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An entry in the Castlevania series, released in August 4, 2010 for the Xbox 360's Live Arcade, and in September 27, 2011 for the Play Station Network. It's the first original 2D Castlevania for a home console since Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, with a heavy focus on online gameplay.

The "plot" involves a cursed book known as the Grimoire, where the story of Castlevania has come to life within. However, the written personas of the various heroes and villains of the series have also come to life and must fight to put an end to the curse (or take over the book). There is up to six-player online co-op on both versions, and up to four-player local co-op on the PS3 version, and while players do not have to stick together, it is somewhat encouraged due to the Dual Crushes and the difficulty.

Initial reactions were mixed, between enthusiastic and indifferent. However, it has gained a larger amount of appeal due to the DLC characters, stages, and even music. Info about the stages is below, and info in regards to the characters has been moved to the characters page.

     Stages 

Base Game Chapters

  • Chapter One: Caught in the Cradle of Decay: Based on the Dark Chapel, Condemned Tower, and Cursed Clock Tower, as well as the underground section of The Lost Village from Dawn of Sorrow. Music is "Ruined Castle Corridor" from Aria of Sorrow, and the hidden item is the Bell. The boss is Gergoth from Dawn of Sorrow, and his theme music is "Into the Dark Night" from the same game. Notable items you can obtain here include Combo Boots, Blue Knuckles, Mjollnjr, Spiked Armor, and Spiked Boots.
  • Chapter Two: Lord of Unseen Strings: Based on the Lost Village, Demon Guest House, and Garden of Madness from Dawn of Sorrow. Music is "After Confession" from the same game, and the hidden item is the Crown. The boss is Puppet Master from Dawn of Sorrow, and he shares "Into the Dark Night" with Gergoth as his theme music. Notable items you can obtain here include the Holbein Dagger, Healing Mail, Muramasa, and Thief Rings.
  • Chapter Three: The End Of Chaos: Based on the Abyss from Dawn of Sorrow and the Skeleton Cave from Order of Ecclesia. Music is "PHANTOM OF FEAR", which is an original track, and the hidden item is the Moai. The boss is Menace from Dawn of Sorrow, and his theme music is "Piercing Battle Fury" from the same game. Notable items you can obtain here include Chaos Rings, Heaven Swords, and Nebula.
  • Chapter Four: Esquisse of Violence: Based on the City of Haze, the Nation of Fools, and the Master's Keep from Portrait of Ruin. Music is "Gaze Up At The Darkness" from same game, and the hidden item is Goemon. The boss is Brauner from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and his theme music is "Esquisse of Violence" from the same game. Notable items you can obtain here include Daybreak, the Alucard Sword, Feather Gear, Orlox's Suit, Gold Rings, and Gungner.
  • Chapter Five: Song of the Unslakable Blade: Based on the Clock Towers from all three DS games (Cursed Clock Tower, Tower Of Death, and Mechanical Tower). Music is "Ebony Wings" from Order of Ecclesia, and the hidden item is Vic Viper. The boss is Death in his Order of Ecclesia form, and his room is based on the Skeleton Cave from the same game. His theme music is "Symphony of Battle", also from the same game. Notable items you can obtain here include the Holy Veil, Death's Robe, Death Scythe, Ancient Mail, and Berserker Mail.
  • Chapter Six: Come, Sweet Hour of Death: Based on Ecclesia, Castle Entrance, Library, and Final Approach from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Music is "The Colossus" from the same game, and the hidden item is Konami Man. The boss is Dracula, using all three of his forms from Symphony of the Night, and he has two themes for his first two phases and his last one: "Order of the Demon" from Order of Ecclesia, and a reprise of "Dance of Illusions" taken from The Dracula X Chronicles. Notable items you can obtain here include Dracula's Tunic, Minerva Mail, Simon's Plate, Winged Boots, the Claimh Solais, and the Valmanway (formerly known as the Crissaegrim).

DLC Chapters

  • Chapter Seven: Beauty, Desire, Situation Dire (DLC for 360 version only; available at the start in the PS3 version): Based on the Sandy Grave from Portrait of Ruin. Music is "Hail from the Past" from the same game, and the hidden item is Vick 13. The boss is Astarte is Portrait of Ruin, and her theme music is "Piercing Silence" from the same game. Was released on September 29, 2010. Notable items you can obtain here include the Robe Decollete, Badelaire, the Royal Crown, Winged Boots, and Miser Rings.
