Good morning!

Today I thought I’d do a Co-op highlight on Castlevania Harmony of Despair, otherwise known as Castlevania HD. (This decision was totally not influenced by all the Starbomb I was listening to today. Swearsies.) This is a multiplayer platformer with a selection of characters pulled from multiple Castlevania games. This game came out on Xbox live on August 4th 2010 and PSN on September 27th 2011. This does mean that the PSN version came with a couple things that were only available as paid DLC for Xbox live users.

The cast of characters includes Soma Cruz (Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow), Alucard (Dracula’s curse, Symphony of the Night), Johnathan Morris (Portrait of Ruin), Charlotte Aulin (Portrait of Ruin), Shanoa (Order of Ecclesia), and if you have the PS3 version you would also get Julius Belmont (Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow), and Yoko Belnades (Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow). Julius and Yoko are DLC characters for the Xbox Live version. Other DLC characters are Richter Belmont (Rondo of Blood, Symphony of the Night), Maria Renard (Rondo of Blood), Simon Belmont (Castlevania), and Getsu Fuma (Getsu Fuma Den).

The base game comes with 6 stages (7 for PS3), each stage has different enemies and items and can be played on 2 difficulties, normal to start and then hard after you’ve beaten the stage. Each stage is amazing in its own way with a challenging boss. There are extra stages up for DLC as well, allowing for extended play (the last 2 stages are in an 8 bit style).

The characters all level up differently with none of them actually leveling in the traditional sense. For example my favorite character to play, Charlotte, levels by absorbing monster spells (each spell maxes out after 5) and each new spell and spell level makes her spells and physical attacks stronger. Other characters absorb souls (dropped when enemies are killed), martial arts skills, weapons, and glyphs.

Castlevania HD gives the option of a 6 person online co-op, and while the Xbox 360 was online only for multiplayer, the PS3 version allowed for 4 player couch co-op and 6 players online. The PS3 version also allowed you to bring guests into the online co-op so you could play couch co-op and online with other friends at the same time.

I have a lot of fond memories of playing this game. I also have a lot of frustrating memories of trying to collect Charlotte’s spells, more specifically the heal spell. That is only dropped by one enemy in the game. That you have to hit first and damage just enough to make them heal. Also they might not cast heal. Also if they do cast it, it has a really low rate of absorption. Oh and they also cast fireball that you can absorb but you can only absorb one spell per enemy so if you get fireball off of them you have to kill them and move on.

I’m not bitter I swear.

Scarring memories aside, this game is a great choice to pick up something to play with friends. It’s challenging, has a wide variety of characters, each character has multiple color palettes so multiple people can be the same character and nobody has to pick a back up character which can cause a terminal case of pouting amongst friends, and ruin what would have been a great game night. The other nice thing is, at the base price of $15 you don’t have to choose a video game over food in order to have something fun to do with your friends.

Until Later,