Pixels and Perspectives

Hello everyone! Due to the joys of having a birthday around tax time, I got myself two new games for the 3DS. One of them, a stellar title that I will discuss later. The other one... I was wondering whether or not it was going to be good. It seemed like a wild card.. This company has been trying to get this series going again by rebooting the plot lines. So, I took a shot, gathered up my money, and hoped that it wasn't a horrible night to play the next installment of the Castlevania series.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate now sponsored by Garnier Fructis.

So, in case if you don't know the background of this series, Castlevania has been a series that stems all the way back to the NES days. It has followed the journey of the Belmont family (amongst others) in their journey of defeating the dark lord Dracula. The series started as a 2D platformer, but a change happened in the mid 90s when there was a new focus in gameplay. In Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, there was a non-linear change in gameplay which vaguely resembled the popular game Super Metroid for the SNES. This spawned a new buzzword called "Metroidvania", which I HATE (but I'll talk about that in a different post). Then.. there was a turn for the not-so-good. Castlevania decided to go 3D, losing that 2D feel that many fans loved. Ever since then, there has been a split in the series; one vein explores the Metroidvania feel while the other attempts to make a 3D Castlevania that doesn't suck. 

So... why did I do that? Because this is a portable Castlevania that was firmly declared to NOT be a metroidvania. The dude at Konami claimed that this game was going to be something new; a new phase in castlevania gaming! Well... the game did it... sort of. It has 2D gameplay, 3D backgrounds, and a somewhat adventurous element that the metroidvania series had. Well, onto gameplay later, as of now we need some plot!

THE PLOT

This game follows three different characters: Alucard, Trevor Belmont, and Simon Belmont. I will say, I love the character art for Simon.

No... sorry... wrong Simon... I was talking about THIS Simon Belmont.

I mean, look at him! all of his skin showing!? He is so high level. 

Of course, this is a journey that follows Simon in his defeat of the dark lord Dracula! but why? Of course... someone killed his family and stuff and he needs revenge and redemption... we get it. Well, the game is split up in 3 parts, one for each character. What's frustrating is that once they start to get the development happening they switch to the next act! It was irritating, because once I got to the point where I almost cared for Simon they switched to someone I didn't care about. Thankfully, the characters do develop a chemistry and you realize why they all know each other.

THE SOUND

I need you to do two things. One: Listen to this. This is from a previous castlevania.

Now... this is from the game itself. listen

I don't know how else to say this: the soundtrack to this game is AWFUL. I mean, did you hear the first one!? It had splash cymbals! strings! the only time I ever played air timpani! the other?... morose strings. Not only that, but in the game you're lucky to even HEAR music. See, that was one of the things that turned me on to the series: the screaming melodies that trumpeted over the speakers as you were viciously whipping through each enemy to get enough hearts so you didn't run out when you had to fight the next impossible boss! The time where you hear the most music is when you didn't die... which is never fun, mainly because the music was least orchestrated when you died in previous games.

THE GAMEPLAY

I know that if you ask anyone about the 3D castlevanias, their first response is," ISJUSAGAHDAWURNAHKAFF" (It's just a God of War knockoff). Although it'd be silly to say there is NO resemblance (stupidly slamming a button over and over to open a chest, quicktime events that could've been done with normal gameplay, "cool" cinematic kills that is done with one button) there is a different feel with this game. You have to take time with combos and the more intricate combos do more damage (Finally!). Now, Here is my beef with this game: how unreasonable the whip is. Look at this picture. 

You see that?! His whip isn't even fully extended and it takes up half the screen. There are multiple combos in which the whip takes up the ENTIRE screen. To me, this is kind of ridiculous. Yeah, the stronger combos are smaller in radius, but if there are a lot of enemies on screen (or better yet, an enemy  I don't want to deal with) What's to stop me slamming Y over and over and helicopterdickin' everywhere!?

Oh I am, E-card. That's how I got through the game.

Here is my second beef with the gameplay: You have three characters. ALL of them have the same move set. There is no variance. Yeah, they look different and have different whip afterglowy stuff and have different sub weapons, but... there aren't differences with the characters themselves! One of them isn't faster or stronger than the other or anything! 

THE AESTHETIC

One of the big complaints about this game that people have said is that it doesn't feel like the Castlevania games they know and love. This is a problem that many franchises have; if you establish the old school, you're considered boring, but if you create the new school you're not true to yourself. We've seen the former happen to the Megaman series (No, this time they're animals. It's totally different!), but we've seen the latter happen to Final Fantasy (EVERYTHING with FFXIII). However, There are some games that keep it interesting while adding new things, such as Metal Gear Solid, Super Smash Bros., and the Tales series. I will say that there were times that I felt like it was a game made under a different name then at the last moment they slapped the Castlevania title to it. 

See? It's Alucard! GET IT!? CASTLEVANIA!

Now, I know that it's not Konami's fault for this. It's because I've been a diehard fan for so long that it's hard to imagine of the series besides what it has been all this time. I actually give them some kudos for trying something new! However, I felt that they may have drifted too far away from their origins.