  • Chapter Eight: The One Who Is Many: Based on the Underground Caverns, Abandoned Pit, and Catacombs from Symphony of the Night. Music is "The Lost Portrait" from the same game, and the hidden item is the Lucky Cat. The boss is Legion from Symphony of the Night and Portrait of Ruin, and its theme music is "Poetic Death", better known as "Death's Ballad" from Symphony of the Night. Was released on January 12, 2011. Notable items you can obtain here include Simon's Cloak, Apollonian Rings, Artemisian Rings, Impervious Helms, and Globus.
  • Chapter Nine: Lord of Flies: Based on the Castle Entrance, Alchemy Laboratory, and Marble Gallery from Symphony of the Night. Music is "Castle Dracula" from the same game, and the hidden item is Twinbee. The boss is Beelzebub from Symphony of the Night, and his theme music is "The Horde's Festival", better known as "Festival of Servants" from the same game. Was released on January 19, 2011. Notable items you can obtain here include the Daikoku and Benten Raiments, Alucard Sword +1, Kaiser Knuckle +1, Acerbatus, Philosopher's Stones, and Sonic Boots.
  • Chapter Ten: Origins: Based on all the levels from the original Castlevania. Music is "Vampire Killer" from the same game, and the hidden item is an 8-bit Crown. All enemies and bosses are in their original 8-bit sprites, and you can even unlock the original eight-bit music after beating the level. The bosses are R. Phantom Bat, R. Queen Medusa, R. Mummy Man, R. The Creature, R. Grim Reaper, and R. The Count. The first five do not have themes, but upon reaching the staircase to Retro Dracula's room, the music changes to "Nothing to Lose" from the first game. Was released January 26, 2011. Notable items you can obtain here include Retro Gear (Helm, Armor, Boots, and Cape), Valmanway +1, Dextro Custos, Sinestro Custos, and Claimh Solais +1.
  • Chapter Eleven: The Legend of Fuma: Based on Getsu Fuma Den. Music is "Go! Getsu Fuma", and the hidden item is the Facade Card. The boss is Ryukotsuki (literally "Dragon Bone Demon") from the same game, and his theme music bears his namesake and is also from the same game. Was released February 2, 2011. Notable items you can obtain here include the Ebisu and Bishamon Raiments, Luminatio, Muramasa +1, Yasutsuna +1, and the Fuma Gear (Helmet, Armor, and Greaves), along with the rare gear from Chapter 2 Hard if you play on Normal and the rare gear from Chapter 3 Hard if you play on Hard.

Besides characters and stages, there have also been 2 music packs of five songs each. If you want more information on the music in this game, check out this link.


Harmony of Despair provides examples of:

  • After Boss Recovery: After killing one of the mini-bosses in Chapter 11, you get a slice of Pizza to recover some health. On Hard mode, a sufficiently geared up person will recover about one hit's worth of damage, but it's something.
  • A.I. Breaker: Astarte will attack at whatever location you were last at, but thanks to the overall slowness of some of her attacks, the fact that she walks around slowly between attacks and she's human-sized and thus easily jumped over, you can just jump over any of her attacks, stand still until she finishes, jump over her again and watch her slowly march where you were and attack thin air. You can easily have her facing the wrong way for most of the battle, making her relatively easy to kill since she has no attacks that hit behind her besides Temptation. However, this does tend to bite you in the ass in multiplayer since there are more than one target for her to attack and you can't tell who she's aiming for unless the entire team manages to stay on one side of her.
  • Artistic License – Physics: The Acceleration Glitch and all that it can do.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Menace, the boss of the third chapter, and Beelzebub, boss of the ninth chapter.
  • Badass Boast: When revived, Shanoa says "Hell could never hold me."
  • Battle Boomerang: Jonathan's Boomerang and the classic Cross.
  • Bishōnen Line: Dracula goes from a giant demon to back to himself (albeit one sitting on a monstrous throne) in the final phase of the battle against him. Applies even more if you play as Soma, the reincarnation of Dracula, meaning that Dracula is essentially fighting against himself.
  • Bookends: In a fitting way for the series, the final (non-Fuma) chapter ends with a recreation of the original game.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • Energy Flow and the Witch's soul. Sure it's not that strong, but it goes through walls, homes in on enemies and is holy elemental, allowing you to kill possible threats before they become an issue.
    • The vertical range on Charlotte and Yoko's weapons is surprisingly useful when dealing with multiple enemies and projectiles. They can even go through some floors.
