Castlevania: Harmony of Despair
 

Anyone else interested in this or picking this up? Comes out tomorrow on XBLA (and possibly PSN later). Giantbomb just put up a really good Quick Look of it:

Quick Look: Castlevania: Harmony of Despair - Giant Bomb

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Essentially it's a multiplayer-focused loot game for up to 6 players. Seems to be getting good but not amazing reviews (seeing a lot of 7-8 range). The fact that practically all the graphics are reused and don't look super great is disappointing, but the Giantbomb video above kinda sells me on it from a loot aspect. You don't level up, but you keep all money and items as far as I can tell. Apparently it's basically impossible to beat a level on your first try, it takes a few attempts as you build up your equipment/resources. There's also apparently 2 characters and a few maps that are going to be DLC, apparently the characters are already in the game download but aren't unlockable :(

Not championing the game or anything, but was surprised that I hadn't seen any discussion of this here. I've been a whore for much worse things, so unless the demo is absolutely horrible I'll pick this up. Would be a much easier sell at 800 points though.

Yeah, Castlevania The Warcraft Raid is not something I really give two shits about. Especially with the forced timer.

I can see what IGA is trying to do here but fuck me sideways I think it reeks of laziness and retarded ideas. I love how it's touted as HD despite the straight up asset recycling. Yeah ok having it be 1080 but the sprites the size of a pin IS KIND OF CHEATING.

Buy Hydro Thunder instead, bro.

It doesn't look nearly as engaging as SotN or any of the GBA/DS titles, but I'll still probably get it if it comes out on PSN. At $15 though, yeah, it does seem a bit overpriced for how much content is actually there.

From what I've read, it's designed as a multiplayer title; there are rooms with switches that need multiple people to activate, causing you to take much longer routes if you're playing solo. How many people do you know that will buy it on PSN? If I bought it at all (and I don't plan to), it would be on 360.

Is this your monthly advertisement telling me that I once again suck for not owning a 360?

And I do know people who only have/primarily play on PS3 who might buy this, so that was never really a concern. Not that I've ever been one to make my purchases based on others anyway.

It was less a subtle dig at you and more "lol no one plays multiplayer on non-exclusive PS3 games".

I wouldn't worry, you suck for completely different reasons than this.

Yeah, I was going to add in a joke mentioning Cake Mania in my last post but that would have just been way too easy.

Supposedly Iga was only given a $10k budget, and worked on the project without pay to even make it happen; Konami doesn't seem to really give two shits about 2D Castlevanias anymore. I think this was Iga doing the best he could with what he was given.

Also Hydro Thunder would be tempting, except I think you are the only person on my friend's list who bought it that I've ever seen. That game is not great single-player, and multi is good but I've got better shit to play if I'm going to just play randoms.

Regardless of whatever personal time he put into it or how bad corporate fucked him over, I still don't see the appeal of the of the gameplay structure. I can see how it's designed to last as long as possible with as few resources as possible by artificially inflating the difficulty with timers and requiring multiple loot runs, but that's still not something I think I'll enjoy.

I'll demo it but it had better be god damn amazing in MP to get me past the frustration I know I'll have with it.

Oh I wasn't making any excuses, just tossing that out there as a possibility as to why so much shit was re-used. I am a loot whore, so I'm cool with that. I do recall that you don't really care for loot games though, so in your case I can't imagine you'd like it.

So did you try the demo? I felt really really negative towards it but what did you end up thinking?

The horridness is justified.

I picked it up this morning, but only was able to play for about 30 minutes, not entirely sure how I feel about it yet. What I'm really surprised about is people's reactions online; in most cases people are down on single player, but then everyone who buys it anyway then turns around and starts going on about how it's awesome multiplayer. So I really have no clue. The demo has NO multiplayer (apparently MS charges extra for this), so almost everyone's down on the demo but people picking up the full game seem to be really digging multiplayer.

I'm going to play some tonight probably, I'll post back.

