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LTTP Castlevania Order of Ecclesia - Shanoa > All the Belmonts and Alucard

J

Jotamide

Unconfirmed Member
I am playing through Order of Ecclesia again and even though I've said many times in the past that Aria of Sorrow is the best in the series, I think OoE has the better protagonist. This game was truly Igarashi's Swan Song: the animations were great, the setting was made to spice it up a bit (not just pure castle-crawling), the quests are a nice addition, THE GAME IS CHALLENGING, and the soundtrack is more Michiru Yamane which is always welcome.

I just finished the battle with this motherfucker and pretty much set all other games aside while I finish this up. I am kinda sad that apparently this game bombed, and that we didn't get the superior Japanese cover:

konachan-com-99971-castlevania-shanoa.jpg
Click to expand...

Boy I love metroidvanias, and to be honest this game is up there with AoS for me now.
 
K

kenjisalk

Member
Favorite Castlevania, hands down.

Hoping we eventually see a return to form with the franchise after Lords of Shadow 2 gets pooped out. Would love to see another Ecclesia-esque title.
 
E

Espada

Member
I loved the hell out of Order of Ecclesia. I agree that this was a nice sendoff for the Metroidvania-style Castlevania games by Igarashi. The somewhat higher difficulty, glyph system, challenge modes, etc... This game was stuffed with things to keep you entertained. The artwork for this game is lovely, I have a whole folder with every piece I could find. There's one with Dracula looking pimp as hell while seated on his throne.
 
Davey Cakes

Davey Cakes

Member
Shanoa certainly is one of the best playable Castlevania characters.

Order of Ecclesia was a nice change-up to the formula of Metroidvania, being split up into different areas that were kind of like stages (though not really focused in their design like real stages). The way they included Drac's Castle was nice, and for some reason I really love Dusk's Holy Mark as a stage theme and overall game theme.

Preferred it over Portrait of Ruin and Harmony of Dissonance, at least. Something about those games was just kind of "meh" to me.

Never fully completed the Long Cavern though. That was just...too much.
 
T

Thorakai

Member
Loved this game. I wish Konami would free Iga from the dungeon they are keeping him in and make another Metroidvania in the style of Order of Ecclesia for the 3DS.
 
M

Mental Atrophy

Banned
Order of Ecclesia probably has my favorite customization mechanics... Like a merger of Soma (Aria/Dawn of Sorrow) and Juste (Harmony of Dissonance). What I dislike about the game is that it's solution to every stage design problem is to add more enemies that move in a sinusoidal pattern. Some of the bosses are really nice, but I don't think the stage design hits anything that resembles a stride until you reach the big papa's castle. Also, it's character theme is amazing.
 
J

JoeFenix

Member
Definitely a kickass CV game. Hard for me to say if it's my favorite of the DS ones but it might be. I really loved Dawn of Sorrow but Ecclesia is probably the better game.

Shanoa is awesome and Ecclesia has some of the best boss fights in the series, no damaging them to get those cool medals felt perfect!

I like the Mercury Steam games for what they are and I'm really looking forward to LoS2 but I wish we could get more Iga games as well. What happened to him was a real shame, is he even doing ANYTHING at this point?
 
S

Shaffield

Member
Shanoa is pretty cool, but i prefer both Soma and Julius as characters and control-wise.

OoE was good, but I wasn't a big fan of the level format. I like a little more exploration in my 'Vania
 
V

VahnSSR

Banned
Mental Atrophy said:
Order of Ecclesia probably has my favorite customization mechanics... Like a merger of Soma (Aria/Dawn of Sorrow) and Juste (Harmony of Dissonance). What I dislike about the game is that it's solution to every stage design problem is to add more enemies that move in a sinusoidal pattern. Some of the bosses are really nice, but I don't think the stage design hits anything that resembles a stride until you reach the big papa's castle. Also, it's character theme is amazing.
Click to expand...
An Empty Tome is godlike, the whole soundtrack is pretty good actually. OOE is probably my favorite Metroidvania aside from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow and SoTN.
 
R

RM8

Member
I discovered it earlier this year. So, so glad I bought it! It's a blast to play and sounds/looks amazing. I really loved the weapon system. It's a bit sad that I played it the same year we got Mirror of Fate :( I want more of this Castlevania.
 
N

Nibel

Member
One of the hardest games I've ever encountered

Need to try it again sometime - loved the female protagonist
 
G

Grisby

Member
Yeah, it was fun. Besides SOTN it's the only other Iga game I've played. Shanoa does have a nice visual design.

