Last week I picked up Castlevania Order of Ecclesia for the DS. The game continues the gameplay mechanics of the two previous DS titles, and introduces a Glyph system. Up to three Glyphs can be equipped, acting as physical attacks (swords, axes, hammers), spells (fire, ice, lightning) or passive abilities (stat bonuses, familiars). Depending on the combination of equipped Glyphs, you can use hearts to trigger a special attack.

The single castle has been replaced with a world map that contains several areas and dungeons. They are basically themed sections like previous castles, isolated onto the map so you have the standard underwater area or the standard high tower and whatnot. A town in the middle of the map is the safe zone where you can buy/sell items and receive Quests, that is, once you rescue the villagers trapped in dungeons.

With the exception of the world map, the game is typical Symphony of the Night. You kill baddies, gain experience points, backtrack with your new abilities to unlock new areas, and kill a boss – although in Ecclesia sometimes the boss is located at the beginning of a dungeon.

Like SOTN, the attraction of Ecclesia is the RPG elements. Castlevania stopped being a platformer the moment it introduced experience points and an inventory Equip screen. The game’s levels are designed for repeat performance. The blocking off of areas is a backtraking mechanism, implies – or rather instills – progression not only in destination but in character proficiency since when you eventually reach a once inaccessible area, your character has become more powerful, accomplished through experience points and item drops. And with such systems in place, especially with baddies that respawn once a room is refreshed, grinding is inevitable.

The Quests are perhaps the weakest part of Ecclesia. With the exception of a few, the villagers are fetch quests, asking for items found either in treasure chests or as drops. Since chests randomize their rewards, the best approach is to find the baddie with the item drop you need, and pretty soon you fall into the pattern of killing the same baddie billions and billions of times until the shiny object drops. Even tasty meat shimmers.

What this grinding of baddies does is change the way you play, and perhaps not in the intended way. What the villager fetch Quests do is make you think of killing the baddie and leaving/re-entering the room in the fastest time possible; you take into account the distance between the baddie and the exit; you take into account the speed-damage ratio of your Glyph combo; you take into account which room has the greatest number of baddie instances in comparison to their distance from the exit. Unless you are speed-running, you never have to put this much thought into clearing dungeons or fighting bosses. The only thing you have to worry about is making sure your attack and jump patterns are asymptotic to the baddies’. Your level of thought goes further into item hunting when it should push you to clear rooms through the use of muscle memory and the occasional daredevil maneuver. And some rooms are populated with baddies that do allow this level of play but there are far too few.

For example, there is a room with one Ladycat and two Curse Divas. In isolation these baddies are more an annoyance than a threat (the only real threat in this game are the bosses) and I guess as a pack they are still more of an annoyance because of the Diva’s curse ability that drains your MP. The Divas are flyers while the Ladycat’s attacks are all ground-based, which means to dodge the cat’s attacks you have to jump but sometimes not so high as to hit the Divas who curse on contact.

And perhaps this has been its greatest failing as the series has continued. The later entries added a stat and inventory screen to allow for hero building and to put values and checks behind each hit. Whereas the original Castlevania could get away with one-on-one encounters or rooms with no more than half a dozen baddies I’m assuming in part because of hardware limitations, post-SOTN Vanias have more or less stuck with this restriction and at the same time weakened the baddies and strengthened the player to the point where your only worry is whether or not it’s going to take you 30-seconds or 30-minutes for the item you’re looking for to drop.