(Game Sack Theme) - Hello and welcome to Game Sack. This time around I'm talking
about all of the 2D Castlevania "Metroidvania" style games. Love or hate that term, you know exactly the kind
of game I'm talking about, and if you don't, this episode's gonna learn ya! You go back and forth, you get new powers, you're able to explore new
areas with those powers, you know, you get the idea, and now I don't really consider Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest
a proper 2D Metroidvania. I'll cover that another time, but in the meantime, I'm gonna look at these in the order that they were released. So let's go. In 1997, Konami graced the world with Castlevania Symphony of the Night for the Sony PlayStation. This is a direct sequel to
the PC Engine CD game that we all know now as Rondo of Blood, which was a Japan-only game at the time. Koji Igarashi worked as a writer, and a programmer on the game, and helped a bit with its design. However, during production
he took over as co-director, and he'd be key to the series future. When I first played this game, I was totally blown away that
they let you fight the final boss battle from Rondo of
Blood right at the beginning, though obviously it's much easier now. And while Rondo of Blood had
Richter ride away on his horse after the battle, this one does things differently. You're now playing Dracula's son, Alucard, and you're on a mission
to thwart your dad's evil. You're no longer dealing
with stages per se, but this game is divided up
into several connected areas. They even added lots of RPG elements, like leveling up, acquiring and equipping
items, and weapons, and storing health items. You also gain new
abilities as you progress. Most areas are inaccessible until you get the correct ability, like being able to double jump high enough to reach a certain ledge, or turning into a mist in
order to fly through gates. You can even turn into a weird wolf thing, and a bat to fly around freely, just as long as you have
enough magic points, or MP for short. To tie it all together, you have a map that's accessible
with the Select button so you can keep track of your progress. You don't use your typical whip here, but instead you have tons
of different weapons, and you can equip different
ones in each hand, though some weapons require
both hands to hold them. You also have sub weapons like in the previous Castlevania games, and even some original ones. Like Rondo of Blood, if you pick up another sub weapon, you have a chance to get the
old one back again as it just plops out onto the floor for a bit. Exploring this game is extremely fun, and I get hooked every
time I play this game. In fact, I've completed both the Japanese, and the US version several times. Before this game came out, I didn't think that I would enjoy it, because I like Castlevania
just fine the way it was. Boy was I wrong. I love just relaxing, and taking my time exploring. I loved being able to save, and come back later. I loved the fast travel warp rooms, and I really love the new
abilities that I'd get. It's super fun to backtrack to
areas you've already been to you to see if there was
something that you missed, or couldn't previously get to. I remember spending quite a
bit of time with the game, and getting really close to 100%, and fighting what I thought
might be the final boss, but then the game turned
upside down on me literally. Now I had an upside down castle to explore with new monsters, and the map completion actually
goes up to just over 200%. That just goes to show you how good the design of this game is, because each area had to be made to be explored in two different ways. The graphics and sound
presentation is fantastic. If you didn't think the
PlayStation could do 2D very well, this game proved you wrong. Everything is vibrant, well drawn, and animated nicely. There's lots of transparency
effects to make things look well beyond the 16 bit days. Same with some rotation effects
from multi-limb enemies, and even some scaling
effects here and there, and there's plenty of parallax scrolling to add some needed depth. The industry was really trying to kill 2D gaming in the 32 bit era, but this one was having none of that. Artist Ayami Kojima did the
illustrations for the game, and I love them. Even if she got Richter totally wrong, as he clearly does not have long hair like her illustration does, but whatever, and the game does recycle a lot of enemy sprites
from Rondo of Blood, but in its defense it has
a ton of new ones too. Of course, it goes without
saying that the soundtrack is one of the best in that entire generation. Michiru Yamane who previously worked on Castlevania Bloodlines, and Rocket Knight Adventures
really came through here with perhaps the best work of her life. There are lots of
different musical tracks, and they range from excellent
to absolutely outstanding. (upbeat electronic rock music) And I've got to at least
