- A truly excellent port of a truly excellent game. Like several other retro games featured on this site, the Switch version is part of a larger pack (âThe Dominus Collectionâ). The price of the entire pack is worth it just for the port of this game.
- I donât want this entire review to just be about how good M2 is at porting software, but every affordance you could think to want is here; nothing about these games âdoesnât translateâ just because they were originally DS games.
- By this point in the life of these Castlevania games, I think Konami had learned to avoid a lot of common problems. For example, in Order of Ecclesia, yes you can grind as much as you want, but itâs never really needed if youâre not hunting for rare item drops or something. By the same token, there is no Symphony-of-the-Night issue where youâre essentially invincible by the end of the game and thereâs no challenge any more.
- This playthrough was just a normal run through Normal difficulty. I did not do the extra hidden areas just outside Draculaâs castle, or go for total side quest completion in Wygol village.
- The glyph and union system never ever gets old; learning new setups, cycling between them, figuring out the best combos for different bosses, all extremely rewarding.
- Some of the boss balancing it a little wack; there are definitely main-game bosses which took me way more tries to beat than Dracula himself. But you kinda forgive this because the balancing is so perfect in all other ways. Enemy weaknesses and resistances are also taken very seriously which means youâre always working the glyph system.
- And itâs a damn good thing the regular enemies in regular rooms are well-balanced, because the overworld of this game is HUGE. Yes youâre in Draculaâs Castle by the end, but you have to fight through several earlier levels, themselves each filled with several bosses, in order to get there.
- Everyone who likes metroidvanias even a little bit should absolutely play Order of Ecclesia. It is Mt Rushmore of the genre.
ă”ăŒăăŁăł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
(Completed on 4 Oct 2025)
ă”ăŒăăŁăł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW
Adverntures of Lolo
(Completed on 2 Oct 2025)
- The perfect little palate-cleanser puzzle game after spending months on something as big and involved as Persona 3
- Not too easy, not too hard, would recommend to people of any skill level
- The entire soundtrack is 1 song and I have to admit it does get annoying after a while. Find something else to listen to while playing.
- Made by HAL, so thereâs a certain bar of quality that is guaranteed
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ă”ăŒăăŁăł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD
(Completed on 6 Feb 2025)
- Once again, never played the original non-HD version; this was my first time through what now amounts to a âclassicâ game
- It isâŠ. fine, but they almost shouldnât call these âDonky Kong Countryâ games. There are several hallmarks of all 3 DKC games which are missing. The worlds do not feel expansive or covered in secrets at all, the way DKC2 and DKC 3 do. Everything you could possibly have to do is all laid out in front of you. Thereâs no Krematoa-equivalent.
- There is a final, secret world, but unlocking it is all-or-nothing; you canât partially visit or come in through a bunch of little side doors scattered all over the place.
- Also no animal friends besides Rambi
- Even the soundtrack doesnât really have the juice. There are good arrangements of good songs but nothing can really match a SNES sound chip cranking out those David Wise originals
- Even though I donât think itâs a real Donkey Kong Country game, it still is not bad. The level designs are fun and the difficulty curve is fair, to maybe leaning a LITTLE on the easy side.
- I also could not see anywhere that the HD upgrade went clearly and severely wrong. The game looks good and you donât have any weird artifacts that you sometimes see on âHD upgradesâ like texture resolution mismatches
- Overall, probably worth it if you didnât play this game in itsâ day, but if you did, I donât see what would be the point.
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ă”ăŒăăŁăł CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW
Tomb Raider: Legend
(Completed on 23 Jan 2025)
- The PS2 original is the âcanonical versionâ of this game, considering all the remakes and ports that came out over the years
- Itâs a fun, low-stress adventure game which doesnât demand very much of you
- Gameplay-wise, itâs not demanding much of you, but the visuals and characters and music and settings are all so good that youâre sort of willing to go along with it
- I had forgotten how much unlockable content that developers used to put in these games. While I did not do â100% completionâ and get all of Laraâs little outfits and such, I can see myself going back to the game for those things. It is fun and a little jarring to see how developers used to give the fans what they want; today all that stuff would be DLC.
- The game is short (even, I think, for the time) but in itsâ small package, it accomplishes what itâs trying to do. The settings are very memorable and the story (which no one even really needs in a Tomb Raider game IWABH) is coherent and interesting.
- Not all games reviewed on this site are very accessible to moderns, but I think this one is, and I can recommend it as long as you donât come in looking for something too hardcore
