Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Jul. 15th, 2012 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroRichter Belmont: Your words are as empty as your soul! Mankind ill needs a savior such as you!
Dracula: What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk... Have at you!
Yes, I realize that I’m a bad fanboy for not having played this before now. I’ll point out that I always kinda sucked at the original Castlevania games (I had the PC version on the original game. It came on a 5.25” floppy!) and I didn’t get back into the series until Circle of the Moon.
Anyway, the re-hash of the last battle of the previous game as an opener is a clever little touch, especially since it includes the best/worst exchange in the history of the series (see above). The translation and the voice acting are so insanely hammy and over-the-top, you have to think they knew what they were doing and just ran with it.
The difficulty is uneven, but generally easy for the series. The bosses are shockingly easy for a Castlevania title. Seriously, I died a few times early in the game when I was still getting the hang of things, and a couple of times due to stupidity (one standout was using a weapon that couldn’t hurt the boss because of the elemental immunities involved), but in general I was taking down bosses very quickly and on the first try. The only exception was Galamoth, a second-half semi-optional boss (you don’t seem to need to beat him to beat the game, just for an optional relic) who I died six times fighting, and was waaaay harder than the final boss, who I beat on my half-assed first try.
They were obviously testing out ideas and kept the best of them for the GBA and DS metroidvania games. They generally dropped the two-hands / active shield thing. The key-combination “spells” didn’t reappear. This game had a lot of life up and heart up items, and stats don’t rise much outside of equipment changes, so it’s unclear what leveling up actually gets you. The shop isn’t very accessible, even by teleporter, and I feel like in the later games they tended to put it in a centralized area with a teleporter and a save point. There’s little indication of how to use items like the Gravity Boots or how to summon a familiar (you need to activate them in the relics menu), but those might have been in the manual that came with the original.
The game really opens up once you get the Leap Stone (double jump) and shortly thereafter, the Soul of Bat. You don’t have that many choices of where to go and what order to do things in until then, but after that, the entirety of the first castle is pretty much available, if you can figure out how to enter each area. Most of the puzzles are standard “use this power or this item” sorts of things, though one obtuse one involves luring an enemy to a specific spot before letting it attack. Fortunately, the game gives you a huge clue that you can do this in a nearby room.
Ah yes, the “first castle”. Though I have no idea how players without hint books would know this—later games were much better about indicating that their first endings were false—you can beat every boss and find two secret items that allow you to find a third secret item that you can equip while fighting the fake final boss to unlock the second half of the game. I’m reminded of Demon’s Crest by how hidden half the content is.
The second half is really straightforward, actually. The map is the same (just reversed) and there aren’t any new broken bridges or special transportation powers, so it’s mostly just working your way around to find a few new items and fighting all the new bosses. There’s no additional plot in the reverse castle until the final boss battle.
As a side note, I used this game to test the remote play feature that you can link a PSP and PS3 to use—basically, you access the PS3 remotely via the internet to play the games on it on your PSP. I found it problematically laggy and unresponsive for an action game like this one, and of course it requires an active and reliable internet connection, which limits the utility. After all, if I’m at home, I’d rather just play the PS3, and if I’m travelling, getting reliable wireless internet is tricksy.
Overall: A classic, and rightfully so. Not to say they didn’t improve on it (I think the Sorrow games are still my favorites overall), but definitely worth the $10 PSN download if you haven’t played it and you like the Castlevania series at all.
Dracula: What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk... Have at you!
Yes, I realize that I’m a bad fanboy for not having played this before now. I’ll point out that I always kinda sucked at the original Castlevania games (I had the PC version on the original game. It came on a 5.25” floppy!) and I didn’t get back into the series until Circle of the Moon.
Anyway, the re-hash of the last battle of the previous game as an opener is a clever little touch, especially since it includes the best/worst exchange in the history of the series (see above). The translation and the voice acting are so insanely hammy and over-the-top, you have to think they knew what they were doing and just ran with it.
The difficulty is uneven, but generally easy for the series. The bosses are shockingly easy for a Castlevania title. Seriously, I died a few times early in the game when I was still getting the hang of things, and a couple of times due to stupidity (one standout was using a weapon that couldn’t hurt the boss because of the elemental immunities involved), but in general I was taking down bosses very quickly and on the first try. The only exception was Galamoth, a second-half semi-optional boss (you don’t seem to need to beat him to beat the game, just for an optional relic) who I died six times fighting, and was waaaay harder than the final boss, who I beat on my half-assed first try.
They were obviously testing out ideas and kept the best of them for the GBA and DS metroidvania games. They generally dropped the two-hands / active shield thing. The key-combination “spells” didn’t reappear. This game had a lot of life up and heart up items, and stats don’t rise much outside of equipment changes, so it’s unclear what leveling up actually gets you. The shop isn’t very accessible, even by teleporter, and I feel like in the later games they tended to put it in a centralized area with a teleporter and a save point. There’s little indication of how to use items like the Gravity Boots or how to summon a familiar (you need to activate them in the relics menu), but those might have been in the manual that came with the original.
The game really opens up once you get the Leap Stone (double jump) and shortly thereafter, the Soul of Bat. You don’t have that many choices of where to go and what order to do things in until then, but after that, the entirety of the first castle is pretty much available, if you can figure out how to enter each area. Most of the puzzles are standard “use this power or this item” sorts of things, though one obtuse one involves luring an enemy to a specific spot before letting it attack. Fortunately, the game gives you a huge clue that you can do this in a nearby room.
Ah yes, the “first castle”. Though I have no idea how players without hint books would know this—later games were much better about indicating that their first endings were false—you can beat every boss and find two secret items that allow you to find a third secret item that you can equip while fighting the fake final boss to unlock the second half of the game. I’m reminded of Demon’s Crest by how hidden half the content is.
The second half is really straightforward, actually. The map is the same (just reversed) and there aren’t any new broken bridges or special transportation powers, so it’s mostly just working your way around to find a few new items and fighting all the new bosses. There’s no additional plot in the reverse castle until the final boss battle.
As a side note, I used this game to test the remote play feature that you can link a PSP and PS3 to use—basically, you access the PS3 remotely via the internet to play the games on it on your PSP. I found it problematically laggy and unresponsive for an action game like this one, and of course it requires an active and reliable internet connection, which limits the utility. After all, if I’m at home, I’d rather just play the PS3, and if I’m travelling, getting reliable wireless internet is tricksy.
Overall: A classic, and rightfully so. Not to say they didn’t improve on it (I think the Sorrow games are still my favorites overall), but definitely worth the $10 PSN download if you haven’t played it and you like the Castlevania series at all.