    • All of the "R." subweapons and spells turn their regular versions into this.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: DLC character Getsu Fuma comes equipped with the Samurai Plate, a piece of (male only) armor that normally can't be found until halfway through Hard Mode. Simon also comes with a Bible, Cross and Holy Water, helping the other whip users get started with decent skills. DLC Chapters 7-11 are also available immediately, rather than having to be unlocked sequentially like Chapters 2-6. And since you keep any treasures you find even if you die, it's possible to go into one of the DLC levels and make a mad dash to the first few chests before you're killed, scoring some excellent gear before even playing Chapter 1.
  • Bragging Rights Reward:
    • The secret items in each stage. Also extends to leader boards since they only exist to provide a large point bonus.
    • The Yatsusuna+1 and Muramasa+1 are only obtainable from Ryukotsuki, the hardest boss by a long shot, on hard mode, and they're not common by any stretch of the imagination, especially on the 360.
  • Bullet Hell: Death spams scythes, Beelzebub spams flies, Dracula spams lasers, Astarte spams hearts, R. The Count spams fireballs...
  • Calling Your Attacks: Quite a bit of it. Dual Crush techniques, Alucard's Dark Arts, pretty much everything Charlotte does...
  • Cast from Hit Points: Equipping the Astral Ring allows you to do this.
  • Character Select Forcing: If you want the best scores for certain stages, you'll have to use Julius to get past flame jets safely in a few stages. As for the best times, you'll be stuck with either Shanoa if there's plenty of Magnes points, Soma if you can abuse the Yorick and/or Puppet Master souls well or Richter if there's the space to spam his Flying Kick.
  • Cherry Tapping:
    • Menace only takes 1 damage if you don't hit its weak points. Ignoring them can make killing him take a while.
    • It's also how most of the cast levels their hunter skills. Every hit give that skill 1 experience point, with higher amounts with Master Rings and on Hard.
  • Chest Monster: Mimics are back, and they sometimes show up in place of the brown chests.
  • Colossus Climb: Menace is easily the biggest boss in the game, to the point that you and your buddies have to utilize a few well-placed platforms, unless you knock him on his ass with an even better placed bone hammer. (He's just as big in Dawn of Sorrow, except there's no hammer, more platforms, and you can fly in several ways by the time you face him.)
  • Combination Attack: The Dual Crushes from Portrait of Ruin make an encore appearance, with most of them being new to the series. Of special note: pairing up Jonathan and Charlotte is the only way to recreate the Thousand Blades attack, while having Alucard and Soma initiate a Dual Crush results in none other than Dracula's Demonic Megiddo (albeit on a smaller scale). While previously they were Awesome, but Impractical due to their large MP cost but far lower damage than their appearance would suggest, they've been greatly improved in the update, both in damage and lowered MP cost, making them a viable option to use against bosses.
  • Competitive Balance: On December 20, the game received a large overhaul in both netcode and gameplay. Here's some examples of what was changed:
    • Several weapons had their damage outputs and properties strengthened and weakened, respectively. Of note is the Blender nerf. Not only was the Yasutsuna's damage output decreased, but its multiple hit ratio has been drastically reduced, making the Valmanways a much more preferred method. The Valmanways, however, also deliver hits slower, but the rate remains the same. The Alucard Sword and the Muramasa, two largely overlooked weapons in favor of the Blenders, have now been massively buffed in damage output so that people would use them instead of Valmanways and Yasutsunas.
    • A lot of subweapons and spells are now stronger, got more elements (such as Yoko's Holy Flames and Holy Lightning now also doing holy damage) and require a smaller amount of MP to use, making them much more effective in lieu of attacking.
    • Charlotte's Infinite Healing now requires a hell of a lot of spell grinding and the proper gear. Problem is, anyone who manages to pull it off will usually only match the cost, if they don't just barely exceed it, meaning a Charlotte with enough INT can still use Infinite Healing in multiplayer, but at best will only be able to heal herself for 1 or 2 HP at a time outside of potions. Still makes SSJ Charlotte insanely impractical.
    • Dead players in Multiplayer are automatically revived when a gold chest is opened, so everyone can get it's contents. Skeletons can also duck and slide so they can better dodge enemies.
    • Netcode has been updated so that the connection strength display actually works now (before the update, it was always stuck at 3 full bars), and it is now possible to reopen the game in the lobby so that new players can join if someone quits or if more players are wanted, instead of having to start over and recreate the same lobby. The menus have also been updated in accordance.
  • Crisis Crossover: Alucard, Jonathan Morris, Charlotte Aulin, Soma Cruz, and Shanoa are the starting characters, with Julius Belmont, Yoko Belnades, Maria Renard, Richter Belmont, Simon Belmont, and Getsu Fuhma currently downloadable.
