WeeklyVania: What else should’ve been added to Harmony of Despair?

First off, I want to apologize for not staying true to my original plans for DailyVania. As you could imagine, it’s just a ton of work to be able to churn out daily articles on top of making sure the site is running well, editorially speaking. So I’ve decided to go the weekly route for this column, seeing as how that way you can get complete, in-depth articles. And really, going the daily route with this column was made even harder because there just isn’t much news pertaining to the Castlevania franchise nowadays.

The only real noteworthy thing, aside from the official release of the Simon Belmont Lords of Shadow beta footage, is the question that was recently asked on the series’ official Facebook page asking for fan input relating to the upcoming 25th anniversary. Other than that, we’ve been left pretty much in the dark with the only announced thing to look forward to being Castlvania: Harmony of Despair for the PSN, which only really applies to those who weren’t able to get it on XBLA last year (and to those who are double-dipping, like me). Regardless of issues people may have with the game, I still found Harmony of Despair to be a very enjoyable experience, both online and off. But, there’s some additions that could’ve been made to make the experience even better.

First things first, when the game’s title first leaked many fans thought (myself included) that we’d be getting a sequel to the underrated GBA ‘vania, Harmony of Dissonance. The reason for that being the Sorrow games; both titles had that word in their titles so we all were pretty sure that Konami would be revisiting Juste Belmont. That turned out to be a bad assumption as we started to learn more about the game and its strong focus on bringing multiplayer to the franchise.

Aside from being an HD 2D title, Harmony of Despair’s main hook was its robust multiplayer offering. You had versus mode where you were pit in one of two rooms in which six players can go at it. Then you had the co-op mode which really is the main multiplayer feature in the game. You were able to tackle the game’s many chapters with up to five other vampire hunters through Xbox Live. Local co-op wasn’t avaialble when the game originally released on XBLA but it will be one of the new features when the game hits the PSN later this summer.

There was a very strong character selection available, made even stronger by the DLC that was released, but it was quite clear that this was in no way a follow up to Harmony of Dissonance. Oh, and Juste Belmont never made it to the game, not even as a DLC character. In the end, we had a varied, for the most part, selection of characters to tackle the game’s 11 chapters (including the DLC) with. But, still, there could’ve been more added to the game to make it even better.

Before we get to the DLC characters and the ones that should’ve been included, we’re going to look at the actual levels in the game (including the DLC ones). First of all, I want to make it clear that I had no problems whatsoever with what we got in the game in terms of the overall levels. Yeah, they’re composed of re-used assets from the series’ Metroidvania entries, with two exceptions being the Castlevania 1 throwback level and the Fuma-centric one, but for the most part they all melded together to make one very satisfying package to run through, especially with friends (or strangers) online.

But why exactly did we get levels made up of already used assets? Well, it’s not hard to see that that may have been due to the low budget Iga received to make this game possible, while Mercury Steam got a more substantial amount of funding to develop Lords of Shadow. I’m not complaining about the latter getting more financial support at all, though, but it’s just a bit sad to see that the longtime ‘vania mastermind, Iga, didn’t get enough funding to make a game consisting of totally new assets. And if that ended up to be the case then you wouldn’t have people complaining about the “copy-and-paste” nature of the game’s levels (which, again, I have absolutely no problem with).

So, having said that, what types of levels should’ve been included? Original ones would’ve been quite awesome but there’s also other maps that could’ve been stitched together to form separate chapters in the game. We ended up getting two chapters, “Lord of Flies” and “The One Who is Many,” made up of two distinct sections of Symphony of the Night’s normal castle, and also including two bosses from said game: Beelzebub and Legion. Now how awesome would it have been to see other parts of the castle, and inverted castle, get made into chapters in the game? When all is said and done, we could’ve had all of Symphony of the Night represented in Harmony of Despair throughout a few chapters. Ah, the thought of beating the holy hell out of Dracula’s final form with others online is quite an enticing one.

Then we have the amazing throwback to the original Castlevania on NES with Chapter 10, titled “Origins,” which was made available as DLC to complement the inclusion of 8-bit Simon Belmont. This level literally patched together all the stages from the original ‘vania to form one entire castle to run through. There were some slight alterations made but nothing to completely change the rooms we’ve been whipping through for years now. And hell, we even got to face all of the bosses in the castle as well! Now imagine if we ended up getting the same treatment for both Dracula’s Curse and Simon’s Quest’s worlds; yeah, it would’ve been quite awesome.

