Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
A great looking classic but poorly paced and ultimately frustrating. I'm glad I played this as a historical artifact but not my favorite of the genre.
Deep thoughts
It took me a while to understand why I loved Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night felt kind of grueling to play through. In fact, I liked Super Metroid so much that as soon as I was done, I basically instantly fired up Zero Mission and the thought of playing a (probably better) Castlevania sequel made me recoil. I started playing these because I wanted to play these two foundational games that directly led to two things I loved playing growing up: Metroid Fusion and Aria of Sorrow.
read →Along the way
Like an idiot I started this. I don't even know why. I just wanted to test the PSX emulator I guess. It's really fun though. Two seconds in I was like "oh this is basically exactly the Aria of Sorrow engine." And I love Aria.
I don't know if this game is going to have the distance for me. I find it pretty frustrating. I don't love traveling around and it feels like it's just very willing to waste a lot of your time and there's just no hand holding here at all. I can see the bones of why it's so good and so influential but I don't know exactly what it is. It's just not captivating me in the way that Aria of Sorrow did. I would be interested to try Aria again and see if I can figure out what it is (although of course the comparison will always be different because of the nostalgia). I did just play it last year I think, but it's hard for me to tell what's different, a more fresh comparison could help. Speaking of...
I think I figured out the problem with this game. It's fucking annoying. I played through more, I looked up some shit because I didn't want to keep going around this castle in a circle looking for some little hint that I missed the first time. Super Metroid like clearly advertises (HEY THIS DOOR IS A DIFFERENT COLOR COME BACK AT EXACTLY THIS TIME). I got the power of mist and the power of bat and it's just meh.
Like it's annoying to get around. The travelling and platforming doesn't feel great, and you're getting chipped at by these annoying ass armored fleas and then you're like "fuck I've actually lost a lot of health I guess it's not a good time to fight a boss" and then you have to backtrack your ass to the save point to reheal.
Also if you die you have to go through the world's longest screen and reload back into the game from the title. Thank god for save states. Me finishing this game seems unlikely but it's not long? I think I'm going to give myself the option to quit whenever since I think I've gotten what I need out of it.
So I kept going and beat the orb around Richter Belmont. I'm definitely using a walkthrough, this shit is too annoying otherwise. The inverted castle is kind of trippy and hard to get around.
Actually it's a giant pain in the ass. There are rooms here that seem designed to drive one to madness. I'm at three dracula parts so it would seem wasteful to not finish.
I found the alucard shield by accident. No guides in the inverted castle so far. It is hilariously broken in a way I don't really mind. Is it taking all the skill and everything out of the game? Yeah maybe, but it's funny and the game is so annoying in some sections here that it deserves it.
It's very funny melting death by walking at him. Collected another dracula part, just need to find one. This seems like the thing where you could go forever walking around in circles not stumbling across the one room you need. Which is crazy because I feel like I've gotten so many taking pretty random walks. I'm not like methodically going through, I just kind of go forward until I hit a dead end. If I missed it waaaaay back somewhere I'm going to be pissed (partially because I only found like one teleporter room.)
Okay, I beat this last night, yes I did cheese stuff to death. I don't think I would have beaten it otherwise. I'm interested in putting Super Metroid more front and center to really compare and contrast.
Additionally, I found out that basically every Metroid and Castlevania tops out at tenish hours? I might just blast through a lot of these.