The Castlevania series has appeared on nearly every console in the past 20+ years of gaming. In that time, the majority of these titles have been 2D action-adventure games where you must traverse a dangerous castle filled with deadly traps and monsters, eventually leading up to a rumble with Dracula himself. Konami has attempted to toy with this formula a bit over the years through fully 3D adventure outings on Nintendo 64, PS2, and Xbox, but the results have been less than spectacular. The series’ latest incarnation, Castlevania Judgment, is a 3D fighting game built exclusively for the Wii. Can the series survive another spin off, or does this take a fatal bite out of the Castlevania legacy?

Judgment casts an assortment of characters from the long history of the Castlevania saga against each other in familiar series locales. The roster is made up of vampire slayers, a werewolf, temptresses, a giant, and even Dracula himself among others, with each having various strengths and weakness that force a player to use them all differently. These characters battle in a number of interesting and entertaining environments, including lavish halls, a graveyard, a torture chamber, and the inner workings of a clock tower. Each area has several interactive elements that will affect you as you play, including moving saw blades in the torture chamber and a giant fish in an outdoor level that gradually destroys the bridge you are standing on. Some levels also have neutral enemies walking around that range from zombies to mermen, and they will attack either player that gets in their way as the fight progresses. All of these interactive level elements are very cool, as they really add an element of surprise and variety into the game. They can also be turned off, in the event you don’t want a colossal hammer-wielding Gollum interrupting your match.

The fighting system that you will be utilizing in these environments is introduced to you through a series of 3 tutorials and is made up of several attacks, items, and combos that the player can unleash during battle. By default, all of these actions are mapped to various functions of the Wii Remote and Nunchuck, as the game utilizes button presses, motion control, and a combination of the two for all of the basic moves. Each character starts with a primary weapon, which varies by character but includes whips, throwing blades, and magical attacks. You will also start with an item in your inventory, though you can also pick up new items and power-ups hidden around the environment as the battle wages on. The items range from crosses and boomerangs to hordes of bats that attack your foes, and you can combine these with your regular moves to do more damage. Aside from the simple strike of your primary weapon, which is done by waving the Wii Remote, you can hold a number of buttons down as you attack to modify or charge up your moves and can launch into combos by timing button presses and Remote-slashing as your previous actions are being carried out. There are also Hyper moves, which aren’t immediately available when you start.

During the fight, you can charge up a meter on the bottom of the screen by doing all kinds of attacks, and pressing Down on the D-Pad once the meter is full launches a Hyper attack attempt. If you successfully connect with the move, you will be treated to a 10+ second animation of your character destroying your opponent in a number of grisly ways, and will find that these moves can take around 40% of your opponent’s life away. The downside to attempting this is that missing the move leaves you open to attack from a crafty opponent, and these animations never change, so you should get accustomed to seeing the same animations often. You can also block by using the C button on the Nunchuck, or do an enemy-stunning block-breaker move by holding C and swinging the Wii Remote. Finally, you can dodge an enemy attack by swinging the Nunchuck right before you are hit, though the timing of this takes awhile to get a handle on.