Edit: I just remembered that MS is doing the thing where if you buy 3 of the Summer of Arcade games you get 400 points back, and if you buy all 5 you get 1200 back. So if you're thinking you're going to pick up the other Summer of Arcade games, might be worth it. That also probably explains why there seems to be so many people who bought it for seemingly no reason; most people I know already were planning on buying the other 4.

Additional Spam:
Hmm, so played it for a bit; didn't hop into online though. Finally beat the first level after about 3 tries; I was playing kinda sloppy the first couple attempts and getting used to it though. Haven't played Chapter 2 yet, it apparently gets much more involved with the castle layout and the time limit actually starts to become an issue at this point (Chapter 1 is pretty straightforward and fairly short). I still don't even completely understand some of the systems or how certain things work (and the game certainly doesn't tell you), but I'm finding it oddly compelling. As soon as I can get some multi in I'll report back, I don't know if I'll have the chance to do that tomorrow or not though.

A question for someone who's bought it: can you do local multiplayer? Can you have 2 people on one console, and then have some other folks online (like Bomberman)?

I'll buy this only if several people I know pick it up. I liked the demo a lot more on my second try, but it's still not worth $15 for the crappy single player or playing with randoms. Seems like it would be a lot of fun with friends though.

This title will come out on PSN if the 360 one sells well.

You can't just jump through levels in your first run of the game; you gotta earn some dough to get decent gear since it gets harder, especially if you're playing alone (which you shouldn't do). Also time DOES become a nuisance on the later levels (which is six in the ENTIRE game).

I am told no, and I don't recall seeing any option like this.

Had some great games with Garr and Term for a good 4 or 5 hours last night. The game is waaaaay better and moves considerably faster in multiplayer.

I've been messing around a little today with Shonoa (sp?), I actually like her more than Soma, her magic is actually useful.

The mach punch is what I also use against puppet master on hard when he conjures a doll.

Dracula is an absolute nightmare on Hard with 6 people due to the scaling. I was playing with 4/5 other dudes from GAF, and we managed to pull it off twice out of maybe 6 or 7 runs. Upgraded all of my equipment across the board along the way though, and the 5 of us completely tore through all the other stages on Hard no problem.

Good games tonight guys.

Also right after I got out of the Party Chat, I compared my Item Compendium to the Shop lists and bought what I didn't have and got the Pack Rat achivement, so booyah! Can 100% confirm that you don't have to have all 300 items on you at one time, just in your compendium. Also if you're doing the same, remember that there's different versions of the Shop for different characters as well. So all I'm missing now is Grim Justice (which should be easy enough on Level 1 Normal with 2 of us), Boned, 1,000,000 Gold and then 10,000 kills. I'm at about 650,000 Gold right now, and only at I think a little over 4,000 kills, god damn.

I thought the spell lasted until the victim was dead. Course, I didn't take the time to find out, as when the opportunity arose to earn the achievement, I took it.

Nah, the Charm wears off after a while. I also don't think there's a minimum player count for him to cast it, I'm pretty sure he's done it when I fought him solo.

And fuck yeah I am down for some of this in a bit.

I'm taking a break right now, but I should be around most all day today. Wrapped up Boned with some randoms and Grim Justice with another friend, so all I have left is 10k kills, at a little over 6k right now -_-.

All achievements acquired. Just farming rares now.

Got the game on day of release but it's kinda disappointing how much the community has changed now, everyone seems to just want to farm rares on dracula, which is dull as hell people be honest, with or without the game breaking blender swords like the Yatsusuna.

I guess right now the game has similar problems to diablo, items bearing no relation to how well you do on a chapter (like people doing jackshit in a chapter then getting better boss drops), newbies being frowned apon, people offering to 'help' them by steamrolling their way through the entire game and the community generally having a bad attitude. Hell just a few minutes ago I formed a team for chapter 2 on hard and the entire room left, not every rare in the game is on the last chapter people -_-

Yeah, but 90% or more of them are, and practically everyone already had the ones from the earlier levels. Except for Boss souls I got everything of any value from Levels 1-4 Hard after about a week. The problem is more the game does a terrible job of pacing equipment upgrades, and also how they drop (like you mentioned). I probably only upgraded my equipment for the character I mained like 3 or 4 times, everything always came in big jumps. I think they really needed to spread out the drops more, and in retrospect they probably should have added some sort of leveling mechanic. After about a week I had everything for my main character that I would possibly want except for a few rares that are so uber rare that I didn't even consider trying to farm for them. The game is just sort of poorly balanced.

