After the success of the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Konami abandoned its traditional level based design for a free flowing action/RPG style of play. After a decade of “Metroidvanias” the formula has worn a bit thin on fans, but fortunately Koji Igarashi and his team have realised that they can’t do the same thing forever. With Order of Ecclesia, Konami has tried to mesh old and new Castlevania together, allowing players to get out of the dank castle and sample a bit of variety in level design, and bringing back a taste of the brutal difficulty that has been absent in recent games.

Order of Ecclesia is set roughly a hundred years after the events of Symphony of the Night. The Belmont Clan has vanished, taking the Vampire Killer with them. In the absence of a Belmont heir to fight Dracula, several organisations have arisen to counter the vampire threat. The most promising of these organisations is the Order of Ecclesia, who created a triad of glyphs called Dominus, based on Dracula’s powers of anger, hatred and agony. Shanoa, the player character, is chosen by Ecclesia’s leader Barlowe to be the human vessel for Dominus; however, the ritual is interrupted by Albus, who believes he, not Shanoa, is the chosen one. The disturbance in the ritual causes Shanoa to lose her memory and all of her abilities, but Barlowe needs her to track down Albus and recover the glyphs.

A vastly different combat system has been conceived for Order of Ecclesia. Shanoa has the ability to absorb glyphs, which come from the bodies of dead enemies. Glyphs come in all shapes and sizes, from everyday melee weapons like rapiers and lances to devastating magical attacks. It’s quite similar to the soul-stealing system of Dawn of Sorrow, but allows for more versatility, though can be just as daunting to grasp when you’re just starting out. Three glyphs can be equipped at an time, with the ones bound to the X and Y buttons serving as weapons, with the R-bound glyph used as a magical attack/support modifier. A strange idea is that all glyph attacks drain your MP meter, so you’ve got to keep an eye on that when fighting bigger enemies.

Players will need to do a lot of experimenting to find the best combination of glyphs, as you simply cannot rely on a single weapon for the entire game due to the heavily detailed strengths/weaknesses of the enemies. Some enemies will be impervious to physical damage, others will need to be struck with a specific kind of weapon. With the ability to alternate between weapons on the fly, you’ll quickly find a combination of glyphs that will help you tear through Dracula’s minions in no time.

In a departure from the more recent Castlevania formula, the first half of Order of Ecclesia is structured like the classic Castlevania games featuring stages with defined beginnings and endings, though players can move back and forth freely. It doesn’t completely do away with back-tracking, as you’ll need to revisit some levels, particularly if you’re going for full completion, but the pacing seems so much better. These stages feature great variations in design and setting which haven’t been encountered in Castlevania games to date, like a lighthouse and canyon. A Simon’s Quest style village acts as a hub, and becomes more populated as you rescue more villagers, eventually acquiring an item shop and a heart refiller. Rescued villagers will provide players with side-quests which generally lead to the acquisition of better equipment. The back half of the game sees the action go towards your typical castle setting, but it’s nowhere near as large, empty and repetitive as those of recent games.

Order of Ecclesia also reintroduces the element of difficulty to the Castlevania formula, something which has been missing from the series since Super Castlevania IV. It’s the first game in a long time where death is a regular occurrence, and players are forced to learn enemy patterns and experiment with their equipment in order to progress. It brings back the element of fear when you’re fighting a boss battle, but with it comes a certain level of frustration, because difficulty is mainly achieved by giving many of the earlier bosses a truckload of health, rather than creating clever patterns and sequences. Bosses become a bit more interesting and exciting as you progress through the game, but those early to mid game ones can be rather excruciating to fight.


It will take players a reasonable amount of time to beat the main game (10-12 hours, at least), particularly with the escalated difficulty, but there’s also a huge amount of quests to complete and glyphs to find in order to achieve full completion – it’ll take you months. Like many of the recent Castlevania outings, Order of Ecclesia boasts a healthy selection of post-game content. Beating the game unlocks the ability to play through as another character – we can’t say who, since it’ll ruin the story, but let’s just say it’s a great departure from Shanoa’s quest, and even more in touch with the classic Castlevania formula. Online modes from Portrait of Ruin return, including the boss rush, which lets players co-operate to defeat the game’s larger foes, along with the race mode, where players compete to complete a level in the fastest time. New to the series is the online auction house, where players can use their in-game currency to bid on a variety of items listed by other gamers. While it’s a sound idea, the Auction house has been ruined with hacking and cheating, with many super powerful items flooding the market at low prices.

The 2D Castlevania games have really showcased what can still be done with sprite based animation, and Order of Ecclesia thoroughly impresses with a variety of amazing character designs, liquid animation and highly detailed sprites. Particularly striking is the design of the main character Shanoa, who is a strong female character with rather gothic fashion sense, and more shockingly, realistic proportions. However, like all recent Castlevania games, Order of Ecclesia does re-use some classic sprites, some of which are more than 15 years old and make for a pretty jarring difference in quality compared to new art assets. The audio is also superb, with high quality sound effects and voice acting provided in both English and Japanese. Order of Ecclesia’s soundtrack is simply amazing, with a heavy emphasis on more gothic themes to match the setting of the game allowing it to stand out from the rest of the pack without featuring reworks of the series’ classic tunes.

Koji Igarashi and his team at Konami have responded well to criticisms that Castlevania was becoming stale by putting together one of the best games the series has seen in a long time. The mix between classic and modern Castlevania level design, the clever and deep glyph system, a heightened sense of difficulty and absolutely amazing audio/visual design make Order of Ecclesia stand out as one of the best games on the Nintendo DS. There’s an astonishing amount of gameplay on offer here which should ensure that Order of Ecclesia is a mainstay in your DS cartridge slot for months to come. Now, if we can just get rid of those old sprites...