On my last day of my GenCon vacation, I picked up Castlevania Harmony of Despair to spend the day playing some multiplayer Castlevania. I'm not one to usually get into multiplayer games on Xbox Live, and this game reminds me why. To take a concept as fun and pure as the "Metroidvania" series and distill it down to this is a crime in itself, but to throw in an extremely bigoted multiplayer system is downright wrong.
Let me explain. Castlevania HD is a fun game in which you have 30 minutes to get from the start of the level to the boss' death. Along the way you'll pick up equipment and level up your off weapon abilities and die. Alot. This is not a single player experience. With some practice and some hand me down equipment, sure, you can make it through the early levels by yourself, but past that, you're going to need some help.
That's where the multiplayer component comes in. You can have up to six people in a game all try to work together and beat the (ramped up) boss. I didn't have a lot of problems while I was playing, in fact it was a lot of fun. The problem was actually getting a group together. The game doesn't allow you to join games in progress, so, no hopping into my friend's game, and it doesn't allow you to setup the game specifications past "only take players from my country" until you have everyone in a group. What happens then is people get kicked out for not having achievements associated with beating the game, or you get a new player who is starting up get paired with players who want level 6 on hard mode. Of course, when you start the game on level anything else, they all quit leaving you to have to start up another whole new group and hope you don't get caught again.
The interface is not slick at all. You can't equip items outside of games, the looped music and page turning graphics and noise while trying to find a group gets more annoying every time I try, and there's no instructions on how to use any character, only vague bits that don't tell you what they reference to (martial arts instructions, for example). I had some problems with the game freezing up while looking for group, and another player told me of his experiences with the game crashing when the map comes up in multiplayer. These are not the hallmarks of a good game.
I think this game can be salvaged with some heavy patching. I did have a lot of fun when I was paired with players my own skill level and I still keep trying to join up with groups (thankfully I was able to beat Dracula on normal tonight, so I'm getting kicked out less). What really needs to happen is that some kind of searchable lobby needs to be implemented allowing players to post up what level they want to do, and what difficulty they want to do it on, and then let players join in from there. Also, we need some in game explanations on how things work. Why is my Alucard's store better than my Soma's, is it because he has beaten normal mode, or is it because he has killed more monsters? Why can I hand down some gear, but not others? Is there a behind the scenes leveling system? The game doesn't explain any of it.
Is this one worth picking up? Ehh.. maybe. If you like Castlevania games and want to play quick pick up games, then yeah. It reminded me a lot of doing a pick up dungeon in World of Warcraft. Sometimes you get paired into a group that's overpowered, and sometimes you get sent off to the Oculus and everybody drops. I'm going to keep playing it for now, but I'm not sure how much longer my patience can last with it.