briefly mention the wonderful voice acting that this game provided. - You seem human, and
yet what do you here? - [Joe] This was also ported
to the Saturn in Japan only. Unfortunately, the results
were not very good as it had a lot of dithered graphics, and tons of slowdown. It did add a few brand new
areas to explore though. You could also play as Richter right away, and it even added the
ability to play as Maria. I've covered the differences
in this one previously, so check out Episode 184: Piss
Poor Ports if you want all of the details, but I had to mention it here
as I wanted to include all of the 2D Castlevania games in this genre. Suffice it to say, Symphony of the Night on
the PlayStation is one of my favorite games ever, and apparently I'm not
the only one who liked it, and bought it as Konami would
go on to make many more games in this style. (funky mystery music) Curiously, all of the Metroidvania titles after Symphony of the Night would only appear on
handheld game systems, and that might be because 2D
games are deemed too primitive to appear on mainstream consoles. I don't know, but just because
they're portable doesn't mean they weren't awesome. Castlevania Circle of the Moon
was a launch title for the Game Boy Advance in mid 2001, and it's the second Metroidvania game. In this one you play as a gentleman by the name of Nathan Graves. In the beginning, your master is kidnapped by Dracula. You along with your friend Hugh, set out to look for him, separately of course. I remember getting this the same day I got my
original Game Boy Advance. I was so stoked to have it, and I played the entire thing to 100% on that non-backlit screen. The first thing to note is
that this game was made by Konami Studio in Kobe, and Koji Igarashi didn't
work on it at all, but the team did heavily base everything on Symphony of the Night as you'd expect. It mostly plays quite well, though the controls
sometimes feel a hair stiff. Your main buttons jump and attack, and you can press up, and attack to use your sub
weapons like the knife, the axe, holy water, and Cross of Fear. The L and R triggers are
for your special abilities. As you make your way through
the game, you'll collect items which unlock these abilities, such as being able to
smash through stone blocks, or maybe jump onto, and bounce off of a wall. Using these abilities often
requires you to press the R button at the appropriate time
when you want to use them. There's also the card system. Some enemies will drop
cards after you defeat them, or you'll simply find them lying around. In the menu, you can mix, and match these to gain certain abilities, like maybe a flaming whip, which is actually weaker
than the normal whip, but it looks cool I guess. The one that I really like increases your attack power by 25%. Another increases it even more
depending on how much of the map you've uncovered. You can turn these on and
off by pressing the L button. When they're on, it eats up MP, which is the blue bar
underneath your life bar. Of course, you find items to increase the amounts
of hearts you can carry, your overall HP, as
well as your overall MP. Enemies also drop items that
can be worn on your body, or your arms, which will have different
effects on your stats. Curiously, the whip you start
out with is the main weapon in the game, and the only way to make it
better is of course to level up. The whip itself is pretty
straightforward, literally, though you can hold down the
attack button to make it spin for a weaker attack. All he has to do is put
some LEDs on that thing, and he reminds me of some of
the kids in my neighborhood, and naturally there are
also items to collect which can help heal, or cure you. The areas are pretty big, but very basic in their overall design. Many rooms are built to
be explored vertically. There are of course save rooms, and warp rooms scattered
all over the place, and it's always a good idea
to spend some time grinding if you find a convenient
place near a save room. Like Symphony of the Night, you'll spend a lot of time
backtracking once you get new abilities to explore the places
that you couldn't before. A lot of enemies are recycled
from Symphony of the Night, and Rondo of Blood, and this is something that we'll see in all of the other Metroidvania games, and honestly, I'm mostly fine with that. There are some new ones here though, like the stupid electric skeleton. You also get tiny bits of story here, and there as you play, but it's certainly no
literary masterpiece. Overall, the game took me about 16 hours to completely finish 100%. Let me tell you, that's a lot of time to spend without the benefit of a backlight. It can feel kind of tough here and there, but honestly it's not overly
difficult by any means, and it sure is fun. Visually, the game is fairly basic, even for the Game Boy Advance. That doesn't mean it's bad, but you can definitely tell it's an early game for the system. The animation is extremely
