Punished Dayni Posted June 5, 2019 Share Posted June 5, 2019 On 6/3/2019 at 2:38 AM, Interdimensional Observer said: A lesser option would have been Castlevania: Judgement. If anyone isn't familiar with it. It is the 3D free-to-move-around fighting game where: Simon in a midriff feels insecure because he relied on the VK whip too much Alucard looks less beautiful Dracula is okay Ralph/Trevor authentically him I think Eric Lecarde is an arrogant child Shanoa is a nun, from a point in her storyline where she cannot have at least one of the Glyphs she does Death doesn't look like Death at all Carmilla is sexy and BDSM A golem exists and is playable for some inexplicable reason Sypha has a big bust Loli Maria has bust envy Aeon is an OC time master and not a chef Grant is a cool ninja pirate And Cornell from Legacy of Darkness is awesome At least it's gameplay isn't the worst.... I guess? Alucard looking less beautiful is heresy. We can agree right? On 6/4/2019 at 4:55 PM, Alastor15243 said: 2: The localization is bad. Did you ever wonder, when first playing this game, why Soma Cruz has a Japanese childhood friend when he's an exchange student not originally from Japan? Well that's because he isn't actually an exchange student. He's Japanese, they just wanted to change his name from Kurusu to Cruz for the localization. Which, I admit, is indeed a cooler name. But the fact that they didn't even think for a second about the immediate plothole implications of this change suggests they weren't being too thorough in their work here. As, indeed, do the numerous mistranslated enemy and weapon names, and even several soul power descriptions that are outright lies. Restoring HP by jumping in midair after being attacked is not the kind of "recovery" the Zombie Officer's description meant. It really means you can just right yourself and regain control of Soma without having to wait until he hits the ground. And Dead Warrior doesn't let you "deflect normal attacks" with your special attacks. It lets you cancel your own. I mean, I don't think I remember him being an exchange student? So I didn't really think he was foreign according to what the localisation wanted to say. 😛 Those are some annoying issues if minor aside. I also didn't feel like the writing floored me that badly though. On 6/4/2019 at 4:55 PM, Alastor15243 said: 3: The two water powers should have been silver souls, not orange souls. I can kind of understand only selectively wanting to be able to walk on water, but there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be able to use the water mobility soul at all times without it taking up your enchant soul slot. I initially assumed that they hadn't come up with the idea of making silver souls togglable, and that that was something the sequel added. But no. They had that idea in Aria of Sorrow first, they just didn't make use of it. And also, there's not even a situation where it would be more useful to automatically float rather than have to swim by infinite swim jumping like 2D Mario. A minor complaint, I realize, but it's a bit annoying to have to switch to the skula soul to dive and not get to use any of my enchant souls underwater. I mean, I feel a bit mixed on this, like if they were clearer on the toggleability of silver souls I'd agree in practice. Maybe they couldn't get it to work as both being on caused a big problem? On 6/4/2019 at 4:55 PM, Alastor15243 said: 10: Weapon choice is really limited compared to the DS games. Really, the only weapons I found worth using were the shortswords and the Claimh Solais. Then again, I tend to stick with my favorite in most games, but still, it's a weakness worth pointing out. I do think that on trying weapons out that one or two other types were pretty good (Not the gun though) But Claimh Solais is the best. Just, it cleaves rainbows and the evils of Dracula's castle with ease. The one thing it sucks against is also badass, so I don't complain about it Yeah, I really liked playing Aria. Absolutely a worthwhile ride. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 5, 2019 Author Share Posted June 5, 2019 24 minutes ago, Dayni said: I mean, I don't think I remember him being an exchange student? It says so in the opening text crawl of Aria in the English version. Also, couldn’t find a place to mention it in the review, but how cool is it that the happy ending music to Aria of Sorrow is a happy remix of Bloody Tears? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted June 5, 2019 Share Posted June 5, 2019 1 hour ago, Dayni said: At least it's gameplay isn't the worst.... I guess? Alucard looking less beautiful is heresy. We can agree right? I haven't actually played it myself, I only read some stuff on it online and watched a few videos. The gameplay concept looks good, freedom to roam around a stage sounds liberating from the invisible line characters are forced onto in SoulCalibur (from what I remember of SCII, the only game I've played). SC has only 3D graphics, not so much three-dimensional gameplay (but I know very very very little of fighting games). The idea of sequel with more authentic character designs is a certain fantasy I'd entertain. Add in: Soma with the Claimh Solais (and maybe a little katana action) and his legions of souls Nathan with the Hunter Whip and DSS An Adult Maria option (have to find another female to add- Castlevania is lacking good picks for these) Albus Maxim (two ninjas are fine) Charlotte- for another female with a magic setup different from Sypha's (also, maybe Stella for a third female addition?) Richter- I was thinking if Simon is the balanced VK, and Trevor is the strong and slow, that Richter could go faster and lighter On 6/4/2019 at 11:55 AM, Alastor15243 said: he also becomes Alucard in all his SotN glory. LIES! Alucard is a shadow of his former self in DoS. I wanted more from him than Hellfire, Bat, and the teleport slash (and for some reason, I always tried to dodge Zephyr's time freeze slash by teleporting just beforehand). On 6/4/2019 at 11:55 AM, Alastor15243 said: Also, the fact that you have to grind the souls to get the ending is an annoyance, but I got both the flame demon and succubus souls naturally, so that definitely softened the blow Just to remind you, Paranoia is locked behind several soul walls in DoS. Though those tell you exactly what you need. On 6/4/2019 at 11:55 AM, Alastor15243 said: 3: The two water powers should have been silver souls, not orange souls. I can kind of understand only selectively wanting to be able to walk on water, but there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be able to use the water mobility soul at all times without it taking up your enchant soul slot. I initially assumed that they hadn't come up with the idea of making silver souls togglable, and that that was something the sequel added. But no. They had that idea in Aria of Sorrow first, they just didn't make use of it. And also, there's not even a situation where it would be more useful to automatically float rather than have to swim by infinite swim jumping like 2D Mario. A minor complaint, I realize, but it's a bit annoying to have to switch to the skula soul to dive and not get to use any of my enchant souls underwater. I recall constantly swapping for these souls was annoying. In an ideal world making them Tactical (silver) souls would have been ideal. However, rather than make them togglable, I'd do a light tap/heavy press divide. By default, you will walk on water once you obtain that ability (is there any advantage to treading water?), when you can go underwater, doing so will require a light tap of down, pressing slowly and heavily on it will be how you crouch on the water's surface. Just jump fully above the surface if you want to walk on it again. So in fewer words- make the water's surface a Smash Bros. platform. On 6/4/2019 at 11:55 AM, Alastor15243 said: Especially Julius. I think he might be my favorite boss battle I've fought so far in this marathon. Don't forget his awesome battle theme! Julius is great, and the Whip's Memory, though I forget much of it, was refreshingly different in the context of PoR. On 6/4/2019 at 11:55 AM, Alastor15243 said: This sudden exciting rush of enemy difficulty unfortunately does not carry over to the Chaotic Realm, the last area of the game, which was honestly extremely disappointing considering what came before it. And if you must leave it for whatever reason, no warps to get out easily. Adds to the otherworldly, unstable, chaotic feel of the Chaotic Realm, but the lack of warps is also a chore. The Abyss of DoS, such an explicable copy of the CR, did have a few warps and that is a small advantage it has. On 6/4/2019 at 11:55 AM, Alastor15243 said: 4: The souls are better. Setting aside the obvious fact that unlike Dawn of Sorrow and even Portrait of Ruin, you can use abilities at full power right off the bat in this game, a lot of enemies that returned in Dawn of Sorrow had their powers replaced with lamer ones. Weird. Barring the rarity and lack of power, in terms of variety, I've been under the impression that while AoS has had some neat stuff, that DoS had the better overall selection. Ghost DoS is atrocious, but I think if I looked I could a likewise awful soul in AoS. Maybe I've just been charmed by Abaddon and Giant Axe Armor for too long. Though I can definitely see AoS as being arguably the best and better than DoS as well. It was the last I played of the seven titles, at the end of my Wii U romp which saw CoM and HoD played some time not too long beforehand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 5, 2019 Author Share Posted June 5, 2019 39 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: LIES! Alucard is a shadow of his former self in DoS. I wanted more from him than Hellfire, Bat, and the teleport slash (and for some reason, I always tried to dodge Zephyr's time freeze slash by teleporting just beforehand). In my defense, 1: I hadn't played SotN in about 10 years when I said that, and 2: I was referring to his sprites. 