Great addition to the series!
The graphics are superb. It's the best looking Castlevania on the DS. Konami, it seems, made use of every available pixel. The art style is gorgeous. Character portraits look fabulous, attack and spell animations look great. Almost everything else seems to be well animated as well. I love how everything is to scale. The villagers are similar in size, the doors, the furniture and the interior decorating of the town homes look great and are pretty detailed. I wish there there was a tranquil garden in the town and some sort of story unfolding in it. Maybe even, for example, finding a secret entrance to a new level in the garden. That would have been pretty cool. One annoying thing is the recycled use of level layout and graphics for a few levels.
The sound and music are ok to pretty good. It's no Symphony of the Night but it's not too bad. A couple of tracks I found a little bit annoying. I noticed that some of the sound effects, like when you successfully complete a villager mission, were taken from Suikoden 2! Very nostalgic and cool.
The gameplay is very good. First of all, the game is hard! I love it! It's about time a nice and hard Castlevania came along. Once you learn how to beat the bosses the game doesn't seem as difficult although you will still probably lose a lot of health and die every so often. The gameplay is "fast and furious"; more so than the previous 2 on DS. The glyph system is good. Makes it a bit more interesting than previous games in the series. I still would have preferred it to be a little more realistic like SotN in that the character uses weapons and the such but still, it worked well here. I loved how the levels were different. You're not just in one big castle, you travel to different locales. There are outdoor environments ala Castlevania 2. There's a town as well with villagers that give you submissions which I liked. I wish the town was bigger and there were more of them and more meaningful villager quests. Also it would have been cool if there was a secret place where you could find a lost treasure or find a hidden level or something within the town itself. The game is fairly long which surprised me. I liked that but it sometimes seemed it was only so due to the re-use of some area layouts. There are also plenty of items and secrets to find as well. Still, I would have liked it to be a bit longer longer. The game also seems to have been very carefully constructed this time. More so than probably any previous Castlevania game! There's hardly an arbitrary boss and enemies pattern to be found. Many enemies in the game have extreme weaknesses and strengths requiring you to quickly switch between glyph sleeves every so often to take advantage of enemy weaknesses.
Now, the gameplay is good, however, yet again konami has decided to stay with the Symphony of the Night style of gameplay. I don't know what is going on but ever since Super Castlevania 4, I've wanted to see another Castlevania game with that style of gameplay. Whip in all directions, swinging off of things, like chandeliers. Why hasn't Konami ever re-explored the Super Castlevania 4 style of gameplay for whip based Castlevania games? Especially since it was so good and everyone liked it.
The story is not bad. I thought it was better than the previous 2 DS games. I really lliked how it was more mature with less annoying, childish characters. It has a "suikoden-esque" feel to it. I have a feeling some people on the suikoden team had a part in Ecclesia's development, which is great. Some of the villagers' dialogue later on seems second rate and a little silly, especially for a few of them after you save them. That may be more to do with the translation, though. It would have been great to see your character become more emotionally involved with the villagers and or the game's story in general although I have to say Konami did a better job with that then the previous 2 on DS. A little tidbit I thought was really cool was the reference to Castlevania 2 which, apparently, was mistranslated on purpose: "I am the morning sun, come to vanquish this horrible night".
Nostalgic.
Overall the game is the best of the DS series. You can't go wrong. Konami did a good job, however, it really could have been spectacular.
8.5/10
So does Castlevania really need a story? Not really, but if Konami wants to make a Castlevania game with a great story how about this for a general idea? A direct sequel to Symphony of the Night: Following the destruction of dracula's castle Alucard had departed with Maria. However, in the ensuing years he was unable to overcome his dark side. An evil character puts a spell on Alucard to increase the power of his cursed bloodline. Over the years Alucard becomes more and more psychopathic. Maria also becomes engulfed in Alucard's insanity and the two of them became a duo of destruction. Kichter, in his old age, sends his son/grandson to investigate some nearby deaths in their village. What he learns is to be another epic belmont journey. The goal is to nullify the spell cast on Alucard. This could also go about explaining the demise of the Belmonts. RIchter's successor somehow dies and Alucard, after being saved from his curse, continues the rest of the game as a second quest! One thing though: You must be able to whip in all directions and swing off of stuff because a Belmont is awesome and doesn't whip in one damn direction, Konami.