Castlevania Judgment Gamers Review
Screenshots
The fun parts (3 out of 5)
Castlevania Judgment is a fun, enjoyable 3D fighting adventure that uses 22 years of Castlevania history well by pitting popular and treasured characters from the Castlevania universe against the Belmont Clan in a battle arena environment that works well.
The various characters are fun to get to know, with their unique moves and style that feel and act differently, providing an entertaining level of variety that requires you to learn to use each characters uniqueness to be successful.
A number of different modes provides a good level of variety in game play, including a Survival mode, Story mode, a free-form arcade counterpart of the Story mode, and fun and interactive on line play against friends or random opponents. The on line brawls are the best part of the game, making the best use of the available combat, and providing the best level of competition of all the modes.
The bad parts (3 out of 5)
Once again the controls with this Wii fighting title don’t work as well as Wii fanatics have been dreaming of, yet they work well enough with the Wii remote and Nunchuk combination that is mapped out. You can use the GameCube controller, which even better than the Wii control scheme of Wii remote and Nunchuk.
The camera swings around the world environment way to much and you will occasionally get your can kicked because you can’t see your character through an obstacle or opponent in the foreground, which can make the game more fun to watch than play.
The balance between the characters in the game is way off; many of the characters are absolutely useless in battle and throw the game play balance of the combat into chaos. In addition, each character only has one set of attacks and they need more attack variety for a 21st century game.
Game graphics (4 out of 5)
The strange camera angle we mention still works pretty good for the presentation, the developers stayed with a simple 3D arena-like battle area that has flat fields that are about average looking for games on the Wii.
The Takeshi Obata character designs used are wonderful, fresh and unique, but strange and fun, definitely a highlight of the presentation. The character animations do justice to Obama’s talent, each has a unique look and feel that has been well presented, and the epic attack animations are true to the Castlemania you fell in love with years ago.
The visual effects are actually pretty good for a Wii game; I enjoyed watching the battles as much as taking part in them. The hyper-attacks look wonderful, even if they do unbalanced damage, for about 10 seconds of amazing visual effects that will get your attention.
Sounds in the game (4 out of 5)
The sound track includes music from 22 years of Castlevania music-history, but is actually not bad, adding a bit to the entertainment value of the game, but a few new songs certainly would have been nice.
The voice acting for the characters in the game is good; each is unique and hasn’t been over done, and provided some fun and entertaining moments.
The sound effects all sound good, each was pretty crisp and it was usually easy to tell what the sound effect was suppose to be simulating.
The story line (2 out of 5)
Castlevania Judgment didn’t have much of an understandable or logical story line, but then it was suppose to be a brawling fighter of a game. The character story lines are barely recognizable excuses for each character to participate in the story line of the game and may have been added last, just to give it a bit of a story.
The bottom line (3 out of 5)
Castlevania Judgment is a good addition to the Castlevania series, with characters, game play, and on line brawls that provides pretty good entertainment value for your dollar. If you have played previous Castlevania games, then you will have fun playing this game, especially with the games excellent use of 22 years of Castlevania history in many aspects of its development and presentation.
The controls need more work, this is common with all the Wii fighting games, so far, but Castlevania Judgment still has combat mechanics that are workable and entertaining, even if the combat balance with some of the characters is a little wacky.