stiff with very few frames, even on your own character. Later on in the game, the enemies get bigger, and have more dazzling
effects applied to them, and there's even a bit of
scaling and rotation here, but it's used quite sparingly. The stages themselves rarely stand out. The music by Sotaro Tojima and Hiroshi Mitsuoka is
pretty awesome though. However, most of it is just
rearrangements of music from past games with very
little original stuff. (cool yet derivative electronic music) Some of it is just straight up
lifted from one of the older games with no change at all, like the title screen music. (operatic singing) As a result, it takes
away a lot of uniqueness from this game's identity. Also, many of the tunes
cover multiple areas, so it feels like there's
much less music over all than you'd expect, but still it's good stuff, and the arrangements are great. Sadly, it all sounds extremely
grainy due to poor use of the Game Boy Advance's PWM sound hardware. Though interestingly, it's the
only Castlevania game on the Game Boy Advance that's
actually in stereo. Overall, it's a good adventure, and while it certainly can't
match Symphony of the Night, I was still stoked to
have a game like this on my Game Boy Advance. Well, I'd sure say that
Castlevania got a pretty good start with it's outings on the Game Boy Advance, but Igarashi wanted back in. Does that mean it was
gonna get even better? Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance came a little over a year later, arriving in 2002 also
for the Game Boy Advance. Koji Igarashi returned to the series with this game as producer, and you can most certainly tell. For the most part it seems like a tiny version of Symphony of the Night. This game takes place 50 years
after Castlevania on the NES, or any of its remakes. You play as Juiced Belmont, or is it Justy? Oh hell, I like Juiced better. So Juiced it is. And Simon Belmont's your granddaddy. In fact, you have the very
same whip that Simon used in Castlevania 1, and even
Super Castlevania 4. I mean, can't you tell
just by looking at it? Anyway, one of your
girlfriends has been kidnapped, so you, and Maxim start exploring
the castle to recover her. Of course you do it separately, and of course you're gonna
have to fight Maxim later. It's all very predictable. The gameplay system has
changed quite a bit compared to Circle of the Moon. For one, it's more balanced, and the levels are designed much better. It's way more fun exploring this castle. It does seem floaty when directly comparing it
to Circle of the Moon though, but you'll get used to it fairly quickly. Once again, your whip is
the only attack weapon that you have, but it can be upgraded with stones. You can kind of wiggle your whip around like in Super Castlevania 4. There's even a stone that you can attach if
you want the spinny whip from Circle of the Moon. Again, you still have all
of the same sub weapons. New to this game though
are the spell books. If you turn these on, and use a sub weapon, you get an item crash like effect, which can be devastating, but it can sure eat up
a lot of magic points. If you use a different spell book, you get different effects
for each sub weapon, and these are all fun to see. There are lots more item
types here as well as money to collect just like in
Symphony of the Night, and yes, there's even a shop
where you can buy some stuff. There's also multiple
castles to travel through, and of course multiple endings. The game is super fun to play, and like I said, very well designed. In fact, it makes Circle
of the Moon seem kind of amateurish by comparison. There's lots of little
details here like collecting furniture scattered throughout the castle. You then set up a room with said furniture just to make it more homey. This of course is optional. You've also got some
really good enhancements to help you get around, stuff like a double jump, slide, super jump, and things of that nature. You know the usual stuff. You don't turn into any bats
or fog, but that's okay. What's interesting is that there seems to be fewer save rooms, and teleport rooms than what you'd expect. As a result, you'll need to be careful, because you can get pretty
far from a save room, and you don't know when you'll
get to the next one unless you've uncovered it already. This game is pretty short, and it only takes about eight
hours if you're not going for a 100% completion. It could be longer, but honestly I'm not complaining. Graphically, the game is a huge leap over Circle of the Moon. The stages have lots of cool
details all over the place. I like the flashing lightening here where sometimes it'll show a monster, and sometimes it doesn't. There's also much more here
in terms of scaling, rotation, and transparency effects, which in turn makes the
