Castlevania: Curse of Darkness is one of the first Castlevania games for the XBOX. It has been lauded a worthy continuation of the Castlevania franchise.
Full Review
Castlevania: Curse of Darkness Review
By, Josh Ferguson
Backdrop
.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.
The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.
The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.
Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.
Combat
Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.
Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.
Fresh Features
Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.
To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)
Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.
Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.
Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.
Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.
Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.
In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.
Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.
Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.
Time for Completion
Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.
Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.
Shortcomings
While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.
From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.
The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.
The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.
Final Word
We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!
Final Grade: B
Castlevania: Curse of Darkness is the newest installment in Konami’s long-running Castlevania series. This latest game takes place three years after the events in the NES game, Dracula’s Curse. Similar to the critically acclaimed 1997 hit, and my personal favorite, Symphony of the Night, players will be taking the role of a former member of Dracula’s army. In many ways Curse of Darkness reminds me of Symphony of the Night, but can this game really compare? Read on to find out.
The storyline in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness follows Hector, a Devil Forgemaster and former lieutenant in Dracula’s army. With the destruction of Dracula by the hands of Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, Grant DaNasty, and his own son, Alucard, many of his forces still run amuck in the land of Valachia. One of these is another Devil Forgemaster known as Isaac, who is also supposed to be responsible for the death of Hector’s beloved, Rosaly. In order to seek his revenge, Hector will go and reclaim his power as a Devil Forgemaster.
What is a Devil Forgemaster? Well, Devil Forgery allows Hector to summon Innocent Devils, which are similar to the familiars that were used by Alucard in Symphony of the Night . There are several classes of Innocent Devils, each with their own unique abilities. For example, the first Innocent Devil that you will acquire is a small fairy, which will normally be used only for healing purposes. In the early going, a fairy won’t even be able to attack, but as time goes on you are able to acquire some attacks. The second Innocent Devil is a large magma type creature that fits into the battle class. Of course, these Innocent Devils are very strong and can be very helpful kicking the crap out of your enemies. Some other Innocent Devil classes include the bird and mage.
Similar to Hector, Innocent Devils are also able to gain experience and level. Leveling your Innocent Devils is one way to make them fairly strong, but the best way to do this is by evolving them. Once you reach a certain part of the game, defeated enemies will begin to occasionally drop items known as evolution crystals. These go directly to your current Innocent Devil, and once a certain number of these are found, your Innocent Devil will evolve, gaining new abilities and occasionally changing appearance. There are normally a few different types of classes that your Innocent Devil can evolve into, each of which will depend on the current weapon class that Hector has equipped. The only problem is that the game doesn’t inform you of what abilities your Innocent Devil is able to gain in the future, meaning that most players will probably continue to keep Hector equipped with a sword, gaining all of the sword classes for your Innocent Devils.
As time goes on, Hector will be able to gain more and more different Innocent Devils, but will still only be able to summon one at a time. Hector will also only be able to carry around a couple Innocent Devils in his inventory, but he will be able to store them back at certain shops throughout the game. Using these shops, and by occasionally acquiring shards from your summons, it is possible to obtain every form of Innocent Devil in the game, but that might take a little too much time for most gamers.
Like I said earlier, Hector is able to equip a few different weapon types. When the game begins, Hector will come equipped with a sword, but as time goes on, he will be able to obtain other forms of weaponry. One of the ways that Hector will be able to acquire weapons is by purchasing them from shops. However, one of the easiest and best ways is for Hector to create them himself. After defeating some of the enemies, Hector will be able to pick up different items which are used to create his equipment, including swords, spears, helmets, and armor. The whole weapon creation adds a little more to the overall gameplay and is a fun and interesting addition.
During combat, Hector is also able to perform a few different combination attacks. Most of these combos are pretty simple to use, and can be done by merely pressing the square button a few times and then finishing it off by using the circle button. The combos are pretty simple and basic attacks, but still manage to look nice and quite different from one another. Even though a larger list of combos would have been nice, what is there is still pretty good. Combat also features a lock-on attack, where Hector is not only able to attack a certain enemy, but is also able to steal items from certain enemies. While the item stealing is pretty simple, the actual lock-on attacks can be a little troublesome at times, especially since it occasionally doesn’t seem to really even lock on an enemy.
While I didn’t have trouble with it that often, there were times when the camera caused some problems. During one of the boss battles in particular, he would constantly teleport around the screen, causing the camera to move around a lot, leading to some frustrating camera views. Like I said, it wasn’t all the time, but there were some boss battles and the occasional other random battles where I ran into some trouble.
One of the best things about Castlevania: Curse of Darkness is the game’s sound. For the most part, the voice acting is done very well, especially Hector who is voiced by Crispin Freeman (Heat of Digital Devil Saga and Lord Zetta of Makai Kingdom). Maybe I’m a little biased because I generally like that guy, but I thought he did great, while the rest of the voice actors were good too. The game’s soundtrack is another strong point, but I still wouldn’t compare it to the great score of Symphony of the Night. Still, it’s very well done.
On the other hand, graphically, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness doesn’t fare so well. While the cinematics look pretty good, they are limited and don’t occur too often. Most of the character designs are generally good, but the enemies are rather boring and the same models seem to be constantly used throughout much of the game. The environments are also a weak point, and much of the areas seem to have a very repetitive-looking level design.
Castlevania: Curse of Darkness does, however, feature some replay value. After completing the game as Hector, the option of playing as an unlockable character is present. While I won’t spoil who this character is, he has been playable in at least one other Castlevania game. Even though the game wasn’t exactly made for the unlockable character, at least it adds a little replay value. Similar to Symphony of the Night, where players were able to play through as Richter Belmont, a playthrough with the character in Curse of Darkness won’t have as much depth to the game as playing through as Hector, but it’s better than nothing.
While I do enjoy the RPG elements of Curse of Darkness, this leads to a very simplistic game. Most of the actual game will seem like a cakewalk, and shouldn’t be too difficult for even an inexperienced player to pick up and play. While some gamers might not mind the difficulty, those who found problems with Symphony of the Night and the other RPG Castlevanias being too simple will more than likely find a problem here too.
Overall, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness suffers from some problems, including minor camera trouble and some dated graphics. Still, these aren’t major enough problems for me to not recommend the game. While this is still one of Konami’s few 3-D attempts with the Castlevania series, it still makes me wonder if they will ever be able to bring the greatness of the 2-D games into 3-D. Chances are if you enjoyed Lament of Innocence, you will more than likely want to add this game to your collection. If you didn’t, well, then you may want to let this one pass by.
Final Verdict: 75%
