Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

 The trilogy has reached an end, three successful titles for the DS, each with its own soul. Dawn of Sorrow stands as the closest to the roots of Castlevania series, the darkest Castlevania and the title that opened the way and set the standards for the next two. Portrait of Ruin, one more step into innovation, two characters at the same time on screen, a slightly better story, non-castle locations, challenge system, and even more unlockables. And now we have Order of Ecclesia, which also has a vein for innovation, and arrives as a worthy successor and member of the trilogy.

The first thing you need to know is that now the Dracula's Castle has an even smaller role in this, in the first part of the game you actually wonder if you'll ever come across something resembling a castle, fortunately you do come across a castle, and it is indeed pretty huge, but its role is significantly smaller, to reach Dracula's domains you're gonna travel through many different places, most of them will be quite enjoyable to play through offering good challenge, meaning this formula still has a lot of fire to burn yet. You also have a lobby, or something like that if you will, which is a small village with some local residents, all of them were captured and locked inside crystals and as you wander through the game you'll have to find each of them, after released they'll present challenges for you to perform as side-quests, much like Portrait of Ruin had with Eric presenting some side challenges to lengthen the overall playtime and keep you busy for a little while longer, it serves the purpose just right.

The new character feels like a pretty good choice, her name is Shanoa, and aside from being an already very stylish character aesthetically, she seems to portrait a distinct personality throughout the game, with all the "I don't have feelings" stuff, captivating really. The characters resemble less an anime style, differently than the other two, receiving a more mature-oriented design, this goes for all characters found in the game when shown during conversations. The difficulty is unforgiving as always, but this time they really stepped out of line here, making a game difficult is one thing, but letting some broken parts go by is a whole different story, like when you keep dying trying to activate the "ultimate glyph" with no idea of what's happening or what to do, really frustrating, especially since you have to beat an already hard boss to reach that. The weapons system has changed a bit, now you control weapons based on glyphs you acquire from enemies wielding them, a good system once you get used to it, at least it's a try to keep things fresh. Something recurrent in these recent Castlevania titles, a special mention goes to Portrait of Ruin, is the bad translation applied to it, it won't jeopardize the experience in any way, but even for those who don't really care for this kind of stuff will find some translations strange to say the least; to tell the truth, I'm one of the guys who don't care about it and even I thought some parts deserved a little bit more attention.

One thing that plagues this game and haunts it without a bit of mercy it the fact that it won't cause the "wow" factor in anyone, if you know Castlevania you know this, if you love Castlevania you'll love this. What this game actually does is being solid from start to finish, probably more solid than any of the other games in the DS. The pace is more dynamic as well, especially compared to Dawn of Sorrow, you feel more in control over Shanoa than you probably did with Soma Cruz; that comes with natural advancement of control mechanics, as well as some new ideas of skills here and there. An aspect this game might earn the top spot comparing the three is bosses, they are all pretty imaginative, there's not one boss in the game you won't have trouble at first but soon, after many death and retry's, get the hang of it and start finding its weak spots and patterns; and these weak spots and pattern are amazingly thought-out as well, this is certainly a strong point this title has. The rewards and ways to keep the player playing the game after beaten are strong, as well as the other two, especially Portrait of Ruin, game modes like the no-brainer boss rush are unlockable, new difficulties, the possibility to replay the game file you've beaten the game with with all equipment and data is a pretty nice touch, and if you feel like it, you can apply a level cap and play through the game having a maximum level of 50 or even level 1; if you're brave enough, maybe play a level 1 cap game starting from scratch for the ultimate Castlevania Order of Ecclesia experience.

Graphically the game is pretty much what you've seen in Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, the music, like the other two, shine bright, hearing amazing songs like the ones in this game while exploring is always a pleasure; I'll go ahead and say that this is probably the best game sound-wise in the DS trilogy, sure I could point out some songs that are potentially better in Dawn of Sorrow or Portrait of ruin, especially the former of the two, but as a whole this game feels more solid in the musics department. The story revolves around this clan, which Shanoa is a member of, named Order of Ecclesia, they are a group of people in a mission of researching ways of fighting Dracula's evil in case he comes back from the shadows someday somehow, and they manage to create a very powerful glyph known as Dominus which is made out of Dracula's power itself, to use it Shanoa is chosen by the group leader to be the subject of a ritual. Of course the plans go wrong when another colleague of Shanoa steals the glyphs and run away, as you chase down the traitor you'll uncover new facts and realize that the problem is much deeper than firstly thought. Again, the story feels more solid than the first two.

Basically Order of Ecclesia is a worthy closure to the successful trilogy, it suffers from some technical problems with difficulty here and there, some low level of polish eventually, and the curse of being a sequel to two successful titles bringing little new to the table, what is brought actually is often superficial and you're bound to the premise that, if you like the previous titles, you'll probably like this one as well, because frankly, there's not much to dislike except maybe the previous stated problems and some lack of freshness or any brand new idea that would move the franchise forward in a more meaningful way. Order of Ecclesia is by any means a good game that should be played, but should be played especially by those who enjoyed the first and second games in the DS, if you haven't played a Castlevania game or haven't played a Castlevania in the DS, you should start with those two.