40 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Just to remind you, Paranoia is locked behind several soul walls in DoS. Though those tell you exactly what you need. Yeah, at that point I wasn't really talking about stuff it does worse than DoS, just stuff it does poorly. But yes, I should have mentioned that. 40 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: I recall constantly swapping for these souls was annoying. In an ideal world making them Tactical (silver) souls would have been ideal. However, rather than make them togglable, I'd do a light tap/heavy press divide. By default, you will walk on water once you obtain that ability (is there any advantage to treading water?), when you can go underwater, doing so will require a light tap of down, pressing slowly and heavily on it will be how you crouch on the water's surface. Just jump fully above the surface if you want to walk on it again. So in fewer words- make the water's surface a Smash Bros. platform. Interesting concept, though it'd probably need a tutorial, and CVs don't really have those, even when they should. 41 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Weird. Barring the rarity and lack of power, in terms of variety, I've been under the impression that while AoS has had some neat stuff, that DoS had the better overall selection. Ghost DoS is atrocious, but I think if I looked I could a likewise awful soul in AoS. Maybe I've just been charmed by Abaddon and Giant Axe Armor for too long. Oh those two are good, but all in all I found the AoS ones pretty damned charming and they dominate my favorites list. I got a lot of fun bullet souls to mess around with, though I think DoS might have smoothed out the ratio of bullet to guardian to enchant a bit. And again, it barely matters when the soul system has been so heavily steeped in grind in DoS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 8, 2019 Author Share Posted June 8, 2019 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night On March 20, 1997, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was released on the PlayStation, radically altering the Castlevania formula from an arcade-style action platformer to an exploration-based action rpg, a change which won over the masses in droves, got Symphony hailed as one of the greatest games ever made, made it one half of the namesake of its own genre, and spawned six handheld sequels and an online multiplayer game, all spearheaded by its creator: Koji Igarashi. It forsook the then-recent craze in 3D graphics that hadn't nearly reached the “this will age well” milestone, and instead focused on using its then-current-generation console power to host 2D sprite graphics so beautiful and timeless that its sequels were shamelessly and yet seamlessly recycling them more than a decade later. It was gorgeous. It was revolutionary. It was one of the two grandfathers of an entire genre that still has games produced in it to this day, from indie to AAA. And there's a very frequent, very large problem that games in that revolutionary situation face when looked back on years down the line: They tend to suck. You see, there's a trend in media that TV Tropes likes to refer to as “Seinfeld is Unfunny”, but which I prefer to call “The Innovator's Curse”, largely since that's more noun-y of a term to use. But whatever you call it, it refers to something that was so innovative and revolutionary, and influenced so many games that came after it, that virtually everything good about it was copied by its successors until it became industry standard, and what that often means for the original product is that the only things that set it apart from its successors are the mistakes that its successors learned from. Symphony of the Night... does not have that problem. I expected it to, given its age and the insane lens I've put every other game in the series under, a lens which has caused me to be disappointed with at least two games I remembered adoring. It certainly does have those mistakes. In fact it has a mind-boggling amount of them. But thankfully it has one major, major difference between it and the sequels that is way more noticeable and plays by far the biggest role in keeping it relevant in a modern Igavania discussion. The thing about Symphony that I slowly realized while going through the first hour or so of the game was that the Igavanias that came after it didn't exactly copy the entire formula. Symphony of the Night is a fundamentally different beast than the games that came after it and, for better or worse, offers an experience that they cannot and do not provide. An experience that made me realize things about the previous games on this list that I hadn't even noticed before. And I think it is that, more than anything else, that guarantees its relevance and appeal. No matter where I wind up putting this game on that list, there isn't a single game on the list that can satisfyingly replace the experience of playing it. It also means that one thought kept running through my head, and getting louder and louder the more I explored the various nooks and crannies of Dracula's castle: “Christ, this is going to be a hard game to rank.” And so it was. But let's stop beating around the bush and get to that big difference, shall we? You see, the big thing about Symphony of the Night that sets it apart from its successors, the big part of the formula that the games to come after it didn't copy, is that it's an extremely open-world game. In the case of nearly all of the other games on this list, while the map is vast and interconnected, Symphony of the Night made me realize their formula is a lot more linear than it feels. In nearly every case, you start out with access to one area, fight your way to the boss, gain access to a second area, fight the second boss, and so on and so forth, unlocking access to one area at a time until you've gained access to them all by the time you face the final boss. While the areas are large enough that there's still plenty of exploration to be had, and plenty of reason to venture back into old areas once you have new power-ups, I can't deny that playing Symphony of the Night has made most of the previous games on this list feel a lot less open in hindsight. I didn't immediately realize what was going on while traveling through the castle. But eventually it occurred to me around the time I had wound my way around and through the castle and reached the library and its librarian: I had gone through no fewer than five different areas of the castle without acquiring, or needing, a single exploration power-up. Instead of being split into 7 or so different stages of castle access (such as Aria of Sorrow's base, hover jump, double jump, slide kick, water walk, swimming and flight), Symphony of the Night has something more like four very, very large and difficult to define stages of access. The first one begins when you enter the castle at the beginning of the game. You have access to the entrance, alchemy laboratory, marble gallery, outer wall, and long library. There you talk to the librarian and can buy the Jewel of Open, which opens a very small number of magically locked doors in the game, and this is where things start getting crazy. Because up to this point, while you had access to a lot of areas, you were mostly traveling in a single, continuous winding path through the castle, from the entrance to your first warp point (which sends you back to the alchemy laboratory). Once you get the jewel of open, you gain access to the castle's underground, but only superficially at first. There's a power-up that lets you move through water, but it's basically entirely self-contained and only relevant for exploring that area. More importantly, you get access to the finale of phase 1: the climb up the royal chapel to the lower half of the castle keep, where you finally, at long last, find the ability to double jump. This brings us to the second phase of the game, which consists of all the areas that possessing the double jump now grants you access to. You can climb to the top of the outer wall, activate the elevator and get the wolf form (which doesn't expand your area access really, but more on that later), and then you can scale the clock tower all the way to the broken staircase of the castle keep where you'll eventually confront the castle's master. You can explore a little more of the library, but that won't be too important in this phase. There's also countless assorted hidden items you can now grab with a combination of double jumping and strategic dive kick bouncing, because in this game that move is so floaty it lets you get to even harder to reach locations if you know how to exploit the enemies in the area. More of note, however, it grants you access to the rest of the castle's vast underground. You can finish your exploration of the watery underground cavern, figure out how to gain access to the abandoned mine, and then the catacombs, until eventually, if you search long enough, you'll exhaust every area within it but a strange dark room you can't do anything with at the moment. Eventually, however, you'll discover that the double jump also grants you access to two of the upper tunnels in the big clock room where you first met Maria, and through one of them you'll find a bit of Olrox's quarters that leads to the main mandatory area of this phase, the one where the plot happens: the colosseum. Fight your way through that and you'll reach the key to phase 3: the form of mist. This lets you pass through grates, one of which is all that's in the way of you getting the bat form. Which is all that's in the way of getting you the high jump power and the ability to do hypersonic dash attacks as the wolf. If you've explored phase 2 thoroughly enough and know all the places you previously couldn't reach in phase 2, within a short time you'll have gone from having one mobility power up to having basically all of them. You now have full access to the entire castle, and that's where phase 3 begins. Now, at this point you already have what it takes to confront the castle's master, defeat him, and get the fake ending. But if you want the real ending, you're going to have to explore every nook and cranny of the castle until you've gotten several more items, beaten a few more bosses, and finally gained access to the castle's very core, where you gain the tool you need to figure out what's really going on and beat the castle's master the right way. And... that's where phase four comes in. Yes, after you get past the bad ending and beat the castle's master properly, you rush into a back room past Dracula's throne, and... ...go into a second goddamned castle that spontaneously manifested, upside down, in the sky. And here, you have a whole second, inverted castle