game feel more "advanced". Yeah, I know. Sorry, but it really was
the best word to use. There's even some nice
multi-jointed enemies. Everything is really bright and colorful, and this is because the Game
Boy Advance didn't have a backlit screen at the time. This is also the reason why Juste, Maxim, and even some enemy characters have an ugly outline around them, and I've never liked those damn outlines. I mean, I was able to play through Circle of the Moon just fine without any of these dumb outlines. Musically, the game is incredibly boring. In fact, I'd say it's the worst-sounding
Castlevania game ever. (music that will make you bored as dust) The sound quality is 8 bit at best. There's only one good
musical selection, maybe two. Michiru Yamane only did
three tunes for this game. Why they didn't just have her compose the entire game is beyond me. Actually, I know why she didn't, and I'll get to that when
I talk about the next game, but the music being so dull, and uninteresting really
does bring the game down a notch as a whole. The cartoony colors and the outline certainly don't help either. Still though it's a good game, and it's definitely worth your time. So the second installment
on the Game Boy Advance was definitely better than
the first in most ways, not so much in the others, but do you think they can knock it out of the
park for the next installment? The answer is absolutely yes. Castlevania Aria of Sorrow
was released in 2003, and would be the third, and final Castlevania game
for the Game Boy Advance. This one was actually
in development alongside Harmony of Dissonance for a time. It is the year 2035, and you are Soma Cruz, you're visiting a shrine
to view the total eclipse. Naturally the eclipse causes
Dracula's castle to appear, and you find yourself waking
up just outside of it. The story is cheesy, but it's actually kind of cool too. You'll run into a lot more
bits of story as you play this one compared to the previous games. That's because there are many more characters to interact with. First off, you have a
ton of different weapons to find or buy, just like in Symphony of the Night. It's always fun seeing how a new weapon feels to kill enemies, and once you find one you like, it's hard to give it up
for a stronger yet slower, or more awkward one. This game also introduces
the Tactical Soul System. As you defeat enemies, sometimes you'll acquire their souls, and you can use these... tactically. Basically you have three slots, and each slot lets you
switch out certain powers. Some are for attacks since you don't have your
standard sub weapons here. Another might provide a special
ability when holding down the R button, like being able to float for a while. Third are the effects that are
always on like being able to walk on water. This is a cool system, and it's not complicated at all. It's also really fun to mess around with, and is far better than the systems in the previous two games, of course you have tons of
items to acquire to help your attack, defense, and magic abilities. The control is excellent, and it doesn't feel floaty at all like Harmony of Dissonance kinda did. Everything is super responsive. Well, unless you have a big
heavy weapon or something. The stage design is even better
than Harmony of Dissonance. Secret rooms are back, and it's up to you to find them, and reap the benefits of
anything they may hold. However, I'm not a huge fan of the map, and by that I don't
mean the castle layout, I mean the actual map screen. I prefer my map to look
like this instead of this. It really is a very, very minor gripe, and I can still see where I need to go, but I just don't think it's as clear as the normal style maps. In fact, that's probably my
biggest complaint with the game. It tells you how good it is. Well, it's also kind of
short at around 10 hours, or so unless you're a completionist. But really for me, that's fine. However, there are additional modes to play after you beat it. For example, you can play as Julius, he's a Belmont that runs around
very quickly with his whip. He doesn't level up, and he can't use items, or change out any of his equipment. He also doesn't gain any new abilities. He has everything he needs
right from the start. He's strong enough to get the job done if you can stick with him. It's good for an additional mode, but playing as Soma is where
the true meat of the game is, and it is quite meaty indeed. As far as the graphics
and sound presentation go Koji Igarashi definitely
listened to the feedback he received from Harmony of Dissonance. He made sure the graphics
were as good, or better, and they most certainly are. That's right, no more glowing outlines around any of the characters. The colors are mostly still bright, but they're a bit less cartoony for sure, and finally the screen doesn't
scroll wildly every time you jump like it did in the past two games. Well in the vertically
