Castlevania Judgment

Castlevania Judgement - An assortment of characters from the popular Castlevania series. Much like Smash Brothers, the name of the game is to beat the pulp out of the rival character. Sadly, that's the only thing these 2 games have in common.

Story

Yes, there is a story mode, but if you're the kind of gamer that loves an immersive storyline, you certainly aren't going to find that here. The "Story" can be summed up as such... "A bunch of Castlevania characters suddenly find themselves caught in a time rift in which they have to fight to find a way out". Fighting games are notorious for bad storylines, but in many cases, it's the delivery of the story to the player which drags it down further. Judgement is a prime example of this, instead of giving the player useful insight into what could be a decent story, it instead shoots itself in the foot with bad voice acting and recycled animations that rarely make sense. For example, before each character battle, the conversation between the 2 combatants will be nothing more than " I will defeat you!" only to be replied with "A Belmont hm!? I shall win!" ...That is the extent of immersion through out the game and let me tell you, it gets repetitive, this is consistent in each of the character's own story playthrough. To put it bluntly, you're going to have the same repeated cutscene and the same repeated conversation 14 times if you plan on completing the game. I personally think that Story mode was a last minute idea to justify the game's existence and a cheap means of adding more play time.

Art Style

The crew of Castlevania has gone through a drastic change in appearance, courtesy of Takeshi Obata, better known for his art style in the manga and anime "Death Note". Despite the revamp in design, I personally think the characters have lost one of their most important aspects...Character. For anyone who's followed Castlevania since it's humble beginnings will know roughly what the characters look like, based on past games and non-cannon merchandise. That said, nostalgia plays no part here, antagonists and protagonists are barely recognisable due to the heavy influence of style. I would have loved to see how the designs could have been updated from Nes to Wii, but instead we get a mixture of gothic anime, hentai-ish females and gender confused people in general.

Music

Ah...The music. The 1 aspect of this game that doesn't have a single complaint...The music that accompanies the opening animation leading up to the title screen is, in a word, beautiful. This orchestrated bliss is constant through out the game, and the 1 star I've given this game is solely for the audio alone.

Level Design

Level design in Judgement can be compared to Marmite, you'll either love it or hate it. Regardless of the location, the space you brawl in loves to remind you of the invisible walls to keep you "in the action". There are a variety of locations, ranging from turning gears, mansion hallways and castle grounds. There are easily avoided traps that are thrown in later levels, but they become more of an annoyance than a challenge. In an attempt to make the game seem darker and edgier, all levels are...well...dark, by that I mean that the lighting is poor and makes levels feel hard to distinguish.

Gameplay

Oh, good Lord...the gameplay...

While you may think the hardest battle of the game is with the last boss, you'd be wrong. Your biggest enemy in this game is the camera. Judgement tries to make itself feel different to your run of the mill fighting games by letting you freely run around the battlefield instead of moving left or right. While I praise this decision in an attempt to be different from Tekken or DBZ, the presentation completely ruins the gameplay. The fixed camera angle makes it hard to judge the distance of your character and the person you're trying to successfully lay fists on. You'll find yourself mashing buttons in frustration of the camera more than frustration of the battle.

Characters have basic move sets, which consist of punches, kicks, and special moves that use their mascot weapon. In addition, you can block attacks from enemy players. By now you're thinking "Oh, at least the attacks are decent". Well, that may be true, but the time it takes to initiate these attacks will more often than not, get you killed. Your only hope at victory is block, wait, punch. The cpu players in Judgement tend to have unfair advantages. While it might take 3 seconds for your character to charge up a special move, the cpu using that exact same character will only take 1 second. This, to me, is a cheap way of making the game progressively more hard, instead of making it hard in a challenging way.

As you battle your way through story mode, there will be instances where you find yourself fighting off a horde of pathetically easy zombies, finished off by an equally easy bigger boss that fills most of the screen. While this is a welcome change from the awful cutscenes and absymal voice acting, it too, gets tiresome because it's so easy.

I should mention that there are other modes that are available, including Arcade, Castle, Survival and Verses. Why haven't I written anything about these? Well, there's little to no differences in any of them. As I said previously, these "modes" are a cheap way of giving the game "more" when in actual fact it just repeats the whole ordeal of story mode, minus the ear-grating conversations.

The game will force you into playing all the characters stories if you plan on unlocking all characters, as you only start out with 2, Simon and Alucard. Playing through the entirety of everyone's stories will be challenge enough for you.

Verdict

Overall, I think Castlevania Judgement had a lot of potential to be a great fighter, but poor gameplay mechanics and a monotonous story really disappoint. The overly anime-ish style has taken away the nostalgic quality that Castlevania has always given it's fan base and a poor attempt at replayability make this game feel like it was rushed, or that the developers were on a tight budget. Either way, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone other than the curious few who like Castlevania, or those who want to finish off their collection. For your own sanity, don't buy this game at full retail price, do what I did and get it second hand, for nothing more than £5.