to explore, with no more mobility upgrades to acquire. Absolutely nothing is off limits, except for the main core, the location of the final boss, which requires you to first hunt down the five relics of Dracula. Which are scattered as the spoils of boss battles all over the castle. So there you are. That's your mission. Otherwise, go nuts. It should be pretty obvious by this point what I'm talking about when I say Symphony of the Night can't properly be compared to any of its successors. It's an entirely different experience, a game with a much more open and freeform progression, where you're likely to fight bosses in different orders, explore whole areas in different orders, and do a hell of a lot of other stuff you can't do in the more structured frameworks the sequels provide. And so we come down to the fundamental thing I have to ask myself when ranking this game: “Which style is better?” This seems on the face of it like a stupid question. Of course the open-world style is better, right? Exploration of a vast, interconnected world is part of the entire point and charm of the metroidvania genre. In fact, realizing just how far away from that model the rest of the Igavania games strayed should, in theory, be a damning mark against them, make them feel less complete in hindsight, and send this skyrocketing to near the top of the list, whatever its flaws. Why on earth would I think otherwise? Alas, it's not that simple, and as games like Breath of the Wild have thoroughly taught me, there's a big danger and disadvantage to going open world as opposed to linear. And while that danger can be faced head-on and dealt with, if Breath of the Wild has taught me anything, it's that sometimes even the best of the best game designers either can't, or don't care to, deal with it. One of the biggest criticisms I've seen thrown at Symphony of the Night is that it's the easiest game in the series. This is more or less correct, though there is a caveat to me saying that that I will discuss later. But for now, I'd like to focus on why this is mostly correct: the game doesn't start easy. It becomes easy. And that is the big danger of designing an open-world game that it's very tricky to make a solution for: if you design a bunch of areas to be equally explorable in any order, and then you add in some equipment or power-up mechanic by which the character gets stronger the more they explore, then naturally each subsequent area will get easier rather than harder, because your character is getting stronger, but their obstacles are not. And if there's a leveling system, where the mere act of playing the game and traveling across the map will slowly make you stronger, then this only gets more and more drastic, until eventually the last area of that “tier” will most likely be a cakewalk you curb-stomp with game-breaking weaponry and powers. This is why Symphony of the Night is the easiest game in the series: because it's the only one without a difficulty curve. A tight, challenging experience was not the main priority. This was supposed to be a game about exploring and adventuring through a vast world of diverse locales with tons of secrets to find, where the world is their oyster and they get to decide what to do first. In all the other games, at least in theory, the developer has a good idea of what power level the player will be at upon exploring each area, because that's the only order they're allowed to do them in. And the challenge will thus scale accordingly with the player's progress. You see the problem here. Unless you come up with some mechanism to counteract this (and Symphony, much like Breath of the Wild, decidedly does not), open worlds and difficulty are pretty much mutually exclusive concepts. Pick one or the other. You can't have both. And Symphony obviously picked to have an open world. And make no mistake, it is a hell of an open world to explore. Remember all those complaints I had about games making it confusing to remember where to backtrack to? Symphony broke those rules repeatedly, but the places and surroundings were so striking and unique that I easily remembered damn near every single location of every single obstruction I could now get through. The castle is gorgeous and memorable, the background tracks for each area are true beauty in audio form, and if that's how I'm reacting to it now, dear god I can't even fathom how people reacted to it then. Hell, I realize the voice acting is pure Saturday morning cartoon cheese, but you know what else I noticed during that opening scene? They actually gave Richter animations for gesturing in time with his voiced dialogue. The attention to detail when it comes to the presentation is absolutely ludicrous. I have absolutely no trouble understanding why people reacted so favorably to this game when it came out. It's just... ...y'know... ...the actual gameplay is kind of shit. Okay, first, lemme explain where I'm coming from. I said before that I had a caveat to calling Symphony of the Night easy. What I meant by that was that Symphony of the Night is easy in the same way that Circle of the Moon is, and to a greater extent. It is statistically easy, but technically a meat grinder. Despite how easy this game is, a 0 damage run of this game, or even just a few of its bosses, is absolutely herculean task requiring intricate knowledge of the game's systems and exploits, and not because of good game design. Enemy attack patterns can be flat-out unfair, some enemies have ridiculously long reaches or swift attacks, bosses frequently resemble bullet hells with flashing lights and crazy visuals making it damn near impossible to tell what's going on, your weapons' hitboxes are so narrow that they had to program in two separate styles of crouch attacks to be able to hit some small enemies in this game, the snipers of goth will randomly fly faster than usual without a moment's notice, spontaneously rushing to the opposite side of you with no real feasible means to dodge besides keeping fog ready (and to make matters worse they appear in massive packs), and azaghals are absolutely ridiculous, with their hurtbox that only encompasses their sword's hilt, and their wildly swift and unpredictable attacks where they'll often fly offscreen, and if you try to find them while not in fog, they will frequently cross the gap from offscreen to your character in a single swing attack. But the thing is that none of that matters. Because with the exception of the really strong ones, by the end of the game you'll take so little damage from all of these enemies that their ridiculously hard to dodge attack patterns are a nuisance, not a menace. By the time I reached the inverted castle, I had the same thoughts about his game that I did about Circle of the Moon. The game felt like it was humiliating and then patronizing me, with enemies knocking me around like a ragdoll while I could do nothing but try blindly to inflict enough damage on them that they'd go away, and then when they eventually did, I stood there feeling not triumphant, but empty, like I was somehow cheating, but not even sure I wanted to do it legitimately, or if that was even possible. In short, every fight felt like a re-enactment of Tenya Iida vs Mei Hatsume from My Hero Academia. The bosses knocked me around for a few minutes, humiliating me with their attack patterns, and then they surrendered. And this was pretty much every boss in the game after Gaibon and Slogra. I don't sense the same sort of smart level design I know from other games in the series, where it'd take skill, but you can still conceive of the idea that a skilled player could get through it unscathed without looking it up. I don't see that here. I see an entire room infested by at least 30 evil squids nearly coating the floor. I see a 7-square-high room full of imps with no platforms to jump up, so you have to cheese it with your mist if you managed to find the powerup that lets you use it to fly, or else get knocked out of the air near the top if you try to high jump or bat morph your way up, because you can't properly attack imps in the air without platforms to jump from and you need to let them knock you out of the air before they'll come down to the floor where you can fight them. I see rooms full of lesser demons (who used to be a boss) that summon more lesser demons while a cthulhu flies towards you a couple of feet off the ground in a game that doesn't have a slide kick attack for you to use to pass under enemies that do that like in every other Igavania. While I know that the human condition almost guarantees it's been done, and sure enough a quick google search sent me to a youtube video of somebody doing a perfect run of every boss, the strategies are ridiculous and involve pinpoint, lightning-fast reflexes and knowing what the enemy will do next, and before I saw that video I couldn't even imagine a way for anyone to successfully and swiftly kill these enemies without getting hurt. And you know what? I don't think the developers did either. In short, this action RPG has action so intense yet awkward that it flips back around and basically becomes irrelevant, and it's pretty much just a straight up RPG in an action RPG's clothing, where in most cases it's just about tanking hits long enough to hit your opponent until it breaks. And I honestly get the feeling in a great many parts of this game that that was almost the point. That they didn't much care about having compelling action so much as the illusion of it, propped up by stats, while the core focus was the sheer joy of exploring the world. There are so many issues with this game's design that I can barely count them, but nearly all of them would have become obvious if they tackled this game with the same design philosophy with which they tackled the games that came after, or even the games that came before. This isn't really a game that was intended to be played. It was a game that was intended to be experienced. ...But unfortunately, by the time I got to the inverted castle, the experience stopped being enough for me. The inverted castle is a pain to navigate, because surprise surprise, the castle wasn't built to be navigated upside-down. An infuriatingly high percentage of ledges are a hair's breadth away from being accessible by double jump. That is, naturally, why they don't let you go there until you have between one and three different ways of flying through