Game Reactor has screens of Order of Ecclesia, the upcoming Castlevania sequel for the DS, which follows the delightful Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin. Let's take a look... yes, that definitely looks like Iga-produced Castlevania. I'm mixed on this; the last three portable Castlevanias have been beautifully made, with wonderful attention to detail (Portrait of Ruin perhaps most of all), but I miss the hard-as-hell linearity of the original Castlevania trilogy on the NES. PoR nodded in that direction, intermingling slightly more linear areas with the open-ended world typical of latter-day Castlevania. But I could've used more, particularly given that the last four portraits were essentially variations on the first four. (In fairness, I know they're on a tight budget — these games don't sell at all in Japan.)
Konami's press release suggests they might be heading in the right direction as far as variety: "Also introduced to the series are new outdoor locales ranging from forests to the ocean, giving players the chance to explore outside of Dracula's Castle." In any event, I'm excited to see what they'll do with the game, and hope they'll push the format a little more than they have recently. (I also hope they change the highly questionable color pallette on that main character graphic, but maybe that's just me.)
