Almost did…thanks for reminding me about how shitty the character designs were and how “animu’d” all the characters got.
I hate it when the series goes with an anime artstyle. Rondo artwork/cutscenes were silly, and Portrait of Ruin+Dawn of Sorrows artwork and character designs were mostly pretty damn terrible. Thankfully Order of Ecclesia didn’t go that route.
Compare Aria of Sorrow’s art to Dawn of Sorrow. World of a difference. The dark, unique, moody artstyle CV typically has > anime shit they went with in a few of their games that makes them look like any other game with an anime artstyle.
I didn’t even bother finishing the game I thought it was so bad. I’m also not going to subject myself through a playthrough of a shitty game just to maybe have a bit of fun with its extra modes, either.
I really enjoyed Curse of Darkness’s combat, story, devil raising, and levels that weren’t square rooms connected by halls ala LoI.
I don’t see how any fan can get worked up over the LoS saga. Three games and it’s over. I think it’s a smart way to inject some new ideas into a long running franchise without disrupting the years of tradition set by it. Mercury Steam gets to express themselves and Konami gets a good game that sells. Might even rope in a few new fans too.
I mean LoS is such a small part of the entire Castlevania franchise history I just don’t see how anyone can get worked up over all the liberties it has taken.
(If the saga didn’t stop here though then I’d be saying something completely different)
Anyway as soon as I’m done with Asura’s Wrath I’m buying MoF.
Question for LoS fans: The European collector’s edition looks pretty sweet. However it has not been confirmed if we will get that in NA or Japan. If you had to make a collector’s edition for the game what items would you want included?
I just want to see another linear 2D Castlevania in the style of Rondo but with new enemies, more characters to play as (ala Castlevania 3), and secrets like keys and hostages to find.
I’d actually rather play Judgment than Curse Of Darkness. At least Judgment’s fun. Curse I finished once and then started a bunch of other times but never finished because it was so bloated. That game LOOKS like a million bucks, but the levels should have been 40-50% smaller in my opinion.
IGA’s not coming back. It was confirmed recently that he’s no longer involved with Castlevania.
Judgement and the original Rondo art were indeed awful, but let’s not forget a few things:
Ayami Kojima (who did all the PS1/PS2/GBA castlevanias) is anime/manga style too, she’s just better at it and produces a more sophisticated style.
Besides LOS games, all the decidedly non-anime style, super westernized art done for the series has looked like the NES Megaman box artist’s shameless fan art of Arnold in Conan the Barbarian.
Even Ayami Kojima goes overboard sometimes. Her design for Alucard was great the first time. Then she changed his coat to red, gave him a whip, and made him a Belmont in Harmony of Dissonance. Then she gave him a fur coat in Harmony, and gave him a bigger forehead to create Curse of Darkness’s hero.
Not only are these repetitions visually uncreative, but they totally ruin the story aspects of Alucard’s design. Suddenly having silver hair and womanly facial featured aren’t traits unique to dampirs…evidently we’re meant to believe that in Romania, effeminate silver-haired dudes are as common as gingers in Ireland.
Riding the fine line of androgyny is fine sometimes, but she does it so often, it becomes a crutch. A few of her designs, like Dracula, Trevor and Richter, are sufficiently masculine, despite creeping close to the line. Others go overboard, like her Simon design done for Chronicles. I dated a chick in college who literally looked just like that (without the muscles, obviously). She saw the Chronicles case sitting on a shelf in my room and said “look, someone made a game about me!”. To make matters worse, Chronicle Simon’s red hair turned out pink in the sprite, emasculating him worse than LTTP Link, and ruining the apparent attempt to reference CV1’s red and brown Simon sprite.
Point of all this being: Castlevania’s art has always been spotty and inconsistent in quality, regardless of whether it was anime style.
On the up side, the actual pixel/sprite work in the 2D CV games has always been pretty consistent. Simon’s sprite in Super CV IV looked pretty much like a faithful 16-bit translation of the 8-bit Belmonts, and Richter’s sprite in Rondo looks perfectly consistent with Super IV Simon, despite the fact that IV’s external art is terrible in a western way, and Rondo’s is terrible in an anime way.
Regardless of what I think about their gameplay, the LOS games have struck a good balance with their art. It’s western, but not too western, and they’ve even handled Kojima’s Simon and Trevor designs pretty faithfully. Their attempt to masculinify her Simon was a pretty good effort, though the beard seems excessive. The concept art for that particular design also has serious anatomy issues.
What’s the general consensus on Mirror of Fate? Most of the Castlevania-loving friends hate it, but I’ve been enjoying it so far. I think it’s weird that they gave Alucard a whip (I know why they did, no spoilers) but other than that, I think it’s a pretty cool game thus far.
Haters are haters there is no rhyme or reason, they don’t need a reason to hate, they manufacture ones that they selectively give passes to in other franchises.
Just play the game on its own merits.
It’s a good game.
Which is what i have attempted to get through to you jackass.
It isn’t your Castlevania, nor mine.
It’s Castlevania, it’s a Konami ip and they can head in any direction they want to with it, more so because your simple ass cant get past jump/whip xxxxx ad nauseum has no bearing or merit on the sequel’s quality or lack of.
Having just 100% the whole game I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot. It starts slow and looks kind of short at first but it’s actually a nice length. Lots of great artistic details in the environment too. And the combat starts to make sense after a little while. It feels nice to actually feel like I’m fighting a humanoid in a 2D play former instead of the usual enemies that either attack or take hits. These guys defend and avoid! I love it. Story and bosses are cool too.
Only thing it’s missing are some nuisance enemies like regular bats, medusa heads, etc.
Oooh ok man. Adding fall damage adds so much uniqueness to the series, holding down fucking square and triangle to do a fucking combo is going to add quality. Those QTEs? Pure fucking quality gold. Get out of my face you tool.
You get stupider with every fucking comment jackass.
It’s about moving it forward, QTE are no worse then 90% of the previous crutch’s the series has relied on.
The problem here is you’re acting a fucking child like Konami owes your simple ass some hallmark moment you can put on your shelf and judge while stroking your hipster stash and saying it’s all garbage/remember when my shit was better.
Seriously bro if you cannot do anything other then bitch you should likely see your way out of the thread.
**TL:DR You’re a fucking idiot who adds nothing to anything
**
My Rugaltarian impression
QTE IN MY CASTLEVANIA?!?!?!?!!? THIS SHALL NOT STAND
YOU DARE CHANGE A TIRED OLD FORMULA Head bashing against keyboard THEY DONT GET IT, WHY DOESNT ANYONE GET IT? THIS GARBAGE ISNT CASTLEVANIA, HOW DARE THEY TRY SOMETHING NEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Trying something new = adding QTEs.
Changing tired old formula = turn it into a God of War knockoff.
You truly don’t think. Then you attach some dumbass South Park video? Enough. You’re clearly an imbecile. You need to get that David Cocks out of your mouth.
