Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night - Review

Xbox Live on Windows Telephone 7 already has a puzzle RPG game, Namco's Puzzle Quest 2. But that game is riddled with bugs and actually wasn't optimized for mobile platforms. Thankfully Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night from Konami shows a lot more care in making a quality puzzle RPG. In fact, it may exist the best Xbox Live title released for Windows Phone 7 so far.

Castlevania has a long, proud history. The commencement title was released on the 8-scrap Nintendo Amusement Organization way back in 1987. Castlevania games tend to be activeness-platformers; afterwards 1997'southward Symphony of the Nighttime, strong RPG elements became standard as well. In adapting the serial to mobile platforms, Konami realized that action games don't usually work well with touch on screen controls. Prudently, Encore of the Night replaces the traditional platform jumping and battles with something new to Castlevania: puzzle battles. Role-playing elements haven't fallen by the wayside, though, resulting in a game that is at one time familiar and fresh to series veterans.

Caput past the jump for our in-depth review.

Encore to a Symphony

Castlevania Puzzle is not a completely original game (and how few Castlevanias are, if nosotros're being honest). This WP7 game re-imagines Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the almost-beloved and pivotal championship in the serial. The exact same story remains: Alucard, the one-half-homo son of Dracula, awakens from hibernation thanks to the reappearance of Dracula's castle. He encounters Maria Renard, a teenage girl who helped Richter Belmont defeat Dracula one time before. Richter, latest in a long line of vampire hunters, entered the castle after it reappeared and hasn't been seen since. Alucard must unravel the mystery of the haunted castle's return while trying to help Maria save Richter.

A vast castle

Symphony of the Nighttime is ofttimes praised for its vast Castle and Metroid-like exploration. Castlevania Puzzle retains both elements: the entire castle map is present (save for 1 role I'll mention afterwards), with dozens of rooms and shortcuts to explore. Like the original SOTN, many pathways won't be accessible to Alucard until he gains the abilities or relics needed to pass them. Instead of running and jumping from room to room, navigation is achieved past clicking on the paths that connect each castle room. The player selects a path and Alucard moves there automatically. A hint system insures players will ever know where to go. It'south frequently necessary to backtrack to former areas, but special safe rooms make things easier. Alucard can warp between the safe rooms he has reached, and he tin can always return instantly to the last one entered as well.

Puzzlin' battles

Alucard'due south travels are often interrupted by battles. Enemies usually assault the outset fourth dimension he enters a room, and randomly thereafter. Defeating foes earns feel points, coin, and sometimes items.

At first glance, Castlevania Puzzle's battles resemble Capcom's classic Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo. The player and enemy's divide playing fields occupy either side of the screen. Pairs of gems fall from the pinnacle of each playing field; these gems disappear when three or more of the same color are matched horizontally or vertically. Making matches and concatenation reactions causes pieces to fall on the opponent's field and vice-versa. In the center of the screen, animated versions of the combatants trade blows until the fight ends. There the similarities to Puzzle Fighter end.

Encore of the Night much more closely resembles another puzzle game series, Puyo Pop (AKA Puyo Puyo). Both games have junk pieces – blocks can't be destroyed until an adjacent set of pieces is cleared. That only reverts the junk blocks to regular colored blocks, which however need to be matched. Stacking blocks wisely and clearing the right ones tin result in huge concatenation reactions that send plenty of junk blocks to the opponent. Wild card blood blocks occasionally announced, as well, eliminating any junk blocks and pairs of normal blocks they happen to bear upon.

Hack and slash

Castlevania Puzzle is unlike other falling cake puzzle games in that filling the opponent'south field with blocks isn't the main goal of gainsay. It certainly helps, lowering their Striking Points and making it harder for them to make matches and fight back. But hither, an hourglass located below the fighters flips at regular intervals. At each flip, the combatants merchandise blows and harm each other's HP. Impairment depends on both parties' attack and defense stats besides every bit the number of blocks on their playing field. Because attacking isn't married directly to filling the enemy's field, stats brand a big difference in the upshot of battles. A well-leveled Alucard can kill lower-level enemies without matching a single set of blocks; powerful bosses will often acceleration careless players in short club every bit well.

You bandage a spell on me

Primal to dispatching bosses and tougher enemies is Encore of the Dark'southward magic and particular, or Quick Cast system. Enemies take up to 2 unique magic spells, while Alucard tin select upwardly to four to bring into battle. Spells may be bandage at any time equally long equally MP is sufficient. They hurt, heal, vitrify, and debuff opponents, merely as you would expect in an RPG. Alucard can opt to apply some of his Quick Bandage slots for items. Once cast, an item falls into the playing field. Destroying an adjacent set of blocks activates the item.   Items are a cracking style to heal without using MP, which you'll need for offensive spells when fighting later bosses.

Build me up, interruption me down

Encore wouldn't be an RPG without a leveling system, at present would it? Upon earning enough XP from felling bad guys and accomplishing other tasks, Alucard levels up. The player then allocates points to a variety of stats:

• Strength:  Affect Alucard's harm to enemies
• Stamina:  Regulates Alucard'south HP. The only stat that automatically increases a scrap with each level upwardly
• Intelligence:  Determines the power of spells and maximum MP
• Luck: Influences the color of blocks that drop and the patterns of junk blocks that drop when either opponent attacks. Lucky definitely matters.
• Burn down Affinity : Unlocks spells that do quick harm
• Lighting Affinity : Lightning spells evangelize delayed, provisional, and powerful damage
• Shadow Affinity: Utility and buffing spells
• Holy Affinity – Healing and defensive spells
• Water Affinity – Utility and de-buffing spells

Affinities likewise affect damage dealt and received when the hourglass flips, depending on what colored pieces each combatant's field holds. Depending on which stats the thespian develops, Encore's battles tin play out fairly differently. If this all sounds complex (it is), the game's useful Help department will help make sense of things.