the air, but the problem is that all of them are slow and awkward. Bat and the upgraded fog form are about as fast as each other, which isn't very fast at all. Flying as a bat honestly felt slower than it did in the DS games. And while fog is invincible, bat form is pretty much defenseless, and the attack upgrade you get for it has such a big delay on it that you can't hit anything you'd need to fight instead of flying away from. The high jump requires a finicky fighting-game d-pad input that makes it nearly impossible to aim at an angle, and not only does it cost MP and not refresh your double jump, but you can't even use it in mid-air until you've exhausted said double jump. And while there were a few cool enemy designs taking advantage of the inverted scenery, like an archer who rides a gear mounted platform that uses the stairs as tracks, for the most part you were just exploring all of the same places again, except this time it was more annoying to get around. ...And that largely gets into my major complaints with the game. Unfortunately I'm forced to conclude that the biggest thing that makes it unique is also part of its greatest weakness from a gameplay perspective, exacerbated by a design philosophy that did the exact opposite of trying to compensate for it. But the positive thing I have to say about all of this is that by the time we got to Aria of Sorrow, the people working on these games had figured out how much of this didn't really work. Iga and company have come a long, long way since the creation of this game, and have learned a lot, and while it seems patronizing for a fan to even say this, I'm genuinely proud of them for all the progress they made fixing what didn't work about this landmark concept. Beyond that, I had a large number of assorted good and bad things to say about the game that I noted down throughout my playthrough: The Good Once again, I just wanna re-emphasize how good this game looks. I realize it's still a 16 bit game, but do keep in mind that I counted only about five enemies in the entire game that the three DS games hadn't reused, more than a decade later. And again, sprite cutscene posing. I like the decision to make Alucard come out of his coffin when you resume a file. Nice graphical touch. The first boss fight against Gaibon and Slogra was pretty good at least. I love that capes change the appearance of the cape on Alucard's sprite, and that his second-to-best one can be whatever combination of colors you like, with an in-depth rgb customization screen made specifically for customizing it. Alucard has the coolest double jump animation in the series, because his cape temporarily turns into wings to flap you upward. Super cool touch, definitely my favorite, with Charlotte's spontaneous broomstick summoning coming in second. Whether you get money or hearts is completely independent of your heart supply. I like that. It doesn't indirectly discourage subweapon use by only letting you get candle money if you don't use them. Though Order of Ecclesia may turn out to also apply, so far this is the only game in the series that actually did the shop right. You get a decent amount of money that, again, you get whether you use subweapons or not, and they give you valuable stuff that's specifically intended for selling, and they give it to you for exploring instead of for grinding item drops (though they give it to you for that too). Plus the prices aren't ludicrously crazy. I never saw anything in the hundred thousand range. The biggest thing I wanted was the amazing technicolor cloak, and I got that for 30,000, which was easily achieved just by exploring, and I had it before phase 3. While a bit tricky to work out, the fighting-game style spells were easier to pull off than I remember them being on the PSP. As awkward as the method of using healing items is (you have to equip the item to your left or right hand and then use it, and for food that means throwing it on the floor and then picking it up again), I like that in this game that isn't something spontaneous you can just do instantly from the menu. It almost made me reconsider my “no mid-battle healing” rule to try it out. Almost. But then I found out about the fairy familiar who uses healing items for you automatically, and I thought better of that rule, and also switched to the devil familiar for the rest of the game. I had fun figuring out about the leap of faith chain of candlestick-bouncing dive kicks from the clock tower balcony that gets you the grand cross subweapon. I liked that they let you buy videos that teach you how to dodge some bosses' attacks. Even if a lot of them, such as the Richter one, were decidedly incomplete and unhelpful, given how nuts their variety of attacks can be and how they don't show all of them in the video. Even considering that, I like it as a concept. I enjoyed having three accessory slots, even if one of them was constantly occupied by the cape. What the fuck is the corny-as-shit ending theme!? It's complete and utter garbage and I want to kiss it. The Bad Alucard being able to us the legendary Belmont subweapons feels... wrong to me. Not just because I don't like their classic find-in-candles implementation being applied to the Igavania format. No, mostly because I just don't think it makes sense for Alucard to be able to use them, and I'd have liked a new ability type mapped to the subweapon system's controls. Also, the fact that there is no cross boomerang, just a ludicrously expensive grand cross item crash, is really annoying, especially since the cross boomerang is my favorite one. The default controls seem pretty awkward. I wound up remapping the off hand from circle to one of the shoulder buttons because I can press that without taking my finger off the jump button. Boss rooms don't have any warning that they're boss rooms from the outside, and often don't even have save points nearby. Dick move. There's an elevator you run into in the alchemy laboratory, and it's kind of pointlessly slow. I don't get Alucard's “ready to use a subweapon” animation. Especially since the one he does on stairs where he draws his cape around him is much, much cooler. It felt alarmingly early in the game to be throwing an evil twin fight at me as the second boss. I definitely preferred the voice acting of the PSP version. Those single-use attack items feel pointless, especially as exploration rewards. What am I supposed to do with a single-use magic bow that I have to go to the menu screen to equip, use once or twice, and then return to the menu to re-equip something else? This feels like a waste of an animation budget that could have gone into more dark magic spells for Alucard. Malphas, or whatever his name is in SotN, was a joke. I could just stunlock him with jump attacks. Wolf form is super lame and basically worthless until you get the ability to dash-attack. Putting subweapon candles right over pits where your old one will automatically fall irretrievably into the void is a psychotically dickish move, and this game does it multiple times. I can't decide if it's cute or dumb that the "holy symbol" that protects Alucard from water damage looks like a snorkel. Why do the frogs have pizza? Does Dracula have time travel powers? Why is he using them to order pizza, and why is he then just giving it to the frogs? For that matter, why was the thing that got Lisa burned as a witch the fact that she was suspiciously good at curing illnesses? Were the villagers seriously completely fine with her getting plowed by the lord of darkness for more than a decade? There are a few pits, like with the giant waterfall in the underground, where if you fall down, the only way back up is to go the long way around, which is often a long walk even after warping. You can't swim in this game. You still only have your standard jump and double jump when underwater, they're just all low-gravity moon physics. Locking story content behind that confusing as fuck clock was a colossal dick move. I assumed since it was so obtuse that it would be bonus content and ignored it until there was literally nothing left to explore with the double jump. Then I looked up online that it opens and closes every other minute, and I'm like “how was I supposed to figure that out?" Waaaaaay too much knockback and hitstun, even when taking almost no damage. Some enemies can come very close to stunlocking you. It baffles me that they made a relic out of seeing the damage you do, given that seeing those numbers at the beginning of the game would have made having and losing the Alucard gear far more impactful. As far as I can tell, there's no in-game explanation for what the button combination is for doing the high jump. The long hall of spikes that makes you think you need the bat form for it when at the end it reveals that you just flat-out need immunity to spikes, but by that point the fog gate means it's impossible to backtrack without getting repeatedly impaled by the spikes since you can't go straight from mist to bat at that point... come the fuck on. The process of getting the glasses you need to bypass the bad ending is an annoying sidequest back and forth across the castle, collecting multiple power ups that seem to serve literally no other purpose than the single task they let you complete to reach the next item. I was not expecting Maria in the secret box room in the core of Dracula's castle, and it makes no sense. Why would she hide in there rather than give Alucard the item to save her friend directly? The PSP version added in a boss fight here, which I remember justifying this weird plot point more. The orange balloon plant enemies are utterly pointless, just a time sink to get past and wait for the spores to clear. I'm not sure how the hell you're supposed to dodge the Gorgon's petrify attack. All I know is that looking away from it didn't work, but constantly spamming the button combination for summon spirit did. Somehow. ...Well... with all of this in mind... where do I put it on the list? 1: Aria of Sorrow 2: Portrait of Ruin 3: Dawn of Sorrow 4: Symphony of the Night 5: Circle of the Moon 6: Harmony of Dissonance I knew for a long time that it was going to be a question of whether Dawn of Sorrow or Symphony of the Night was better. And for a while I was leaning heavily towards Symphony for the sheer value of the unique experience it offered compared to Dawn of Sorrow being more inoffensive. But the inverted castle drained away whatever goodwill I had towards the value of the game's experience. This was another game where by the end of it I was glad it was over. That experience still puts it well above Circle of the Moon, though. I really, reeeeaaaaaallly didn't want to give such a negative review to the Castlevania series' equivalent to Ocarina of Time, but I just had to. I wasn't having fun, for a good portion of it, for reasons that were obvious to me. ...Well, on the bright side, we end this marathon with a bang. Tune in next time as I give my thoughts on the third game in the DS Trilogy, and the game I remember being my personal favorite: Order of Ecclesia. