Comments on: Anatomy of a Simon’s Quest: I

By: MetManMas

MetManMas — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 20:45:40 +0000

@jparish The thing about Order of Ecclesia is that even though it looks like a DS Castlevania, sounds like a DS Castlevania, and recycles Rondo/Symphony era sprites like a DS Castlevania, if you try to approach it like a DS Castlevania it will wreck you.

Order’s very much a game about learning enemy attack patterns and weaknesses, and how to exploit them. It’s about knowing when to evade, how to alternate button presses to rack up hits quickly, when to hold back and give your magic a chance to regenerate, when to teleport back to town when things get too rough.

It’s not for everybody, but it can be pretty fun if you play it without thinking of it as a Castlevania. That’s…really not too hard to do, since the only connections are Dracula, many of the monsters, and the music. Game’s probably the only one not to have a Belmont or some other whip user as a playable character, too.

Actually, it’s kinda disappointing there’s no whip guy. Actually, you only get Not Balthier-I mean, Albus. Compared to Dawn’s Julius/Yoko/Alucard trio and Portrait’s Richter/Maria, Sisters, and Old Axe Armor, that’s kinda disappointing.

By: vaterite

vaterite — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:01:01 +0000

Simon’s Quest is a perfect topic to cover in light of the demise of Nintendo Power. I loved the game as a kid, because it was so forgiving. Castlevania I was awesome, but I didn’t make it past level 9 until it came out for Virtual Console. However, with my trusty Nintendo Power by my side I could be the master of Simon’s Quest, and it was one of the few games i managed to beat.

By: Tato

Tato — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:53:12 +0000

I was one of the kids who had CVII before I even played I or III, so my opinion of the entire franchise has always been defined by it to some degree. I like CV III and SCIV the best these days, with a lot of my affection for CVII coming out of nostalgia.It’s still fun to play for a few hours, but I’d much rather play the other games these days.

I could put up with the same-y nature of the countryside and the lying townspeople if the mansions or bosses had more variety or purpose behind them. After going through the intricately designed stages of CVI (as Parish detailed) where everything felt like it had a PURPOSE for being there and the boss battles were big encounters that took lots of practice to get through, it’s pretty disappointing to go through several mansions with identical tile sets, floating platforms, hidden blocks, and bosses you can SKIP!

The same sense of architecture and progression just isn’t there in this game (in the mansions or the overworld), which oddly enough, makes it feel smaller and less epic even though its game “world” is much larger than the one in CVI.