I have debased myself so that you might not. As we all know, all that evil requires to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
If you're already subbed to Apple Arcade, it's easy to see this as being "free", so really, what harm can be done? As you start it up you might even be quite excited - try to ignore the voice over and the intro CG is fairly pleasant, featuring animated takes on some of Kojima's beautiful artwork from past titles, and eventually launching into some gameplay, as Alucard no less, that's scored by a reworking of classic SOTN number 'The Tragic Prince'. Woo!
Pretty much everything from this point is at a downward trajectory. The 2.5D art is unremarkable but at least serviceable, and similarly, the controls are functional although still fairly loose and unresponsive. Despite the presence of double jumps, slides, and character-specific specials, at no point does it feel like any Castlevania to date, rather a floaty pastiche. Every now and again it does present something vaguely resembling fun gameplay, however the majority of the nails in the coffin come from the structure of the game - it's a deliberately overwhelming nightmare of predatory systems colliding awkwardly with one another, drowning you in an overabundance of currencies, stats, modes, automations, challenges, login bonuses, random and incomprehensible loot, upgrade paths, trials, shops... it just goes on and on. I understand that this is gacha behaviour 101 - bewilder the player with multiple ineffective options so that they seek quick and easy (and yet costly) routes to improve.
And yeah, it turns out that knowing a bit of the game's history helps understand how this monstrosity has come to pass: it was originally released for mobiles in a small number of territories, and bogged down with microtransactions before eventually getting pulled. By Konami's hand it is again given flesh, yet with Apple Arcade being a subscription service, microtransactions are forbidden. What's evident though, is that very little effort has been made to address this restriction beyond the most basic necessity of removing the "buy currency" button. You're still beholden to "summoning" random loot, and very little effort's been made to rebalance this from a grind fest into anything resembling an enjoyable single player experience. The difficulty spikes are brutal, and not through actual challenge, rather through the artificial tedium of one stage's difference now meaning that basic enemies take four times as long to kill.
The story is a very basic narrative wrapper that not-so-neatly allows various generations of vampire hunters to be brought together. Stages are short little three minute affairs that are typically wrapped up with an arena-style fight which comes with a bizarrely Darius-esque "WARNING" siren.
For what it's worth, I've played the first chapter over a few days so far, on an Apple TV 4K using a DualSense.
The undisputed highlight for me is the soundtrack, which although is mostly comprised of remixes, has the potential to become the one positive outcome from this should it become available somewhere, anywhere, that doesn't require you to play the damned game.
If you're already subbed to Apple Arcade, it's easy to see this as being "free", so really, what harm can be done? As you start it up you might even be quite excited - try to ignore the voice over and the intro CG is fairly pleasant, featuring animated takes on some of Kojima's beautiful artwork from past titles, and eventually launching into some gameplay, as Alucard no less, that's scored by a reworking of classic SOTN number 'The Tragic Prince'. Woo!
Pretty much everything from this point is at a downward trajectory. The 2.5D art is unremarkable but at least serviceable, and similarly, the controls are functional although still fairly loose and unresponsive. Despite the presence of double jumps, slides, and character-specific specials, at no point does it feel like any Castlevania to date, rather a floaty pastiche. Every now and again it does present something vaguely resembling fun gameplay, however the majority of the nails in the coffin come from the structure of the game - it's a deliberately overwhelming nightmare of predatory systems colliding awkwardly with one another, drowning you in an overabundance of currencies, stats, modes, automations, challenges, login bonuses, random and incomprehensible loot, upgrade paths, trials, shops... it just goes on and on. I understand that this is gacha behaviour 101 - bewilder the player with multiple ineffective options so that they seek quick and easy (and yet costly) routes to improve.
And yeah, it turns out that knowing a bit of the game's history helps understand how this monstrosity has come to pass: it was originally released for mobiles in a small number of territories, and bogged down with microtransactions before eventually getting pulled. By Konami's hand it is again given flesh, yet with Apple Arcade being a subscription service, microtransactions are forbidden. What's evident though, is that very little effort has been made to address this restriction beyond the most basic necessity of removing the "buy currency" button. You're still beholden to "summoning" random loot, and very little effort's been made to rebalance this from a grind fest into anything resembling an enjoyable single player experience. The difficulty spikes are brutal, and not through actual challenge, rather through the artificial tedium of one stage's difference now meaning that basic enemies take four times as long to kill.
The story is a very basic narrative wrapper that not-so-neatly allows various generations of vampire hunters to be brought together. Stages are short little three minute affairs that are typically wrapped up with an arena-style fight which comes with a bizarrely Darius-esque "WARNING" siren.
For what it's worth, I've played the first chapter over a few days so far, on an Apple TV 4K using a DualSense.
The undisputed highlight for me is the soundtrack, which although is mostly comprised of remixes, has the potential to become the one positive outcome from this should it become available somewhere, anywhere, that doesn't require you to play the damned game.