Castlevania Judgment Wii Review

Castlevania Judgment

Wii Review
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami
Released: November 18, 2008

Konami has done a great job recently with the latest Castlevania games, especially with the releases on the Nintendo DS.  They have attempted something new this time out with Castlevania Judgment on the Nintendo Wii, as it is a one-on-one fighting game.

I was a bits skeptical when I heard about Castlevania Judgment and what it was all going to be about.  This was due to the fact that I was afraid that it was going to be just a knock-off, an average fighting game that would carry the franchise tag in order to do a little bit better at retail.

I was optimistic though only due to the fantastic side-scrolling releases, as well as the 3D releases from the franchise we have been treated to recently.

Castlevania Judgment is the brand new release on the Nintendo Wii that allows you to play as up to 14 of the legendary Castlevania characters.  In regards to controls, you can play with a GameCube controller, the Classic Controller, as well as the Wii Remote and Nunchuk combination.

Unfortunately though, my skepticism ended up winning out as Castlevania Judgment ends up being very underwhelming when it is all said and done.

The game starts off by teaching you all of the various fighting mechanics, the majority of which you can carry out with the use of the Wii Remote.  The controls actually work pretty well with the game as you can get a lot of the attacks down and be able to pull them off with great ease.

If you have played any fighting games as of late you can pretty much know what to expect here as it is a lot about timing and being able to pull off attacks, evade attacks, etc.  The whole fighting system is very well-done but overall does not really innovate in any way that would make it stand above other big releases such as the new Mortal Kombat or something such as this.

The biggest issue I had with the fighting in the game though is that the characters are not balanced in any such way.  Some of the characters are very strong, while others are extremely weak and pretty useless to be honest.  This hurts a lot of the appeal of trying to get used to using all types of fighters.

In regards to the visuals, the whole game actually looks pretty respectable in the animations and attention to detail.  Over time though things do begin to look pretty bland, lacking variety over time.

The audio is not quiet as impressive as some of the visuals are, but the sound effects and such are still pretty solid throughout, with some nice remixes.

The game has some nice single-player modes, but nothing all that deep.  The real fun for me came in the online modes which allow you to hop online and try out your skills against the rest of the world.

Castlevania fanatics may want to rent this one to test out the fighting with all of the legendary characters and such.  Overall though when you look at the entire package, this is not one which I can recommend to the masses as it just lacks too much depth and originality.  There are better fighters out there than Castlevania Judgment.

Graphics: 7.8 The visuals are pretty impressive with some nice effects and animations.  More variety could have helped it though.

Sound: 7.5 The sound effects are decent as is the music that goes along with the fighting.

Gameplay: 7.0 The controls on the Wii work pretty well, but the characters are not balanced.

Replay Value: 6.0 The single-player stuff is not very deep, online play saves it a bit.

Final Score: 6.8

Do you have a product that you would like featured on dBTechno? If so, drop us a line at vicb@dbtechno.com