Game could get tough in one or two spots. That evil Shadow boss deserves it's own spot in hell.
 
R

Refyref

Member
My favorite Igavania. Would have been nice to see where it would have went onwards from there, but I guess all of the change in IGA's couch was used up.
 
C

Creaking

He touched the black heart of a mod
I liked Ecclesia well enough, and it had a great combat system, but it's not my favorite of the IGA-vanias. I didn't think that the world was very fun to explore, though it was challenging to progress through, in places.
 
F

FlyFaster

Member
damn, never played this when I had a DS. Regretting it now, I've heard pretty much nothing but good things about this game.
 
F

Foffy

Banned
It's such a damn shame that IGA's two swan songs (Order of Ecclesia and Adventure Rebirth) are really solid Castlevania games for the styles they were going for.

MercurySteam should have at least contributed with him and whatever remnants of his team are still at Konami on Mirror of Fate. Mirror of Fate simply lacks soul. It looks even worse compared to previous handheld 'vanias, so it's perhaps to not compare them too much..
 
J

Jotamide

Unconfirmed Member
Crewnh said:
review2.png


Thats where I quit the game back in winter break 2008. Havent touched it since.
Click to expand...
Equip the Beam Skeleton Glyphs, equip the +INT passive glyph, get some food and milk from the village. Boom! Takes less than 5 minutes. :)
 
A

Alucard

Banned
Still haven't finished it. I'll get to it when I have some time. Still need to get through Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin. So far, Aria of Sorrow is easily the best Metroidvania of the ones I've played so far, though Symphony will likely always be my favourite.
 
D

Dolphin_Butter

Member
I loved this game, and it sits second behind Dawn of Sorrow for me. However, I did not enjoy unlocking the castle, which was basically half of the content.
 
L

Lumpy Onion

Member
I had fun with it although I only ended up playing thru half of the game. My main complaint is the muddiness of the color choices and the design for some of the stages. I think that vertical crab-like boss took around 30 tries...And this is coming from someone who didn't Dark Souls to be that difficult.

Recently picked up the DS trilogy again and am looking forward to playing to the end.
 
E

Espada

Member
JoeFenix said:
Definitely a kickass CV game. Hard for me to say if it's my favorite of the DS ones but it might be. I really loved Dawn of Sorrow but Ecclesia is probably the better game.

Shanoa is awesome and Ecclesia has some of the best boss fights in the series, no damaging them to get those cool medals felt perfect!

I like the Mercury Steam games for what they are and I'm really looking forward to LoS2 but I wish we could get more Iga games as well. What happened to him was a real shame, is he even doing ANYTHING at this point?
Click to expand...

I jumped and cheered after I beat Eligor without taking damage. That bastard screwed up so many attempts with his bizarre hitboxes.

Crewnh said:
review2.png


Thats where I quit the game back in winter break 2008. Havent touched it since.
Click to expand...

Pure evil. I was stuck on this for a while due to his attacks, how hard they hit, and the tiny little space you can operate in. IIRC there was a glyph combo that did serious damage to him.
 
Tesseract

Tesseract

Banned
unlocking the town npcs was lame, the early levels were simple, boring, repetitive. drop rates sucked. good second half, great bosses.
 
S

Sgblues

Member
Well I do agree on the Shanoa part, she has been a better protagonist than Soma and Johnathan(Jonasan!) and unique in a way though glyphs were just the soul system under a different style, it was still good.

Shanoa does gets points for being a female protagonist who, despite
having her emotions locked away, still had a lot of charm while she struggled to understand things and why she couldn't feel more when situations called for it
, my favorite part was when
thinking she had lost everything, she quickly resolves to go fight Dracula and just rolls into his castle while "empty tome" starts playing, what a badass
.

OOE was just the metroidvania I wanted, because you had the option of exploring the countryside, something you couldn't do for a long time in the games and many/if not all of them had the action take place within the walls of castlevania and it showed its not only dangerous inside the castle but outside as well even when Dracula isn't around.

This game had a lot of new things to it, new music, new bosses(
besides Death and Drac
) and they(for the most part) were challenging though I wished collecting the boss medals from them unlocked something, seemed kinda of a waste besides getting your collection rate to 200%

I did wish the Castlevania series had more female protagonists, poor Sonia got retconned in her first game and her second game never got released, but for all the deuteragonists(second main characters) I loved Maria and Charlotte(though I wished her backstory was more fleshed out)
 
E

Espada

Member
JoeFenix said:
Eligor was the horse boss right? I remember the hitboxes being really weird on him yeah!
Click to expand...

