Review | Castlevania: Harmony of Despair
Vampiric Difficulty
Format: Xbox 360 | Genre: Strategy | Publisher: Konami | Developer: Konami | Release Date: 04/08/10 | RRP: 1200 MSP (£10.20)
Mike Rose fends off ghouls and zombies to review CASTLEVANIA: HARMONY OF DESPAIR.
THE XBOX Live Summer of Arcade chugs along this week with the next Castlevania title, Harmony of Despair, or HD as it’s shortened to (see what they did there?). Mixing retro stylings with more up-to-date visuals, the game provides single and multiplayer castle crawling with lots to see and huge boss fights to partake in.
Some unique and quite intriguing ideas are thrown into the mix this time around, providing both veteran Castlevanians and newcomers with challenging gameplay and a lovely online co-op mode. Yet while it all sounds so promising, Harmony of Despair proves to be an exercise in frustration and unfair balancing. It was always going to be a difficult game and not for the faint hearted. Unfortunately with the challenge ramped up, the fun fades away into oblivion.
First impressions are all over the place. As the first level begins, Castlevania’s vast scale hits you like a ton of sweet-smelling bricks. While previous games have kept the camera firmly focused on whichever room you’re currently occupying, Harmony of Despair pans out and provides a view of the entire level. After surveying the scene, players can click the right stick to zoom in on their character and start the action.
The next pointer that soon becomes apparent is that this is most definitely a Castlevania game. Ghoulies and zombies and all other sorts of mythical creatures will relentlessly try to kill you, and will usually do a very good job of it too. Each of the five available characters have their own set of weapons and special powers for taking out the monsters, but none of this matters a jot if you haven’t learned how each bad guy moves and attacks.
All in vain
It’s at this point that we come to the first hurdle and stumble wildly. Castlevania games aren’t exactly known for their easy-going gameplay, but at least an ample number of save points is usually provided so that you can care a little less about dying all the time. Harmony of Despair provides no such thing – there are a couple of pedestals dotted around the map which can be used to buy new weapons and stock up on potions, but ultimately if you die, you must start all the way from the very beginning of the level.
For this reason, the aforementioned ability to zoom out and see the entire level becomes quite the double-edged sword. In any previous Castlevania game, if you died you’d simply spawn again at the last checkpoint and get back on your way. In Harmony of Despair, however, since you can see the whole level already and know it’s going to be quite the trek, it’s rather off-putting to think that you now have to traverse this whole castle all over again.
Case in point – I reached the boss of the first level, and spent five minutes dealing him as much damage as I could possibly muster up. With my health steadily dropping throughout the battle, I eventually hit the bucket and was thrown back to the main menu. Upon loading the level up again, it zoomed out to show the long and winding path I had to take all over again, and I simply felt that I couldn’t be bothered to go through all that again. Dying when quite far into a level is easily the most frustrating element to this game.
This is, however, only touching the surface of how frustrating Harmony of Despair can really be. Unless you’ve seen an enemy before in a past game – indeed, many of the monsters are taken straight from previous titles – defeating enemies can be an utterly trial and error experience. Even when you do know how they move and attack, it’s still very fiddly, especially when multiple enemies pack together.
Aluhard
Then there’s the baffling inclusion of a time limit. You’re given 30 minutes to complete each level, and if the timer hits zero, your game is over. Half an hour is easily enough time to beat each maze and destroy the boss, but Harmony of Despair isn’t about rushing through as fast as possible. There are rooms dotted all over the place which conceal special treasures and interesting puzzles, so quite why Konami would put a limit on how long you’re allowed to explore for is beyond me.
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its hard and frustrating?
this makes it an even more amazing game then it was already just being castlevania.
i dislike how games now a days hold your hand thru the entire game…demon souls didnt do that and that game is amazing all castlevania’s dont and they are amazing.
win for castlevaina
Really disappointing; although, I was sceptical, having heard tidbits about the game, over how it was ever going to work.
The idea of having a co-operative game that doesn’t scale according to player count is garbage and completely unacceptable. It’s total BS, just as it was in Lost Planet 2. And quite frankly, it deserves to sell just as much as that title, for its sins.
It is a Castlevania. The games are always refreshing, because they aren’t easy. LOOK at all of the titles that come out that basically give you the game; The Lego series, The Transformer series, I can go on. Don’t be mad because you might not have been up for a challenge on a game that doesn’t change either single or multiplayer. I like that fact, it shows the game isn’t taking it easy on you. Difference of opinion, or you just weren’t ready?
What a poor review, and I don’t mean the deconstruction of the title, I simply mean what a poorly written review.
Do yourself a favour and proof read more, cut down on sentence length and try to avoid cliches rather than using them at every turn.
A review of this ‘quality’ reflects badly on the site.
Didn’t find it to be poorly written at all, personally. You seem tremendously angry that it’s not ‘up’ to your ’standards’, ‘James’.
Castlevania stopped being “hard” ever since Rondo of Blood. The moment it shifted from a framework requiring nothing but pure reflexes into a plodding, “RPG” like structural nonsense where any notion of challenge is chipped away by how many hours you can devote to slice and dice the same skellingtons over and over until you “level up”. It became a battle of patience to subdue challenge rather than a battle of friction between the player and the moment-to-moment combat.
Igarashi has done nothing but pander to the kitschy romance-loving fans who can’t live without a new Castlevania that doesn’t reference past characters and chronologicaly resolve all the plot holes and inconsistencies in the story. Level and game design fell by the wayside a long time ago; it’s become a thematic series of small, box-like levels with little verve or wit.
It was only with Order of Ecclesia that Iga looked at gamers with respect again, because it injects a level of challenge long forgotten by the fans and the developers; levels are tighter, enemies aren’t sleepwalking anymore, and the flow of the game itself is much better (if you discount the first area, that is). Also, unrelated but poignant, kickass music.
There’s hard, and there’s positively unbalanced and ill considered design. Ecclesia is the former; Despair is the latter. It’s a mess of level design and challenge has been ramped up by virtue of completely misunderstanding the point of those that complained about the sedate pace of every CV offering after Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance.