Castlevania Judgement - Well It's Not As Fun the 2nd Go Round

I decided to come back to Castlevania Judgement. I wasn't one of those guys that played it once and said it sucked. I generally enjoyed it.  But thanks to other games and that the online playbase was a ghost town.  There wasn't much fun to be had.  So I just stopped.  I unlocked everyone, Got a few true endings, and just stopped. Now I come back to this...Not as great as I remember.

Online

Well I can't tell you anything about the online as well it's dead. Nintendo killed it. What was it like back then? Well no one played it when I playing it back then so still couldn't tell you.  I could only go off word of mouth and what I heard was that the online was no good. Pretty much like any fighting game on the Wii just not made for online.

Story

Well the story goes like this. A Time Rift has opened up gathering warriors from various timelines of Castlevania (Yet somehow skipping Soma Cruz & Johnathan's timeline as well as many others. BUT THEY CAN INCLUDE SHANOA.). A man named Aeon introduces himself to whoever you pick. He tells you in this rift of time you can find what your heart most desires, but you must pass a series of trials.  The character's don't really question it and go along with it. They're actually far more accepting and understanding of what's going on compared to other games.

The story seems to range from alright to WHA?.  Certain characters motives are simple especially considering the times they were pulled from.  Others...well you probably want to bash your head in. Well really only one character's story makes me want to bash my head in. There's 2 others that just make me want to slap the character.  At the same time I can let it go cause it's not as cringy as some make it out to be.

I personally enjoyed Grant, Cornell, and Golem's story.  Grant wanted to be the one to marry Sypha but never told her how he feels nor Trevor.  Cornell wants to find a way to break the werewolf curse so he can live in peace. As furry as I am hey being a werewolf obviously isn't all sunshine and rainbows.  Golem wants to be human but he can only have some form of sentience while in the time rift....poor guy.

The characters in question would be.

Eric Lecarde:  Jealous of the Vampire Killer he wants to prove that the Alucard Spear is superior to the Vampire Killer (the Whip).  His character is very haughty basically challenging everyone expecting to be treated like a man.

Sypha Belnades: She's pulled before Castlevania 3 even happens. Being a servant of the church and judges everyone harshly.  Mainly due to herself and her sister witches being killed and discriminated against. Essentially don't cross Sypha.

Maria Renard: OH JOY...So I don't want to call this wrong but I feel like this is loli syndrome. Maria still being a child wants to "Grow" bigger and is jealous of everyone else who looks better than her or essentially has bigger boobs.  And the dialogue literally focuses on that.

You have to beat the game twice.

So in order for everyone to reach the true ending. You have to beat story mode with all the characters at least once.  Each time you do this with a different character Aeon will appear at the end and say that the key has been collected. Giving off this vibe that he's the true villain or something. Once you get all the keys. You run the story again. But this time you have 2 more stages.  Now you fight Aeon and the true final boss.

Aeon explains that in order to leave this time rift you must defeat this boss named Time Reaper. The only thing we know about the Time Reaper is that he comes from 10,000 years past or future....probably the future.  After managing to defeat him you get an ending that's just a wall of text.  It essentially tells you that everyone made it back to there own timelines and the character your playing as does there role in there game.  It doesn't tell you the ending to the game there from. I see this as "Hey go play the other Castlevania games to find out more."

It's not bad.  I mean it's a fighting game so story doesn't mean too much.  At least it's not a visual novel type story. Not that I don't mind those, just that those can take forever and tend to force you down one path.

Graphics

Well these are Wii Graphics...although that makes me sound like I'm giving them an excuse to be the way they are. This was released in November 2008 in the US and later in 2009 in Japan and Europe.

First off to attempt to look at this from a pure graphics standpoint. The graphics aren't horrible. I'm sure some people will note the character default faces during dialogue. There eyes don't really move and certain other features stand out heavily. The environments/stages are alright. It also runs pretty smoothly.  My main gripe here would be the camera work. Cause this is a 3D Arena fighter. The camera zooms in or out to keep both characters in sight.  This can actually make things difficult as I had times where I couldn't tell if I dodged attacks properly or spaced out my attacks well enough. Hit detection I also question at times.

Now to the part that everyone focuses on. Which is somewhat strange to me. The design. In particular the character designs.  I'm so used to hearing people make complaints about games not running at 60 FPS or more or that there's a lack of expression in characters, or  models looking stiff. Instead this is one of those cases where the main complaint is character design.

A long time ago I did attempt a defense at this design choice. Well I was like 22 and didn't know any better. Or cared. Even now I feel a little biased. Much less than how I was back then. Let me go through these one by one.

Simon 

Serious JRPG vibes coming off this look.

This feels like they should've said to the artist "please fix this" Or make it some alternate costume. This outfit looks like some sort of JRPG thing. Or a nightclub thing. It's not horrible but it's not how I want to remember Simon Belmont...and I barely played any Castlevania games. Interesting Take but...eh.

D+

Trevor 

Uhhhh...Ralph???  Also looks like the kind of guy that would give you a combat tutorial. Actually he does give you the tutorial. 

Strange enough I could see this look working. His other game looks feel rather generic.  Here he looks like a seasoned hunter. Heck he looks like a character that would appear in front of the new guy character of a JRPG giving you the tutorial.  This look could pass for a lot games.

B

Eric

Stuck up little rich kid is what this says. 

Well if you wanted stuck up little rich kid asthetic.  You got it. I don't really know his other games but just a glance at the wiki. I'm starting to get the vibe that person who designed this character probably didn't play Eric's Castlevania games. (Excuse me game he's only playable in Bloodlines. Portrait of Ruin he's just an NPC). Just looking at the pictures of him in his other 2 appearances. One of them definitely gives this haughty rich guy vibe.

C

Alucard

This isn't too far off from his SotN look.

Honestly...I don't have a problem with this one. While I never played Symphony of the Night (I know I know Blasphemy).  This honeslty is very close to his original design. No real complaints...Except for the lack of Valmanway

B+

Grant

I guess they wanted to make him fit in with the rest of the designs...and now he stands out even more. But now on the other end of the spectrum.

I guess they really had to imagine this one. There's not a whole lot to go on.  Is he trying to do Voldo from Soulcalibur cosplay?  I guess if anything the look works cause his super move does go well with it.

C for effort

Cornell

We couldn't just have typical shirtless werewolf? 

Well I guess they didn't want him to have his human appearance.  So they gave him armor???  I guess not a whole lot to work with but. I'm not happy about the armor thing.  It works...But feels unneeded.  Heck just go with the Legacy of Darkness boxart.  It's at least not as outlandish as some others and it works. Still rather far off from his original look.

C+

Maria

If I ask anyone about Castlevania Judgement. This always comes up and not in a good way. 

So uh...what happened? Basically the game explains this as this is Maria a few years after she was rescued by Richter.  But uh...This is really out there.  Strange enough now that it's 2020 I'm getting a Rachel Alucard vibe.  Like this is some alternate reality of of Rachel from Blazblue.

D

Sypha

Well if we wanted a female character to come from Guilty Gear that's somehow related to Ky Kiske. Well here's a look for you. 

Guess this is what she looks like without the robe covering her?  This looks like something that I would see in a Guilty Gear game.  Heck is Sypha secretly part of Guilty Gear's Sacred Order of Holy Knights?  Yeah Sypha can definitely fit into a Guilty Gear game and you wouldn't think twice about it if she was there. It's nothing totally bad unless you just hate anime.  Thinking about it now.  For awhile there was this mass amount of hate for anything that looked anime. I'm generally okay with this.

B

Shanoa

This says "Ass-Kicking Anime Nun". This also isn't too far off from her original game look. 

