Konami Confirms Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for Nintendo DS

May. 15 8:25 PM by Lynxara

About six months ago, a series of screenshots claiming to be from an unnamed, upcoming Castlevania DS game surfaced. I thought about running them but decided against it, since the shots could be fake.

It turns out I was wrong. Those shots may well have been early and rough, but as this article from Nintendic points out, match surprisingly well with the shots shown off in the issue of Famitsu that announced the game.

More concrete details on the new Castlevania, titled Order of Eccelsia for the US market, appeared at the 2008 Konami Gamer's Day. Today GameSpot was able to confirm details about the game. It will consist of roughly 20 levels with varying environments, and amazingly, star a heroine named Shinoa.

While Dawn of Sorrow offered a playable heroine in a bonus mode and Portrait of Ruin offered both hero and heroine to play simultaneously (and two "heroines" in a bonus mode), Order of Ecclesia will be offering the first sole female protagonist the Castlevania series has seen since Castlevania Legends on the Game Boy.

For more gameplay details, check out ShackNews deceptively-named "Impressions" coverage of the game, which discusses the title's Glyph system in detail. Glyphs seem patterned a bit after Soma's abilities in Dawn of Sorrow, but different Glyphs can be bound together, and Shinoa will not be able to attack without using Glyphs. That means all offense in Order of Ecclesia is going to require careful MP management.

You can be sure that we'll have more Order of Ecclesia coverage coming-- I'm a huge Castlevania fan, and this game is everything I've wanted from the series for quite a few years now.