I’m beginning to seriously debate whether Final Fantasy is my favourite game series folks. I mean, yeah, Square’s RPG monolith continues to rumble onward spewing entertaining RPG’s for me to play every three years or so, but ever since I played my first Castlevania game about a decade ago (yeah, a bit late to the party) there’s been something about platform-hopping castle exploration that’s really tripped my trigger. The DS trio, of which Order of Ecclesia is the third part, has only gone on to deepen my love for all things ‘Vania.

OoE is not only a remarkably good game even by Castlevania standards, but also the first game in which the magical Dracula-slaying whip doesn’t rear its leathery head. Instead, you control tough chick Shanoa as she goes off on an adventure to retrieve three magical glyphs that, when reunited, will form an entity within her that will give her the power to destroy Dracula. As ever, things aren’t quite how they seem initially, and along the way there are plenty of twists to keep you on your toes.

Of course, the story has never really been the main focal point of Castlevania games whilst the platform adventuring most certainly has, and OoE nails it. You start off as a pretty bog-standard character with a limited ability set and, through defeating enemies and completing portions of the map, gain new attack powers and skills to allow you to venture further into the levels and progress. It’s classic, enjoyable Metroid-esque progression, with each new ability being given at just the right moment to make the thing feel like it flows particularly nicely as the difficulty curve heads upward.

That difficulty curve is, to put it mildly, challenging, but at the same point it never seems to be unfair. The run-of-the-mill enemies you face are tricky enough (especially those BLOODY CROWS), but the boss battles are amazingly punishing and task you with learning attack patterns and selecting the most appropriate selection of abilities from your ever-growing set to come out the other side still alive. There’s no other way to go about the game than to accept that, yeah, you’re going to die, and you’re going to die a lot. On the plus side, you get to fight a giant enemy crab and hit it for massive damage.

The fact that the game never becomes terribly annoying despite this points toward just how much fun it is, and a big part of this is collecting glyphs from around the maps to boost your character alongside the standard levelling-up process. Polishing off a number of normal bad guys will give you the chance to absorb some kind of ability from them, be it an attack such as the knights’ lance or the ability to summon little monsters to help your offensive onslaught. On a purely attack-based note, the options are plentiful, and each can be combined in the two available slots to create a number of powerful special attacks to unleash.

Elsewhere, the game often throws you ability glyphs that allow you to reach previously unreachable locations, such as the double jump or the ability to magnetically attach yourself to metallic objects scattered around the world. They’re introduced periodically enough so that you always have a good bit of exploring to do with your newfound powers before you start feeling like you’re running up a dead end.

The way the game progresses is slightly different to previous Castlevania titles in that rather than one big castle to search, you get a little world map containing around a dozen smaller locations that each host different enemy types and puzzles. Progression through is pretty linear as you go vampire hunting through one to the next, but you are also given a central town of which you must restore the kidnapped population on your travels, each of whom then go on to help you by making you potions, clothes and additional items in return for completing certain tasks or collecting enough of a certain item. It’s a great little RPG-tinged addition to proceedings, and on a personal level I found the map system made it easier for me to remember where certain enemy types and the like were as opposed to a large complicated building.

There’s so much more you can go on about that a proper in-depth review of Order of Ecclesia could end up taking over double what I have written out here, but at the end of the day all you need know is that it’s a fine, fine game with beautiful visuals, the usual jaunty soundtrack and tons and tons of hidden extras from an unlock at the end that allows you to play the game a completely different way to the usual Castlevania mid-point plot pivot. It’s difficult, sure, but it never feels unfair either. The best Castlevania ever? Possibly not. The best Castlevania on the DS? Debatable. A game that fans of the series should buy right away, no matter what the cost? You betcha.