It's like she's an anime nun?  I guess that's what's trying to be passed off here. But honestly like Alucard her look isn't too drastic of a change. Honestly if you remove that hat she would look very close to her "Order of Ecclesia" look.

Aeon

Clocks, Swords, Stops Time, flashy clothes. You fit the Time Guy Aesthetic.

I can't really judge him off the same criteria as I have with the others. Time Lord...or watcher of time.  One of those tropes. Too many clocks and watches. Stands out.

Golem

I honestly like this look.  Certainly better than giant rock monster.  This is actually good.

I like this desgin...I can't complain. And well...they took a generic monster and made it playable.

A+

Carmilla

Well it's either this look or have her completely naked. But man...super dominatrix look.

WTF?! Generally what I said on first look.  Then discovering her other appearances. So they put clothes on her. I think I'll be avoiding the night clubs.

C

Death

We couldn't just get Death with a cape? Why this robotic look?

Well...I would prefer him to have a cloak on.  He honestly seems to have a more robotic feel to me. Rather makes him less menacing than his appearance in other games.

B

Dracula

I can't really say anything about it tbh.  

Not much changed from his original looks.  My problem I have with him here is...He's always floating. And at certain angles he looks fat.

B

Time Reaper

Death Couldn't Look something like this?

This thing.  Looks more like an undead mage than a reaper.  It's just a giant skeleton with a cloak on.

Okay I'm still rather lenient on the character outfits but again. I'm not a huge Castlevania buff like many other people are. I didn't hear about the game Series until Aria of Sorrow, Soma Cruz's game. Also the hate for the anime look was during a time where a lot of people did not want anime in there games or like it.  Heck on youtube there were dedicated groups to flagging/banning anything remotely anime.  It's 2020, times have sure changed tbh.

If I'm to judge the character designs. I'd say the artist generally looked at maybe 1 or 2 images of the character from the past and drew there own take on the design. And to be honest there really isn't much to off on in that regard. So I could see die-hard fans getting pissed off.

*Yes I know Takeshi Obata, the artist behind Manga like Death Note and Hikaru No Go designed the characters.

Gameplay

Well I already explained the online and the story mode.  There's also your basic versus, survival, and arcade mode.  Then you have Castle mode.  Which is like an adventure mode. You travel up Castlevania to defeat Dracula with given handicaps. There's also rewards for progressing.

Controls are more or less simple.  THANK GOD there's more than one control scheme you can use.  The Wii-mote with this thing is atrocious heck honestly I hate anything that pushes me to use the Wii-Mote. You can use the classic Controller, or the Gamecube controller.

I do have problems remembering moves.  Like certain moves you have to leave the control stick in neutral or you have to hold down a button for a few seconds.

Another issue I have is determining hit boxes.  Some characters have weird movements but you can't touch them while they're performing there moves yet I can slapped out of mine and they look quick.  Stage hazards are a thing but you can turn those off thankfully.  The characters are pretty unique enough to more or less stand apart from each other.

A hang up I have is certain fights.  Like the true final boss of the game has attacks that you must evade or you're pretty much dead. Or there's fights where the AI just seems to know that they can punish anything I throw out. Like pretty much any given fighting game.  I have more issues dealing with the random monster fights.  They attack in such a way you have change up how you deal with them.  I also have issues with some stages. It's so easy to get a ring out in certain ones cause you don't think about the edge of the ring during combos.  Yet you're more than likely to fall out instead of your opponent cause of how a lot of attacks work.

It didn't really stop me from playing the game.

Music

Where the game truly stands out.  The music for this game is great in every way. All the music are essentially remixes of themes from older Castlevania games and they're done in such a way that's made for a fighting game. Definitely one of my favorite fighting game OSTs I've ever heard.

Overall

My revisit to this game albeit short.  Definitely did give me a reality check. It definitely has it's problems but it's not something that makes me hate it.  Just sad that this game didn't last long at all.  Maybe a few months at best. If anything should change it would be the character designs. I don't necessarily have an issue with character designs but they could be better.