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rapier Posted June 8, 2019 Share Posted June 8, 2019 10 hours ago, Alastor15243 said: I was not expecting Maria in the secret box room in the core of Dracula's castle, and it makes no sense. Why would she hide in there rather than give Alucard the item to save her friend directly? The PSP version added in a boss fight here, which I remember justifying this weird plot point more. It actually originated from the Saturn version, where she was a boss. Also, these logs reminded me of one thing I dislike the most on Metroidvanias: If you're a forgetful person, good luck remembering where you saw that convenient platform that can only be accessed with a double jump, or wall jump, or a gap you can use your recently learned slide ability to go through. Showing save rooms and teleport rooms isn't enough, the player should be able to mark any spots they find noteworthy on the map, like with Etrian Odyssey. Hollow Knight does this with the custom pins it offers, but it's not quite enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 8, 2019 Author Share Posted June 8, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, Rapier said: It actually originated from the Saturn version, where she was a boss. Also, these logs reminded me of one thing I dislike the most on Metroidvanias: If you're a forgetful person, good luck remembering where you saw that convenient platform that can only be accessed with a double jump, or wall jump, or a gap you can use your recently learned slide ability to go through. Showing save rooms and teleport rooms isn't enough, the player should be able to mark any spots they find noteworthy on the map, like with Etrian Odyssey. Hollow Knight does this with the custom pins it offers, but it's not quite enough. Funny thing: I just discovered a little while ago when I started replaying OoE that it lets you do that too. If you go to the map menu, there are these five golden pins you can tap and drag onto each map. I never noticed that before! I assumed those pins were some sort of completion flag, like more pins means you’ve explored more of the map. But seeing the same number for a nearly-complete and a mostly-incomplete level made me wonder what they really were and give them a tap. And voila! Edited June 8, 2019 by Alastor15243 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zapp Branniglenn Posted June 8, 2019 Share Posted June 8, 2019 5 hours ago, Rapier said: It actually originated from the Saturn version, where she was a boss. Also, these logs reminded me of one thing I dislike the most on Metroidvanias: If you're a forgetful person, good luck remembering where you saw that convenient platform that can only be accessed with a double jump, or wall jump, or a gap you can use your recently learned slide ability to go through. Showing save rooms and teleport rooms isn't enough, the player should be able to mark any spots they find noteworthy on the map, like with Etrian Odyssey. Hollow Knight does this with the custom pins it offers, but it's not quite enough. In my experience, custom map markers are a very hit or miss - usually miss answer. Having a tall ledge in a room you can double jump or wall jump to is one thing, but other interactables can be difficult to identify on a first playthrough, even as an experienced player of this genre. If a metroidvania gives you the ability to climb walls covered in green goo, you'll realize "oh, I didn't know these sorts of walls were noteworthy, I just thought they were preventing me from using my wall jump on them and that I can only pass through the opposite direction". I remember in Axiom Verge there were holes in the ceiling, and I thought, okay, maybe my jump will get even higher. Then you get a remote control drone you can fire onto high ledges for exploring. Go back, nope that's not the answer. Drone can't jump high enough to continue up that way. The actual answer is a Super Metroid style grappling hook that connects to any point of the ceiling and can swing you up through a gap. I couldn't guess that. If anything map markers are more helpful on a second playthrough where weird level design jogs your memory on a later ability you would need. The biggest obstacle for a metroid-like game is communicating to the player when it's time to backtrack. Metroid Prime 1, a classic example. You're exploring through phendrana drifts until you get Spider Ball from a boss. And there are spider ball tracks in the rooms around you so you explore a bit. But what you're actually supposed to do is go allll the way back to the Chozo Ruins, which is the other side of the traversible game world, about a twenty minute walk with the Gamecube version's load times, to locate the one room with spider ball tracks that leads to the Ice Beam. And you need the Ice Beam for the next upgrade back in Phendrana Drifts! Why not have the ice beam in the ice area? So much sudden backtracking in a game that is otherwise very straightforward. The Ice Beam is the reason I never finished it as a kid. Eventually, if you're playing the game for about 30 consecutive minutes with no progress the game notifies you the general direction you should be going, but 30 minutes is a lot of time the player is expected to waste for such a small hint. And the game hasn't asked you to leave an area prematurely, so you might disregard such hints. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 (edited) On 6/5/2019 at 5:01 PM, Alastor15243 said: In my defense, 1: I hadn't played SotN in about 10 years when I said that, and 2: I was referring to his sprites. The capitalized "LIES!" meant I didn't mean that all that seriously. His lovely spritework in DoS is as lovely as it was in SotN, but I just kinda wished after having played SotN that he had more of his old arsenal available than three-four tricks. On 6/5/2019 at 5:01 PM, Alastor15243 said: And again, it barely matters when the soul system has been so heavily steeped in grind in DoS. I'd never deny that. I don't quite get why they added that to DoS now that I think about it. 20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said: It baffles me that they made a relic out of seeing the damage you do, given that seeing those numbers at the beginning of the game would have made having and losing the Alucard gear far more impactful. I think Kaga said, in a relatively recent GameSpot interview + gameplay of the game's beginning segment, it was placed where it was because of a Devil they placed in a nearby hallway- a really strong enemy. When you see all the damage the Devil is absorbing, it will make you go "this is too powerful for me to kill right now, I should turn around". Also, in the same discussion, Kaga said the main menu is incomplete. There were plans to make better graphics for it, maybe faux-stained glass decoration, but the game didn't have the time or resources to squeeze it in, resulting in the thin white lettering on blue that looks like it was used for playtesting an unreleased game. Your criticisms of Symphony are a little more than expected on the gameplay side. But you certainly are looking at things much more technically than I. And I haven't booted up SotN in forever, so I can't really argue at all. 4 hours ago, Glennstavos said: Why not have the ice beam in the ice area? Were I to guess it's because the Chozo Ruins are the most Chozo-y place in MP1? The Ice Beam is the most Metroid-y of the beams since it is distinctly anti-Metroid the titular enemies. Chozo = Metroid-ness = Ice Beam? Not according to Smash. Edited June 9, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 9, 2019 Author Share Posted June 9, 2019 (edited) 25 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Your criticisms of Symphony are a little more than expected on the gameplay side. But you certainly are looking at things much more technically than I. And I haven't booted up SotN in forever, so I can't really argue at all. Believe me, I hated saying it. Honestly, I spent a good chunk of my playtime prepared to hold my elitist hat in my hands and give SotN my seal of approval, combat be damned, just from how much fun I had exploring the castle. But the inverted castle just sucked all the fun out of it for me, because this game just was not built for Alucard to depend on his flying powers to get around. I realize it’s only a difference of a single spot on the list, but given that point separates “games I enjoyed” from “games I did not”, it still kinda hurts. But the good thing is that I don’t think anything I said hadn’t already occurred to Iga ages ago, given that they’re problems that are largely exclusive to this game and the one or two after it. I don’t think this is a bad game (it felt like one at the end, but I did have lots of fun before then), or that Iga was being an idiot who should have known better. This man pioneered an entirely new way of playing video games, made a god damned spectacle out of it in the process, then recognized what he could have done better and did it better. Edited June 9, 2019 by Alastor15243 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 28 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said: But the inverted castle just sucked all the fun out of it for me, because this game just was not built for Alucard to depend on his flying powers to get around. And to be fair, the inverted castle is sorta filler. You can get through it real quick and the plot is nonexistent once you get inside beyond the final battle with dear old dad and quick two-line exchange with a terribly easy Death (only 666 HP?, it was that or 4444 I guess). Doesn't Finale Toccata play almost exclusively in the inverted castle? I think that adds real evidence to it being an afterthought, or at