scrolling areas it can, but it's definitely been toned down. The music and sounds have
been hugely improved. Michiru Yamane was the
primary composer here. Since this game shared development time with Harmony of Dissonance, she couldn't devote as
much time to that one, and it certainly shows. The different musical
selections truly do enhance your enjoyment as you play, and give each area a unique personality. The sound quality of the
music is also much better, though you'll still hear some of that Game Boy Advanced fuzziness. The sound effects themselves
are worth mentioning as well, as they're pretty beefy when
you kill certain enemies. (whip slapping enemy) It's amazing how these games
just kept getting better, and better each year, and they were all completely new games. I truly feel that Aria of
Sorrow is one of the best games on the Game Boy Advance. Back then we were getting yearly installments into
the Castlevania franchise. Life was awesome, but we'd have to wait nearly
two years to get the next one, because it was gonna be on
the new system called the DS. Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow is the direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow, and this time it's on the Nintendo DS. This game takes place a year later, and as far as you know you
don't have your powers anymore, but then suddenly an evil
lady from a cult appears, and attacks you, and you realize that yes, you still do have your powers. Though, of course you'll still need the level of them all back up. Otherwise you'd just
rip through this game. The story is less
interesting this time around, but needless to say you're back inside the castle
trying to stop the cult. Since it's on the DS, a few things about the gameplay have been slightly altered or enhanced. Most of what you loved about
Aria of Sorrow is in here, including the Tactical Soul System. Though, now, that screen is consolidated with your regular equipment screen, instead of being its very own menu item, and since there are
more buttons on the DS, you soon get the ability to toggle between two sets of equipment, and soul set ups simply
by pressing the X button. This can be convenient
for equipping a heavier, slower sword that you only
need to use here and there, or equipping the standard floating magic to get over a big gap, and then flipping back to an attack magic, you get the idea. In addition, the A button
will do a special attack with your main weapon at
the expense of some MP. You can now also enhance your
weapons to make them stronger. This is pretty easy to do, and not complicated at all. There's also something here
about freeing souls that I never quite understood, so I just never bothered with it, and it didn't seem to
affect me in the long run. Since it's a DS game, the map lives on the top screen
while everything else takes place on the lower screen. This is awesome, because you don't need to keep stopping, and pressing Select to look at the map just to figure things out, and yes, the map is the same style as the one from Aria of Sorrow. You can toggle this to
show Soma's stats as well, which is handy when you find a place to grind for experience. Once again, the control
is generally excellent, and the game is really fun to play. However it uses the DS touchscreen, and that really brings
it down in my opinion. For example, you soon get the ability to break ice blocks by
touching the screen. This isn't too bad, but it certainly doesn't
enhance the gameplay at all, but the worst part are the seals. A pattern appears on screen, and you need to draw it to
complete certain things like finishing off bosses. If you fail, the boss fight will continue, and eventually you'll get
another chance to do it again, and it'll go on forever
until you get it right. I feel that this is just dumb, and it detracts a big time
from the fun you'll have. What's even worse is
that as the game goes on, you'll collect several of these seals, and they get more, and more complex. There's also this room puzzle where you can use either the touchscreen, or the D pad to arrange the
rooms in the proper order. Personally, I'm not really
a fan of slide puzzles so I didn't have much fun here, but hey, at least I'm not
forced to use the touchscreen. The game length is roughly
the same as the last one at around 10 hours or so. The visuals have taken a huge step up. There's tons more color
and detail everywhere now. I like how the snow falls off of the cars in the intro stage. There's even a bit of 3D
geometry here and there in some of the backgrounds, and tons of enemies are multi
jointed with rotating limbs, and cool effects. Soma looks even better now, and his animation has been improved, even though it was already pretty good, and not to mention tons
of parallax scrolling all over the place, which makes it look like a little PlayStation or Saturn game. Everything just looks outstanding. The art style for the
