Reviewed By: Mindesyn, Byronic Gaming, CanadaCastlevania Judgement for the Wii is based on a well known gaming franchise created and owned by Konami called Castlevania.
Normally in the Castlevania series you star one of many vampire hunters, usually from the Belmont clan, and wield magical weapons in a side scrolling adventure through Dracula's demonic castle, Castlevania in order to kill Dracula. This game is more of a twist in the fact it is a 3D fighting game, that collaborates most of the heroes and villains through the franchises 24 year history.
Upon starting the game you are greeted with a very well done opening featuring an epic fight between the games two main protagonists Simon Belmont and Alucard. The graphics are well done for the scene, and it brings you into the Castlevania Gothic atmosphere.
However that's the highlight of the game. Upon starting the game, you have only the said two characters. You need to play through the game over and over again with different characters to unlock all 12 of them, 14 playable characters in all including one added just for this installment of the franchise, a mysterious man named Aeon whose power is time.
Playing through the various modes like Story, Time Trial, Survival, and the all new Castle mode wouldn't normally be so bad, the game's cut scenes, and voice acting is well done, the music is nothing short of masterpiece after masterpiece, and the whole experience (Being my first contact with the famed series) made me want to play the other installments. However the controls are just unresponsive, lagging at time, and awkward, the control layout on the Wiimote is at best unconventional, I played the entire game with the Gamecube controller, I tried the Wiimote/Nunchuk combo and the classic controller, but the Gamecube controller was by far the most manageable. To unlock all characters, and ability to use them, you need to play through the game about 26 times. Which becomes a chore with the controls.
Not only are the controls a bust, but the core gameplay mechanics are very shallow, basically you use basic attacks to string along a combo that is best used to spam to build up your hyper meter, to unleash a hyper attack, which is an epic, lengthy super attack, that is accompanied by a cut scene, these attacks almost redeem the entire gameplay, very well acted, and huge cinematic attacks that deal loads of damage are cool the first few times, but after playing the game so much and no way to skip the length of the attacks, they get old fast. On top of your Hyper attacks, regular attacks, and charge up attacks, you are able to pick up various secondary weapons, mostly projectile based, like holy water, crosses, daggers, and hearts.
The stages are interactive and hazardous as well, which adds another element into the fighting.
Some of the characters are incredibly unbalanced, and some are just impossible to use. Playing through the story mode and 'true story mode' is at times frustrating and annoying. Although the unlockables you get are pretty cool, you get concept art, (Done by famed Manga artist Takeshi Obata from Death Note fame) background music, and accessories, which you can add onto your favourite fighter's skins, and personalize them, a top hat on Dracula for instance. I believe the accessories were a way to customize your fighter for online play.
Too bad online play wasn't worth it, to say it was laggy was an understatement most fights were 5-10 second action followed by 5-10 seconds of frozen screens, and choppy battles. Dodging and blocking strategy was nonexistent with such a environment, basically all you do was spam super attacks and combos that a human player would have difficulty avoiding with a perfect connection let alone a choppy one. Which is a shame, because the online had good ideas that more fighting games should use. For instance, you have the options to fight in Ranked or Unranked matches with Friends, Randoms or a new Rivals option where you add people to your Rivals list if you found someone you had a good match with so you can find them again and sharpen your skills. Accessories were a nice add-on since there was quite a few of them. The other function of online was to connect your DS and Order of Ecclesia game to unlock bonus content, which I believe was just a secondary costume for the series latest heroine Shanoa.
The characters in the game were truly a good selection and the fact that the game is based on some time loophole that allows certain characters to interact with each other who normally wouldn't be able to added interesting commentary in the cutscenes, and made me want to play the other games to find out the history of each character. Although the games are notorious for being hard, the only hard part in this game was the Castle mode.
Castle mode consisted of going room to room on a predetermined map, and having handicaps or certain objectives to be met in order to move on. For instance 'Collect 8 items' or 'Kill all monsters' Which introduced the zombies, mermen, minotaurs, among other minor monsters. You go room to room on a preset path that is the same for every character, until you get to the last room and fight Dracula. Upon completing Castle mode, you unlock accessories, concept art, and other things to flesh out the game.
Overall as much as I enjoyed my first experience with the Castlevania series, I was severely disappointed in the game's controls, and expected more from a well known developer like Konami. Although a Castlevania game on the Wii has potential, it seems no one has an interest in pursuing something worthwhile with the series anymore. I enjoyed the characters and the music was perfect. Repetitive gameplay and atrocious controls ruined the experience though.
For Byronic Gaming I give this game 2.3 Holy Items out of 5
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