The Rundown On Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night

This puzzle interpretation of the classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night just came out on iPhone and iPod touch. But is it worth your five bucks? Game Informer goes hands-on to find out.

I just played through the first hour or so and I can already say yes. Castlevania Puzzle takes the basic genre blending from Puzzle Quest and goes in a more action-RPG direction. It's almost like a puzzle tribute to SotN with surprising depth. CP utilizes the exact SotN visuals, sounds effects, and music to bring you back to Dracula's castle in a whole new way.

Rather than running around slashing monsters with Alucard, players will touch areas of the traditional Metroidvania blue map to make him walk to the next rectangle. The blue disappears once you enter a new room to reveal classic environments from the original game. Sometimes you'll just get a new item, but most of the time you'll have to battle an evil minion of Dracula using your puzzle smarts.

So far, I've run into skeletons, zombies, and mermen. Though I'm no puzzle game historian, the hook here is in the Puzzle Fighter, Puyo Puyo, and Dr. Mario vein. You drop two connected gems into your side of the screen in order to match three or more of the same color. Of course, big chains will dump junk on your rival's screen, but the most common damage Alucard doles out happens naturally through rounds. An onscreen hourglass flips every time a round ends and damage for both sides is calculated based on how many gems a player has on his or her side. You can eventually use offensive spells and health regenerating items to help tip things in your favor.

You tap the falling gems to rotate them, and can drag and slide them into place. It's not as precise as a d-pad and buttons, but you can tweak the sensitivity to preference. Small misinterpretations cropped up here and there so I've still got to find the sweet spot. This could be cause for concern later in the game when the AI difficulty ramps up, but so far so good.

Straight puzzle skills will get you far, but leveling up and catering to your strengths will help to tip the scales in your favor. You can spend points on attack power and defense or throw it all into spells like fire, holy, water, etc. Collecting armor and weapons is just as satisfying as in a traditional Castlevania game (just got the crappy "Alucart" sword!), and they can make a difference in your stats. Additionally, you can collect certain armor sets to earn honors (read: achievements) that will grant bonus XP and rare items. These honors also extend to others areas of the game like total enemy kills, amount of map explored, and more.

Konami claims that the entire Story Mode takes around 20 hours to complete -- which rules. But if you just want to jump into some quick puzzle battles there is also an arcade mode. Here you can try out different characters beside Alucard like Richter, Death, Maria, and even Dracula himself, all with their own unique abilities.

I can't wait to dig deeper into the Castlevania Puzzle, and if you're at all a fan of Symphony of the Night this is definitely worth checking out. If you don't have an iPhone, one of Konami's developers is not ruling out other platforms. "...for those of you who hate Steve Jobs and would never touch an Apple device, I just want to say: It's not completely out of the realm of possibility that this game will be ported to another platform. ;)" says designer and lead programmer Daniel Gutierrez. I'd love to see this on XBLA and PSN, but Konami will probably have to give Castlevania: Harmony of Despair its time in the spotlight for awhile.