I am an example of this. Last night, Garr, his buddy, Term, and myself were farming Dracula on Hard for the hell of it. I had a FLAWLESS run, not getting hit once, even at Dracula. Know what I got out of it?



Then, yeah, rolled with Jonathan and stayed back a bit because he was weak, and wound up picking up 2 Simon's items. The drop system is definitely retarded. Perhaps when the DLC is released, they will also tweak the drop system a bit (wishful thinking).

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I saw you in a random room SimDaddyGT a while back on a all Somas dracula run. Nothing says fun like a team where 1 guy has yatsusunas and everyone else is using rpgs to take down a final guard =P

Luck doesn't increase the chance of better chest loot; it is for enemy drops.

6 farm to get winged boots, drac tunic, claimh solais and valmanways. 2 for thief ring, 3 for chaos ring, 5 has death scythe and robe as well as purples can drop yatsusunas. Everything else is up for grabs I suppose.

Oh, nebula drops on 4 hard, Satan ring on 6 normal.

Is that so? I heard that it increases the chances of rares on non boss related treasure chests. I could be wrong though I mean this games not even been out a month and people are still trying to figure these things out

Dunno. Gamefaqs is still tackling with the issue.

But for all I know, I got yasutsunas with 5 luck on purple chests, so really, the debate rages on.

5 yatsusunas? o_O considering I aim for about 12 luck at the very least on item farming and haven't seen any yet... I think I might try your low luck method.

Trying out the 7th stage right now, theres 2 new enemies (including the boss) 2 new souls for soma but I've not seen the boss soul yet and 1 spell for charlotte. It's a variation on the pyramid stage from Portrait of Ruin, the layout is fairly straight forward once you get used to it until you get to the boss that is... then any male characters become the bosses bitch from her charm attack unless you're good at dodging. On the plus side however, it's pretty funny to see Soma and Alucard players who once thought they were god tier to be brought to their knees from charm spells.

Any word on the dlc characters? Because I haven't seen them anywhere for some odd reason x.x

Ones that can evade Ashtarte's charm spells for all I know are Soma and Alucard. Definitely a challenge using dual Valmanways against Ashtarte who is only vulnerable against light-based spells. Yatsusunas are even worse; not even going to bother.

Delta Spark is alright, I suppose. Playing female definitely helps but I like a bit of a challenge. All those 1-damage for 2 then using the witch spell for Soma will take more than 10 minutes but hell, it is satisfying.

Johnathen can use his dash attack I think it's called sonic strike? To dodge the hearts too but it's pretty risky, the only uniform strategy seems to be stay behind her and (with careful timing) jump up where the first heart appears when she casts charm, everything should pass straight by you.

Turns out the new Chapter does have some exploits despite Konamis efforts, common tatics include Alucards misting through doors, leaving at least one person outside of the boss arena to hold the door or even Charlottes casting heal from just underneath because the spell can pass through walls. It's a strange boss she doesn't look that dangerous, but with the choas that goes on in multiplayer it becomes sometimes much harder to watch her attack pattern.

Also no sign of the dlc... well unless you count some music that should have been in the game to begin with =P this is getting like borderline trolling imo, maybe they're holding out until the end of October to release the long overdue new characters?

Jonathan is way too risky unless the timing is real great. Soma can avoid the hearts by using the Medusa Head soul and jumping above her head when you hear the cue she is about to cast it. With Alucard, just mist.

All punch weapons are effective against her, so with Soma, it's usually the Kaiser Knuckles; Alucard with the Fist of Tulkas. Charlotte can just abuse the Energy Light spell while Shanoa can use her stone fists and her usual spells. Jonathan could use his blunt subweapons (guessing his ball and chain usually).

But the drop rates are the same, so chances of high replayability is off the window.