Finished
Castlevania - Order of Ecclesia
Good:
- Modern Castlevania game, where everything finally "clicks": exploration, enemy variation, difficulty, art, subsystems.
- Fantastic fun for the whole family. No filler, constant fun.
- Beautiful graphics, decent music.
- No level scaling, but game stays challenging till the end.
- Huge gameplay area. Basically two games in one: various small / middle-sized locations (bad ending) plus decently-sized Drac's castle (proper ending).
- Combat system does everything right: HP for staying alive, MP (regenerates) for regular attacks, Hearts (don't regenerate) for special attacks.
- Crafting system finally makes sense (subquests based on collectibles, not weak weapons which you sold off 15 minutes into the game, like in PoR)
- Enemies are strong / weak against certain weapon / magic types, so switching those is necessary.
- Bosses are mostly fun to kill, not cheap (avoiding attacks requires skill and timing, not luck).
- Variety of weapons allows different tactics / playstyles.
- Mini-puzzles to get some (elemental) glyphs are wild fun.
- You can transform into actually useful / strong enemies.
- Strong female lead, yet no feminism or psycho-bullshit.
Ugly:
- Glyph names are confusing, often you have to read the description to learn what each of them does, etc.
- Stage design is often bare-boned (most of difficulty comes from enemies' attacks)
- Bonus stages are fun, but p. short.
- Story is nothing special and loosely connected with 'Vania lore, Drac is just "the bad guy who is the last boss".
- Some bosses (esp. the later ones) are cheap (hard to avoid their attacks, so it's better to spam healing items / strongest attacks).
- The Castle could and should have been more interesting.
Bad:
- Rare Glyph / Item drops are based on luck / special equipment, so some harvestan is unavoidable. Easier on emulator, since you can use quicksaves over and over till you get the drop.
- Last game in the series so far.
Verdict:
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