  • Death is Cheap:
    • In multiplayer, you can still go around as a skeleton after you're killed (and continue doing so), meaning the game won't end until the last player actually dies. However, there are a few problems with being a skeleton: not only are you weak, limited in mobility, can't interact with switches or treasure chests or get the latter's contents and can only attack through throwing your bones, but each time you get killed as a skeleton, three minutes are removed from the timer and you respawn wherever you were killed, which might be halfway across the level if you tried following another player who was making their way to a Water Of Life and got hit by a stray attack in the progress. But still...
    • Being reduced to a skeleton is not as much of a handicap anymore thanks to the update, which gave them the ability to crouch and slide, meaning the only general action they don't have access to is jump kicks... but then again, Charlotte and Yoko don't have them either. Any skeletonized players are also now automatically revived when someone opens the boss chest, meaning they won't be screwed out of a possibly rare item if nobody has any leftover Waters of Life after the boss fight.
  • Degraded Boss:
  • Denial of Diagonal Attack: Semi-averted by some characters, but Julius Belmont averts the trope fully, in the style of Super Castlevania IV. Plus, he can whip-swing.
  • Distracted by the Sexy:
    • Dracula's final form has a special heart attack which can brainwash female characters if it hits them: against males, it just does large amounts of damage. Charmed females can hit other players and be hit by other players, and killing a charmed player counts as an achievement, but it isn't particularly smart to do it otherwise, since revive items are scarce and it wears off on its own. In single-player, being charmed just renders you unable to do anything for a fairly long time, though given Dracula and Astarte can deal large amounts of damage either way it is a serious problem.
    • Astarte can do the same thing, except for males. And since the majority of the characters are male, this would pose a problem if only it were less easily telegraphed and the fact that you can dodge it with relative ease if you're either outside the boss door or if you time your jump right and you're right on top of her while doing so.
    • If a player holds Up as Shanoa to absorb a glyph too long, she lets out a sarcastic huff as if the player is just trying to Male Gaze at her epic Sexy Backless Outfit.
  • Dungeon Bypass:
    • Soma can use a combination of moving platforms, a tall vertical wall, Puppet Master soul, and a well-timed double jump to use the game's collision detection against itself and glitch his way through a solid ceiling to reach the other side of a normally one-way door and bypass a very large part of the otherwise marathon-length chapter 10. He can then, of course, flip the switch next to the door and let the rest of the team join in on the fun.
    • Soma + Yorick + Puppet Master + lots of jumping = zipping straight up to R. The Count's room from the beginning of the stage.
    • Soma's Yorick soul can lead to Chapter 4 lasting about only 2 minutes when used at the right times.
    • Julius' Omnia Vanitas and (prior to the patch) Charlotte's Heal spell allows him/her to move through flame jets and Final Guards with no problem.
  • Dynamic Difficulty: As can largely be expected, the more players there are, the more HP enemies have.
  • Earn Your Fun: If you ever hope to get the most out of this game, be prepared to grind and farm for rare drops from bosses for hours on end.
  • Easter Egg:
    • There is a very, very, VERY rare unique voice clip for when Soma is the first one to initiate the fight against Dracula on Stage 6. It's somewhere along the lies of "Huh, never thought I'd be fighting myself."
    • In Chapter 9, after getting across the drawbridge, there is a platform next to the Dullahan. If you attack it, it reveals a secret area with a green chest. This area is the entrance to the Underground Prison in the Saturn version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
    • Chapter 10 contains all of the secret money bags that were in the original Castlevania game.
  • Elite Tweak: Due to its utter lack of traditional experience levels and subsequent reliance on random drops and treasure chests, Harmony of Despair is all about elite tweaking. And the methods for tweaking your elites can be determined by very frustrating random variables.
  • Equipment-Based Progression: Characters don't gain levels in the traditional way and most of their stats come from better gear, although characters with fixed main weapons still gain more attack for them via mastery of their subweapons, which can and will take a good while.
  • Excuse Plot: Basically, Castlevania's manifesting itself within the pages of a book, and you have to stop it. The development team outright state it doesn't have a plot to begin with.
  • Fan Remake: Initially beginning as a port, fans have been working on porting the game to PC via the Unity engine, including new stages, enemies, bosses, and playable characters to boot.
    • The new stages include "Muddled Bloodline" and "Stupid Disciples", both with a new boss. The former is a fight with Whip's Memory in a stage based on the Royal Chapel and Coliseum. The latter has three bosses all from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Arthroverta, Brachyura, and Barlowe, all in a stage amalgamating areas from the game.
