Trying to be different

Order of Ecclesia reinvigorates the series by injecting some fresh ideas into a rather tired formula. Essentially, it tries to take the classic Castlevania's ethos and hybridize it with the mechanical foundations of SotN, the shadow of which had been looming over the series for over a decade by this point. Did it succeed? Yes and no. But mostly yes.

Instead of having one big castle or several medium areas to explore, the game instead presents us with numerous linear locations with lots more platforming challenges and an increased difficulty across the board. The idea being: each should play like a level of the classic Castlevania, while still retaining the freedom to tackle them in a non-linear order. And then, if you accomplish the main task (saving the villagers), you get access to Dracula's castle, which plays more or less like a miniature version of the same castle we explore in the previous games. It's trying to give you the best of both worlds. I think it works for the most part, but naturally the castle at the end doesn't have the same sense of place as the castles in the previous games, due to the simple fact that it's small. Sure, the difficulty does pad it out, but that actually fucks with the pacing that was so perfectly worked out in SotN and its follow-ups.

Speaking of the difficulty, it's a double-edged sword. One one hand, a lot of enemies do attack in more interesting patterns and the increased damage forces you to be more careful and dynamic. On the other hand, a lot of them are huge damage sponges, especially certain boss fights. A boss fight can quickly go from exciting to tedious when you find yourself thinking "when is it gonna die already???!" Some boss fights could only be killed with a gimmick, which you couldn't know beforehand, so you end up sinking an ungodly amount of damage into them until you realize that they're basically invincible.

The new combat system, based around stamina and dual-wielding is neat in theory, but in practice feels more like a needless overcomplication because fundamentally the damage system works the same. Despite three loadouts you can switch between on the fly, I ended up mostly using just one because other types of weapons don't make much of a difference. For example, bows are supposed to be useful for range attacks and give you an entire different approach to combat, but they're really slow and you can probably close the distance between you and the enemy in the time it takes the bow to shoot. So you end up prioritizing anything with a higher DPS anyway. And that means dual-wielding the same weapon instead of a combination because you will get a higher DPS that way, plus a more powerful super attack. So in practice this isn't very different from the way you would find the highest-damage weapon in the previous games and just stick with it until you find a more powerful one.

Except the loot in this game is much less plentiful. I imagine because they wanted the experience to feel closer to the classics. Indeed, I spent most of the game barely paying attention to loot-management. There is no shop either, instead you get these side-quests to find some items for the villagers, which I couldn't bother with.

But really overall I enjoyed Order of Ecclesia. I do think the fact that it tries to be different is commendable. I also like that they tried to make the art style a little closer to the older games, although it's still very anime. I imagine they tried to please both camps. I would've preferred the return to the SotN/AoS style, but this is still very pretty. Ultimately, the core gameplay loop is very strong here, and the aesthetics are pleasing, and the levels have a healthy mix of platforming challenges that were lacking in the previous Igavanias. So my impression is: Order of Ecclesia is a solid entry in this series and one that should definitely be checked out by anyone who has gotten tired of essentially SotN clones they'd been pumping out before this.