After a while of playing the game, I have to say that it's actually not bad. The controls and camera take a bit of getting used to, but once you get a grasp of the controls, combat can have a bit of depth to it. The core of combat flow comes from knowing whether or not to attack, guard, or evade against an enemy. Once you get comfortable with the controls, using cancels to switch up your game with specials, items, or unblockable attacks can put your opponent on edge. Hyper Attacks are notoriously powerful, but the combat is fast and furious, and because the Hyper Attack uses all your mana, matches are hardly ever long enough to ever gain two full mana bars in a fight. More to that, most Hyper Attack startups are slow and unsafe, truly making the move into an all-or-nothing gambit, kind of like Ougis in CC2's Narutimate series (in fact, I'd say this game plays much like a 3D-plane version of that game, without the frantic KnJ madness. Almost similar to Ultimate Ninja Storm...which I haven't played yet).
Characters are varied enough to hold one's interest between playthroughs, and there's enough variety between the way each character plays to suit your playstyle. I've assembled the cast into a small list of vague playstyle archetypes that define their general strengths:
Mid-Range Melee - Good Range, Average Speed and Damage
Belmonts, Eric, Death
Speedy Melee - Minimal Melee range, excellent mobility and combo potential
Grant, Carmilla, Cornell
Melee Casters - Close-range Melee combined with Magic ranged pressure
Alucard (more melee than magic), Shanoa (more magic than melee)
Heavy Casters - Poor melee advantage and less-than average mobility, but possesses powerful, wide-range magic attacks.
Maria, Sypha
Special Exceptions
Golem (Slow mobility, hard-hitting attacks and far-traveling bull rush moves)
Aeon (Average mobility, close-quarters range, and "ticks" that charge his special moves)
Dracula (Teleport, fireball, repeat =P)
While some characters have an easier time beating other characters (Golem vs Dracula anyone?), there's no character who's truly broken. The only character who MAY come close to being broken is Aeon, whose ZA WARUDO combo gives him a free Hyper Attack, but it requires three ticks on his clock, which may be difficult to achieve on a human opponent. Besides which, anyone who manages to pick up the Stopwatch sub-weapon is capable of performing a ZA WARUDO Hyper Attack combo.
There's a lot to think about when playing Judgment with regards to fighting. Sometimes it's not just about "pulling off that bitchin' combo you saw on Youtube", sometimes it's about using distance and space to gauge your opponent's attacks, thwart them, and swiftly counterattack. Sometimes it's about luring the enemy into the stage hazards, and sometimes it's about knowing when it's okay to start whipping torches to find the right subweapon for the job. I'm only slightly annoyed that there's no Random Stage select, nor is there enough stages in the game, but that's a very minor gripe.
Oh, and the soundtrack is ten flavors of awesome, especially if you're a fan of classic Castlevania music.
I personally don't mind if they make Metroid Castlevanias forever, but variety is good as long as they do it well. I am actually hoping that Konami pulls a Capcom and release an 8 bit side scrolling Castlevania.
Did you play the Dracula X Chronicles for PSP? It's a 2.5D remake of Rondo of Blood (which was never released in the US), Richter Belmont's first game. It plays like a traditional arcade-style Castlevania game, no leveling up or collecting gear or exploration... just a straightforward romp through the castle with your whip and whatever you find inside the nearest candle. It's actually amusingly faithful to the original game, and if that still doesn't tickle your fancy, the game includes the
original PC Engine CD version of the game in case you need your 32-bit pixel fix.