the least, poorly planned. It is a mass of bosses and exploration without anything to string it together into a cohesive entity. PoR did the second half area recycling better. And on the topic of exploration, this is the only game where your very best ending requires map completion (and the rings and glasses to avoid the bad endings). All of the games with better and worse endings (so not CoM) do require exploration to achieve- to find the Dracula Remains for HoD, to find the needed souls for AoS, get Paranoia for DoS, Sanctuary for PoR, all the villagers for OoE. It is interesting, a non-gameplay incentive in each to explore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 9, 2019 Author Share Posted June 9, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said: And to be fair, the inverted castle is sorta filler. You can get through it real quick and the plot is nonexistent once you get inside beyond the final battle with dear old dad and quick two-line exchange with a terribly easy Death (only 666 HP?, it was that or 4444 I guess). Sure, if you know where to go. But if you don't, you need to hunt around the map for the five relics of Dracula. Which actually sounds quite fun in theory, and probably would have been if the inverted castle had been more interesting and more fun to platform in. 1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Doesn't Finale Toccata play almost exclusively in the inverted castle? Oh boy does it ever. It was utterly surreal hearing that music play, going through one of the music-silencing inter-area door rooms, and then hearing those opening notes of the song play again. 1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said: And on the topic of exploration, this is the only game where your very best ending requires map completion (and the rings and glasses to avoid the bad endings). All of the games with better and worse endings (so not CoM) do require exploration to achieve- to find the Dracula Remains for HoD, to find the needed souls for AoS, get Paranoia for DoS, Sanctuary for PoR, all the villagers for OoE. It is interesting, a non-gameplay incentive in each to explore. Quick correction: The best ending in HoD is when you collect all of the furniture, and as a result Lydie is so thoroughly aroused by Juste's peak metrosexuality that she starts flirting with him in the ending. Edited June 9, 2019 by Alastor15243 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said: Sure, if you know where to go. But if you don't, you need to hunt around the map for the five relics of Dracula. Which actually sounds quite fun in theory, and probably would have been if the inverted castle had been more interesting and more fun to platform in. The Floating Catacombs were a little more inventive, but yeah the rest of the castle needed work. I'm not quite sure what they could have done though. 7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said: Quick correction: The best ending in HoD is when you collect all of the furniture, and as a result Lydie is so thoroughly aroused by Juste's peak metrosexuality that she starts flirting with him in the ending. And to think it all went to waste once the castle collapsed in the ending. However it was Castle B, which wasn't actually a physical normal entity in the first place, and Castlevania even without that is a fluid structure that emerges from and can convert back into the energies of Chaos. Therefore, it is entirely possible that that room survives and that Juste after the game is over, is able to access it via a pocket dimension. Utterly infatuated with decorating this one room he made his own in Dracula's Castle, Juste finds himself spending more and more of his time continuing to decorate it with things he bring to it, and less time in the ordinary world. To the point it becomes a half-serious question whether he or Maxim sired all of the next generation "Belmonts". And Juste's firstborn son heir to the Vampire Killer is left to train themselves in the art of the whip and subweapons, because Daddy isn't interested in that. Richter for his part could only remember glancing at Grandpa maybe tens times in his entire life before he mysteriously disappeared, which he thought was what his parents told him to avoid saying Grandpa had died. In truth, Juste simply lost interest in life beyond his private Demon Castle chamber which he kept a secret from everyone but his passive wife and overly trusting friend. He soon began within the Chaotic Realm where this lone room exists to take the gradual inflow of darkness generated on Earth by humanity and slowly construct additional rooms around it. Juste comes to think himself the proper owner of this quaint little seaside of chaos cottage. The darkness begins to taint his being, and by gradual osmosis of the darkness, he become a vampire. When Dracula next awakens in 1792, he asserts his supremacy over his suddenly gargantuan castle. Juste, having forgotten who he was and what Dracula is, argues that he owns the castle and has the right to shape it as he sees fit. After a little Hellfire, Juste long sans VK yields to Dracula's power, and forms an agreement with Dracula- Juste becomes his servant, and in exchange gets the rights to decorate every bit of the castle according to his whims and desires, excluding the throne room and its immediate environ. That same year, Richter defeats Dracula and Juste, who wasn't a fighter being into interior design, vanishes with it whilst still being alive. Four years later in 1796, Dracula's Castle returns and so does Juste, who returns to his lifelong and beyond passion. This time however, Death in the absence of Dracula himself orders that Juste help defend the castle from Alucard who is rummaging through it. Juste complains that isn't his job, and Death gives him an undeath by a thousand miniscythe cuts to "persuade" him otherwise, he did nothing to defend his liege last time, he will do it now! Now it is to be noted that when Juste agreed to become Dracula's servant, he was a haughty individual who had to be sated first. And Dracula granting him decor rights was not enough. If Dracula was the Prince of Darkness (although Satan disputes this), then Juste demanded a title of nobility of his own. Dracula reviewed the old European hierarchies and ranks and chose something he felt appropriate to Juste's merit as an underling. Duke was too great for Juste, and so too was Marquess, thus he had to settle for a lower honorific, that of Count. It was with this title that Alucard slew Richter's former grandfather, and with this title he returned in 1999 after several centuries of being too insignificant to be worth reviving, and even then he was downgraded to Baron for how worthless he was. In attempt to appease his master and regain prestige, Juste built a lavish dance hall and taught the supernatural how to perform beautiful routines, hoping lavish entertainment for his Prince would result in Juste regaining the place he had lost. He did not, and when he heard Julius was on his way, he drank all of his wine, becoming so intoxicated he threw on nothing but his threadbare red cloak from young adulthood and danced in cowardice, petty anger, and insanity in front of Julius, who thus slew him in a single lash forevermore. However, the clothes Juste wasn't wearing survived him and were not sealed in solar eclipse, instead, they remained scattered upon the Earth. A cult movement found them, for they were a relic of darkness and thus worthy of veneration, only to be claimed neat and tucked as they were by Soma in 2036. What became of them afterwards is not for certain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punished Dayni Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 (edited) On 6/8/2019 at 4:56 AM, Alastor15243 said: You see, the big thing about Symphony of the Night that sets it apart from its successors, the big part of the formula that the games to come after it didn't copy, is that it's an extremely open-world game. In the case of nearly all of the other games on this list, while the map is vast and interconnected, Symphony of the Night made me realize their formula is a lot more linear than it feels. In nearly every case, you start out with access to one area, fight your way to the boss, gain access to a second area, fight the second boss, and so on and so forth, unlocking access to one area at a time until you've gained access to them all by the time you face the final boss. While the areas are large enough that there's still plenty of exploration to be had, and plenty of reason to venture back into old areas once you have new power-ups, I can't deny that playing Symphony of the Night has made most of the previous games on this list feel a lot less open in hindsight. That is something that's quite noticeable now that you point it out. Of course I haven't played SotN, so I don't really know how open it is for myself. On 6/8/2019 at 4:56 AM, Alastor15243 said: I definitely preferred the voice acting of the PSP version. WHAT IS A MAN? But that Dracula ham though. 