Symphony of despair

I've been ignoring pretty much anything to do with Castlevania since the second DS game, Portrait Of Ruin, and it's hideous Pokemon artwork. The HD console "reboot" isn't helping matters any. This series went from rising from dormancy like Dracula himself, by humans wishing it tribute, to a shambling zombie corpse. Something that was shown off at Konami's E3 2010 conference of legend was a "new" 2D rehash to be distributed over XLA, Akumajou Dracula (Calstlevania) Harmony Of Despair, or HD for short, geddit?

The 2D "IGA-vania's" have been pretty much recycling all their assets since 1993's seminal Rondo Of Blood, and this one seems to be the most blatant hack job to date. Take all the level tiles, and character sprites, mix 'em up in a random generator, and spew out a new level. Also, thanks to the low resolution of the original sources, the game looks like a playable map screen from Symphony Of The Night. To say I was underwhelmed by this prospect would be an understatement.

One tiny sliver of hope I noticed was the inclusion of protagonist Shanoa from the latest DS iteration, Order Of Ecclesia. Another interesting aspect were the redrawn character portraits, similar to the art overhaul Ecclesia got. Again, it's not the return of Ayami Kojima's master works, but it's a fuck ton better than Dawn Of Sorrow was. The third piece fell into place today, when I noticed that Houko Kuwashima would be voicing Shanoa. An interesting character design, drawn by a competent artist, and voiced by a favorite talent. That's worth somewhere around 1,200 MS Points.