Yup, the big ole horse bastard. As if navigating through his legs wasn't nerve wracking enough, when you get on his back he has a bizarre hitbox up there. You wind up taking contact damage when you thought you were safe.

Did anyone here ever do the challenge cavern? The one with the crazy platforming challenges and secret boss at the end? That was a nice challenge.
 
K

King Boo

Member
good game. sucks that you kill
shanoa's boyfriend. although he is playable in the extra mode if i remember correctly
 
A

Aeana

Member
It's honestly the only Metroidvania I can say I actually really love. I like the shorter, detached stages more than the big castle stuff. More similar to classic CV in that way. And the training hall was super fun (and had one of my favorite classic CV tracks in it).

Nibel said:
One of the hardest games I've ever encountered

Need to try it again sometime - loved the female protagonist
Click to expand...

I see this expressed a lot, but I've never understood it. What about it makes it so difficult? I didn't have very much trouble, really.
 
D

dumbyugi

Member
I actually just finished this for the first time last night. I really enjoyed it but I like Dawn of Sorrow better. I liked the challenge compared to the other DS games and Shanoa was the best MC of the three but the level design wasn't as good and I prefer the soul system to the glyph system.
Albus
mode is pretty bad as well, DoS and PoR both had better extra modes. I really wish Iga would make another Castlevania for 3DS or Vita.
 
D

demidar

Member
This is the best Castlevania I've ever played on a handheld. Lotsa new sprites, lotsa new areas, great music, new in-depth mechanics and has some of the difficulty of classic sidescroller Castlevanias.
 
Danny Dudekisser

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Order of Ecclesia was pretty great, and more than made up for the dismal Portrait of Ruin. Dunno if I'd say Shanoa's > all the Belmont's, but she's pretty hot.

Sad to see what happened to the series after this.
 
L

Little Green Yoda

Member
The woods level on a fresh, hard file made me want to snap my DS in half but in a good way. I plan on finishing that hard playthrough once I finish 100%ing TWEWY. I think I was stuck trying to medal the boss right before the castle area.
 
Danny Dudekisser

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Little Green Yoda said:
The woods level on a fresh, hard file made me want to snap my DS in half but in a good way. I plan on finishing that hard playthrough once I finish 100%ing TWEWY. I think I was stuck trying to medal the boss right before the castle area.
Click to expand...

Speaking of which, I actually did break a DS Lite over this game.
 
K

kenjisalk

Member
Not sure why there are rumors that it bombed, as sales figures I've seen indicates that all the DS Castlevanias performed similarly (about 250-300 thousand lifetime).

It's also interesting to note that those sales figures also apply to Lords of Shadow (per console) and that the LoS DS game has only moved about 70,000 units globally to date.

I imagine that unless we see a dramatic uptick in sales for LoS2, that particular version of Castlevania will be dead soon. As to if we'll see them return the franchise to Igarashi, who knows. Konami is in a weird place right now, and they may not have the common sense to let him go back to making games the core fans want, choosing to let the series cool for an indefinite period of time.
 
M

MechaX

Member
Aeana said:
I see this expressed a lot, but I've never understood it. What about it makes it so difficult? I didn't have very much trouble, really.
Click to expand...

At least in comparison to other Metroidvanias, I can see it being the hardest because it leaves no room for error. Even on default difficulties, enemies do a lot of damage. Plus, you actually have to learn boss patterns and actually dodge attacks as opposed to tanking hits and wildly swinging your weapon. I think only Harmony of Despair really took a similar approach.
 
N

Nicko

Member
Kayhan said:
What happened to Iga?

What is he doing now?
Click to expand...

I am friends with him on Facebook. Found him through a mutual friend, Kinuyo Yamashita, who was the music composer for the original Castlevania (super nice lady!).

I know he is for sure still working at Konami Digital Entertainment. I believe he is overseeing several mobile titles, and was involved with the pachislot akumajo dracula line of Pachinko games.

He likes to post pictures of food and wine, and appears to travel a lot for enjoyment.

He certainly has earned some time to rest... However I really hope he is given back the reigns, and returns Castlevania to greatness!

Agreed, OoE was one, if not the best portable CVs!! Got to replay those DS games sometime soon.

Nicko
 
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