cutscenes is different though, and seems dumbed down. Ayami Kojima who usually
does the illustrations wasn't used at all here. This was actually intentional as they wanted to attract
a bigger audience. I guess the bare bones anime
look was considered to be the best way to achieve this goal. They don't look awful, but I really do miss Kojima's work. The music is outstanding, and it's much cleaner now
since the DS can basically play back standard MP3 files for its music. I don't know if that's what they did here in this particular game, but they could have if they wanted to. The sound effects are
often really cool too. Overall, this is a fantastic game, but the touchscreen shenanigans
do bring it down somewhat If it weren't for those
pesky touchscreen gimmicks, I might even say Dawn
of Sorrow is as good, if not better than Aria of Sorrow, but just as they did with
the Game Boy Advance, Konami kept spitting these
out again, and again. Next up is Portrait of Ruin. In 2006 Castlevania Portrait
of Ruin came out on the DS. At this point, the series was starting to
get a little repetitious, so they decided to change some things up. Some things really helped, but other things, well I could take them or leave them. This one takes place in 1944, and it's actually the followup
to Castlevania Bloodlines on the 16-bit Sega Genesis. You play as Jonathon Morris, the son of the whip dude
from Castlevania Bloodlines, except that you don't have
the power to use the whip yet. So in the meantime you use
lots of other weapons like Soma Cruz in previous games. You're accompanied by Charlotte, and by pressing X you can
switch between them at any time. By pressing A, the other character will appear, and help you on screen. Fortunately, they both level
up at the same time no matter who you use. They have special abilities
like combining to perform a super powerful attack. You may need one character to
stay in place while pushing with the other. Then switch characters in
order to get high enough. Eventually you get a dollar
store version of the double jump feature where you need
to bounce off of the other character's shoulders. Don't worry, you get a
normal double jump later. This all adds some very
slight puzzle elements that certainly aren't hard to figure out, but they really didn't do much for me, but they don't bring the game down either. Another new thing is that
this game has a main castle, and many different portraits
that you can enter. These all have your own maps to complete, and bosses to kill. All in all, you have up to
1000% of the map to discover. Since the paintings can be anything, the designers were not restricted to the typical castle setting, which is really a breath of fresh air. I actually love this idea. The main castle acts is kind
of a hub world of sorts, and you expand upon it once
you gain all of the abilities from ruining each portrait. Yeah, I went there. (dark Gothic midi music) Once again, the game is
presented with the map living on the top screen, and everything else below. However, they went back to the original style
of maps for this game, and I prefer that. This time you have two
characters that you need to worry about equipping with stuff. As a result, there's a lot more
things that can be equipped. I kind of like this. Lots of stuff can be
equipped by either character, but other stuff can only be
equipped by one, or the other. This one also introduces some
optional side quests assigned by a ghost named Wind to add a bit of beef to the experience. One thing that I noticed
is that it's a touch harder to grind in this game as the enemies don't seem to
give out as much experience. This makes the game feel tougher overall, but I still think it's
fair for the average gamer. The best improvement here
though is that there's no touchscreen nonsense required. You do have to draw an emblem
when you start the game, but that's certainly no big deal. Thank you Konami. (sweet arranged music from Bloodlines) Visually the game remains great. The added environments in each painting help give the game some variety. As expected, there are lots
of reused sprites here. There are a few polygonal
enemies here and there, but not a ton, and there's even more in
the way of polygons in the background this time, but again, it's a fairly rare sight. And of course the music
is once again, amazing. Michiru Yamane did it again, but even Yuzo Koshiro stopped by on his way home to add a few tracks. I found this game immensely fun, and very tough to put down. The variety really helps, and the presentation is all around as good as it can get on the system. This is definitely one
of the better entries that Koji Igarashi has made. Again, I've got to say that I really did enjoy Portrait of Ruin. However, this next game would
be the final Castlevania game that Koji Igarashi would ever produce, though I doubt he knew it at the time. Let's take a look. Finally in 2008, we got
