Ecclesia is Difficult Done Right

I've owned Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for several weeks now and I am finally making progress. As much as I'd like to say that it's been in my backlog pile with Fable II and Dead Space, I've actually been playing it fairly regularly, if only for an hour or so every other day.

It's hard. Damn hard. It's also the first game I've played in a long time where the difficulty can be overcome by practice and skill alone. Playing through the most recent Call of Duty really emphasized the fact that so much of what makes most modern games difficult is not a steep learning curve but a barrage of unpredictable and unfair bullshit. There were some missions in CoD: World at War that were so controller-snappingly frustrating that I forgot about how much I enjoyed some of the others until my second playthrough. It's not the classic "get in, die, learn, make it a little further, die, continue," model of gameplay. Instead you can either breeze through a level or die thirty times in a row under a hail of grenades. My only saving grace on some levels (hello, Reichstag) was my knowledge of the "invisible line scripting" mechanic. Instead of having a tough firefight and ultimately winning, you have infinitely spawning Nazis. The game practically forces you to Rambo your way through, clicking the sprint button and hauling ass towards the "IF player approaches THEN retreat" trigger.

My point is that OoE brings back that old Contra style of play- if you fight a boss enough times, you can eventually beat them without taking a single hit. The balance between the time you spend replaying boss fights (a lot) and the satisfaction gained from steadily getting better until you win (a LOT) is fantastic. I haven't beaten the game yet, but I'm at the (real) final area, and I've had only one moment so far that made me almost throw the DS across the room (in-the-dark death spike jumping puzzle- fuck you).

It's hard to be fully objective- I'm a total Castlevania fanboy, and short of 3D games and shitty Wii fighters, it's hard to disappoint me. Then again, as somebody who has played Castlevania games for 20 years of his life, it's so satisfying to see not only quality, but some (if minor) innovations. The glyph system, the weapon combos, the emphasis on enemy resistances, the severe shortage of health potions- it all clicks. Castlevania has always been a kind of a niche game, despite its considerable profile. The people in the know probably already have this, and those who aren't probably never will; it's unfortunate because this is easily one of the best games of 2008.