Ecclesia’s “herbalist” is bogarting the merchandise

By Stephen Munn | November 29, 2008

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for Nintendo DS is rated T for Teen, due to “blood and fantasy violence.” Fair enough, but they forgot to mention the drug reference.

The townsfolk in the game tend to offer a handful of sidequests. This man, Abram, is the town’s herbalist. Bring him sage and mandrake root, and he’ll mix up a few potions that will appear in the store for purchase. It’s a device to unlock better recovery items in the town’s store as you progress through the game and obtain different herbs from the various enemies in the game.

Once you’ve unlocked everything Abram can make, you get the above message. Which might be reasonably subtle if the guy wasn’t voice acted like Keanu Reeves in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. “Whoa! There you are!” he says when you walk up. His dialog also reads like someone who’s pretty wasted much of the time. When you unlock the strongest recovery item by the way, he offers it to you for free, then changes his mind, saying “oh wait, if I did that, you’d take it and get into really bad danger just to use it, and I can’t let that happen to you, so I’ll put it in the store for a lot of money so you can’t buy it.” Stoner bastard.