It’s October, and I’ve been wracking my brain trying to decide on a Castlevania game to write about, since it’s the most appropriate time to do so. Actually, in this house, any time is an appropriate time to talk about Castlevania. I got that DS collection for my birthday last month, and I enjoyed it tremendously. Prior to this, I’ve been messing with a randomizer for Aria of Sorrow, breathing new life into a game that’s already an all-timer. But mid-way through this week, an idea popped into my head: there’s still a few Castlevania games in the series I still haven’t played, so what if I played one of them? And when I say “a few,” I mean the Lords of Shadow games, which you would have to have a gun trained on me to get me to play, and the game I’m writing about here, Castlevania Judgement.
Judgement, for anyone who forgot or has been living under a rock for well over a decade, was a pretty infamous release. Infamous in that it was neither a level-based action platformer, nor was it a Search Action game with mild RPG elements, but rather a 1-on-1 fighting game. A Nintendo Wii exclusive fighting game, at that, which essentially condemned it to obscurity. Also, being a Wii Castlevania game, I can remember a lot of people, very secure in their masculinity and sexuality, being concerned that the game would be wagging the Wii remote around while looking like a homosexual. Regardless of the reason, it’s not a particularly well liked entry in the series, often brought up as a Worst Of All Time contender.
Now before I get into whether or not this game sucks, I am legally obligated to mention a couple of things. First of all, I already brought up the fact that it’s a fighting game, but I didn’t say it like an obnoxious normie so here: “a Castlevania FIGHTING GAME!? What were they SMOKING when they came up with that idea? DRUGS????????”
Ahem. Anyways, I also have to bring up the new character designs. Rather than use Ayami Kojima, or whoever did those terrible “anime” designs for the DS games, Konami opted to bring Takeshi Obata on-board to freshen up the cast. Obata was riding high off of his work on Death Note, a manga that I absolutely fucking love, even the part where the Death Note was being used by corporate executives instead of Light Yagami. For Castlevania, Obata gave everybody a very overdesigned goth look, very Guilty Gear-esque.
A lot of people hate this art. I have seen so many criticisms of this game centered entirely around these new character designs. Now, as someone who still enjoyed Death Note when it was old men sitting around in board meetings, I’ll be a contrarian again and say that I think these designs are sick as hell. Except for one: Eric Lecarde. In Castlevania Bloodlines, Eric is an effeminate Spanish dude with a giant spear who is very much an adult. Here, he is a teenage boy who seemingly never blinks his eyes. Everyone else is a badass, or has massive swinging titties, or something else that’s cool. Eric is just a little baby boy. The thing is, I think the design itself is great; creepy, well-dressed child perfectly capable of murder is actually pretty cool. But not for a grown man! Of course, the great cosmic irony of all this is that Eric is also the one character I have more skill playing as than everyone else on the roster. I guess I’ll just have to learn to live with that design.
WHY ARE YOU BABY MAN
All that aside, what actually got me interested in wanting to check this game out was finding out that it was developed by Eighting. They’re a company known for making shooters, like Kingdom Grand Prix, before pivoting into fighting games like Tatsunoko vs Capcom and Marvel vs Capcom 3. Also, they were co-developers on 2023 Game Of The Year, Pikmin 4. Needless to say, I had more confidence in a Wii-exclusive Castlevania fighting game than I did back in 2008, where the only fighting game I had any remote interest in was the upcoming Street Fighter 4.
Finally, actually talking about playing Castlevania Judgement now.
At first, I fucking hated this game. I thought the controls were weird. It felt the CPU was reading my inputs. The game managed to be this total contradiction that felt sluggish to play while also requiring me to have strict timing. Castlevania Judgement is a game that, even with an in-game tutorial, does not ease you in. This is 2008, baby, you better learn how the game works in a hurry. The longer I played, the longer I got used to things, the more my opinion changed. I went from thinking the game was terrible, to thinking it was janky with a lot of nice fanservice, to now sitting here and thinking that this game fucking rules. It takes time, more time than any other fighting game, but it wormed its way into my brain. The game is actually pretty fun, with a very mild amount of depth; don’t expect this to have the level of complexity of something like Third Strike. Figuring out some good combos, or really, any combo at all has been pretty satisfying. The reason is entirely based around how easy it is to cancel an attack into a different attack. Starting with some normals, then cancelling the auto-combo into a sub-weapon attack or a special move. Maybe even jump cancelling and pulling off an air combo. Due to a lack of any sort of competitive scene, I’m not sure if me pulling off a 75% damage combo is actually optimal, but whatever, it looks cool. Also, if you would like to enjoy this game and maintain that feeling of enjoyment, stay far away from Arcade Mode. That’s the mode where everyone reads your inputs and Dracula is suddenly no longer bottom tier trash and is capable of murdering you via annoyance.
So yeah, Castlevania Judgement is a decent little fighting game that is a lot more playable than you would think at first glance. But that’s not important. What is important is that there is fanservice out the ass. At least, fanservice for the sickos. The old-school freaks who can recognize that the first level is the sacrificial altar Dracula is resurrected from in the X68000 remake of the original Castlevania. Aside from Shanoa, nobody from the GBA or DS games are here, and it’s pretty obvious that the only reason she was in the game was due to the close release dates of Order of Ecclesia and Judgement (OoE had come out the month before). No Soma, no Juste, no CHARLOTTE! or JOHNATHAN! to be seen. Hell, the game has Maria, but no Richter. But you know what you do get? The entire cast of Castlevania 3! You get Trevor, Alucard, Sypha, and Grant! You get Cornell from Curse of Darkness on Nintendo 64, with a really sick new design that I think is the best of the bunch. There’s some excellent remixes of Castlevania hits like Bloody Tears (CV2), Vampire Killer (CV1), and Dracula’s Castle (Symphony of the Night), but they did something that I have wanted for literally decades: a new version of the Clock Tower music from Castlevania 3. It’s among my favorite tracks in the whole series, ever since I was a kid playing CV3 on the NES, and that it has taken this long for it to get any further recognition is baffling. There’s even a version of Tower of Dolls, a pretty underrated track from Dracula X68k. Yes, I know that the song was also in OoE, but that game already has musical representation, so I’m going to declare this a second X68000 reference. In another nice touch of fanservice, regarding the sub-weapons that you can pick up and use during matches: much like the non-fighting game Castlevanias, Holy Water and the Cross are the most busted and overpowered, and the knife still fucking sucks and I still get mad every time I pick it up on accident.
I must also mention the Castle Mode. Similar to Soul Calibur’s Mission mode, you pick a character, and go through a series of fights with unique conditions for the match and/or the win condition (finishing your opponent with a sub-weapon, or landing a combo of six hits or more, etc). It’s a neat idea that can admittedly get pretty tedious at points, but the rewards are worth it. See, finishing certain levels earns you accessories that you can equip on every single character. The accessories don’t do anything other than be accessories, no stat boots or anything here, but I like this feature because now you can make the Castlevania crew look like one of two things: a complete jackass, or an extra in a Malice Mizer video.
Since this is running pretty long, I’ll end things with this: Castlevania Judgement rules. The internet was wrong when they said this game sucked.
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