Soul of Darkness is Gameloft’s attempt to copy the look and feel of a post-Rondo Castlevania game. And it does a decent job at that! But the review’s not over there, unfortunately. The game’s quite easy (with the exception of the one tedious dragon boss), and betrays its mobile phone origins with a limited scope and animations that don’t live up to the buttery smoothness of its inspirations.
You are Kale Belmont, whose girlfriend Lydia is targeted by Dracula Ritter the vampire. Lydia has amnesia because of course she does, and then there’s a twist which to be fair Castlevania never did: Lydia was a vampire all along. For as brief as the plot is, it’s not too terrible. An amusing feature after clearing the game is to take pictures with your DSi camera and insert your own face into the characters’ dialogue portraits.
The camera is also used at certain points in gameplay to give you a bonus based on the predominant colour of a picture you take. It’s a vestigial feature but harmless, as it’s not required. Other than that the DS does allow a map display on the bottom screen—big thumbs up, always appreciated—although the level design is pretty simple. This is following the older stage-based Castlevania format, but it does have pickups to boost your health or magic, and experience points to upgrade your weapons. Stages can be replayed to farm experience or find upgrades, but you really shouldn’t need to.
There’s a few gameplay innovations that are unlike the standard Castlevania format. Kale has a fire sword and soon gets an ice spear to swap between; each has a slightly different attack pattern, and can interact with environmental objects in different ways. For example, you might need to freeze a water spout or burn a wooden barrier to progress. He also can for some reason transform at different points, into a fish, a crawling bug, or a water elemental. It’s a neat idea that adds some puzzle-solving or otherwise breaks up the action.
It seems from this description that the game is packed with ideas, but each one passes by quickly and before you know it the adventure is over. For its length there’s a decent amount of variety, but one can’t help but feel that it doesn’t compare well when three amazing actual Castlevania games are available on the same platform. It would fare better on the phones it was designed for, where its competition is the dodgy Castlevania Order of Shadows, but even then there’s better options like Shadowalker. It’s a decent effort though, a little off-brand romp, worthy to be a footnote to the series it’s aping.
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