    • The new characters are the Old Axe Armor, making her Promoted to Playable instead of a placeholder skin for DLC characters, and Albus making use of his abilities from his game of origin. Due to not being characters in the original, OAA uses clips of Shanoa to fill in for her mute status, while Albus reuses clips from his origin to fill in for his chat bubbles. Barlowe does the same during the fight, using a different Punctuated Pounding for if Shanoa is not fighting him.
    • Along with the previously mentioned bosses, an alternate Stage 6 can be accessed which uses a different fight against Dracula, one borrowing from Order of Ecclesia. All of his voice clips from the fight are also lifted from that game, with some alternate clips thrown in as well.
    • Due to the original creator of the port dropping work on it altogether (either out of exhaustion or fear of a C&D from Konami), as well as not releasing stages 9-11 as well as the missing Simon, Yoko, and Fuma, the port has now taken on the identity of a remake in every sense of the word.
  • Forced Level-Grinding: If a character needs Master Rings to level their skills, then their weapons improve alongside their non-DLC skills. This is highly important for everyone aside from Yoko. To make this matter worse, skill level 8 is about a third of the way to skill level 9. Happy grinding.
  • Frankenstein's Monster: Appears as an enemy in chapter four and as a boss in chapter eleven.
  • Grandfather Paradox: Soma (Dracula's reincarnation) is able to gain dominance on Dracula's soul. It's a damn good thing the game has no story. Hell, he can do the same thing to the 8-Bit Retro Count!
  • Guest Fighter: Getsu Fuma.
  • Guide Dang It!: While the chest drop list is a given, most of Charlotte's spells fall right into this since it's hard to figure out what's a spell and what isn't. The worst is Astarte's Delta Spark and R. Grim Reaper's R. Deathscythe. The two spells don't seem to be spells (Delta Spark doesn't even seem sealable and R. Deathscythe just looks like standard Death sickles), they're DLC skills so you can fully level her up without these skills, and you'll almost never see them online.
  • Hard Mode Perks: In Hard mode, not only will the treasure chests will provide much better equipment, but some equipment that's only obtainable from gold chests in Normal can also be gotten in purple chests on Hard.
  • Hitbox Dissonance: Richter and the Skeleton that you turn into when you die stand slightly lower than everyone else. While this normally would be meaningless, a certain attack formation used by Beelzebub will hit Richter and the Skeleton in what is otherwise a blind spot unless you duck, while it'll completely miss everyone else.
  • Idiot Ball:
    • There are a couple of weapons available for Alucard and Soma, the Yasutsuna and the Valmanway, that allow you to attack while moving, because they don't have an attack animation — they just make some slashing effects happen in front of the character. Granted, the Yasutsuna only works that way when used by Alucard, but the Valmanway works the same for both. While seasoned players will no doubt look at this and think they can get many attacks in while still remaining agile, the far more common response is that people just forget to dodge entirely, because they can deal damage as fast as they can mash the attack button(s). If it weren't for this, they'd be straight up in Game-Breaker territory.
    • Smarter players also tend to pair the said weapons with Berserker Mail, which doubles both the damage you deal and take, since this is a significant boost to the otherwise low damage one of the said weapons does per hit: since not getting hit at all is vastly preferable both in regards to getting higher scores and better items from bosses, the doubled damage isn't as much of a handicap as it'd seem.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: Well, you can't get much more literal than having better versions of best weapons of several weapon classes with better stats that are just named <original name>+1, can you?
  • Infinity -1 Sword: There's quite a few, and thanks to the patch, they're viable. Most notably Soma's Longius and Alucard's Daybreak are easily obtainable weapons with good attack power and, for the latter, comes with a very nice special skill.
  • Instant Gravestone: In multiplayer, dying creates a tombstone which spawns a skeleton.
  • Item Amplifier: The Ankh item increases the effect of healing items when equipped.
  • Kaizo Trap: Until you open the gold chest, the level isn't over. While getting yourself offed while doing a clean sweep of the rest of the level can happen, sometimes the bosses can out you even after they died:
    • In chapter 9, if some of Beelzebub's flies are still around after its defeat, they can still kill you.
    • As can R. The Count's projectile spirals if you kill him while he's in middle of using one, but it's a lot less likely to happen since you're generally too busy evading it to attack him then.
    • Brauner's painting monsters stick around even after defeating him. Woe betide any gamer who has to deal with his poison-demon-things after the fact.