Now, now, I’m aware that both Simon’s Quest and Dracula’s Curse don’t exactly lend themselves greatly to having their levels (or mansions) patched together to form one big map but just hear me out here. Let’s start with Simon’s Quest and how its game world could’ve been turned into a level in Harmony of Despair. In the first ‘vania sequel we once again took on the role of Simon Belmont on a quest (get it? Simon’s Quest…) to rid himself of the curse that was placed on him by Dracula. To do this we had to venture through many outdoor environments, going from mansion to mansion (there was no actual castle to fully explore in the game) recovering Dracula’s scattered body parts. After doing this we finally made it to the remains of Dracula’s castle to put an end to the Prince of Darkness once and for all (and of course he came back 100 years later).

So, how exactly does one go about making all of the game’s environments into one standalone stage? Well, you could take each of the mansions and put them all together, along with the small bit of Dracula’s castle at the end. this would’ve made one large “castle” to go through with Dracula waiting at the end, and, of course, Death and Vampira (The Crying Mask) waiting for you in their respective chambers (in which you’ll actually have to beat them this time instead of just running past them). And Dracula’s body parts could’ve served as important items that would’ve greatly boosted one’s stats.

Then we have Dracula’s Curse which, when you think about it, could also see a bulk of its levels stitched together to make one big map. The final entry in the NES trilogy saw players take on the role of the big boss of the ‘vania series, Trevor Belmont. On your quest to save Europe from Dracula’s control you did battle with hordes of  creatures, but you weren’t alone. You also ran into other characters which could then join you on your quest. Those characters were Alucard, Sypha Belnades, and Grant Danasty. Each character had their own unique abilities like Alucard’s bat transformation and triple fireballs, Sypha’s elemental attacks and Grant’s ability to stick to walls and other surfaces.

So how exactly does oen go about combining the game’s many levels and branching paths? One easy route to go would be to make the castle in the game a standalone chapter seeing as how it’s already quite large on its own. Then, like pictured above, you can also have another chapter consisting of the early levels molded together. Something else they could’ve done was take the ghost ship, a favorite level of mine, and make that its own chapter perhaps. But how to handle the branching paths the game has? That may be a bit trickier but one good alternative would be to just incorporate the actual rooms you face the secondary characters in, before recruiting them, into the patched together levels based on one set path. Or you could just place Sypha, Grant and Alucard in new rooms altogether. I just think it’s key to have them included in a Dracula’s Curse themed level.

Dracula’s Curse had a memorable cast of characters, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses and while Alucard is already in Harmony of Despair (in his more popular Symphony of the Night appearance) it would be nice to accomodate 8-bit Simon Belmont with other 8-bit characters, especially Trevor Belmont. Which leads us to the characters that should’ve been added to the game’s roster as DLC, but sadly weren’t.

I’m not complaining about the characters we did end up receiving as DLC (Julius, Yoko, Maria, Richter, Simon and Fuma) to complement the game’s default cast (Alucard, Shanoa, Jonathon, Charlotte and Soma) but noone can deny the fact that it wouldn’t have hurt to have a few more characters from the series’ past. One character that I’m quite surprised didn’t make the cut was Juste Belmont, who, as aforementioned, was the protagonist in Harmony of Dissonance. And, to make the GBA representation complete, it would’ve been cool to see Nathan Graves as DLC especially because of his unique battle system. Nathan’s card system would make for a lot of drops throughout the game that would extend the game’s replay value even more as fans of the character would be sinking many hours into trying to find all the cards.

 Seeing Albus, of Order of Ecclesia fame, and Hammer, of Dawn of Sorrow and Aria of Sorrow fame, included in the roster would’ve also been quite welcome as both characters would’ve brought a new way of fighting enemies with their firearms. This, along with Nathan’s card battle system, would have definitely served to enhance the overall roster and add a greater dose of variety into the mix. Sure there are already a lot of varying characters in the roster but having ones that can wield actual guns and one that can equip and collect cards to unleash different attacks would’ve been quite nice. And we can’t forget about 8-bit Simon Belmont who, sadly, wasn’t complemented by other 8-bit characters from the franchise.

How awesome would it have been to see Trevor Belmont and the rest of Dracula’s Curse cast in Harmony of Despair? As previously noted, each character in the NES classic had unique abilities that could’ve been put to good use in HD. Grant’s wall-crawling antics could’ve made him a nice alternative to Shanoa who is still the one character with the greatest advantage when it comes to traversal, in certain cases, due to her magnes glyph. And adding Sypha into the mix would’ve made for one more stellar magic-user in the game’s cast.

Those are my personal choices for DLC that should’ve been released for Harmony of Despair post-launch. I’m in no way unsatisfied with what we did end up getting, though. I enjoyed every last bit of DLC that was offered as each served to extend my time with the game. You have a large selection of chapters to go through and if you really want to master each and every character that’s available then you’re looking to spend dozens and dozens of hours. How’s that for replay value? Regardless, one can’t help but feel like there could’ve been more added to this game. That’s enough from me, now I’m interested in reading what you guys wanted to see as DLC in the game. Make sure to let your thoughts be known in the comments section below!

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