Castlevania Judgment

The time for judgment has come!

NA release: 18th November 2008
JP release: 15th January 2009
EU release: 20th March 2009
Developer: Konami, Eighting
Publisher: Konami
NGamer Magazine Review: 28%
Platforms: Wii
Version Played: Wii

When it came to making a Castlevania game for the Wii, Iga was concerned about people getting tired of whipping for an hour or so with the Wii Remote, so decided against making a more traditional Castlevania game for the system. He always had the option to make the motion control optional, but decided to go the more obvious route: make a waggle based fighting game.

In an attempt to destroy Dracula, Galamoth (the villain from Kis Dracula) tries to destroy time. A mysterious hero called Aeon pulls 14 heroes from out of time to fight to decide who is worthy of taking on the Time Reaper sent to destroy everything. All the heroes from Castlevania 3 are here (Sypha from before she stated, Trevor and Grant from after and Alucard from after Symphony of the Night) alongside Maria (in between Rondo and Symphony), Simon’s (before Simon’s Quest), Shanoa (from the start of her adventure), Cornell (from before Legacy of Darkness) and Eric from Bloodlines as a child, along with a bunch of villains.

You play through a short story with each character where they each have a reason to fight. A lot of jealousy-based. Simon is jealous of Trevor being cooler than him, Grant is jealous of Trevor marrying Sypha, Eric is jealous of the Vampire Killer whip and Maria is jealous of everyone having larger breasts (seriously, that’s her story). The more interesting ones are Cornell, who is looking for a curse but rejects it because it will help Dracula (quite tragic with what happens in Legacy of Darkness) and Golem – a random enemy given sentience by what is going on, he just wants to live and be human, not wanting to fight. Amusing that he has by far the best story.

The gameplay is a discount Soul Calibur, something I find quite amusing when paired with the actual Soul Calibur on Wii, which was very similar to Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. It does feature subweapons, which you collect from breakable objects, and you’re only semi-locked-on to your opponent (meaning you can accidentally attack in the wrong direction), but the game susceptible for button mashing, and just jamming A and B on a Classic Controller will deal with any opponent. There’s also a powerful special attack, which is cool one time but the animation is so long it’s better to use regular attacks.

Once you’ve finished each story, you unlock “true story” mode, where you have to play as each character again, with a second fight against Aeon and a final boss against the Time Reaper, with each character having a text-based epilogue of what happened to them once they returned to their own time (poor Golem). Mainly it’s about their next game, as most characters were taken before their last (for Trevor, he was on his way to Curse of Darkness, so it mentions the Devil Forgemasters). Aeon wanders through time, while Grant is pretty much the only hero to have something new.

Outside of the main story is “Castle” mode where you go through a series of challenges to reach Dracula. You can be required to get a ring out, collect hearts from destructible objects, beat up some generic goons or trigger something in the stages (which have hazards and stuff, but matches are over so quickly you probably won’t notice them). It’s a bit extra to do, but nothing too exciting.

One huge problem with the focus on characters are the designs, as they redesigned everyone. Takeshi Obata, the artist of Death Note, was told to create new versions of each character, and many have a striking resemblance to Death Note characters. The problem is, these character designs combined with some of the personalities just makes the game seem more of a joke, something to laugh at rather than something to take seriously. Then again, it’s a fighting game on the Wii, so perhaps all that is intentional.

Fine

Castlevania Judgment is not in any way fun to play – at best it’s just inoffensive. That’s a miserably low standard of quality, and there’s o excuse for a game created by a publisher of Konami’s stature to be aiming so low.
Alicia, NGamer Magazine #32

Remake or remaster?

A re-release with new skins to suit the games more would be good.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Castlevania Judgment