French studio Migami Games made a name for itself with excellent Castlevania fan games like The Lecarde Chronicles 1 and 2, but fan games don’t keep the lights on or put food on the table, so the team has understandably embraced commercial ambitions with Wallachia: Reign of Dracula. One might expect that, given Migami's pedigree and the presence of a certain world-famous literary vampire, that this would be a Castlevania-type game with the serial numbers filed off. But in practice, it’s actually quite different, particularly being that the heroine, Elcin, wields a bow and arrow as her main weapon. It results in a game that feels more like a classic run-and-gun akin to Contra or Rolling Thunder, with a tiny bit of Shinobi mixed in for good measure.
Elcin is quite versatile with her bow and can shoot in eight directions, but she also wields a sword, which is not only useful for close-quarters combat but can also be used to slice enemy projectiles in mid-air. Special arrows with limited ammunition can be found as well, include piercing arrows, explosives, and three-way projectiles. Arrows can also be charged by holding down the attack button for more powerful blows.
Elcin is also accompanied by the spirits of four helpers, whose abilities can be selected at any time and activated when you’ve collected enough orbs. The white wolf Silviu blazes across the screen while Radu fires a flare that attacks everything on the screen. Offering different utilities, Christian can grant temporary invincibility while Konstantin can strengthen your arrows. Rather than floating candles or orbs, power-ups are dropped by helpful birds that routinely fly at the top of the screen, requiring that you pay careful attention to them and shoot them accurately so you can grab their goodies. Enemies regularly drop items too, encouraging you to slaughter as many of them as possible.
While many modern indie retro throwbacks try to offer some concessions to the player by making the difficulty level more manageable, Wallachia: Reign of Dracula has little patience for such things. It’s very much patterned after 8 and 16-bit style action games, complete with checkpoints and limited lives. There is an easy mode, but in classic Konami style, you can only play partway through the game before being asked to challenge a harder mode.
There are unlimited continues, plus you can jump to any level you’ve been to when starting the game, essentially allowing you to save your progress, so it’s not totally hardcore – but it’s definitely a game that expects you to play, and die, and replay, several times until you’ve memorized the level layouts and boss patterns, and developed sufficient strategies to overcome them. Much of the game is relatively generous with this, with judicious checkpoints and short levels, though the last two become quite a bit less forgiving. Elcin can take four hits by default, so you’ve got more room for error than in your average Contra game.
For the most part, Wallachia: Reign of Dracula plays very well, offering full control over your character’s jumps and double jumps, and a button that keeps Elcin in place while you aim in any direction (though there’s no way to strafe). A few control quirks manifest; there’s a slide move that’s executed by pressing down and jump, which is easy to use accidentally, and ally special attacks can’t be used when ducking, for some reason. There’s also an occasional glitch where Elcin shoots out blanks when firing a stream of arrows. It’s rare enough that it’s not a huge problem, but it is noticeable.
The difficulty, however, does contain some kinks regularly seen in classic 2D action games. The ally special attacks are hugely overpowered, and they’re easily the most ideal way to cheese bosses. If you’ve managed to play the stage all the way through without dying, then you likely have enough orbs to simply overwhelm the end-of-level guardian. Meanwhile, if you die during the boss battle, all of your ammo is depleted, making it quite a bit more difficult, albeit not impossible. Many power-ups, particularly the ones that enhance your weapons, disappear when you get hit, something that limits their usefulness.
The visuals in Wallachia: Reign of Dracula are much like Migami Games’ other titles, utilizing higher resolution pixel art than most other retro games. A nice touch is that the game is based more on the historical Vlad Tepes than Bram Stoker's literary creation (and the assorted movie monsters it inspired) that tend to be featured in Castlevania games. Most of the fodder enemies are human soldiers, and tougher foes include catapults, cavalrymen, and wooden tanks. There’s even a boss fight that’s just against a small clock tower. That’s not to say there aren’t any supernatural enemies, though – it’s easy to forget that “Dracul” means “dragon”, which is the form the villain takes for the final boss fight. Some of the battlefields are also filled with fallen soldiers skewered on stakes, the horrific pastime that earned the real Vlad Tepes his infamous reputation.
The soundtrack is excellent as well, with music that’s catchy in the same way as classic Castlevania tunes while still carrying their own unique identity. Wallachia: Reign of Dracula also takes its story quite seriously, hiring top name Kira Buckland (2B from NieR: Automata) as the voice of Elcin, with Robert Belgrade (the original voice of Alucard from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) appearing as Radu. That’s quite a bit of effort put into it, considering that the plot is mostly just some bits of dialogue interspersed in the levels and some interstage narration. It's a shame, then, than the static artwork which accompanies the cutscenes looks so primitive.
At seven stages, Wallachia: Reign of Dracula isn’t too long, and while the difficulty may seem high at first, it’s still something that can be conquered with some tenacity. A hard difficulty mode is available, as well as several “challenges” for performing top-level feats, like beating a stage without getting hit. The game also keeps records of best times, making it a good candidate for speed runs. There’s even an unlockable costume allowing Elcin to dress up as Miriam from Bloodstained.
