Plus XP

When the news came to my ears that a brand new 2D Castlevania for an actual home console was on the way, my heart leapt – aside from a couple of ports and remakes of classic titles it’s been two years since the somewhat disappointing Order of Ecclesia on the DS, and a whopping thirteen years since the last release of a non-remake 2D ‘vania on a home console – Symphony of the Night. While the GBA and DS titles were generally amazing on the whole, I’ve long since hoped for a full-blown 2D title to grace this generation of home consoles, with HD graphics and brilliant 2D gameplay in a metroidvania style.

However, I was disappointed to hear that Harmony of Despair would not be the title I’ve long since dreamed of – rather a co-op based title allowing for 1-6 players in a more arcade style experience. As a Castlevania enthusiast, I wouldn’t let my disappointment stop me from buying the new title – my ‘vania collection is amongst my largest, and I was still intrigued to see what exactly the game would be like. Alongside my fellow ‘vania fan Ray, we got ready to team up for the first time in the series’ history and take down the vampiric castle for oh, the 15th time or something.

Harmony of Despair plays somewhat inbetween the styles of the older ‘vania titles. While level-based - more in the vein of the early titles – each stage acts as a sort of mini-free roaming castle more in the style of Symphony of the Night and it’s predecessors. However, unlike normal Castlevania titles where each room is loaded separately, you can instead see the entire castle loaded on-screen at once. Although I was unsure at first, this style works well as you can zoom in for a more normal view (with no loading at all between the seamless rooms), while being able to zoom out to various magnifications, as far as showing the entire castle on-screen at once. Although this has never been done before, you can quickly see why it’s been done – with up to six players moving freely around the castle at once, it allows you to keep track of the others’ movements more easily, whilst also keeping an eye on the location of the mission’s boss – and there’s even a few extra little features, such as portraits that teleport you to other areas of the castle, and special boss attacks that can span huge areas, as far as attacking you on your way to the boss itself.

The way HoD plays is quite simple – all of the players are placed in the castle (sometimes at the same point, others at different areas of the map), and are charged with taking down that level’s boss together to complete the stage. However, getting to the boss can prove to take a little work, as you often need to activate various switches and such to open up new routes for yourself and your comrades. While it’s possible to beat the stages solo, sadly it feels as though you miss out on things due to a fair amount of co-op style puzzles such as “person A stands on switch while person B walks through gate”, so it doesn’t really have that feel of a single player game even if you wish to play it that way. On the plus side, however, it does feel as though Konami have done a good job at making Castlevania co-operative, with players able to roam at their leisure, together or apart.

Since the game encourages multiplayer, it introduces perhaps the most exciting part of the title – the option to choose between five different characters from the Castlevania series. In order of the menu, the protagonists are: The soul collecting Soma Cruz from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, the good vampire Alucard best known from Symphony of the Night, the young vampire-killer wielding Jonathan Morris from Portrait of Ruin, the beautiful glyph-bearing Shanoa from Order of Ecclesia, and magic-toting partner to Jonathan - Charlotte Aulin, also from Portrait of Ruin. There’s a decent mix of characters in there, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a single Belmont character in the line-up to represent Castlevania’s pre-Symphony characters. However, there’s a possibility of extra characters as DLC, and the selection that’s available is still pretty good.

One of my biggest concerns with the multi-character idea with HoD was that since each of the characters had different ability styles and methods of playing, and that Konami would spoil their unique styles by giving them all dumbed down move-sets and ignoring their previous styles. However, I’m pleased to say that the game actually manages to retain their unique aspects rather well. While all characters access their equips from the same menu system, consisting of Offensive Gear, Defensive Gear, and (in the case of Jonathan) Martial Arts, all of their abilities have been mapped into this new menu system to work in the same way as always. For instance, Alucard’s weapons are equipped in the Offensive Gear menu, whilst Shanoa uses the same option to equip her weapon runes. Soma still has access to his three types of souls, such as the blue souls which are assigned to the RB button, and Yellow souls are equipped as a passive equip. Likewise, Alucard’s transformation abilities are instead mapped to the RB button, while Jonathan uses that button to access his unique Martial Arts skills. Perhaps most importantly, every character can equip four offensive abilities, mapped to B, B+Up, B+Forward, and B+Down. These abilities take the form of sub weapons, bullet souls and Alucard’s magic while allowing you to equip four at once – while most of the original titles allowed for only one to be mapped at a time. Not only are the various abilities assigned in their unique ways, but the ways they are obtained are also keeping close to the original format – Shanoa still gains glyphs by absorbing magic spells by holding the Up direction, and whenever an enemy is defeated it has a chance of releasing a captive soul for Soma to collect. It’s pretty cool, too – since Soma can also collect the souls of enemies his allies kill!

While I do think the characters are done well, sadly one of my other worries did come to realisation – the lack of a decent plot. Due to the game’s somewhat arcade feel, the mish-mash of characters and the possibility of six player co-operative mode, the game doesn’t really bother with much of a story. The general idea is something to do with a magical book that creates different incarnations of Castlevania each with its own master – nothing exactly riveting. While Castlevania isn’t the most plot-heavy series in the world, games such as Dawn of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night (from which the characters originated) had some good dialogue at times that gave the characters some good personality, and even a few decent plot twists here and there. It’s a shame, but it’s just a different style of game, really.

As the title scraps the more modern EXP system from recent Castlevanias, there are only a couple of ways to increase your stats – one being the various weapon and item equips, which can be found in various chests around the stages, or bought with gold obtained in the same way, or by selling said objects. The other way is by powering up your various sub-weapons, through usage or collecting multiple of said ability to power it up, your base stats growing as your powers do. The various chests, along with the switch puzzle elements to the stage, make up the core exploratory stages of the castle, each Castle loosely based on a certain theme. In terms of graphics and enemies, there’s little new content – most of the castles and enemies recycled from various other Castlevanias. Although this does work in some areas – I particularly love the “Gallery” style stage based on Portrait of Ruin, some of the areas feel a little thrown together and don’t quite have the atmosphere seen in previous titles and feel a little mashed together. The game’s music is nice, with a very Castlevania “rock-orchestral” feel, with each stage having one or two tracks that plays throughout that level.

Overall, I’d say Harmony of Despair is a must-buy for Castlevania fans, but I’m not sure about new players to the series. While the game certainly has a very nostalgic feel, and it’s quite fun playing as the various characters, I can’t help feeling that I wouldn’t find the game quite as enjoyable if I didn’t already know all of the cast, enemies and Castlevania references littered about. Plus – if you’re not a fan of the series, I definitely wouldn’t reccommend going solo, as the game is quite tough, especially if you don’t already know what to expect from some bosses. If you’ve never played Castlevania, I highly recommend downloading Symphony of the Night instead, or even picking up Aria of Sorrow or Portrait of Ruin on the GBA/DS respectively – where the characters and gameplay are shown to their real potential. Still, I was pleasantly surprised, finding the game quite enjoyable as an opportunity to co-op with fellow Castlevania fans, playing as some of my favourite characters, it’s just not the real 2D Castlevania I’m still hoping for.

Leon