  • Kill One, Others Get Stronger: This is how the three mini-bosses in the Getsu Fuuma Den level in work: when you kill one of them, the others gain additional attacks, which is signified by the dead miniboss' soul floating next to the alive one(s). You also need to kill all three to open the door to the actual boss' room, who summons the spirits of all the minibosses to attack you in his final form.
  • Large Ham: The Puppet Master ("YOU, TOO, SHALL BE MY PUPPET!") and Brauner ("THIS...IS ART!!!").
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Any player that charges into a boss room without waiting for everyone else, which can be devastating if said boss is the Puppet Master.
  • Lethal Joke Character: The 8-bit characters may initially seem like this, but both of them possess strength comparable to other characters:
    • Simon's whip ends up being just as strong as Richter's with length comparable to all other whip users, and he attacks the fastest out of all whip users in the game as well as having an always-available ranged attack, and he can use all the same subweapons as well.
    • Meanwhile, Fuma's sword swing has the shortest range in the game, but the flames that shoot out with every swing give him the largest normal attack coverage in the entire game, and at pointblank range, all 3 of them hit the enemy along with the blade, giving him respectable damage output. His unique subweapons also have plenty of uses and include a powerful piercing attack, a powerful bomb that spreads in 5 directions when it explodes, and a rapidly-moving wall of shurikens for large enemies or getting rid of hard to hit small ones in his way. His taunt can also cause minor damage to enemies right above him and his Double Jump also damages anything he comes in contact with, which may end up saving the day, especially when fighting the boss from his own game. And finally, both of them are smaller targets than the other characters, meaning they'll have an easier time avoiding some attacks.
  • Lethal Joke Item:
    • Soma's Fish Head soul. "Throwing fish skulls? What a stupid abilit- Wait, that just did how much damage?!"
    • The Cape of Invisibility. Sure you can barely see yourself, but in Survival mode, neither can the other players.
  • Level Grinding: Subverted; unlike the Metroidvania-style games, no traditional form of leveling is involved. That being said, all subweapons get stronger with either repeated use or collecting more copies of them, which in turn increases that character's base stats, and in Charlotte's case, upgrades the range and coverage of her normal attack.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Soma starts out with weaker stats and fewer options than everyone else... however, since every enemy can drop a soul for him, and these can be leveled up to level 10 by getting them repeatedly, he has the potential for far more options than everyone else, including game-breaking combinations that make him the strongest character in the game.
  • Luck Stat: Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this game compared to other 'Vanias. Finally, Konami has officially revealed that Luck DOES actually affect the rare drops you get...however:
    • Playing the game on emulator reveals that the chest contents are already determined once you start the stage, meaning any luck-boosting items you pick up along the way don't do anything to change your luck for those (however, all enemy drops including Soma's souls and Charlottes spells are still affected). The upside to this is that you can go into the stage with a luck build and then switch into a set for better survivability/DPS.
  • Mega Manning: Soma, Charlotte, and Shanoa can all do this, in different ways.
  • Menu Time Lockout: Averted. Once that 30-minute timer starts, there is absolutely no way to stop it. Whether it's pausing, fiddling with your inventory at the Grimoire, everything keeps going in real time. Yes, that means the gameplay keeps going, so if you're pausing, you'd best make sure no enemies are nearby. Granted, this is a necessary concession for online play, but it can be annoying in single-player.
  • Metroidvania: Subverted; even though the rooms are laid out like previous 2D Castlevania titles, they now play out as a single joined stage, where enemies can travel and attack between rooms. Think of it as a perfect mixture of Classicvania and Metroidvania.
  • Money for Nothing:
    • Played straight with the shop, as the stuff there hardly matters once you start finding all the really good items in the field, thus relegating gold to buying Super Potions and Mana Prisms.
    • Averted if you find the Miser Ring, which increases your attack stat by 1 for every million gold you have.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • Every character has 2 quotes they say if they're the ones to land the last hit on the boss. Guess what Richter's are? Yup, you got it: "Die, monster!" and "You don't belong in this world!".
    • A lot of the other dialogue is also referenced. In the demo, a skit with either Jonathan and Charlotte or Soma and Alucard will play. Alucard says "I'm interested in this.", his original line when asking for something from the Master Librarian. The fans finally got what they wanted, essentially. New voices, same old hilariously bad dialogue.
  • Nintendo Hard:
    • Limited healing items? Alucard's Soul Steal not as effective as it was before? No save points that give full HP/MP mid stage? A 30-minute time limit for your exploration of each stage with no ability to pause?!? Yeah, this is going to suck for some people.
