Lemonov
Cornell & Henry story clear.
1999
I really should have played this before LoD, but yeah. Not nearly as terrible as some claim, but not nearly as good as some defend it to be. It's not a completely terrible attempt to transition to 3D, and is worth playing if you enjoy the franchise. You also get to play as a cute girl.
A really solid exploration type Catlevania game, hampered by the obnoxious implementation of the dash mechanic and abysmally low card drop chances. Still absoultely worth playing though. Just don't force yourself to do battle arena on your first run.
What a strange mess of a game. For every good side it has it's counterbalanced by something dumb. The disgusting amount of backtracking alone is enough to make the game plain not fun, and even then on top of it you also have to deal with piss easy bosses, needlessly vertical level design, and lack of any reasonable way to track collected items. Not to mention, furniture collection is yet another blatant form of padding out the playtime.
Circle of the Moon right before this one had major problems, but even it didn't try to be nearly as annoying.
Circle of the Moon right before this one had major problems, but even it didn't try to be nearly as annoying.
Playing Kaseki no Uta
Practically everything annoying about previous games is fixed here. The game is fun from start to finish and offers a great balanced gameplay and a huge variety of approach with the soul system. A must play.
Meh. Considering the budget, it's impressive how long this game is, but the repeating locations, shit ton of pointless backtracking, and lack of any memorable level design makes it questionable for such game to even be finished. The story, for how important of a task it tires to accomplish, doesn't deliver any hard hitting moments or significant revelations, and the game is simply not worth the 8 hour playtime it asks.
Strangely enough, Castlevania 64 ended up being a far better game.
Strangely enough, Castlevania 64 ended up being a far better game.
A very solid sequel to Aria, using a lot of the same ideas but amplyfying everything to an extreme. The game is huge, and has a lot of hidden mecahnics to chew on, with some souls being useless and some being completely broken. But experimentation is the key, and the game has a lot of ways of testing the player.
I recommend playing with Definitive Edition+ hack mainly because it fixes the behavior of Luck value and adds a bunch of small bugfixes. I finished the game on a real DSi and didn't notice any issues.
I recommend playing with Definitive Edition+ hack mainly because it fixes the behavior of Luck value and adds a bunch of small bugfixes. I finished the game on a real DSi and didn't notice any issues.
FILLER EPISODE
AKA SKIP THIS ONE
Do you love fetch quests? You should if you want to enjoy the blood pumping, semen boiling action of walking around the same locations over and over again, telling kids to go back home for dinner and collecting junk to later give it away for experience and some money.
The gameplay loop never really changes or meaningfully evolves, you are experiencing the same fetch quest "how else can we make this game longer?" type of design philosophy for 10 hours and then the game ends. The story, what little of it is there, can be summarized in a single sentence, and the character writing never really becomes engaging or goes beyond your average fantasy archetypes. If the goal of the game was to hype up the main event, Curse of the Moon-style minimalist adventure would have done fine, and delivered a way more fun burst of experience than this slog.
From what I've heard about the main gamae, Rising is ultimately irrelevent as the main cast plays only a minor role there. Find a better way to spend these 10 hours: play Rance 01.
AKA SKIP THIS ONE
Do you love fetch quests? You should if you want to enjoy the blood pumping, semen boiling action of walking around the same locations over and over again, telling kids to go back home for dinner and collecting junk to later give it away for experience and some money.
The gameplay loop never really changes or meaningfully evolves, you are experiencing the same fetch quest "how else can we make this game longer?" type of design philosophy for 10 hours and then the game ends. The story, what little of it is there, can be summarized in a single sentence, and the character writing never really becomes engaging or goes beyond your average fantasy archetypes. If the goal of the game was to hype up the main event, Curse of the Moon-style minimalist adventure would have done fine, and delivered a way more fun burst of experience than this slog.
From what I've heard about the main gamae, Rising is ultimately irrelevent as the main cast plays only a minor role there. Find a better way to spend these 10 hours: play Rance 01.
Surreal experience of playing a shitty tie-in game made so that clueless parents buy them to kids who liked the cartoons they are based on but instead being based on The Sopranos