#Castlevania harmony of despair series#

The game is also not very welcoming to anyone unfamiliar with the Castlevania series. Once you’ve played through it a number of times, then that should be more than enough time, but having to start completely over simply because you ran out of time is needless aggravation. This wouldn’t be as frustrating if you weren’t also racing the clock, but you only get thirty minutes to finish a level. After a few runs, you usually have good enough equipment and a sound enough knowledge of what levers need to be tripped in order for your team to reach the boss, but actually killing it might take a few more tries. Simply exploring the enormous levels chews up a fair amount of your time during your first few attempts, and the fact that you’ll die repeatedly until you score better gear doesn’t help. Harmony of Despair is based on incremental improvement and advancement you have no choice but to play levels over and over and over again before you succeed.

And if you happen to really, really love Castlevania …well, even then, it’s kind of hit or miss.

These are all good things, and adding the ability to team up with other like-minded slayers should make Harmony of Despair a guaranteed good time. Each chapter offers a huge, sprawling level to be explored, stuffed to the rafters with treasure, monsters, and trickery. You will kill stuff, you will explore, and you will curse more than once as you miss that motherloving jump onto that motherloving swinging platform.

#Castlevania harmony of despair series#

Thankfully ignoring Castlevania‘s forays into 3d space, Harmony of Despair sticks with the more traditional 2d format, while also keeping the hordes of enemies and precision jumps that made the series famous. The levels are clearly designed for multiple players, right down to switches and shortcuts that require more than one person to activate. In that way, it’s not too terribly dissimilar from the single-player games in the series, but while it’s technically possible to play through Harmony of Despair by yourself, it’s far more difficult and not very much fun. Harmony of Despair lets you and up to five friends play as one of six iconic Castlevania characters, like Alucard, Soma Cruz, or Jonathan Morris, working your way through six different sprawling mansion levels, each complete with its own ridiculous architecture, tenacious enemies and over-the-top boss.