Conclusion
It might be more old-school than other similar games, but Wallachia: Reign of Dracula still offers rewarding action, skilful level design, and some excellent music. With Konami seemingly content to sleep on its popular Castlevania series for the time being – outside of smartphone games, of course – this (alongside the likes of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and its sequel) might be as close as we're likely to get to a brand-new "old-school" Castlevania outing on Switch. It's a good job, then, that Migami Games knows Konami's franchise so well that it has created a truly convincing imitation – but one which has enough ideas of its own to stand out from its inspiration.
Comments 29
First time I have ard of this, I'll take a deeper look later, it looks good.
It is in the same art style of the Castlevania The Lecarde Chronicles 2 as ALL assets are done by Mig Perez. If I am not mistaken he also did all the coding.
I would've bought it but I am not such a huge fan of Contra gameplay.
EDIT: Still I might support Mig as he loves the Castlevania games so much and I do not see Konami changing any time soon. Every original CV Fan game must be supported.
EDIT 2: I pre-ordered it from Pixel Heart
Nice review but the amount of ad space in this article was inbearable. One after every paragraph. 8 in total. + a 9th between the article and comments and a 10th underneath comments. And that’s just on phone where there are no background ads.
This one has been on my radar for long time
Sounds really good
@darkswabber Get an ad blocker. I don't see any ads in the review.
@LinktotheFuture no I support free stuff through ads. But the article was hard to read this way. Wasn’t an ad itself issue, but the space it took up, way too much for a normal read.
Why does your review spoil the final boss fight?
Thanks for the review. Sounds quite good but seems overly hard from the footage and reviews from the youtube reviewers. I like a challenging game now and again but I really have to like the game to want to persist with it. May be a deep discount purchase but not sure. Good to have another qualitu Indie on the eShop circuit of course.
I was wondering about this game. I think I’ll get it.
Just waiting for my physical copy to arrive.
@darkswabber keep on scrollin', baby.
Not my cup of tea, but it looks sharp for a retro game.
Game look nice, it seems to be inspired by the older Castlevania games than those countless Metroidvania style ones. Definitely may check out soon.
This looks fantastic! On the queue it goes!
@darkswabber same, i don't want to use adblock on sites that i want to succeed, but sometimes they are so egregious that i will be forced to. I hope that's not the case with this site.
Added to the backlog awaiting a sale.
I'm enjoying it but I feel like the enemy placement can be quite cheap. Quite frequently, enemies appear on ledges just enough below and to the side of you that you can't shoot them using the 8-directional aiming. It feels like they're from an earlier version of the game that still had the axe thar you'd use in similar situations in Castlevania.
Looking forward to this in physical. One of the hosts of XVGM Radio podcast Mike (Miketendo) voices one of the bosses as well.
One can never have too many Contravanias.
I was not expecting a contra style castlevania game but I'm willing to give it a shot. Big fan of run n guns so it might be right up my alley. Anyone else think the girl on the cover looks like Catherine zeta jones? I look at her and all i see is the chick from zorro.
I wasn't feeling this at first glance, with its choppy looking animation and run and gun gameplay. But the review sounds pretty solid...might give it a shot at some point. It's just that its overall aesthetic might put off anyone expecting a Castlevania-like title, or worse, have folks thinking it's a poor rip off.
I don't think you should be comparing it to "Castlevania" so much, as it seems like a completely different kind of game. The only things it seems to have in common are a 16-bit Gothic art style and setting and the use of Dracula as the villain, neither of which are that uncommon in fiction.
That being said, I think it actually sounds better than if it were just another "Castlevania" inspired game. Add to future Wishlist...
Nice, was looking forward to this review. Appreciate nintendo life's coverage of the game, wishlisted and waiting for a big sale to hit
@twztid13 I have the same approach and I don't find Nintendolifes ads and their placement intrusive or annoying, neither on desktop, nor an smartphone. I would prefer a smaller font size on smartphones, though. The game is BTW really great. It shares some traits of it's look and feel with Captain Claw, a PC game by Monolith that doesn't seem to be known very well
@Speeeedy Man, "Claw" was terrific! I played the hell out of it back in the day (alongside Jazz Jackrabbit 2).
I tried Wallachia's demo awhile back and honestly didn't really like it...but I might give it another go.
@Mach_Rider Hell yeah, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was my favourite plattformer when I was young, I would pay a frivolous amount for a Switch port. And for a port of Claw as well. Wallachia and Claw are both distinct, maybe it is the piratesque setting, the way both characters run, the superb music as well as the difficulty. I was a bit underwhelmed with Wallachia at first as well, but the gameplay is honestly very good...but despite the fact that it offers professional voice acting and a very good soundtrack, it does feels a bit rough, i.e. unpolished around the edges.
@BulbasaurusRex Yeah. I want to see it is more Shinobi dressed in Castlevania clothing.
@RupeeClock I noticed that too. I am Error.
Just thought I would let anyone know, in case anyone in rhe comments did not buy the game, that i just bought it and so far am really enjoying it. The review is spot on. It really is a mix of Castlevania and Shinobi, but not so much Contra. The Shinobi influence is huge. The game really feels like an authentic Neo Geo era arcade game. As a fan of the Dracula aesthetic and as a huge fan of the original Shinobi, this game is hitting all the right notes. To be fair though I am only about an hour in. The game is challenging and I am not good at games. It takes me a while to beat them. I am on the first level boss.
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