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

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0...vaniahd_13.jpg

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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.