Introduction

Grinding for Souls and Profit: Let's Play the DS Castlevania Trilogy!

I love the Castlevania series. It's consistently been one of my favorite video game IPs for pretty much ever. The trio of "Castletroid" (or Metroidvania) games released throughout the DS' lifespan are some of my favorites from the series. The games get a bad rap from some because of the grind-y nature of the games and the departure in difficulty from the series' roots. I personally find them hella fun despite any well-articulated arguments to the contrary. Joining me for commentary will be my friends Gubbin from the forums, and Bryce, who doesn't have an account. We'll be trading off people occasionally as well.


Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is a very good game and I like it a lot and it is a fun to play game that I enjoy.

Okay, I'm going to try not to gush over it too much, but it really is one of my favorite games on the DS, and my favorite of the series. I'll try to justify myself as best I can in the videos, but let's just move on to the mechanics for now.

Order of Ecclesia has a unique system that lends to faster and more action-oriented gameplay than the previous two games. By equipping a weapon "Glyph" onto each of your hands, you can alternate between the two. Every attack depletes your mana bar, but it recovers very quickly. As you use these attacks you accrue points with the corresponding element that factor into damage.
You can also hold up and press an attack button to preform a Glyph Unison, that uses up a separate, more scarce resource (hearts). The world itself is broken up into very defined levels, in that there is an actual overworld and you select which level to visit from there. This leads to the game being pretty linear, but not in a bad way.

The difficulty is a bit higher for the trilogy. The bosses in particular can be very punishing if fought recklessly. While they tend to do a huge amount of damage, however, they have very defined tells to help dodge them.

As for the story and tone, they are both a bit less light-hearted than the last two games, especially Portrait. There is a fresh, unique art style, as well as a slew of new unique enemies and bosses. I swear I'm not trying to sell you this game.




April Fools haha get it