The Castlevania series has some of the best games that have ever been released on any consoles, ever. When some of them are re-released that game, by default, becomes the best game on that system. This is less of an exaggeration and more of how much I really enjoy many of the 2D versions of these games. The problem with this, of course, is that the game has not always made the transition into 3D as well or as painlessly as one would hope or dream. Add to that the fact that this game is a PC port of something that came out on a much less powerful system years ago and some of the clearer problems start to reveal themselves.
Click HERE to read our review of the Xbox 360 version.
The game expects the player to have an XBOX 360 controller hooked into their computer, which is fine as that is quickly becoming the norm with most PC games. The problem is that from that moment forward the game starts to try and make the player believe that they are just playing on an extremely expensive and more feature heavy console. Many of the backgrounds of the game are impressive and well detailed, almost like when they were first designed someone wanted to see how far they could push an older system and were told to pull it back due to memory constraint and random fires; but now with the power of a PC they are able to go crazy and use all of graphics. The problems start and end with many of the enemies, which look like they came from a system a generation ago, which considering when the game was announced and the speed of video card upgrades isn’t that far from the truth, and many of them can be rather inconsistent in their detail—one minute the player will be fighting something that looks like it came from the weird gap between PS2 and XBOX 360, the next they will be in a death battle with a high polygon-count spider that seems to cast better shadows then the player character. The good news is, all the DLC that was available for the original 360/PS3 version is included here in this Ultimate Edition.
It isn’t that this game is bad in any regard, the only real complaint is that it is much longer than the average player would expect from both a Castlevania game mixed with a God of War clone. What damns the game is that it is three years old and doesn’t seem to miss a beat to remind the player of that fact. While it isn’t the worst PC port in recent memory it also doesn’t break the model, redefine anything, or even live up to some of the standards set by games that have come out in the last several years. Take note Konami, because next time a little more effort will make all the difference.
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