5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Spoiler And to think it all went to waste once the castle collapsed in the ending. However it was Castle B, which wasn't actually a physical normal entity in the first place, and Castlevania even without that is a fluid structure that emerges from and can convert back into the energies of Chaos. Therefore, it is entirely possible that that room survives and that Juste after the game is over, is able to access it via a pocket dimension. Utterly infatuated with decorating this one room he made his own in Dracula's Castle, Juste finds himself spending more and more of his time continuing to decorate it with things he bring to it, and less time in the ordinary world. To the point it becomes a half-serious question whether he or Maxim sired all of the next generation "Belmonts". And Juste's firstborn son heir to the Vampire Killer is left to train themselves in the art of the whip and subweapons, because Daddy isn't interested in that. Richter for his part could only remember glancing at Grandpa maybe tens times in his entire life before he mysteriously disappeared, which he thought was what his parents told him to avoid saying Grandpa had died. In truth, Juste simply lost interest in life beyond his private Demon Castle chamber which he kept a secret from everyone but his passive wife and overly trusting friend. He soon began within the Chaotic Realm where this lone room exists to take the gradual inflow of darkness generated on Earth by humanity and slowly construct additional rooms around it. Juste comes to think himself the proper owner of this quaint little seaside of chaos cottage. The darkness begins to taint his being, and by gradual osmosis of the darkness, he become a vampire. When Dracula next awakens in 1792, he asserts his supremacy over his suddenly gargantuan castle. Juste, having forgotten who he was and what Dracula is, argues that he owns the castle and has the right to shape it as he sees fit. After a little Hellfire, Juste long sans VK yields to Dracula's power, and forms an agreement with Dracula- Juste becomes his servant, and in exchange gets the rights to decorate every bit of the castle according to his whims and desires, excluding the throne room and its immediate environ. That same year, Richter defeats Dracula and Juste, who wasn't a fighter being into interior design, vanishes with it whilst still being alive. Four years later in 1796, Dracula's Castle returns and so does Juste, who returns to his lifelong and beyond passion. This time however, Death in the absence of Dracula himself orders that Juste help defend the castle from Alucard who is rummaging through it. Juste complains that isn't his job, and Death gives him an undeath by a thousand miniscythe cuts to "persuade" him otherwise, he did nothing to defend his liege last time, he will do it now! Now it is to be noted that when Juste agreed to become Dracula's servant, he was a haughty individual who had to be sated first. And Dracula granting him decor rights was not enough. If Dracula was the Prince of Darkness (although Satan disputes this), then Juste demanded a title of nobility of his own. Dracula reviewed the old European hierarchies and ranks and chose something he felt appropriate to Juste's merit as an underling. Duke was too great for Juste, and so too was Marquess, thus he had to settle for a lower honorific, that of Count. It was with this title that Alucard slew Richter's former grandfather, and with this title he returned in 1999 after several centuries of being too insignificant to be worth reviving, and even then he was downgraded to Baron for how worthless he was. In attempt to appease his master and regain prestige, Juste built a lavish dance hall and taught the supernatural how to perform beautiful routines, hoping lavish entertainment for his Prince would result in Juste regaining the place he had lost. He did not, and when he heard Julius was on his way, he drank all of his wine, becoming so intoxicated he threw on nothing but his threadbare red cloak from young adulthood and danced in cowardice, petty anger, and insanity in front of Julius, who thus slew him in a single lash forevermore. However, the clothes Juste wasn't wearing survived him and were not sealed in solar eclipse, instead, they remained scattered upon the Earth. A cult movement found them, for they were a relic of darkness and thus worthy of veneration, only to be claimed neat and tucked as they were by Soma in 2036. What became of them afterwards is not for certain. Thanks IO for that one. So wait, who is Juste supposed to be represented by in Symphony and Dawn then? Edited June 9, 2019 by Dayni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 4 hours ago, Dayni said: So wait, who is Juste supposed to be represented by in Symphony and Dawn then? Count Olrox- that one boss in Symphony of the Night, whose Olrox's Suit can be found in Dawn, though it is quickly outdone once you find Dracula's Tunic. -Apparently though the name, which is properly spelt Orlok, comes from the old 1922 silent vampire movie Nosferatu. Which is based on Dracula the classic Bram Stoker novel that started the love for vampires. But the movie producers weren't allowed the rights to use the Dracula brand, so "nosferatu" replaced "vampire" and "Orlok" replaced "Dracula". Interestingly now that I look at it, the full title of Nosferatu is Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens, which translates as "A Symphony of Horror". I have the memory of a goldfish at this moment, so that sound familiar? Hmm...🤔 Apparently, the only real explanation in the Castlevania franchise for its Olrox is in a Japan-only novel supervised by Iga set after Dawn of Sorrow. I didn't know any of this at the time I was writing my little fict. I was just filling in what I thought was undeveloped character and picked Juste as him because Olrox happened to reside in a fancy place in Dracula's Castle surrounded by other fancy places in it if my memory is correct. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punished Dayni Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 Olrox's suit also showed up in Aria. It was also pretty irrelevant there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rapier Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 That headcanon is better than the entirety of HoD's story, amazing enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 12, 2019 Author Share Posted June 12, 2019 Aaaand... Dracula is dead! I've finished Order of Ecclesia! I'll be posting the final part of my retrospective tomorrow! After that, all that'll be left to do is wait the two weeks to play Bloodstained when I get it for Switch, and then I'll be adding that to the list! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 14, 2019 Author Share Posted June 14, 2019 (edited) Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Well. Here we are. Last on the list. Last one I played in high school. Last in the series. First in my heart. I was very, very nervous going into this. Considering how, in the process of doing this retrospective, several games I remembered loving turned out to have flaws I never noticed originally (some more experience-ruining than others), I was filled with an increasing dread as I went through the games, getting closer and closer to this one, wondering if it was going to be able to balance on the pedestal I had put it on. And what a pedestal it was. I've lost count of how many times my disappointment with some feature or another in one of the games on this list prompted me to think “man, Order of Ecclesia did this so much better.” Well, that's the question now: “Did it?” Did my memories of playing this game in high school, the memories I thought about whenever anything went wrong in any of the other games on this list, hold up to the cold, harsh, burning light of reality when I replayed it once more with modern eyes? Let's find out, shall we? The most noticeable thing about Order of Ecclesia from a more casual perspective is just how drastically different it is from its predecessors. It all but entirely eschews the metroidvania formula itself. It plays less like Dawn of Sorrow or Portrait of Ruin, and more like a classicvania with igavanian controls. In fact, you don't even see Dracula's Castle at all until about 75% of the way into the game, hidden behind the game's fake ending. Until then, you're fighting your way through a wide variety of smaller, self-contained locales similar to the eponymous portraits of Portrait of Ruin, just smaller and way more numerous. Indeed, a lot of the time there's little to no exploration in these areas at all. But playing Symphony of the Night made me realize that this difference is mostly an illusion. As I said during my ranking of it, Symphony is the only game in the series that really gives you anything resembling true freedom of exploration, and it paid dearly for that freedom in many other aspects. Seen in that light, the only real difference here is that for most of the game, what's keeping you from getting to the next area isn't an inability to jump up to the door, but the fact that you haven't unlocked it on the world map by clearing the previous area. Beyond that, all Ecclesia is doing is changing the context and aesthetics, trimming the fat, and letting itself focus on delivering a tight, satisfying gauntlet of challenges for you to overcome using every ounce of skill and wit you have. The Good Spoiler Order of Ecclesia's biggest and best feature is the quality and tightness of its gameplay and level design. OoE represents the pinnacle of Igavania gameplay in many respects, and it owes most of this to how balls-crushingly difficult it is. Or at least how difficult it can be, if you're playing on hard. Which I strongly suspect this game was built around. Multiple facets of the game's design seemed specifically designed with hardcore players in mind. And that is a very, very good thing. You see, Order of Ecclesia is as good a demonstration as any of a fundamental truth of game design: If you design a game with the hardest mode in mind, you will end up with a better game. This is for a simple reason: when there's a smaller margin of error and a greater demand of the player's skill, all of a game's flaws become far more obvious, and bad difficulty (things that demand luck or encourage dumb and boring strategies) becomes way easier to tell apart from good difficulty (things that demand skill and are fun and exciting to overcome). It makes you think hard about what parts of your game stay fun when you crank up the difficulty to 11, and what things are really just annoyances you didn't notice when the stakes were low. And I think the fact that I loved this game as a less-skilled teenager who played it on normal, and still loved it when I cranked the difficulty up, demonstrates that easier difficulties suffer much less from not being prioritized than hard difficulties do. Ecclesia's hard mode is the best challenge in the entire Igavania series, and it isn't just because it's the hardest: it's mostly because it's the fairest and most satisfying. How fair? This is the first (and only) igavania in the series to give you optional bragging rights medals for beating bosses without taking any damage whatsoever. The fact that they even bothered to include these things makes it clear that they consider this to be a realistic achievement for every boss. And it really is. I managed to get two of them myself, and I can totally imagine eventually getting good enough at these fights to be able to do them perfectly eventually, if I weren't strapped for time to get these all done in time for Bloodstained. But getting back to the point, prioritizing hard mode has resulted to several fundamental