My best in show from this E3 was surprisingly [b]Castlevania: Harmony of Despair[/b]. The potential seen in this demo sold it for me.
The game plays as half Castlevania half Beat ‘em Up. You’re given a thirty room castle that you must scale in order to get to the boss fight at the top. There are multiple paths to reach the boss, some requiring the help of another character to complete (see: Elevator Switches). There are monsters, traps, chests and candle sticks to hinder or help along the way. For my play through I picked Alucard to get me to the top since, aside from Soma (who was not playable in the demo), he’s the character I know the best from the series, so his attack patterns were familiar and by about halfway through I was able to pull off some pretty nifty combos, be it the extended jumps through mist form, or wolfing my way under enemy attacks. Magic was relegated to Smash Bros. format with one button performing multiple spells based on the direction of the analog stick.
The inventory system took some getting used to. The only time you could change equipment was when you ran into a floating book. I don’t think at any point you could pause the game, since this is meant to be played as a brawler with six people, but enemies are pretty confined to their room (most Castlevania enemies don’t wander the halls much anyway). As a person who is very familiar with the series, the inability to pick a weapon best suited to the enemy was a little frustrating, but I suppose in the long run it becomes more about strategy. In most of the chests were money bags, so I assume that in between levels there will probably be a shop system that will allow you to upgrade your armor and weapons. Alucard had his five slot defense and two slot weapon system, but this is not standard in every game, so the potential for separate systems for each character is there. I’d love to see a soul collection tie-in for Soma, and I found a few grappling points for Shanoa that prevented me from going down a completely different path in the map that I played.
The music and sound effects were all classic Castlevania fare, what I could hear of it (E3 is noisy), so I suspect that it will take from previous soundtracks for the most part. And the ability to zoom out of the map to see the entire layout came in handy while I was planning my attack path as well as for avoiding the death laser coming from the boss every twenty seconds or so.
We were only given ten minutes of play time with the demo which I think should be included with the finished product. I probably could have beaten the level in twelve on my own, and with up to six other people playing it could probably be done in ten pretty easily, unless there was a radical upgrade in difficulty. I’m not sure how replayability will factor into this game, I would think that unless there are a lot of levels planned in future DLC that it could get stale pretty quickly. From what I was told by the booth guy (one of about five at the whole convention), there were only going to be ten as of release. With more characters above the starting five planned, let’s hope they continue level creation as well.
Of course look at me, the game’s not even out and I’m already hoping for DLC.
An Aside: A level editor for this game would make or break it for me. It’s fairly boxy in it’s level design already, just give me the ability to snap together premade rooms and I think you’d add a lot of value to the game.