Castlevania Clone Releases: Koumajou Densetsu II
January 3, 2011 10:00 AM | Eric Caoili
Doujin developer Frontier Aja has released Koumajou Densetsu II: Stranger's Requiem, the "Touhouvania" sequel to its Castlevania clone series, at Tokyo's Comiket fair. There's a free Japanese demo available, and apparently an English/French translation for the full game.
Though it's a shameless knock-off of Konami's vampire-killing series, taking heavy inspiration from Castlevania's visual style, music, and gameplay (the level designs are more linear like the older titles), it features some great art from Banpai Akira and voice work from professional actors who've contributed to anime shows like K-On!, Lucky Star, and Stirke Witches).
The demo is available to download through Frontier Aja's blog, though other portions of the developer's site seem to have trouble loading. You can check out some video and promotional artwork for Koumajou Densetsu II after the break:
[Via Daiz]
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6 Comments
Seems like a massive waste of talent if you ask me. I can see games taking ideas and core gameplay mechanics from other games they love and making them their own... but this is shameless.
Ujn Hunter | January 3, 2011 11:31 AM
Why? For people who like Castlevania, this is more Castlevania, except on their PC. For people who haven't been happy with recent Castlevania games for one reason or another, it is Castlevania by a different team and perhaps more to their taste.
It is extremely honest about just what it is.
It just bugs me that in the gameplay video, the girl's crouching hitbox doesn't include her head, so you keep seeing shots safely passing through her head when she "ducks" them.
Baines | January 3, 2011 3:28 PM
"It just bugs me that in the gameplay video, the girl's crouching hitbox doesn't include her head, so you keep seeing shots safely passing through her head when she "ducks" them."
Every single time she ducked those shots I expected her to take damage.
I think this is a hold-over from the studio's earlier maniac shmup titles in which character hitboxes were pretty much ALWAYS smaller than the sprites.
Leave it up to Japanese developers to actively try to confuse the player.
Garrett McKellar | January 4, 2011 11:51 AM
^ That's a Touhou mechanic. This is a Touhou/Castlevania hybrid. It may not be for you but when you look at some of the patterns the bosses spew out you'll realize it should be like that.
Aconcit | January 4, 2011 7:41 PM
well, i played the first and... i really think is bad, why flying? why the weapon range is so fucked up? in this first level, the game looks greats but still have problems with the range of various enemies(like the balls that clearly hits you in the face, and the swords of the armor warriors) and again... why flyng in a plataform game? ok, you now have a limit to fly, but is too much time, you can fly and skip most of the traps and that really makes the game boring
drr...drr...ddr... | January 4, 2011 8:38 PM
Flying is a staple of the Touhou Dynamic therefore it is there. Compared to Koumajou Densetsu II it is already a vast improvement. In the first game you had infinite flight with no mp meter to limit that. The controls take awhile to get use to. Because of all the danmaku the boss spews out the hit box was considerably smaller than that of the true Castlevania.
With the impressive casting of seiyuus is it not surprising if their next project will come in the form of a metroidvania, but with the reduced hitbox and floaty jumps of course.
This game was made for hybrid fans of Touhou and Castlevania primarily, fans of one genre knowing little about the other wouldn't understand
i.e.
Touhou fan would question why this game isn't all danmaku while
Castlevania Fan would complain as ddr complained
Anon | January 6, 2011 11:41 AM