Dress to kill

Customization in Castlevania Puzzle is not limited to leveling up. Equipment also influences stats and block drop percentages. All sorts of weapons and armor are hidden throughout the castle, encouraging thorough exploration. Enemies sometimes driblet equipment too. New stuff is usually better outright, simply some equipment may suit various grapheme builds better than others. Collecting full equipment sets earns XP bonuses (and eventually the Son of Dracula Achievement).

Vampires live a long time

Encore of the Dark takes quite a while to trounce past mobile gaming standards. Whereas many WP7 games are short, score-based diplomacy, Encore's Story Fashion took me around 15 hours to beat. Fifty-fifty later all that playtime, I would yet have fun going through the game again with a different character build. There is also an Arcade Mode with 8 playable characters. Arcade Way doesn't offer much to do besides choosing a pair of characters to mash upward in battle and setting the difficulty though. This way would be way more than useful if it supported multi-role player (where many a puzzle game shines), just of course Xbox Live games are not allowed that privilege just all the same.

A almost memorable soundtrack

No Castlevania review would be complete without discussion the audio. Encore of the Dark easily boasts the best soundtrack of any Windows Telephone 7 game to my ears, menses. Michiru Yamane'south haunting Symphony of the Dark score is wonderfully reproduced here. Each castle area has its own excellent melody for gamers to bask. My only criticism here is that the music switches to a separate battle tune whenever a fight starts. Thus players will only feel brief snippets of the wonderful castle themes unless they end moving and avoid fights for a while (Encore sadly lacks a sound test). I would have been happier if the regular castle songs kept playing throughout non-boss battles, merely information technology's a modest complaint.

Achievements

Castlevania Puzzle mainly awards Achievements for exploring Dracula'south castle, collecting sets of cards, and defeating enemies. They tend to come easily plenty and encourage histrion progress. Only two Achievements should provide whatsoever problem: Master Collector (Acquire all 26 playing cards) and Son of Dracula (Complete the 'Son of Dracula' Equipment set). The last carte du jour and piece of equipment are guarded by Galamoth, an optional boss and the toughest enemy in the game. Multiple failed attempts at defeating him discouraged me until I finally learned to rely on Loftier Potions for healing while fighting him instead of healing spells. Persistent gamers should exist able to net the total 200 GamerScore as I did.

Stumbling blocks

For all my admiration of Encore of the Nighttime, the game is non quite perfect. The leveling system needs some fine tuning. Initially, regular enemies provide enough XP to eventually level Alucard up. Subsequently a while though, their XP awards get tiny drops in a Titanic-sized bucket. At that betoken in the game, felling bosses becomes the only practical method of leveling upwards, as bosses award instant level increases. If the player doesn't spend some time grinding against regular enemies early on, it's possible to attain the last couple of bosses under-leveled and with no realistic way to ability up farther.

Speaking of those bosses, I found the difficulty for the Galamoth and Dracula battles a lilliputian college than necessary for a phone game, though they would be fine on a console where gamers typically accept more than time to play and more than precise control methods. Aye, there are minor control problems. The game sometimes misinterpreted my gesture for dropping a block instantly (a downward swipe) and only rotated the block instead, slowing me downwardly in the heat of battle. The controls are fine on the whole though, and their sensitivity tin be adjusted in the Options menu.

The game's menus aren't the best, either. Selecting things at the title screen takes longer than it should considering of an unnecessary flight bat animation. The Character Menu, from which practically every essential not-battle function is performed, is buried beneath another Bill of fare. Information technology really should have its own button on the castle map screen. I as well encountered the occasional crash when attempting to view Relics and Cards from the Detail screen, just otherwise the game ran extremely well, with super fast load times to boot.

A few of Symphony of the Dark's features didn't make it into the Encore. The Inverted Castle - which mirrored the original castle, well-nigh doubling Symphony'southward length - has been replaced by the much shorter Demon's Corridor in this version. Most of the original bosses are present in Encore, except for the classic battle confronting the trio of heroes from NES Castlevania 3 (aww). While Symphony'due south story scenes remain, they are now told with text only instead of vocalization interim. The exclusion is unwarranted since voices wouldn't accept increased the game's file size too terribly; Symphony is only 96 MB on Xbox 360, a size that The Harvest already approaches on WP7. Too missing are a bestiary and a audio test, two staple Castlevania bonus features.

Overall impression

Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night is an exceptional Xbox Live game for Windows Phone seven. Its intricate puzzle battles, immense castle to explore, deep RPG features, and unparalleled soundtrack will entreatment to puzzle and RPG fans akin. Castlevania fans will get even more out of the game thanks to nostalgia, but experience with the series is not necessary. Konami may have gotten off to a rocky Windows Phone 7 start with Frogger, simply Castlevania Puzzle is a complete turnaround in quality. The game costs $6.99; the high price tag actually feels justified for once.

Buy Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night or delve into the free trial here on the Marketplace.

Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/castlevania-puzzle-encore-night-review

Posted by: brownsproas.blogspot.com

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