Castlevania: Order of Eccelsia Review

Much like Portrait of Ruin, I started Order of Eccelsia around 10 years ago on an emulator but could never get very far in it and after the Dominus Collection releasing so recently, I was finally able to beat it, however I do have a more clear understanding as to why I never got very far into when I played it the first time.

The first thing noticeable about Order of Eccelsia right away is the upped difficulty by comparison to many of the other of the Igarashi produced Castlevanias, this is easily the hardest one I'm not really sure if it's for the right reasons either.

The early game hell in Order of Eccelsia makes the game so offputting to newcomers that I wouldn't be surprised if many people who started the game up for the first time gave up around the first few levels. So many things are either not explained to the player, how weak many of starting attacks and glyphs are or just how damage spongey enemies and bosses can be. I almost wanted to quit at around the crab elevator fight and if it weren't for the built in rewind that comes with the Dominus Collection, I would've just stopped around there.

Later in the game, you do get more powerful glyphs like throwing fire balls that covers your entire flank from where it is casted and a light ball and even an energy beam late game. What really helps is that the player will rescue villagers and doing side quests for them will unlock better gear and healing items. You don't even get the ability to buy potions and hi potions until getting at least a good ways into the game. You need to get to finish a few of the levels and bosses to unlock regular potions and a good ways into the game to unlock hi potions, you can forget about super potions since they are insanely expensive. However once you rescue the village cook and do his side quests, you can buy ramen and BBQ fish which aren't as expensive as potions and can revive more health.

With all this said, I'm sure looking up lots of posts online could've made the game easier or unlocking more high level gear but at the same time, enemies take up an insane amount of damage and take far too long to die. If it weren't for the stages being short, the tickets that warps you back to the village and the rewind, the game would've been impossible to beat for me. The bosses take so long to die and they do so much damage to you that it's hard not to abuse the rewind feature since if I don't that just means more grinding.

Dracula's Castle is a level I very much dislike too. I don't mind have a lengthy level inside of his castle, but at this point, this is the ending section of the game and it takes so long to finish. There's at least 3-4 bosses you have to fight before Death and there is also a fetch quest involving the heads of Cerberus in order to unlock the Dracula boss itself.

The double jump in OoE can also be very misleading too, 95% of the higher platforms you can reach by casually double jumping but there are those platforms on occasion where you need to specific timing with the double jump to reach it, to rescue Irinia you need to do a specific jump from below the waterfall to reach the platform to get her, I almost quit the game due to how confusing the timing was when it was straightforward before this. Dracula's Castle has at least 4-5 platforms like this. It just makes me wonder, why are 95% of the jumps simple than on occasion I need to be precise with my timing? The lack of carefully easing the player is what annoys me.

One big issue I have with SOTN styled metroidvanias is that you can look around and find secrets in so many of the levels and all they reward you with is gear that has less stats than the one you are using, weapons weaker than the one currently equipped or just something completely useless like some materials for side quests I'm not sure if it gets me one step closer to finishing. I thought OoE going back to the older style of CV game would mean stuff like this wouldn't happen as much but not really.

Some good things I'll say about the game is that the requirements to get the "true" ending is generally simple stuff, just rescue all the villagers and they are mostly easy to find and you will need to rescue them in order to get certain things like healing items and armour. Sometimes, you will need to backtrack but it's nothing too time consuming.

The grapple hook like ability with Magnes gets a decent amount of use, I was expecting it to be used in the early levels but it still gets acknowledged throughout the game, there will always be a level that requires some use of the ability even by Dracula's Castle you still need to use the power which is some decent game design in a game with so many abilities given to the player.

Overall, I don't dislike OoE but I can see why I never got far into the game when I first played and it can be jarring with it's difficulty compared to what came before especially considering those who played CV for challenge probably stopped playing a while ago.