    • Chapter 10, based on the entire original Castlevania, is this regardless of difficulty. The map is huge, requiring a lot of time to get through (unless a Soma glitches their way through the ceiling in the room with moving platforms and opens the door for the rest of the team, allowing them to bypass around 60% of the level), treasure chests are in difficult to reach places (including the blue ones that have the Water of Life in multiplayer), and both of Retro Dracula's forms can have new insane attack patterns and tricks up their sleeves.
    • Hard Chapter 11 has topped Chapter 10 in terms of difficulty. First, you have to beat all 3 minibosses before fighting the actual boss, which takes quite a while and will cost you a lot of health (and Super Potions) and each one you defeat powers up the other 2 and makes their attacks harder to avoid. Then, when you get to the boss and kill his first and second forms, he turns into a giant dragon skeleton...thing that suddenly starts filling the screen with fireballs that can either curse, poison, or petrify you. Oh, and you can't hit him multiple times, either. You have to wait until his heart is exposed, and even then you only have a limited window of time to attack. Ridiculous.
  • No Fair Cheating: On Hard Chapters 6 and 10, both Draculas have measures to prevent idling at the boss door. Normal Dracula will summon pillars of fire outside the door if he detects someone standing near the entrance after transforming into his second form. Retro Dracula, however, is less forgiving. If he detects someone outside the door and the one person fighting him is dead, he summons a HUGE fire spiral that goes across the whole stage and cannot be dodged or avoided. And it goes on forever and will kill you in 3 hits. Death does this as well, summoning random scythes around the boss area and other players until they get back into the boss room.
  • No Plot? No Problem!: Some of the playable characters' lives are centuries apart, and one is the reincarnation of two of the bosses (who he can absorb the souls of). Nobody cares.
  • Not the Intended Use:
    • The Yorick soul is meant to be a weak projectile that can be hit into enemies; however, most players use the Yorick soul to act as a double-jump of sorts, by launching the projectile upwards and then jump-kicking off the projectile (considering that this was how most players ended up using the Yorick soul in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, it's probably an Ascended Glitch). The Puppeteer soul is also often used to trigger glitches that can send Soma (the only character who can use the Souls) great distances quickly.
    • Besides online multiplayer, the PS3 version of the game also features local multiplayer, which in addition to its intended use is also played solo (on a large enough HD screen so you can still see the stage while at max distance zoom) in order to more quickly farm chest contents.
  • Nostalgia Level: The stages are fashioned after previous entries in the Castlevania franchise. Especially Chapters 10 & 11, which use 8-bit sprites, and with Simon and Fuma, being nostalgic characters in themselves, using 8-bit sprites and sounds in all.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder:
    • The Berserk Mail tanks your defenses so much that almost any enemy can kill you in one hit on Hard mode.
    • Played with with the Ancient Mail, where it forces all damage to shave off 20% health, turning you into a 5/6 hit wonder.
  • One-Winged Angel:
    • Dracula, as always. The battle against him features him using all three of his Symphony of the Night forms.
    • Ryukotsuki has three forms as well, with the last one being one tough cookie.
    • To a lesser extent, Legion, who'll actually attack you once it looses its outer shell.
  • Peninsula of Power Leveling:
    • Legion and Beelzebub for multihit skills with good range (eg. Bible, Acerbatus, Holy Lightning). Menace for single hit skills (eg. Knives, Hymn, Grando).
    • If you're online though, Survival Hard is easily the best way to level skills, since dying instantly revives you with full HP and MP, gives you Gergoth to fight right away, and only lasts 3 minutes, so you can start over instantly.
    • Playing offline multiplayer on the PS3 forces everyone to only use Player 1's account. However, any items and experience anyone gets is tied to Player 1's account, which means you can get up to 4 items from a chest just by having multiple controllers plugged in.
  • Pink Girl, Blue Boy:
    • Upon death in multiplayer, guys get tombstones with moss, girls get wooden crosses with floral wreaths.
    • Both get ornate Japanese gravestones with spirit flames flying around them if they die enough times, Getsu gets them by default.
  • Poison Mushroom:
    • You can pick up a poisonous mushroom and a rotten can of food; both will do damage and poison you. They're also dropped from enemies and one is even hidden in a wall.
    • One of the more annoying points in Chapter 2 has a room full of Moldy Corpses that can drop said poisonous mushroom. On multiplayer, there's an iron maiden and a box in said room. If you want to put the box in front of the iron maiden, hope the enemies didn't drop a poisonous mushroom, or you'll have to pick it up.
