Welcome to the Belmont Clan! A legendary heirloom of hunters from a bloodline who are in fact vampire hunters who come to kill Dracula every once in a blue moon....or should I say Dark Moon! In Transalvania where Dracula resides, makes subjugates humans and makes them into more vampires. I should say that he either steals someone's precious girlfriend to get the hero mad to make him go to the castle to finally kill him and bring her back, or he just steals people's souls like I've said previously. During the introduction, the legendary hunter named Richter Belmont goes back to Draculas castle to kill him again! How many times does Dracula revive? Sheesh! So they start talking and Dracula drops his wine to fight. Whether you kill him or not with Richter is up to you. Dracula then dies.... if you don't suck. But is Dracula really dead in the symphony of the night? At the very end his body burns into a flaming picture. So the story ensues that Dracula comes back to the dead and revives to cause more havoc to Russia, Transelvania. You are Alucard, Draculas son who suddenly comes into the picture to finally kill his father who Richter supposedly tried to kill. Your ultimate goal is to rid of Dracula.
The visuals of the game is a perfect two dimensional masterpiece. Lots of colors, the fine character and castle architecture is wonderfully crafted. Lots of subtle details with ethereal statues and statuettes. The trees in the background when Alucard rushes to the castle is great. The castle just oozes with religious detail. The monsters are awesome to look at and kill too. Flames shoot out when you kill a foe. Even the blood that flows out of an enemy is nice. Various other background effects like water, flame and lightning and other likeness special effects are worthy of such a title.
The music has an ambience of what sounds worthy of an orchestra. The first few classical pieces like the start of the castle. the Marble Gallery and Alchemy Lab are especially great. The rest of the songs can be easily forgotten, but those three songs sound like something Ludwig would do, or Bethoveen would do. There is the ice cavern song which has a very good ambience as well. One nice aspect of the game is the boss fight music is also very fast paced and fun to listen to. The music is about 20 percent enjoyment of the game.
So now that everything else is out of the way. There are battles and certain moves you can do to get across the game anyway you can. Mostly you have STR,CON,INT,LUCK,WIS and various other stats. When those stats move up, you power up in those areas. Defeating monsters like merman, skeletons, Wargs, armor lancer, axe armor to name a few out of many get you to level up. And when you level up you gain in stats like most rpgs. You have a number at the upper left which is your HP or soul. When it reaches 0 after you take so much damage it is game over and you will have to start at the latest coffin in which you saved your game. Other bonuses in the game include your skill attacks. There are eight types, but I'm not completely sure. There is your axe skills, knife, diamond, holy water, book cross, holy cross, dust and clock. Each skills uses up a direct number of hearts which you get by slashing candles in the castle. You can also gain more limit to your hearts by obtaining max heart items and you gain more maximum HP by getting rainbow jars which will refill your health to the max as well as giving you a better maximum value. The blue magic bar across from the HP numbers allow you to do magic, but in order to do magic in the game such as darkmetamorphesis and ghost wind allow you to input several buttons at once in a limited time. You gain more magic as you progress, but they can help you in battle when you need it the most. Last but not least for powerups are the relics. You will get relics in the game which will help you in someway, or get you across in area in the game that you would not get to in the castle otherwise. Many relics do many things such as turn you into a ghost or a bat or will make you jump higher. Even such as a relic might let you also have materials come about from candles and read damage hp points.
Also, one specific point.. The castle in this game is very very huge. On your first try in defeating dracula you may spend hours getting through this complex castle of a maze. But if you like dungeon crawlers, magic and sorcery, this game is for you.
Wed Apr 17, 2013 12:41 pm