My first experience with Castlevania goes way back to the first installment on the NES. It was one of my favorite games on the NES so obviously I was looking forward to the DS’ first installment of this classic series. To my dismay Castlevania has gone the way of Japan’s pop culture by turning itself into yet another Anime. Gone are the old style graphics, the old style weapons, and other classic traits that come to mind when thinking about Castlevania. So does this “facelift” of an old series make for a good game? There’s only one way to find out.

The game begins with a heavy amount of Anime dialogue where the story is set into motion. Yeah this time around there is a large intertwining Anime style story going on here that is much larger and more involved than any other Castlevania game. As the story progress the player ventures further and further into a world map which is displayed on the top screen. The map is very similar to a Metroid style map. The way the player traverses the map is also very much like a Metroid game as the player must collect powers and beat bosses to unlock new ways to access new areas of the world map. This leads to a lot of backtracking a la Metroid. Luckily the backtracking is cut to a minimum thanks to warp points that allow you to warp around the map at will.

While traversing the map there are many encounters with a wide variety of enemies. Most all of the enemies have horrible attack patterns that can be figured out and beaten within seconds of seeing the enemy appear. Of course as the game progresses the tactics of these foes gets gradually tougher but the tactics are not tough enough to call any real challenge. As for the bosses, they are much tougher than regular foes as one would expect but instead of being a challenge, many of them use extremely cheap tactics to destroy the player. But once the boss’ patterns are revealed they go down pretty quickly.


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[LEFT] When it comes to the player’s arsenal there is a huge assortment of weapons available. From long blades to short blades to guns, yes guns, there isn’t lack of weapon variety. These items can be found throughout the map or can be bought from an item store that is close to one of the first revealed warp points. Once a weapon is acquired it can also be forged into a more powerful weapon using souls and by chatting up the weapon upgrade lady who is directly across from the item shop. Souls randomly appear and are acquired by the player when vanquishing a foe. There are tons of souls, but of course you need the right combination of souls to upgrade the corresponding weapon.

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