Castlevania Judgment (2008)

Technically a replay yadda yadda, I honestly would've been content to never touch this game again but I forced myself to suffer through it some more mostly for personal research reasons (trying to concretely find out where all the songs play). I'm also like a month late to actually do this writeup but might as well get it out of the way.

The music's still very good. It's really the only big draw of the game. I'm not into fighting games at all really but even I can tell how lackluster this whole experience is. The graphics and character design are w/e, I'm not big into that either so I don't really care (though I'm definitely aware of how bizarre some of them are like Carmilla the goth-punk hooker, Death the dentist, and Grant the... whatever the hell he's supposed to be), though as someone who is very familiar with CV it is pretty jarring seeing the monster models which are recycled from Curse of Darkness, a game from the previous generation. The fighting, from my self-admitted noob standpoint, is clunky as s***, but at least they let you use a gamecube controller. Some of it might be blamed on the unique playstyle it has, which is freely controlling characters on a 3D plane rather than the traditional 2D/2.5D perspective that's been polished with many titles over the years, but then again the original Dissidia FF came out around the same time and did a much better job of it.

The game modes are, to my understanding, pretty standard stuff for a fighting game. Story, Arcade, VS, and a couple gimmick modes that I never even touched before this run, Survival and Castle. Survival is just as it name implies, win as many battles as possible in a row. The trouble with this mode is that the opponent AI is piss easy compared to every other mode in the game, so you can just find a spammable move that works and do that for a couple hours if you really want to, though the expected performance seems to be about 20 rounds since that's about how high the preset high score table goes. You regain about a third of your health bar every time you win so the risk factor is even lower. I think you fight Dracula every 20 rounds or so and he's a smidge more challenging but if you survive you're set to just keep going if you're not sick of it already.

Castle mode is probably the most unique part of the game, you move through a grid of rooms where instead of just going through normal battles you have to complete special challenges like survive waves of monsters as you try to collect a certain number of heart drops from breaking the destructible objects on the map. Once each room is cleared you can just pass through it, but you keep your HP level between them and have to go back to a save room to refill it, you can also get "random encounters" while moving through cleared rooms to frustrate that. As you might imagine if you lose all your health you have to start over from your last save, but thankfully there's no limit to saving as long as you can get to the save room. The maps are unique to each playable character, though you still always have to fight Dracula at the end and unlike in Survival mode he can bat you around like a motherf***er. Pun totally intended.

There's also extra unlocks like artwork and accessories you can put on the characters if you play these gimmick modes, but by the time you've got those extras you'll probably be fed up with the game already. Overall would not recommend unless you're obsessed with Castlevania like me and you have to be able to say you at least experienced it.