Review by: Michael Barnes

Castlevania is my favorite video game series. I’ve been following the adventures of the assorted vampire killers that have whipped, slashed, or stabbed their way through hordes of Medusa heads, jumping Mermen and Ax Knights since 1986. Over the years, I’ve eaten more than my share of wall meat and I’ve put the coup de grace to Dracula and his buddy Death more times than I can count. Needless to say, I was quite excited when Konami announced the 2D Harmony of Despair game for Xbox Live, and I was very interested to see how classic gameplay concepts would mesh with an online co-op mode. What’s more, the inclusion of Alucard as well as all of the characters from the uniformly excellent DS games as playable characters made this game sound like a victory lap for the series. Unfortunately, the game is something of a gothic heartbreaker and I’m crying bloody tears over its poor execution.

The pitch is irresistible—you and up to five buddies storm through six levels of classic Castlevania madness each with a boss and a thirty minute time limit. One of the really cool things is that you can zoom out and see the entire map at once, so you’re effectively looking at a cross section of the castle and you can keep track of where your teammates are and coordinate switch flipping and treasure hunting. Each character comes complete with their signature abilities and weapons, so Shanoa has her magnetic catapult jump and Morris has the iconic Vampire Killer whip.

Along the way to each level’s final confrontation, items are found and the game features the now-essential light RPG elements that have been with the series since Symphony of the Night. This also means that there are elements of looting and grinding, and the game is designed so that you simply must repeat levels over and over again in order to build up enough money to buy stat-increasing equipment at a between-levels shop. There is no actual “leveling up” other than that of secondary weapons that increase in potency with use.

I had a honeymoon period with this game in which I was simply excited to be playing a new 2D Castlevania. I couldn’t help myself because it looked and felt right, and seeing Alucard back in action was great. I had a good time for the first few games but suddenly the reality that it is simply not very good came crashing like a drunken vampire bat through the window.

The bad news is that repeating the levels is boring. Grinding and looting is joyless because there is little reward in finding $1 or a piece of crappy equipment that no one in their right mind would equip and since there is no capacity for drop in/drop out multiplayer you’re in for a full game start to finish every time you play. Matchmaking works, but options for custom games are limited. There is no way to specify that you only want to be on a team taking on a specific level, so be prepared to play the ones you’ve completed ad nauseum. It’s possible to issue a request to the host for a different level, but you’re at the mercy of his or her choice. I’ve played that first level twenty times. Never again.

The six levels have very simple puzzle elements, and once you’ve figured out which levers open which doors, the thirty minute time limit becomes a joke. I’ve been on a six player team where the first level, boss and all, went down in four minutes. There is a weird imbalance created by having more players because having so many people running around and then simultaneously hacking at the boss simply overwhelm any challenge the game might present on the normal difficulty setting. The boss fights are also a big source of disappointment. Castlevania has always had awesome bosses that required observation, timing, and strategy to beat. These baddies are most vulnerable to the old stand and chop routine, apart from a couple of variations like the third one that has to be smacked with a giant hammer requiring one person to wind up it up and another to release the catch.