Castlevania: Symphony of the Night +

Symphony of the Night was awesome. I've played it through at least ten times, and gotten the Duplicator twice. I had a character with two Runeswords and two Heaven Swords. I beat it with Richter. I played the shit out of this game. And I loved it.

The game also ushered in everything that sucks about 2d Castlevania. It's a collect-a-thon. A MMORPG for the Metroid set. You run around and kill enemies over and over in order to get all the useful gear, then you use it to kill bosses easily.

Sure you can avoid the Crissaegrim, but then you fall victim to the game's larger problem. In order to accommodate for the huge variety of levels and weapons that can be brought into a fight, the bosses have simple patterns and take way too long to kill. The fights feel loose. No longer are battles restricted by what weapons you can pick up in the level and a lifebar. Sky's the limit, so you end up doing the boss patterns over and over and over and over. There's a lot of this. Tedium for tedium's sake. You've got the patterns down, but you have to keep doing them.

Which is why I always rush to the upside-down library as fast as I can and spend as long as it takes to get a Schmoo to drop the Crissegrim so I can run through the rest of the game like it isn't even there. It's not real gameplay, but It's good fun, even if it did ruin Castlevania

3 stars

+

I posited to Gorgeous Hair that the score should be 4 stars divided by the number of times Koji Igarashi has ripped off the game on DS. We decided that Igarashi should release all the sprites he keeps reusing so we can all make our own Castlevanias.

Igarashi recently did us a favor by releasing Rondo of Blood for PSP. He had nothing to do with the game but got himself elected "Mr Castlevania" over at Konami, apparently for his ablity to knock off Symphony of the Night. So here we are playing the most sought after Castlevania. The one that still costs over $100 on ebay. It was great back in the day, but it doesn't hold up all that well (CV4 does) and PSP makes everything harder to play so it double sucks. I'm glad they included the old 2d version, but the inclusion of SotN makes me think Igarashi's trying to convince people he made Symphony.

One game he is responsible for is the PS2's Lament of Innocence. Devil May Cry was originally intended to be Resident Evil 4, but it comes across as a much better attempt at 3d Castlevania. Lament is the biggest insult to the series, as it tries to be an origin story. It's got some neat ideas: the origin of Dracula and the Belmont rivalry with him was cool. The origin of the Belmonts' primary weapon was not. The Vampire Killer is a chain whip with a morning star on the end. Supremely badass and definitively Castlevania. In Lament you get to create it by killing your recently vampire'd girlfriend and turning her into the whip. But instead of turning into that metal pinnacle of destruction, it turns purple. Purple leather whip.

WHAT
THE
FUCK

I know it's a small detail and I should probably beat on the game for the fact that I had to check the map twice per room because of the horrible design, or for the fact that when I go looking for healing potions the game doesn't pause. I should be pissed the most about those things, but it's the purple whip that kills me. All the whips in the game suck (fire, ice, lightning and alchemy) and the Vampire Killer was to be my salvation. When I got it I had to double check that i was in fact equipping it. Purple suckage.

Then King Castlevania got back to his non-roots and got into the serious business of making us forget the potential Circle of the Moon had by making the shittastic Harmony of Dissonance. A return to Ayami Kojima's ladyboy heroes (between Konami and Square, i'd be amazed if there's a straight dude in the entire Japanese industry), and the exact gameplay of SotN, only with less weapons and less fun. I don't know how that game is so bad, but man it is.

(Minus 1 star for every game other than A Link to the Past that uses a "dark world" btw)

Stella got his groove back with Aria of Sorrow. It played much better and had way too many things to collect. Halfway though you get the ability to run through the game stupid fast. It is awesome, but begs the question, what kind of game should you enjoy skipping through at great speed? Dawn of Sorrow and Portal of Ruin have deviated from that formula not an inch. Seriously: level editor.


Rondo of Blood: 3 stars
Rondo PSP: 2 stars
Lament of Innocence 1 star
Circle of the Moon: 3 stars
Harmony of Dissonance: 1 star
Aria of Sorrow: 2 stars
Dawn of Sorrow: 2 stars
Portal of Ruin: 2 stars