The problem with Castlevania Judgment

If you followed my progress you might have noticed that I have taken a fair share of influence from Castlevania Judgment for the Wii. Tonight I would like to take the opportunity to talk about Castlevania Judgment itself. Mainly the biggest problem I have with the game.

You see, screw the complaints about the odd fighting engine, the characters being redesigned by artist of Death Note (which resulted in Shanoa looking like a nun and Dracula sporting udders), the good guys being bigger jerks than the forces of evil, alternate costumes just being palette swaps and the overall game not feeling overly polished. Those things didn't bother me and being given the opportunity to play as Cornell from Legacy of Darkness made up for a great deal.  No, the greatest evil in this game isn't represented by Dracula, Galamoth or the Time Reaper, but by Maria Renard.

Yes, 12-year old Maria Renard from Rondo of Blood.

Her character design (what's that supposed to be anyway? Pink BDSM loli?) and voice acting alone make me want to scratch her entire existence from the disc, but then there's her moveset. Most of the time she's just randomly flying around the screen, being lunged at her opponent by the owl in her staff. Her special attack has her falling to the ground so her owl can do all the work for her. Every hit she makes sprinkles Microsoft Clip Art all over the screen, and she NEVER SHUTS UP.

So it's a fighting game and in true fighting game fashion there's a story mode which details the motivation of why the character in question is there. We are introduced to newcomer Aeon who provides the plot device as to why people from different time periods can interact, and from there they just kind of have a go at each other until the most powerful warrior is chosen who will attempt to defeat the Time Reaper.

Now Simon Belmont takes the opportunity to test his abilities against the legendary three warriors from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. Shanoa just wants to get out of the Time Rift as fast as possible to continue her mission to hunt down Albus. Cornell seeks someone to help him control the werewolf form. Dracula obviously seeks revenge for his many defeats (yet because of the greater threat of Galamoth he also seems to be the most reasonable of the playable characters).

Maria Renard's story and motivation? Beating up the other Castlevania girls because they have larger breasts than her. No, really, that's her story mode. We have the most annoying 12-year old on the planet running around seeking fights with both allies and enemies because she is insecure about her body image.

I mean seriously? Who thought this was a great idea? Did we really need to ruin a beloved Castlevania character (... even more) just so we could have extreme close ups of Sypha and Carmilla's boobs?

There's a lot of Castlevania characters that I would have liked to see in this game and it didn't have a ton of features anyway, but I would have seriously preferred not to have Maria at all.  

Entrance to Castlevania

One of the most obvious parts of the Forest of Silence I neglected so far was the actual entrance to Dracula's Castle.

Yeah, that really doesn't look good

I sloppily copied a brick texture over the old one and called it a day. I was perfectly aware that it didn't look good at all. I just hadn't gotten around to improve/fix it yet.

Konami/Eighting's
Castlevania Judgment (Wii)

Once again inspiration came in the form of Castlevania Judgment. Here's Carmilla in the Castle Gate stage. I realized very early on I couldn't duplicate this look of the castle with any degree of accuracy because the castle model and the setup of the textures simply do not allow for it. It did provide the overall starting point I wanted to base the new design on though.

I feel that originally the look of the two towers didn't mesh well with the main gate. It seems like the towers and the middle section had been built by two different builders. My intention was to put some consistency in the design.

The transition from tower to main gate still could have been done better, but this is easier said than done considering the entire tower consists of a single tiled texture. There is more variety on the main gate but it still has similar problems with the actual texture placement.

As seen from the Boss Battle area.

HUD

So I've been reworking the Heads-Up Display (again) somewhat. I didn't quite like the way the View section looked and the Status bar also needed some updating. I decided to take a few more looks at the menu screens and HUD of Castlevania Judgement for the Wii, as I had already based other portions of the HUD on it.

Konami/Eighting's
Castlevania Judgment (Wii)

The Health Bar and Special Attack Bar formed the inspiration for my version of Castlevania 64's Health Bar and Boss Bar (as can be seen at the bottom of this post).

The bar holding the name of the combatants seemed to be a decent starting point to base the View section on. So I went with that. Having a bar instead of just the text additionally provides the benefit of it looking more uniform.

I also reworked my previous Status/Blood meter by putting it in grayscale and putting the name of the condition in it to make its use more obvious.

And so here we have the current version of the HUD:

Underground Waterway

And yes, I'm taking some heavy liberties with the Underground Waterway because I think it's the ugliest level in the entire game. Once again I'm taking inspiration from Castlevania Judgment. When I'm done I intend to evoke a look similarly to the Crystal Cavern stage. Sadly I can't do anything about the depressing soundtrack.

Boss View