A focus on multplayer makes single players despair.
Where does one even begin to pick apart a mess this incomprehensible? Let's begin with the fact that there is no story to speak of. Usually, Castlevanias begin with a prologue, but there is no such introduction. You don't know when you are, or what's brought you back to Dracula's castle. You can control one of six characters, but you are never told exactly why you're fighting with them, or given any kind of backstory. They will never interact with each other unless you are playing with five other people. There's no NPCs to interact with or people to save. It's the most mindlessly put together Castlevania in existence.
A lack of story makes it clearly obvious the game's been geared for the multiplayer. It's also evident by how the game's six chapters have been laid out. Usually, a Castlevania of this style would start out with the map completely unrevealed, requiring you to explore every room to see what's what. Not so in Harmony of Despair. Every room is fully visible by zooming out on the map, and in multiplayer, each play is positioned in a different area of the screen. You work together using each other's own unique abilities to reach the boss room, usually in the center. When playing in single player, it's not nearly as fun to explore in this way, because there will be places you can't reach since you'll never acquire the abilities another character has.
The core gameplay of Castlevania is still there. You run around fighting monsters and demons and skeletons with the weapons you find until you come across a challenging boss. Some enemies will drop souls that you can used, like in previous Castlevanias. Unfortunately, a lot of key staples have been stripped away to make it a more streamlined experience for multiplayers. One such omission is the leveling system. You do not gain any experience from killing enemies, and this greatly deters gamers who love spending hours grinding to grow stronger. If you want to become more of a force to be reckoned with, you have to save up to buy the best gear you can at the shop. After that's done, there's no way to become even more powerful, so the rest of the game becomes a matter of skill and luck.
One feature will be completely unwelcome to single players, and that's the 30 minute time limit. Not only do you have less than a half hour to reach the boss, but you need to beat the boss in that time as well. The levels are designed to never take that long, but it puts an unnecessary pressure on the gamer to get through the castle as fast as possible. Combined with the lack of experience points gained from slaying a foe, most gamers will even be inclined to skip the more difficult enemies altogether to save time and health.
The Castlevania series has been known to pump out difficult games, and Harmony of Despair is hard, but for the wrong reasons. Unlike the previous installments, there are no check points or save rooms. This means that if you die during the boss fight you must start the level from the very beginning. Considering it takes roughly 15 minutes to reach the boss, it may not seem like a big deal, but start over five times in a row and the game turns into a tedious chore.
Harmony of Despair has also committed a grievous error by not letting you pause the game. For multiplayer purposes, it's understandable, as pausing the game would disrupt the flow for other players, but not pausing a game for a single player mode is unforgivable. This also means that you can't bring up an equipment menu to make changes to your gear or souls when you want to. There will be books scattered through the chapters that let you make equipment changes, but if an enemy follows you into the room, you'll be hit while you're messing around in the menu. Plus, the game limits you to how many consumable items you can carry, making it hard for the lesser skilled players to win boss fights.
The graphics of the game have kept its 2D heritage intact. No obvious improvements have been made. The sprites of previous Castlevanias have been lifted out and transplanted into this game. The same goes for many of the game's locals. It's a novel idea to play with the entire screen zoomed out, but it's also impossible to see anything that's going on. Animations also have been preserved as if kept in a bottle of formaldehyde. Every enemy's dying special effects can also be expected to return. It's nice to be able to play a game like this on an HDTV, but it would have been even better had the game been remastered to not look so pixelated in certain areas.
The audio of Harmony of Despair is perhaps the only saving grace of the game, solely because of the music. The soundtrack is classic Castlevania, with a rock and metal infusion. Guitars and violins possess the music aggressively, pumping the player as he presses on. The sound effects don't have quite the same impact, because they're coming from machines that simply aren't capable of producing amazing sound effects. Again,this is where some remastering might have been appreciated. As it stands, the overall presentation of the game is rather lacking.
Every once in a while, a game company needs to take a risk and perform an experiment. Like all chemists will tell you, eventually an experiment will blow up in your face. If you're strictly a single player gamer, then Harmony of Despair's beaker will have sent shards of glass shrapnel right in your face. It's designed with multiplayer gameplay at the forefront, so it offers you practically nothing. It's also incredibly short, and if you manage to beat the game without dying, you'll have it completed in a little over an hour and a half. No story to speak of, save points within levels or even a simple pause feature makes this game very undesirable to play. If you don't care about any of that, you may find some enjoyment in the multiplayer, as it actually has some interesting elements. The bottom line here is that Castlevania should always and forever remain a franchise with the single player in mind.