Castlevania
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night · Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow · Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow · Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia · Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
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.
Probably a bit of nostalgia help here, but probably still my favorite one. I just love gathering the souls as you go.
A worthy successor to Aria but the story isn't quite as interesting.
This game has so many good ideas but I just didn't love the execution of it overall. The early levels are just too flat and linear and there's just not enough actual castle (although this could be mitigated by making it a castle by committee). I also wish there was a radial menu to be able to switch between more loadouts (obviously not doable on original hardware). The idea to have a weaknesses system is good, I just spent too much time switching in menus.
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.
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 →Also needed to continue our Metroidvania series! Soma moves like fuckin MOLASSES. Beat one boss.
Killed like four bosses now? It's pretty fun. Soma still moves sooooo slowwwwww.
I'm liking this a lot more. I'm not totally sure what's so different yet.
I cheated myself the soul getting ring because you know, fuck farming. I know it's more reliable now but dang there's still some farming!
Got through a massive chunk here, "beat" the game with the wrong ending, so had to go back and track down Paranoia and then I went around jumping into all the mirrors for a while before actually beating Dario.
Okay, stayed up a bit later than I should have to beat this, which I suppose is a good sign. I do like how fast it is to chunk through these.
This felt fine though overall. I think the evidence increasingly mounts that I need to replay Aria and Fusion to see how I still feel about both, although I'm pretty certain I beat Aria a few years ago. But I think Order of Ecclesia is next.
Playing these games now has really just shot up my love for Metroidvanias. I have some ideas for why I forgot about this but I think this is fodder for a Deep Thought so I don't want to give too much away right now.
Levels are really horizontal here at the start and I don't care for that. The glyph system is interesting, soul adjacent for Soma.
Game looks really good though, I love the flair in Shanoa's animations.
Also fuck these weird floating tentacle monsters.
The progression curve on this feels weird. I don't feel like my weapons are strong enough currently.
I'm not a giant fan of how I have to do these little quests to then get the upgrade. I am not really feeling this one currently.
I really don't know how I feel about this one. It's different and it's trying things. I feel like it's hard to get into a good flow with the glyph weapons and I'm not sure I like this early on distributed structure of the locations. I guess I do like having a hub it's relatively easy to zip back to.
Okay, so the type matching and resistances thing is a cool idea but if you're going to do that I feel like I need more slots for glyph loadouts. I gotta switch between slashing and smashing and poking and then I want something that's a bit more ranged and then I want a magic one.
It's just very annoying and breaks flow to have to be like "fuck it's a skeleton let me switch my sword glyphs for hammers."
Rescued all the villagers baby. Still having a moderate amount of fun here. I think I'd say this slots in under Dawn of Sorrow but maybe only just?
We have made it to Dracula's castle. Every time I kill a boss and it doesn't have a cool new ability drop it makes me angry.
I'm really uncertain I'm going to finish this. I think I've seen enough to make a real judgment on it and it's "cool ideas kind of okay execution." What might get me to push through it is that I'm so very close to the end and Fortune's Weave is around the corner so am I going to start something NEW? Probably not. Although I'm so close to the end of this and DQV I'll probably have some left over time before Weave.
Beat it today. I did use a cheat to just help me over the hump. I just wanted to see it through.
I think this game is fine. The Castlevania series is much weaker for me overall compared to Metroid. I think the backtracking is possibly weaker because the verb gaining is much weaker. In this game for example, you get paries and wings so late and there aren't many other traversal powers beyond the double jump.
Also getting weapon upgrades is pretty underwhelming. Once you have all the variety it's mostly just getting the slightly more powerful versions. And for me at least, not much got better than rapiers. They deal so much damage so quickly.