Why I stopped playing: Castlevania Double Pack
With the amount of enjoyment I got out of Order of Ecclesia, I definitely wanted to get into the rest of the series. So I was at the mall and saw Castlevania Double Pack--which contains Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow--for about $10 and picked it up.
It's a very big disappointment.
Harmony of Dissonance I spent the most time with. It's not a great game by any means, made even worse by the fact that there's way too much backtracking through two versions of the same castle. I found myself aimlessly wandering, and frankly, if I'm not sure where exactly to go, I don't want to spend ten minutes going from one end of the ugly graphics to the other. The music is awful; I don't like to play games without their intended soundtrack, so I won't just put on regular music, but this was ridiculous.
And the game contains the stupidest sidequest I've ever seen. You find a few items of furniture--a chair, a statue, some sconces--and when you go into a certain room, your character says something to the effect of, "This is a nice room, but it needs furnishing!" And you drop off all of your furniture items and they are arranged for you. You even get items like full-length mirrors and king-sized beds. The thought of a character traipsing around fighting monsters while carrying around a bed, only to furnish a room in Dracula's fucking castle is just...ludicrous, and in a very very bad way. It doesn't even pretend it's in a semi-scary game--it even bypasses camp entirely. And from what I've seen on gamefaqs, the sidequest...seems to give no reward whatsoever.
Aria of Sorrow fares slightly better, but it also has the problem of backtracking and not knowing exactly where to go. I'm fine with a huge sprawling castle, but I don't like wandering aimlessly. At least there are teleportation points in this one. Still, I didn't find the action nearly as compelling as I did Ecclesia. I liked the satellite areas as well as the castle in that.
I think the structure of Ecclesia with a slightly different flow would be an ideal game for me--where you have the gigantic castle and the other outside areas...except instead of, as in Ecclesia, you go from one area to the other linearly, you can explore all areas at once, collecting items at your leisure.
I'm going to give Symphony of the Night a try, since most people consider that the finest game in the series, and I'm actually very interested in Portrait of Ruin, but I'm not holding out terribly much hope.
I guess I just like a lot of focus in my games--I like to know that there are distinct goals for me to get. "Sprawl around this castle" is not a focused game for me--neither is "randomly investigate until you find stuff." Eccelsia had that focus: through the first part of the game, for the most part, you're chasing another character, and you go from location to location to find him. During the second half, you have Dracula's Castle, which is slightly more linear than its incarnations in Harmony and Aria; however, while it takes as much time to finish Dracula's Castle as it does the entire rest of the game, storywise it's set up as the climax. Rather than a sprawling world, conquering this one castle is itself a goal, and I like that a lot better. I guess that's why sandbox and sim games don't appeal to me--I want to be told what to do. And yet I somewhat disliked Bioshock. Go figure.
It's a very big disappointment.
Harmony of Dissonance I spent the most time with. It's not a great game by any means, made even worse by the fact that there's way too much backtracking through two versions of the same castle. I found myself aimlessly wandering, and frankly, if I'm not sure where exactly to go, I don't want to spend ten minutes going from one end of the ugly graphics to the other. The music is awful; I don't like to play games without their intended soundtrack, so I won't just put on regular music, but this was ridiculous.
And the game contains the stupidest sidequest I've ever seen. You find a few items of furniture--a chair, a statue, some sconces--and when you go into a certain room, your character says something to the effect of, "This is a nice room, but it needs furnishing!" And you drop off all of your furniture items and they are arranged for you. You even get items like full-length mirrors and king-sized beds. The thought of a character traipsing around fighting monsters while carrying around a bed, only to furnish a room in Dracula's fucking castle is just...ludicrous, and in a very very bad way. It doesn't even pretend it's in a semi-scary game--it even bypasses camp entirely. And from what I've seen on gamefaqs, the sidequest...seems to give no reward whatsoever.
Aria of Sorrow fares slightly better, but it also has the problem of backtracking and not knowing exactly where to go. I'm fine with a huge sprawling castle, but I don't like wandering aimlessly. At least there are teleportation points in this one. Still, I didn't find the action nearly as compelling as I did Ecclesia. I liked the satellite areas as well as the castle in that.
I think the structure of Ecclesia with a slightly different flow would be an ideal game for me--where you have the gigantic castle and the other outside areas...except instead of, as in Ecclesia, you go from one area to the other linearly, you can explore all areas at once, collecting items at your leisure.
I'm going to give Symphony of the Night a try, since most people consider that the finest game in the series, and I'm actually very interested in Portrait of Ruin, but I'm not holding out terribly much hope.
I guess I just like a lot of focus in my games--I like to know that there are distinct goals for me to get. "Sprawl around this castle" is not a focused game for me--neither is "randomly investigate until you find stuff." Eccelsia had that focus: through the first part of the game, for the most part, you're chasing another character, and you go from location to location to find him. During the second half, you have Dracula's Castle, which is slightly more linear than its incarnations in Harmony and Aria; however, while it takes as much time to finish Dracula's Castle as it does the entire rest of the game, storywise it's set up as the climax. Rather than a sprawling world, conquering this one castle is itself a goal, and I like that a lot better. I guess that's why sandbox and sim games don't appeal to me--I want to be told what to do. And yet I somewhat disliked Bioshock. Go figure.
posted by R. Goodness at 9:13 AM
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