Or as some say: Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. It’s the latest 2D castlevania gam for the Xbox and was part of their SUMMER OF ARCADE. Yet, here I am in December talking about it. You know, I had to wait for it to fully soak in.
I'm interested in this...
It is one of the most old school designed gams I’ve played in recent memory. Super Meat Boy can’t touch this. At the time of playing this at its peak, no FAQ knew what the “stats” meant. Some very old school theory crafting was happening on message boards instead of the school yard. Lets take a look at the Stats screen, which I grabbed from a google image search. Thanks Gaming Bits!
Seems simple at first glance… but think about those for a second. What is the difference between Strength and Attack. Or Mind and Intelligence? Is it better to take 2 Strength for 4 attack? Or gain 3 defense and and lose 20 resistance to slowflakes? And those icons seem to make sense..but then go crazy. If that thing is a Holy symbol, what is the OTHER star in the black icon? Hell, I see a fire Icon and I know what that means, but does the number goto damage or to resistance? Is this a bad thing?
Yes, it is a bad thing: I want to metagam and make an overpowered character that will let me do math to show why my e-peen is bigger than yours.
No, it is not a bad thing: Buckle up. Shut up. Go with your gut and just play the damn gam. Have fun theory crafting in a forum and make a new gam out of it!
For me, it found a balance of Yes and No. But I can’t decide if it is a good balance or a bad balance, so I will just say it “found a balance”. I wore luck items cause I wanted better item drops (at least I believe it did that…who actually knows! Maybe the hammer icon knows!)
They scrapped a level up system to go entirely gear based. And by small increments. You’ll start with a piece of cloth armor and get a swanky rare dropped chain outfit that will increase your DEF by 1 (maybe 2) and will increase your AC by 2 or 3. This makes new gear drops a far less exciting thing than other loot heavy gams such as Diablo and Borderlands, but on the other hand, you are always getting stuff. You are always going to that awesome main menu music, and you are always reading the something humerous description.
End
All this said, there are only 6 levels and 1 DLC map. I’d avoid this gam like the plague if you are going to only be playing by yourself. Like, I don’t even think it would be worth 50 cents. The amount of unrewarding grind you’d have to do by yourself would just be unbearable. However, multiplayer with some friends over the net, or in the desired LAN party setup is awesome.
Yeah. I did that. It was awesome and we stayed up till 5am and ate deep-dish pizza.
To sum up for the 3rd time: If you got some multiplayer buddies to be on sync with when you play it’s a ton of fun. Also, it is a lot more fun when you are in sync in gear/stats vs. an overpowered friend plowing through the levels (they can’t help it at that point! Really!)
Edit:
Also, this sums it up REALLY well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBUgsaWYCqE&feature=fvw
Edit:
Also, this sums it up REALLY well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBUgsaWYCqE&feature=fvw
