Castlevania Judgement

Castlevania Judgement its a 3D Arena Fighting game developed by Eighting and published by Konami in 2008 and 2009, exclusively for the Wii. It was one of the 2 last titles before the reboot happened, and due to its basic and repetitive gameplay and poor choice of art style, it was not received well by fans.

Why it Deserves Judgement

 * 1) The art style and character designs of the game was questionable at most. They hired Takashi Obata of Death Note fame, but it didn't pay off as the designs look too much like the characters in the previously mentioned series, but worst, they fail to capture the essence of the characters (sometimes at the point of making them completely unrecognizable), with unnecessary amount of detail for the most part, not being era-appropriate, and for characters that should have for the most part simple designs. here are some examples.
 * 2) *Simon looks a lot like Light Yagami, and while his design its based on how he looked in Chronicles for the PS1, it add some unnecessary detail that can easily throw fans off.
 * 3) *Alucard looks alright, but also looks a lot like Nier from the Death Note Manga and his eyes look very weird.
 * 4) *Carmilla looks nothing like she did in the original games, she went from looking like an usual aristocrat from the time, to a dominatrix that looks like a bad ripoff of Ivy from Soul Calibur, they didn't even get her hair color right as its now blue when she was a redhead in the previous games (unless Rondo of Blood is the exception), she also fights nothing like she did in the original games, where she transformed and used magic, now she fights exclusively with melee combat.
 * 5) *Grant looks like a genderbend version of Rem, which doesn't make any sense, as in the original game he was a simple pirate who wielded a knife, now however, he is turned into a mummy and has the chakrams that looks like Axel's Eternal Flames, instead of his usual dagger in the original games.
 * 6) *Maria heavily resembles Misa Amane and has a ridiculous gothic lolita/magical girl costume that looks out of place in the setting.
 * 7) *The Golem looks more like the Frankenstein monster than any of the golems of the series, which are made with specific materials.
 * 8) *Sypha looks like a weird combination between a duchess and a cheerleader, with comically large breasts.
 * 9) *Eric Lecarde, who was turned into an androgynus child, heavily resembles Melo from Death Note, and his Alucard Spear now looks like it was possesed by the Soul Edge.
 * 10) *Shanoa resembles a fragile nun, a far cry from her original design.
 * 11) *Death's design is just a complete mess that's makes you question what they were thinking.
 * 12) *Dracula's outfift looks ridiculous and his body looks like it was mutated.
 * 13) The game only has 14 characters, which for a game based on Castlevania its really pathetic, as they had a lot of characters (like Soma, Charlotte, Hector and others) and numerous monsters (ex: Medusa, Minotaur, Dullahan, Slogra and Gaibon, The Creature, Orlox or Karasuman) that they could choose, but instead, they barely exploited the propriety they had.
 * 14) The voice acting in English sounds very bad and at points annoying, specially when some characters are defeated. Maria Renard is possibly the worst offender.
 * 15) The portrayal of some characters is really awful:
 * 16) *Maria is obsessed with breast sizes, which is an out of place anime cliché in the Castlevania franchise, and as an extra, her breasts in Rondo of blood are actually slightly larger than in this game, and she is supposed to be 2 years older here.
 * 17) *Eric acts like an insufferable brat with a massive ego.
 * 18) *Grant is part of a stupid love triangle with Sypha and Trevor.
 * 19) *The golem has some really awkward moments, specially with Carmilla, who he calls Mama.
 * 20) *Sypha is an idiot and an hypocrite that attacks indiscriminately good characters with dark powers like Cornell or Shanoa.
 * 21) The gameplay, even for arena fighters, its mediocre:
 * 22) *The movesets are really small and there aren't many combos, due to this the combat quickly becomes repetitive.
 * 23) *Sub Weapons, aren't that useful and they are easy to ignore.
 * 24) *The super attacks deal way too much damage (over 60% in some cases).
 * 25) *The ring outs can be really frustrating as they happen with a lot of ease, and sometime for unfair reasons.
 * 26) *The balance of the characters is a complete disaster, Maria, Carmilla, Eric are severely overpowered compared to the rest of the roster, as they have a big damage output and massive range, while a character like Golem, its too slow to fight them and can barely land an attack.
 * 27) *Dracula himself is insanely overpowered, and can rain projectiles and long range attacks on his enemies, he is a pain in the ass to fight against.
 * 28) *The movement is somewhat clunky.
 * 29) *Maria has an annoying mechanic that causes her to trip and fall if she uses her attacks too much, a poor attempt to balance the game. It no suprise that Super Smash Bros. Brawl also did this similar mechanic, except here, is only for one character, so at least it isn't as annoying as the former.
 * 30) *Shanoa has a really annoying dodge move that lasts way too long.
 * 31) *Attacks easily miss their target and there is no lock-on at all.
 * 32) *Since the attacks always focus on your opponent, opening item boxes and heart containers can be a bit of a gamble.
 * 33) *The camera is awful, and sometimes screws with your view at random points, which can easily cause you to be hit by an stage hazard or even being ring out.
 * 34) *Stage hazards can be really frustrating, this is more noticeable in the dungeon stage.
 * 35) *The balance of super moves is messy too, some have close to no hit box and others almost always hit the opponent.