  • Power Equals Rarity: The best stuff is all mostly highly rare item drops from bosses and purple chests.
  • Power Makes Your Voice Deep: Dracula's voice deepens as he transforms into his final form in chapter six.
  • Randomly Drops:
    • In full force here. What's more, there are different theories about how luck works, leading to a severe case of Guide Dang It! among the community until the game was able to be played on emulator (and even then the only thing that has been confirmed so far is that the chest contents are generated upon loading the stage, not upon opening the chest).
    • Shanoa's weapon glyphs are mostly found in gold treasure chests, and it's random if you get one or not. Be ready for a lot of frustration if you're not happy with the default rapier...
    • Jonathan's subweapon drops are random. Note that he doesn't improve unless he levels said subweapons.
    • Charlotte's spells are both acquired and upgraded through a random-drop based system, with the random element shifted from whether you get the spell you're looking for or something else entirely to whether the enemy you get the spell from feels like using the attack in question, and whether you need to absorb 1 or 1000 of their projectiles in question to ultimately learn or upgrade the spell. Like Jonathan, she doesn't improve unless she gets more spells, but it tends to just rely on persistence with her. At least it's easier to actually get spells with her than it is to get certain abilities for other characters. note 
    • As in his original game, Soma gains new abilities from souls randomly dropped by enemies. For normal enemies this is mostly a matter of grinding; unfortunately, the best souls are generally boss souls, which require beating the entire stage just for a chance to get them. And like normal souls, you have to get them ten times to fully level them up!
  • Random Drop Booster:
    • Anything that increases your luck stat, technically. The Princess Coat and the Thief Ring are the most notable, because they increase your luck stat by 10.
    • The Soul Eater Ring boosts the effect the luck stat has on getting souls by 50% each.
    • The Daikoku Raiment makes higher denominations of money drop from candles more often. Combined with Gold Rings, you can make a ton of money just from said candles.
    • There's also the Ebisu Raiment, which makes items of higher rarity drop more often from chests.
  • Rare Random Drop: Almost every rare item from gold chests, even on Normal and especially on the 360 version. The most notable however is the Miser Ring, the main reason you'll be killing Astarte en masse.
  • Say My Name: One character pressing the "Dual Crush" button near another usually results in them calling the other character's name.
  • Sequence Break:
    • Soma can skip large parts of stages or get into places by himself via careful application of the Puppet Master and Yorick souls, plus drop kicking. Shanoa and to a lesser extent Julius can also sequence break, but only if there are Magnes orbs they can hold onto.
    • The whole idea of multi-player, besides teaming up to kill things and grind for better gear/souls/spells, is to split up and open doors for each other (or be living platforms for additional drop kicks), shortcutting a large amount of side- and back-tracking.
  • Super Title 64 Advance: The game is part of the trend of releasing games online with the HD suffix (Harmony of Despair).
  • The Swarm: How Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies attacks; the flies devouring him appear to circle him, then fly at you after a while.
  • Timed Mission: Each level has a time limit of 30 minutes, shaving off 3 minutes whenever a dead ally in Multiplayer dies again. For the longer and/or linear levels (Chapters 6, 10, & 11 come to mind), this is actually very unforgiving.
  • Time Travel: Shanoa's game takes place sometime in the 1800s, Richter and Maria come from 1792, Jonathan and Charlotte are from 1944, and Soma, Julius and Yoko are from 2035, so it kinda goes without saying. Alucard's year of origin isn't stated, but it doesn't really matter much, since he's effectively immortal.
  • Took a Level in Badass: "Psshh. Retro Dracula? Like this is going to be any kind of challen-Did he just fire underarching fireballs? Did he just Back Dash into me? DID HE JUST UNLEASH BULLET HELL AGAINST ME?! DID HE JUST CHARGE AT ME WHILE FLYING?!"
  • The Voiceless: Simon and Fuma do not speak at all, thanks to being 8-bit. Simon does have a grunting sound, however, but that's from Castlevania as well.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss:
    • Gergoth. If you haven't picked up that the stage is one big area and enemies and attacks aren't just confined to one room, you'll overextend yourself once Gergoth falls down and forces you to fight him with a bunch of Minotaurs, Axe Armors, and Fleamen.
    • Puppet Master. He's there to teach you that doing more damage isn't everything; if you don't take the precautions necessary to defeat him before going after him, you will get your party killed.
    • And so on. Each boss has a gimmick unique to them and usually involves more than just using massive damage to overcome.
  • The X of Y: Used for the subtitle.

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