Castlevania Order of Ecclesia, once again on the DS. This one takes place back in the 1800s, and once again, there have been plenty of
changes for this installment. You play a Shanoa, who's a Shardbinder. Oops, actually you're a Glyphbinder, or something like that. I really didn't pay a whole
lot of attention to the story. Honestly, it's not very interesting. This time around the
game is all about glyphs. You can absorb them
after defeating enemies, or sometimes even find them just hanging around waiting for you. You can equip these, and they become your weapons. There are a bunch of different weapons just like the other games, and some are quick, and others are slow. You can assign a weapon to the Y, and the X button, either the same weapon, or two different ones. If you alternate pressing the buttons, even slow weapons can become pretty fast, which is nice. You can also install a glyph
for a special move like this magnetic thing which can fling
you in certain directions. There are now a bunch of tutorials
which slow down the pace, but fortunately they're pretty quick. When you use an ability, or even attack, it'll use up MP. That's right, even attacking
uses up your magic points. Fortunately, if you stop
attacking for a bit, it will refill pretty fast. By pressing up and attack, you use up hearts, and this will result in a
special attack based on whatever glyphs you have equipped. There's a village that basically acts as a hub world for the game. Everyone's been kidnapped for some reason, and you need to find and rescue them. Oh, and don't forget to
rescue their cats too. Once they're back in the village, they can help you out. The shop has some really
expensive stuff to buy. Oddly, you now select your
stage with the map screen. All of the stages add up
to 100% map completion. (deep bassy music) Right off the bat, this is definitely the
toughest one of these games. Most enemies barely give
any experience points, and even the most basic
ones are damage sponges. There are a few good places to grind, but not many, and it takes a while, and you don't power up
much when you do level up, but you'll have to do it otherwise you stand absolutely no chance. You can't take much damage, and the healing items that you can buy don't restore much health. The stages themselves
aren't very interesting. Some areas just have
your run to the right, and there's really nothing to find, or even any bosses to fight. They're just there. I'm also not a fan of the equipment menu. Some items are listed twice, even though you definitely only have one, and some are different colors than others. The good news though is
that once again, there are absolutely no touchscreen
gimmicks forced on you. Graphically, Order of Ecclesia excels. Even though you get a
lot of recycled sprites, everything still looks incredible. I love the lights and the
shadows in the prison stage, or the crazy waves in the Kalidus Channel. It might even be enough to
make some people motion sick. The sound and music are good, but I've got to say that
nothing here really stands out. It's certainly nowhere near as
bad as Harmony of Dissonance, but it feels like maybe there was some
creative burnout happening. In fact, that's what the
entire game feels like. I don't blame them. I mean they were pumping
these out left and right. As a player, I was getting
burnt out at this time too. I remember saying to myself
that after I beat this one, I'm done with these games
for quite some time. Unfortunately these games didn't exactly end on the best note, but that said, it's not exactly
a bad game by any means. This is the worst game in this episode, and if the worst is this good, I'll certainly take it. Well there you go, every 2D Castlevania game in
the Metroid style for you. So how do I rank them? Well, got to say that Symphony of the Night
is still my favorite. It's incredibly awesome. I mean it may just be, because it's on a console
that hooks up to your TV, but hey, my favorite's my favorite. However, my next favorite
is Aria of Sorrow, and they just did an
incredible job on this one, and I think a lot of people agree. Next favorite Portrait of Ruin. They didn't really ruin
much with this one. It's not the best, but it's still good. My least favorite, Order of Ecclesia is that
how you pronounce it? Well, it is now, Ecclesia. This one is not my favorite. That doesn't mean it's a bad game at all. It's just the worst 2D Castlevania Metroid game in my opinion. What's your opinion? How do you rank them? Let me know. In the meantime, thank you
for watching Game Sack. (Game Sack Credits Theme) - Die monster! You don't belong in this world! - Um... - It's your line, man! - I don't think so. - Ah, come oooon. - Ooh, ooh, I'll play!
Good episode as always Joe. Now I'm downright convinced to get atleast Aria of Sorrow for GBA.