 * 36) The main mode, the story mode, is just downright awful:
 * 37) * It's basically just an Arcade Mode with one round and no time limit.
 * 38) * You only start with 3 characters: Simon and Alucard.
 * 39) * To unlock the rest you must beat the game multiple times.
 * 40) * There is no much story in the game, the intro is just lazy text.
 * 41) * The interactions of the characters are at best just excuses for them to fight and at worst awkward most notably the ones with Maria.
 * 42) * Most of the enemies are random, with the exception of specific fights.
 * 43) * The CPU is a pain in the ass, specially when fighting the overpowered characters like Dracula, Carmilla or Maria.
 * 44) * The stages where you fight classic monsters are uninspired and pointless.
 * 45) * Beating this story mode just gives you a cutscene of Aeon accepting something called the Soul Key.
 * 46) * The only character who faces Dracula (you know, the main bad guy from the series) is Alucard.
 * 47) * Beating the game with all the characters unlocks a True Story Mode, which is the same as story mode, just with 2 additional fights.
 * 48) * The first extra fight is just against an stronger Aeon.
 * 49) * The final boss is the Time Reaper, and his boss fight is fairly lame, worst yet, his design is a shameless rehash of the form Death took in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness.
 * 50) * His story is also really stupid, as he was sent by his boss Galamoth to the past to destroy Dracula by destroying the period in which he ruled the underworld. Not only his goal doesn't make any sense, but most people probably don't know who Galamoth even is, because he was a secret boss in Symphony of the Night without any story on why you fight him in that game.
 * 51) * The endings are terrible, its just plain text, making everything feel as a waste of time. The only other reward is unlocking Aeon as a playable character.
 * 52) * Aeon's story is just fighting everyone in a row, and only then you can unlock him for the rest of the modes.
 * 53) The rest of the game modes are also lame.
 * 54) * Arcade Mode is just 10 fights in a row, and fighting an extremely cheap Dracula at the end.
 * 55) * Training and tutorials are just that.
 * 56) * Survival mode is just that, with the addition of enemies not getting any harder, making it an easier deal.
 * 57) * Castle Mode is clearing battle with objectives, somewhat like Soul Calibur 2's Weapon Master Mode, but lamer. Most of the objectives are basic and boring, and is just fighting monsters, and occasionally fighting a character. To add to the tedium, you don't get health refills unless you clear boss rooms or find a save, worst yet while going returning to a save point, you can get ambushed by enemies and being forced to fight, and in the final room, you fight Dracula and he is even worse than he was in the Arcade and Story Modes.
 * 58) To unlock the music you, are expected to clear Castle Mode with all the characters, which is ludicrous.
 * 59) The accessories are just a weak and lazy attempt of customization.
 * 60) The controls are stupid, for starters, it pointlessly shoves motion controls, second, to do your special attacks, you need to hold the B button and then wiggle the controller, this can get really tiresome in the wrist of the player.
 * 61) * You can use the GameCube or classic controller, but it only re-assigns the buttons, and you still need to hold the button down before pressing another button.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The remixes of classic Castlevania music are amazing, its just a shame that they take too much time to unlock, its also the only point fans agree its great universally.
 * 2) Both Cornell with his metallic werewolf design and Trevor with his a little strange, but fitting design look great.
 * 3) The Super Move's cinematics look amazing, really flashy and have a lot of impact. In fact, Simon's Super Move, Grand Cross, later makes an appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as his Final Smash.
 * 4) The concept was great, the idea of a Castlevania fighting game is amazing, but the execution was far from ideal.
 * 5) The new character, Aeon, is pretty cool, has a mostly simple design and has powers that fit the series.
 * 6) You can actually connect the game to Order of Ecclesia on the DS, and unlock Shanoa and Aeon early, plus some accessories, which at least saves you some of the grind.
 * 7) The Stages are actually pretty cool and recreate very faithfully some sections from older games, for example the Clock Tower.
 * 8) The graphics are decent for a Wii Game, the FMV from the intro however looks amazing.
 * 9) Controls are responsive enough, is just that the control scheme isn't very good, due to pointlessly adding motion controls.

Reception
From the start the game was met with skepticism, when the trailer dropped players reactions were fairly negative, this was mostly directed at the art style which fans disapproved.

Once the game released the game received mostly negative reviews, criticizing the controls, combat with a lack of depth, unbalanced and awful characters, fans also complained the awful story mode.

An example is a review by X-Play, which said that the game a 1/5 saying that the game bastardized the established Castlevania designs, other example is Gamespy which gave the game a 1.5/5.

In terms of sales, it was a complete flop, selling only 3700 units in Japan, in the rest of the world, sales were still disappointing.

Because of this, outside of the Netflix show, this is the last time in the franchise that take place in the original Castlevania timeline before being rebooted with Lords of Shadow.

Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aV1Gf_C5VE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdctQ-ABBtI&t=883s