reference, here is a typical Victorian lady. A little hard to do a double jump in that outfit, wouldn't you say...?

I watched the new trailer.  The new art style is leagues better than the Saturday morning nonsense from Dawn and Portrait and the music is decent, but the gameplay looks uninspiring.  Would it really be too much to ask for this series to take more cues from Metroid and have more reward-based progression and exploration instead of mindless enemy grinding and weapon/magic customization?

New gameplay footage, courtesy of Jeuxvideo:

http://www.jeuxvideo.tv/video/castlevan … iew:247080

The world map is a change, the graphics look improved, and the magnetic glyph seems pretty cool.  Of course, the general design and enemies still look the same as always, but I suppose that's a given.

.

The cut scene is certainly impressive, the graphics look good, and the music sounds OK (nothing special to my ears), but I can't help but feel we've been through this quite a few times before... yeah, we get to play as a female which is cool, but I feel this is going to be just another Symphony wannabe. Honestly, I'd almost rather just play the original Castlevania (despite the difficulty) because it offers something fresh. In fact every Castlevania through Symphony were unique and awesome, and since then they've been either unsuccessful 3-D attempts or Symphony clones. I might be wrong, but I've said "I might be wrong" for the last 4-5 Castlevania games and so far it's Clone Wars

cheers,

-avatar!

It basically looks the same as always, not many surprises there. Which of course means it will be a great game (as long as you can endure the "been there, done that"-feeling).

Can't agree with McCall on the music, though. Man, does it sound bland and uninspired. The compositions in the trailer basically use the same structure Yamane always seems to employ nowadays for CV music, just a few different notes. The Symphony OST and her non-CV work showed that she has the ability to be diverse, but somehow she's become such a one-trick pony with more recent CV-scores. Maybe she's just lazy and goes through familiar motions without much thought. Anyway, I'll reserve judgment until I hear the whole soundtrack, hopefully there will be better tracks than the ones we've heard so far.

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Let's agree to disagree. I liked most of DoS and PoR's music (nothing outstanding, and kind of weak in comparison to most other soundtracks in the series, but still pretty good). I just thought the tracks we heard in the OoE trailer sounded like exactly the same style employed in the other two CV DS soundtracks, only a whole lot weaker.

It is very possible, though, that I'll like the music more after playing the game. That was the case with Portrait's soundtrack, which I found very bland at first, but better once I heard it in game context.

Same here. I'm such a Castlevania tool.

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Well you can rest easy on the SotN clones - Castlevania Wii is a 1 on 1 beat 'em up.

Suicide party at my place anyone!?  BYOB.

What's that extra B for?
... that was a typo.

oh well, the wii does it again

Portrait Of Ruin is actually my favourite title of the Castlevania games (I have only completed Aria Of Sorrow, Dawn Of Sorrow, Symphony Of The Night and Portrait Of Ruin)

All of the games has some great tracks but I think POR has many, plus I think the overall gameplay has become slightly better since DOS.

I rank them like this:

Portrait Of Ruin - great soundtrack, great gameplay
Aria Of Sorrow - ok soundtrack, great gameplay
Symphony Of The Night - some killer-tracks, ok gameplay
Dawn Of Sorrow - weak soundtrack, ok gameplay

I look forward to Order Of Ecclesia as the trailermusic is awsome!

Japanese LE comes with a two-disc OST:

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/08/spe … ition.html

Yeah, now watch... the music will be so great because of the amount of hassle, green and extra stuff (the game) it will take to get it.

Why does the Japanese limited edition have a box with the American name for the game on it?  I wonder if that's a hint that we might end up getting it too.  Hope so, since I hate it when soundtracks ONLY come with limited editions of games in Japan (several Falcom soundtracks, I'm looking at you).

Yeah, right.

Picked up Ecclesia today, and so far, it's pretty by-the-numbers.  Actually, I'm finding the linear design of the levels to be a bit boring.  Not because they're linear by nature per se, but because a lot of the areas seem very cut and paste and generally uninspiring.  The game does keep you on your toes, though, as the difficulty level looks to be set very high this time around; enemies and bosses are aggressive, while healing items are sparse during this early portion of the game. 

At first glance, the Glyph System appears be a variation of Aria/Dawn's Soul System - except the Glyphs extend to even the most basic of weapons as well.  That, and it doesn't look like you can power them up by collecting multiples of them.  Collecting the Glyphs themselves is kind of a hassle, as it leaves Shanoa temporarily immobilized when she absorbs the powers - which doesn't bode particularly well with said aggressive onslaught of baddies.  The two-handed combo system is pretty rad, though; it's awesome performing swift three-four hits with the melee or projectile weapon of your choice.  The Magnes Glyph, too, is an innovative new feature that livens the gameplay up a bit.  This is the one you've seen in the trailers, where she's surrounded by a blue magnetic field which allows her to propel in a targeted direction.  One particular boss battle made great use of this.

Nothing's really sticking out for me music-wise, though the Minera Prison Island theme is pretty awesome.  Um..... so is the Game Over theme, which I've seen my fair share of already. :)

Yeah, the level design is dull so far. It reminds me of the worst parts of PoR. Very rarely separate areas to explore and often, it's just long, uninteresting hallways. Fortunately, the ramped-up challenge is keeping me interested for now and the music is very decent.

Bleh.

I've come to expect that from the Metrovania games. One aspect where Metroid definitely has the edge in comparison with the newer Castlevanias is in level design. The Metroid games have great level design, the environments are much more diverse, organic and interactive: you can bomb the walls, floors, etc. and find lots of secret passageways. They were more fun to simply explore. The Castlevanias, on the other hand, are often composed of long, identical hallways with lots of enemies you have to grind down for exp. Still, the Metrovanias were not as bad as Curse of Darkness. Jebus, that game had really horrible level design!

That's nice to know. Newer Castlevanias are generally too easy, I'm glad to hear they upped the difficulty a bit. Still looking forward to playing this.

I know I said...

... but after reading Angela's post I'm not so sure I'm willing to cough up the money to play something I've already done a hundred times before with a somewhat fresh coat of paint. I just finished a playthrough of SotN this past weekend, so my Metrovania standards are set pretty high right now. The last thing I need is a by-the-numbers, boring and uninspired CV game on the DS. All set.

There's also a game rip with the music floating around out there (originally posted by Mac_Tear over at SEMO) but what Angela said about the game I will say about the music: by-the-numbers, boring, uninspiring. That's a shame.

I got this and the game difficulty has increased in the early going.  EXP is given out more sparingly, so increasing levels is harder.  They also placed several tough bosses given your current level and position in the map.  I'm at the Lighthouse, and my best weapon does 11 points of damage at my current level against this boss, and I still haven't beaten it.

That boss annoys the hell out of me. I still haven't beaten it either. I'll avoid spoilers, but I have gotten to the third part of it. Now I just have to figure out the best way to avoid his pattern there.