Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (XBLA)‎

[Decider-VT]

Really liked the demo. Can see this running into the same problems as Lost Planet 2 at the review stage, though.

[Riskbreaker]

I've been enjoying this. Finished all the normal stages and ploughing through hard mode. Good fun in multiplayer even with randoms, but you see everything it has to offer level and creature wise quite quickly. More levels and bosses would be nice, they've left room for dlc by the looks of things so it wouldn't surprise me to see this in the future.

Bit disappointed with Shanoa. She has some decent attacks but there doesn't seem to be much variety. Charlotte has about twenty magic attacks to her four. Which is a bit naff.

[Family Fry]

Reckon if they allowed Chapter 1 Multiplayer in the demo this would be selling and being talked about with a little bit more praise, then again that's a large chunk of the game.
It's a multiplayer focused, Castlevania boss rush mode basically. I have been finding fun in single player just speed running through Chapter 1 and trying to beat my previous times, seeing the little mistakes I make and checking out leaderboard runs, so far I have popped a good 4-5 hours on it.
Still need to nail Chapter 3 boss and on co-op he seemed a lot more difficult.
The only thing I would say is disappointing is no sign of tutorial and the how to play section is a bit lame.
I am really enjoying it and I am saying that as a Castlevania fan from all the GBA/DS games, just nice to see something different. I am sure there will be another single player focused Castlevania one day and when it arrives I will be all over it.

[Riskbreaker]

Yeah the How to play is particularly inept at telling you how to absorb glyphs or spells as if the assumed only players of past few DS games would buy it.

Charlotte's method of learning spells is particularly poor in it's implementation and doesn't lend itself to multiplayer at all. When six players are moving along the same path your chance of blocking a spell let alone learn it after repeat attempts is retarded. Even moreso when you realise you need to successfully absorb each spell repeatedly to power it up.

[EvilBoris]

How do you learn other spells? I seemed to acquire some souls for soma from another player but I've yet to get anything extra for alucard

[Riskbreaker]

Only used Shanoa and Charlotte so far. For Shanoa you hold up when an enemy is using a glyph attack (dark triangle appears over their head) and you'll see the glyph get sucked towards her. Shanoa just has to use a glyph to level it up.

With Charlotte you need to block the attack using RB, block enough of them and you get the spell. Level up by getting the same spell over and over, nine is the max.

Chances are the others will work in a similar manner.

EDIT: Scrap that. Alucard's are learnt by collecting scrolls which are random pickups.

[nakamura]

Well I have only played the demo but I hated it. The way the castle rooms are literally stuck together gives the game no atmosphere at all, it all feels very cheap.
The control of Alucard was horribly slow also. Graphics were rather poor too, didn't feel new and HD.

Still the full game may be better, but I certainly won't be buying it.

[Charlie]

I wasn't impressed by the trial either; I'm a big Castlevania fan but this felt archaic and not in the good way - in the 'obsolete' way.

But, really, this year's Summer of Arcade, much like this year's actual summer, has been a total washout as far as I'm concerned, especially compared to previous years. 2008's Summer of Arcade gave us Geometry Wars 2 and Braid and Castle Crashers, last year's gave us Trials HD and Shadow Complex, but this year's has failed to tempt me to spend any of the 4000 points sitting in my account. Maybe the Tomb Raider game will be good...

[stainboy]

Played a bit of the trailer, didn't know what was going on, didn't know it'd be that sort of game and I couldn't see anything because I have an SD tv. But if you can zoom that's a plus point.

How long do you reckon people will be on multiplayer? Since that seems the point of the game.

[stainboy]

Oh my god I'm soooo **** at this, when did it come out? there's people requesting chapter 4 on hard (shut up) already. Think I need some single player before playing with too many people.

If anyone wants a game my gamertag is staindude. Leave me alone if I'm playing Limbo tho! Anything else is freely interuptable.

[arcnas]

i prefer this years summer of arcade line up more than the last 2. Limbo. Hydro thunder are great and for me monday night combat is the most fun ive had online in ages. i dont see why people think it was a poor arcade summer, although i hated castlevania

[Skull Commander]

How long do you reckon people will be on multiplayer? Since that seems the point of the game.

If it's like 99% of the other games, then people will have already moved on unfortunatly. Apart from a select few (e.g. Street Fighter, COD, Halo) nothing seems to keep any kind of online community nowadays