I hate Order of Ecclesia

[Ancient Toaster]

Level design is total crap and the enemies hit you for half your health every attack.
The fact that you have MP to use attacks is just absolute trash too.

Good thing that the other two games on the collection are amazing.

OoE might be the worst Castlevania game ever made.

[Amaterasu]

It's designed to be extremely hard. Shanoa is effectively a mage while the other characters are warriors and Soma is literally the reincarnation of Dracula. Plus she lost all her emotions and possibly memories, thus any training she might have received for combat is more or less gone.

The difficulty comes from playing a squishy wizard type rather than the badass frontlining warrior type. Approach enemies tactically instead of rushing into their face hoping you can chug potions to get through the fight.

[0wnz0r]

mad cuz bad

[Firebrand]

Originally posted by Amaterasu:

The difficulty comes from playing a squishy wizard type rather than the badass frontlining warrior type. Approach enemies tactically instead of rushing into their face hoping you can chug potions to get through the fight.

That's far from the only problem it has though. It has many small linear stages before you reach Dracula's Castle which are generally bland, Dracula's Castle is correspondingly smaller, borrows some odd & ill-fitting mechanics from other games like the pinball magnetic jump, the village buildup is boring, the weapons are all reduced to abstract representations via glyphs & don't offer a better experience than just having weapons the way the others did.

The bosses are properly hard. That's the only upside I see. I recall the crab boss in particular being a tough fight.

I own & have played through all 7 of the Castlevania "Metroidvania"s &, other than HoD, I think it's the weakest of the 7.

[D.A.S.H.]

100% correct. One of the worst Castlevanias ever.

[Soren]

Only way you're getting consistently two or three shot is if you're playing hardmode lvl 1. Where the game automatically adds 60+ damage on any hit you take. Even then, you can easily face tank like 10 hits with healing items in hardmode lvl 1. And you're complaining about wienie hut jr mode being too hard?

[benjymlewis]

Think of it less as "you need to use MP to do basic attacks", and more of "they turned the MP bar into a Stamina bar". Because that's pretty much what it is, and I think it's a cool way of doing it. It means that you never "run out" of magic like all the other games, and it's all about finding the correct time to attack and the correct time to recover. And it allows stronger glyphs to be balanced by being less spammable due to the mp cost. I think it's balanced really well. Not every game needs to be an identical clone of the games that came before it. Having unique mechanics makes things more interesting.

[Lapinoire]

I don't remember Ecclesia being hard, having beaten it at level 26 on first playthrough way back on the DS version. The maps are absolutely boring, that's for sure.

Really don't understand why Ecclesia is liked when it's just a watered down Castlevania, especially compared to Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, literally nothing was memorable about it.

[Soren]

Originally posted by Lapinoire:

Really don't understand why Ecclesia is liked when it's just a watered down Castlevania, especially compared to Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, literally nothing was memorable about it.

I'd say first off, it's got the whole villages and their side quests. The treasure chest system was so nice they used that kind of system for Harmony of Despair. I kind of like the RNG of what you could get, like equipment being in some green chests. Instead of it all just being tied to a monster the bestiary tells you to maybe farm. Boss medals are fun to earn. Secret chests and puzzles are more prevalent. Back-tracking is more rewarding. The Attribute point system is nice. The triple loadout allows for a lot less pausing if you need weapon/ability swapping.

Most importantly, the hardmode is actually hard, unlike most Castlevania games. I could gush about Ecclesia's hardmode for days. The tutorial fight replaces the 4 skeletons with 4 skeleton champions. Tons of new/different enemy placement like that. Certain enemies/traps are faster. You take a minimum of 30/60 extra damage on every hit, so 1 damage face tanking is no longer a thing. The enemy placement being a redux of sorts is what truly sets it apart of course. That's also why Curse of Darkness's @crazy mode is also a top tier game difficulty.

[Ctoer]

So the thing with Order of Ecclesia, you aren't supposed to face tank damage like with some of the other DS games, Shanoa's as squishy as Charlotte, even more in Hard Mode.

The MP bar is more like a Stamina bar, the reason you use it to attack is probably because you can spam attacks in quick succession with some of the gylphs, and the hearts are there to balance the strong combo attacks you'll end up getting access to.

OoE is also like the one game in the DS trilogy where enemy weakness/resistance actually matters, at least in the early game when the balance hasn't been thrown out the window, not like Portrait of Ruin where I would argue it only matters in a few key points during the main story like the Whip Memory fight + some of the optional bosses.

Of the 3 DS games, it might be my least favorite, but it is also the one where I feel like I'm in control of what's happening the most, and the game never really walls you with a stupidly hard boss or room.

[Lu2]

fair chalenge , its not piss of easy like sympony of night or bloodstained , go cry to iga

[Lu2]

get good , game is masterpiece

[-Drezz-]

You just have to figure out which glyphs to use against what enemies. Resistances and weaknesses actually matter in this game.

[William Shakesman]

Complaining about OoE's soporific Halo-esque copy paste level design is fair but the increased damage was what the series really needed. In DoS and PoR there are so many tedious rooms with enemies strewn about randomly that you just sleepwalk through because they cannot actually do anything to you. OoE at least forbids you from damage tanking and sleepwalking and makes you actually play the game. You also cannot clear a boss eating 12 or so hits and beating him first try without even needing to learn his pattern. It is honestly the minimum they needed to get you to actually PLAY the game.

Going back to SotN almost ALL of these games are too damn easy except for CotM

[Ancient Toaster]

The haters haven't been able to refute that the level design is total trash. There are numerous levels that are literally just hallways with nothing else going on. You don't even need to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ jump. It's just a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hallway.

[Ancient Toaster]

Originally posted by Firebrand:

Originally posted by Amaterasu:

The difficulty comes from playing a squishy wizard type rather than the badass frontlining warrior type. Approach enemies tactically instead of rushing into their face hoping you can chug potions to get through the fight.

That's far from the only problem it has though. It has many small linear stages before you reach Dracula's Castle which are generally bland, Dracula's Castle is correspondingly smaller, borrows some odd & ill-fitting mechanics from other games like the pinball magnetic jump, the village buildup is boring, the weapons are all reduced to abstract representations via glyphs & don't offer a better experience than just having weapons the way the others did.

The bosses are properly hard. That's the only upside I see. I recall the crab boss in particular being a tough fight.

I own & have played through all 7 of the Castlevania "Metroidvania"s &, other than HoD, I think it's the weakest of the 7.

Let's talk about bosses.

OoE has bosses that have VERY specific patterns.

Here's the problem with that. It makes the bosses one-note and predictable and not fun to fight.

Everytime you play this game you're always going to fight the Crab the same way every time.

There is no player agency. It's a set pattern you follow from start to finish.

There are several bosses in this game like that.