[Review] - Castlevania: Harmony of Despair

Now, what truly separates Harmony of Despair from other Castlevania titles is that it is completely multiplayer focused. It can be played single player, but you will have a hard time beating any levels solo until you get some exceptional equipment. The game can be played with up to 5 other players online. The game can be very hard, especially some of the bosses, but with a well rounded group that knows what they're doing, it becomes a lot easier. The characters have enough variety to round out the team very well, with attackers, spell casters, and healers. Though sadly, most of the time you'll end up with teams comprised entirely of Alucard and Soma, as they are the best attackers and can use the most weapons, and hence, get the best loot.

Playing with big groups isn't as competitive as you'd think, either. You get random loot from every chest that is opened, regardless of your proximity to it. If you die in multiplayer you run around in a weak skeleton form until someone uses a Water of Life to revive you. Unfortunately, you don't receive any loot while in this form, which often prevents some players from getting loot from boss chests on hard mode when there aren't enough Waters of Life. Each level has a 30 minute time limit (which is more than enough, even on hard), but every time a player in skeleton form dies, a few minutes are taken off of the clock.

The graphics from Harmony of Despair are almost entirely reused from previous Castlevania games. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as Konami was pretty creative with the way they laid out the textures. There are 6 levels in the game, and in each one you can see the entire map all at once, with the ability to zoom in and out by clicking in the right analog stick. This allows you to map out your path to the boss while searching for treasure chests and healing items along the way, as well as zoom out and get an idea of what the other players are doing.

There is no story whatsoever in Harmony of Despair, but it isn't really necessary. The game works well as an arcade style dungeon crawler. Any cutscenes would just slow down the action.

Tips and Tricks

- The first thing you should do is beat all 6 chapters on normal so you can unlock hard mode where loot is actually worthwhile. This is much easier done with a group, if you can find anyone willing to play on normal.

- Chests are color coded. Purple chests hold the best loot aside from boss chests, blue chests hold Waters of Life (used to revive allies in multiplayer), and red chests always hold money.

- If you happen to find a sword called the Yasutsuna while playing as Alucard or Soma on Chapter 5 Hard, equip it on Alucard to become an absolute grinding machine. With two it's twice as fast by alternating X and Y. There are better weapons that do this (such as the Valmanway, Soma's superior equivalent), but the Yasutsuna is relatively easy to get with a bit of luck (I have about 4 of them).

- If you level up Charlotte's heal spell to the point where it heals 40 or more points of damage (the cost to cast), you can equip the Astral Ring (makes you use HP instead of MP) for "infinite mana". While this may not be quite that effective as an infinite health spell until you have extremely high magic power, you can constantly heal your allies without using any mana.

Reaction

I haven't really played any Castlevania games apart from Symphony of the Night on XBLA, and Curse of Darkness on the original Xbox, but Harmony of Despair appears to be a very unique title in the series. While it may not appeal to veterans looking for another castle-exploring adventure full of hidden items and secrets, the game more than makes up for it with it's fun multiplayer. The game is incredibly fun to play with 6 players running amok slaying demons, and there are many ways to play the game with 5 unique characters with their own sets of abilities.

While the price may be a bit steep at $15, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair has enough replay value to justify the price for anyone who enjoys looting and grinding with a group of friends. The only real downside is that it doesn't have any offline co-op, meaning that someday there will eventually be very few people left to play the game with, as with most XBLA titles.

If there's one negative thing that I have to say about the game, it's that there isn't quite enough content. For a game as grinding and loot focused as Harmony of Despair, it would have been nice if there were more levels, and some more characters so that there aren't only two of them that are all around powerful (Alucard and Soma). Fortunately, DLC that will add a new playable character and level has been announced, which should increase the replay value for a (hopefully) small fee.

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair slays 8 vampires out of 10!