TITLE: Castlevania: Harmony of Despair
PLATFORM: XBLA
DEVELOPER: Konami
PUBLISHER: Konami
ESRB: T
RELESASED: August 4

By Eric Stuckart
Creator, Destroyer

Having never been the biggest fan of the Castlevania series, Harmony of Despair was perhaps the worst game to dive head first into for a first time, but I never do anything easy, so what the hell? That being said, I should also acknowledge my idiocy in the fact that I forced myself —along with the help of my partner in crime, Stephen McCarthy—to plow through this game in single player mode, knowing quite well that its whole point was to be played as a multiplayer title. And what a title it is!

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, is basically the distillation of the last thirteen years of Castlevania titles, stripped down to their most basic essences, and then smashed and homogenized into a puree of what theoretically was to be a fun, arcade-style multiplayer mash-up of the series’ many post-Symphony of the Night 2D ‘Metroidvania’ titles.

Image from kotaku.com.

Harmony of Despair takes Alucard (SotN) Soma Cruz (Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow) Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin (Portrait of Ruin) and Shanoa (Order of Ecclesia), all with their powers from each of their respective games, and throws them into levels that look more like patchwork quilts of parts from better, more fun games. Up to six players can join at once, albeit via online multiplayer, and the whole object is to reach the final boss and get as much loot as possible.

All of the enemies and bosses are recycled from past games, but aside from that and the ridiculous premise of many of the series’ power ups and items, the fun, explorative nature of those games has been completely been scrapped in favor of what amounts to little more than having the player’s ass repeatedly handed to them ad nauseum. Unlike the older games, there’s no traditional leveling system; players basically have to keep playing the levels until they’ve earned enough gold to buy better equipment, as that is the only way to bring up one’s stats.

The leveling system is inexplicably designed to only increase a player’s attack powers by using their secondary weapon, or in some cases, spells. Better yet, none of this is documented in any way, shape or form in the game. There is a small tutorial that explains some simple aspects of the game, but nearly everything in the game is up to the player to decipher, including the nine stat designations, which are all abbreviated. Seriously, the game designer that assumed that players would know what stats like CON and INT were, let alone did, should finish their career only making shitty superhero movie tie-in games.

Image from kotaku.com.

The only way to switch these power ups or equipment is to access them from a grimoire, often strategically placed at the most inconvenient places imaginable, or from the game’s main menu screen. Players can also buy items from the game’s shop, but this can only be done from the menu screen, so if you’re out of health potions, you’re shit out of luck.

Basically, the only way to progress through the game is to keep playing the same levels over and over until the chosen player is strong enough to complete each of the six levels. Add to that the fact that the game was designed with multiplayer in mind, not single player, so there is no pause button, and all of the levels are limited to thirty minutes. Now none of the levels are all so long to the point that the time limit would really come into play as a hindrance, it’s just an unnecessary addition to a game series that always emphasized adventure over speed.

Multiplayer, on the other hand, seems to make the game quite a breeze, provided that the player is only looking for a quick match. Konami has done a good job of making the matches work quite well, without much in terms of lagging, which could definitely kill the game quite quickly. An added bonus is that downed players turn into skeletons that can still fight. These players can be brought back to life by other players with Water of Life, found in some of the treasure chests, but only in multiplayer mode.

The co-op mode is very much like the single player, except with obviously more players, but the thing I noticed was that the levels turned into a free-for-all race to the boss, with the emphasis on co-op placed in the backseat. Survival mode, on the other hand, gives players three minutes to defeat a boss while being able to attack other players as well, with the last man standing being the winner. While an interesting gameplay mode, it’s nothing to write home about.

Ultimately, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair serves as a prime example of why certain games should never be shoehorned into the multiplayer trend. However, it’s the ridiculous difficulty, the constant need to grind levels just to continue, and the complete lack of coherent instructions that ultimately makes this one of those games with a lot of promise that just didn’t cut the mustard.

RATING: 4.5/10