Episode 683: Castlevania Order of Ecclesia - The Metroidvania Book Club Pt. 1

Jeremy: Good news, everyone! Now you can play a video game!

This episode marks the first of hopefully many entries in the Metroidvania Book Club series. You'll hear a full explanation of the concept in the podcast itself, but it's pretty straightfoward and hardly original. Every three months, we'd like to highlight a different metroidvania game for a two-part deep-dive discussion. Each game will most likely receive the same treatment: an introductory episode that breaks apart the first half of the experience, and a follow-up that concludes the discussion and incorporates community feedback.

Because, yes, we'd like for YOU to be a part of this process. We'll be continuing the conversation in a special Discord channel, meaning that this will be a shared experience specifically for the Retronauts community. We'll record the next episode in a few weeks, which should give you time to play the game highlighted this episode and take part in the discussion. (I wanted to focus this "book club" specifically on metroidvania games because they tend to be substantial enough to support a couple of in-depth episodes while being MUCH less time-intensive than an RPG or an open-world action game—good, dense, accessible, manageable efforts.)

To that end, I have assembled a team of book club regulars-to-be who each bring a different set of experiences, opinions, and expectations to a metroidvania discussion. Stuart, Nadia, Chris Sims, and Kate Willaert all have ample knowledge about games like these but also hold different enough perspectives on the format to prevent this from being a boring yes-man echo chamber. We'll each take turns picking games to play, and YOU the Retronauts community will be our sixth panelist, not only voicing opinions but also selecting every sixth title in the rotation by community vote.

And we have decided to begin, in a way, at the end: by diving into the final entry of the series that gave the genre half of its name, Castlevania Order of Ecclesia. In this episode, we set up the concepts of the game and discuss the overworld phase of the adventure. Next time we record, we'll hit the big shocking endgame map and voice your opinions live and on the air. So please fire up a copy of Ecclesia (easily accessible on the Castlevania Dominus Collection), spend some time mastering the glyphs and the combat, and hit the Discord to share your thoughts on the entire game (not just the portions discussed here). We look forward to seeing what you have to say! And, of course, please enjoy the episode in its own right—it's a good one.

Edits by Greg Leahy. Art by Greg Melo.

• 13:18 - An Empty Tome

• 24:02 - A Prologue ~ Again ~

• 31:48 - Tragedy's Pulse

• 41:07 - Dissonant Courage | Chapel Hidden in Smoke

• 55:17 - Destiny's Stage

• 1:05:27 - A Clashing of Waves

• 1:17:41 - Serenade of the Hearth

• 1:33:28 - Trace of Rage ~ Conversation ~

• Closing - Lament to the Master