Konami Gamer's Night: Castlevania Order of Ecclesia
One of the big highlights of the Konami Gamer's Night event was the official unveiling of the new Castlevania game in the works for the DS. The game has been mainly rumors up until this point, but last night Konami had Koji Igarashi up on stage to give us the dirty details on Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. The biggest difference people will notice right off the bat is that you are not playing as one of the members of the Belmont family this time around, but instead are playing as a girl, Shanoa, (now that's a change of pace) whose a member of a group called the Order of Ecclesia. Seems that the Belmont family has gone missing, but Dracula is still up to his old tricks. A few groups have cropped up to combat Dracula, and the most effective group is the Order of Ecclesia and what makes them so effective is a very secret weapon they use (and no she's not named Buffy) . . .
The secret weapon that this Order has to combat Dracula and his minions are these magics called 'glyphs'. Normally the glyphs are difficult to wield for the order's members; however, our heroine seems to have some special affinity to them and can absorb them into herself. Once absorbed, she can attach the glyph to either of her hands and use it's powers to attack enemies or explore the area. The Rapier Glyph was the first we were shown in the presentation and was attached to both hands, which correspond to the Y and X buttons. Each hand has an attack cooldown time, so attaching the glyph to both hands allowed for a rapid attack by alternating which hand was attacking, thus allowing you to string combos together. Now, if the two arm buttons are mashed together, a super attack will be launched that can have different effects depending on which glyphs are placed on the arms. As the glyphs are used, and MP meter decreases, and then when at rest, the MP meter quickly replenishes thus limiting just how much damage you can do with the glyphs in a given amount of time. We were then shown a variety of weapons/glyphs that can be acquired in the game including: Bow, Sword, Light, and Dark.
Along with the two arms, there are other Glyphs that can be placed on our female protagonist's back, which corresponds to the R button. The example shown for this was a Magnetic Glyph that was absorbed and placed on her back and when used made a magnetic 'sphere of influence' around her. She then jumped near a metal circle on the wall and activated the glyph, which attracted and then grappled her to the circle. Using the stylist, you can then pull Shanoa away from the sphere and by letting go of the R button, catapult her in the opposite direction. The electrical engineering geek side of me was so happy to see the inclusion of magnetic field lines in the 'sphere of influence', since it was a nice bit artistic detail.
Speaking of art, with the latest game Konami decided to move away from the normal anime style they've had in the previous two DS games and have more of an illustrated style in this newest iteration. From the presentation they showed and the screenshots below, I have to say that the more realistic style does look pretty spectacular and is a nice change of pace. The only sad part of the whole presentation was the news that there would be no playable demos for us to try out, but I guess the game is still in the development process. We were, however, given the news that they are working towards a Fall 2008 release date, so if they stay on target we shouldn't have to wait too long for our sexy heroine to fight some vampires (using glyphs instead of stakes though).
PixelPoet
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 15 May 2008
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: castlevania: order of ecclesia, gamer's day, konami, nintendo ds
Am I the only person here who just got hilarious glimpses of a Buffy-Castlevania crossover?
@ first pic: That's officially the biggest "sword to person using it" ratio I've ever seen.
It is not that new to play a girl in a Castlevania game. There was Sonya Belmont (for example) and that little "Fernandez"-chick from Castlevania 64
More 2-D Castlevania is always a good thing. I'm glad they're going back to the SotN-style art for the series, I always preferred it to the anime look of the firs two DS titles (which I still loved, though).