THE VERDICT

This game would've been great if they kept more of what people liked about the series. If they added a killer soundtrack, more variance with the characters, and a plot that was based off of something besides revenge, this game could've been the next Symphony of the Night. However, it's not too bad. Is it worth 40$? Ehhh... it is if you're a big fan of the series. As of now, try to rent it or borrow it and it's not too bad... You know, as long as you blare other Castlevania tunes while you play it.

Pixels and Perspectives #1- The Last Story

Remember the Wii? Well, there are some very good games on it that aren’t directly related to Nintendo! I know it may be hard to believe in times like these, but  there are many fine rpg titles for the wii like Xenoblade Chronicles and… uh… Tales of Symphonia and… well… you know… something besides this one that I am reviewing today. I’m going to give you a view on my interpretation of Mistwalker’s latest achievement The Last Story.

When I started playing this game, I was hooked and had a lot of high hopes for this game. However, I started to lose interest over time. I wanted to get into more battles because the fights were great! However, after about two thirds of the way through the game, I lost interest. So, what happened? I’ll start with what I liked.

What I liked:

- the battle system. To be honest, I think that the battle system is really fun and innovating. There is no wait-time and no real battle sequence. Heck, there isn’t even an attack button! You literally point the stick at the enemy and the dude starts swinging. Not only that, but you can have up to six people on your side in a fight. Six people! I haven’t seen that many people fight along side you since the Suikoden series! I mean… you had to have those kind of numbers in the Suikoden series because of so many characters, but in this game you can use everyone you know in a fight. Thankfully, there are varying roles with each character so all in all it makes a nice chemistry. Which leads me to my next point…

- the cast. I’ll get to the individual characters later on, but I can say this about the cast: I like them a lot. My first impression is that they look like characters from the world of Ivalice, from Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII fame. I've heard multiple reviewers dive into this... but I'll let it slide. It’s an attractive cast; they're young, and they get along very well. So attractive the fanart is through the roof on this one! I would post some but… well, let’s just say that the male characters get very comfortable with each other. Even though there is all that, I can say that there is witty dialogue between each character and it creates an overall lighthearted feel. 

Straight out of Ivalice, er... Lazulis... Island.

What I didn’t like:

- the characters. Now, I know in the last point I said I liked the cast. As I was playing this, I kept having this awkward complex of liking the dialogue and present chemistry, but hating how superficial each character was. Through this, I realized that the group is great as a whole, but none of the characters are solid enough to establish an individual identity. This is partially because of the structure of the plot, but to me this is a major pitfall because I ended up not caring for the individual people. I went from,” Oh no, this person could be dead!” and instead saying,” oh no! who’s going to heal me now!?” It was frustrating, but I think the shallow characters could be because of……

- the plot. The plot to this game isn’t really enticing. It starts off with our young yet sort of androgynous heroZael and his buddies being mercenaries and fighting through the land to make money. Zael finds this power called the Power of the Outsider, which is mysterious and no one really knows about it except… you guessed it… the corrupt king that wants to use it for his own benefit! He wants it to fight the lizard people because… I guess they’re lizard people… I wish there were nice lizard people in a JRPG… oh well. 

an eyepatch AND gold trimmed black armor?! totally not evil.

But anyways! It seems fairly standard, and although I haven’t completed the game the plot seems to be pretty much about that. There’s a princess involved that doesn’t want to be royalty and acts like a love interest for Zael… that’s as much individual character development as you’re going to get.

- the “we are obligated to do this to make the game longer” phases. There is a lot of this in this game. I will give you a perfect example.

***SPOILERS… but not really because this was used as filler….***

Ok, so like in every JRPG, you get captured. Since you are the main character, you don’t just do your sentence and come off looking like a respectable citizen. No! You meet another man in your cell named Horace, who is the king of fetch quests in this game. Anyways, he has been digging a hole and thinks you can get out by going through this hole. Wonderful, it provides experience and, well… I’ve been fighting in caves through a majority of the game. So, you get to the end and beat the obligatory boss of the area, and you get to a dead end… What does Horace do? He says,” I’m sorry master Zael. I thought this would be a way out.”

I wanted to just write gotcha… but this photo helped me deliver it more.

…… that’s it. You just spent about 30 min and nothing came of it!? No special item!? No new plot to this Outsider thing!? Then, guess how you get out of the cell? You are proven innocent.  This was very frustrating to me, and one of many examples of ways they tried to extend this game to make the storyline longer. The length of this game isn’t close to long either; I’ve spent about 15 hours on it and I’m two thirds through the storyline. One way they could’ve made this longer was if they changed…

- the difficulty. My last rub with this game is how easy it is. The battle system grants everyone five lives, and if your character uses all five of his/her lives, then you must start from the last check/save point. This is fine, but I’ve hardly lost one life in a battle, let alone all five of them. Another aspect that contributes to the easiness of the battle system is that the game stresses tactics in every battle, but the tactics can be easily disregarded which will lead to you winning battles by just brute strength. Pretty much, you just point your control stick at what you want to attack and… well that’s it because you don’t even have to manually attack someone.

What’s my verdict? The Last Story is fun, but don’t look at it if you want an in-depth and inventive RPG that changes the face of gaming. Although the battle system and overall feel is nice, the intricacies of the game make it become less appealing. Even though it is not the best RPG, I do believe that this game is at least worth a couple plays.