overhauls to a few key gameplay systems and features, all of which have improved things for the better. I will now take some time to go through just a few of the ones that I noticed: 1: The game completely overhauls resource management. MP was a flawed concept in most of the previous games in the series, primarily because it made boring yourself a viable tactic for victory, which is just fundamentally bad game design. The slow trickle of MP regen meant that you might as well not have any MP regen at all for the purposes of individual fights for how long they lasted, but having any MP regen rate, even a tiny amount, means that if you're patient enough (or capable of amusing yourself for five minutes doing something else), you can finish a single room and then have full MP, and in some games even full HP, by the time you tackle the next. Needless to say, it's not good game design to make waiting around doing nothing as a viable strategy, and the way I see it, there are only two solutions. Option one: make MP regenerate quickly, so that, while exhausting your supply is limiting to your options when you're in the middle of a fight, you'll be fully charged by the time the next one starts. Option two: make MP not regenerate at all, only recovering via MP pickups you find progressing through the level, and make it a resource that the player has to use sparingly in the situations that really call for it. Order of Ecclesia, interestingly enough, does both. Shanoa is fundamentally a different character from every other igavania protagonist, in that she is a pure, 100% mage. With the exception of things like the drop kick and slide kick, all of her attacks, even her attacks where she swings weapons around, consume either MP, which regenerates wearing-a-chaos-ring rapidly whenever you aren't attacking, or hearts, which don't regenerate at all and have to be restored from candles as you progress. MP recovers so quickly that it functions more like a Dark Souls stamina meter, putting a time limit on how long you can keep up certain offensive strategies before you have to go on the defensive to recharge. This also means the game fuses the basic attack with the special attack, meaning Shanoa can sling spells almost as easily as most protagonists can swing swords, except that their higher MP cost than weapon summoning adds another dimension to what tool is best suited to each situation. This makes Shanoa's repertoire of magic to be much more fun to use than Charlotte's ever was, even if Charlotte had a wider variety of spells. With your central basic arsenal turning into a fusion of what in other games would be basic attacks and special attacks, the role of the special attack is filled by your heart-powered glyph unions, which are more like devastating super moves that take various shapes depending on the combination of glyphs you have equipped when you hold the d pad up and attack. These do extreme damage to large on-screen areas, almost certainly killing all mooks hit by them. However, they take anywhere from 15 to 50 hearts each, and unless you have special equipment equipped, the amount of hearts you'll find in candlesticks is going to be a pittance, meaning you're mostly relying on your core supply of hearts that you replenish at a heart jar in the village. Unlike your weapons and spells, these aren't meant to be a core part of your arsenal you use regularly. They're meant to be a panic button, a sort of safety net for when there are a handful of enemies or obstacles in the level that you haven't figured out how to fight, or aren't skilled enough at fighting. This is important, because this game places a great importance not just on testing your reflexes and dexterity, but also on figuring out for yourself what your strategy for tackling each obstacle will be, assessing the tools at your disposal and figuring out which ones, used in which way, will get the job done. However, while a viable strategy always exists for every obstacle, even the ones that seem insurmountable at first (and usually it's way, way more than just one solution), a lot of them are tricky enough that most people won't figure everything out on their own. Giving the player this super move, therefore, ensures that if there are one or two things in a level that are giving them trouble, they can still make it through on the merits of their own strategy, rather than some method they just looked up online, as long as they've figured out how to deal with most of the challenges. 2: THEY FIXED THE FUCKING SHOP. Finally. I have made no secret of my hatred for most of the shops in these games. It seems that after starting off on a good foot in Symphony of the Night, none of the later games' shops can resist the urge to suck by either being impossible to find (Harmony of Dissonance), not existing (Circle of the Moon), or being full of useless crap you're never going to use except for potions and that one useful item that is comically, ridiculously expensive relative to your income (Every other fucking game). But not Order of Ecclesia. In Order of Ecclesia, not only is nearly everything you can purchase from the shop useful and scales all the way to the endgame, the game also supplies you with enough money to buy a good deal of it. Not only that, but they tie the expansion of it into a surprisingly engaging quest system. Here's how it works: the shop is in your hub zone of sorts, called Wygol Village. The village is initially deserted except for the village elder because of plot shenanigans, and you have to rescue the village's various inhabitants by finding them in the world. The first of these is the shopkeeper, who then stocks his store with the bare essentials and not much else. But most other villagers you find will give you quests, and if you complete them, they'll be able to send the shopkeeper more stuff you can buy from him. Most of the equipment quests, primarily from the armorer, seamstress and jeweler, involve collecting enough of the raw materials needed to make the items in the first place. And if your immediate assumption upon hearing that is that there's going to be a lot of grinding involved, you'd be wrong. 3: The game makes the magical ticket available from the start and dirt cheap, and adds treasure chests. These two things might seem wholly unrelated, but together they make a very noticeable, and brilliant, change to the game's progression system, both in terms of experience and resources. Lemme explain both things first. Let's start with the magical ticket. Essentially, for a paltry 100 gold, you can buy a magical ticket that instantly teleports you back to Wygol village, from anywhere, at any point. Except maybe during bosses, I didn't test it there. But anyway, I understand this was also available in Portrait of Ruin, but only after you spent 25k total at the shop to unlock it, and for the price of $1000. Here, not only can you buy it from the start, but it's also one tenth the price. Secondly, the treasure chests. Basically, there are various treasure chests scattered throughout the different areas of the game, each containing various goodies. There are red chests, which have fixed contents specific to each chest and which once opened are opened forever, and then there are random chests, which come in wooden and shiny variants, whose rarity type and contents are randomized each time you enter the level and constantly restock, essentially serving as a reward for getting a certain amount of progress in a level. The specific loot you can find varies from area to area, and these can be recovery items or, in rare cases, equipment. But more often than not they'll contain those quest items the various villagers need from you. Once you get enough of them to complete the quest, you'll unlock new stuff to buy in the shop, and depending on the quest giver, even get some money or even a free piece of equipment for your trouble. After that, most of the quest items have no further use beyond being sold to the shop for cash money. Now, by the time I got to the infamous skeleton cave, I noticed that this resulted in something really cool. You see, that place is a notorious hard mode death trap, one of the two areas in the game that goes from generally innocuous to violently psychotic when you make the switch from normal to hard, and I was generally getting my ass handed to me by the bone pillars and the blade masters and the swarms of winged skeletons. But each time I went through, I got at least far enough to pick up enough loose change to get a new magical ticket, and get some treasure chests that I could translate to either a little more progress on a quest, or a little more money. And then when it reached the point where I knew I was going to die if I went any further, I cut my losses with a magical ticket, healed up, checked on the quests, and went to do it again, just the slightest bit richer and more powerful than before. And then it hit me what had just happened. What I just did... was grinding. I had just accomplished everything that grinding usually entails: I had gotten some more experience and items by repeatedly going through the same level over and over again. But I hadn't noticed that's what it was. Because it was fun. Because I was doing it as an unintended side effect of actually getting better at the game through repeated attempts to make it to the save point. Yes, while this game does have a handful of villagers who demand random drops you can only find from monsters, most of the “grinding” for these quests can be accomplished by actually going through the level you're currently stuck on, getting treasure chests, and making actual progress towards being a better player. And of course, when the game isn't giving you that much trouble, naturally that means there's no need or reason to grind at all. So basically, if you're the type of player who wants to grind to get through difficult challenges, the game basically perpetually offers you a satisfying, entertaining, and actually worthwhile activity to grind with whenever you find yourself in a situation where grinding would help. But it also indirectly encourages you to get better at the game too while you're doing it, and maybe you'll even find that the levels and gear aren't actually helping you as much as your increasing familiarity with the obstacles and controls is. Now, I am generally a huge opponent of grind. I like stat growth and advancement, but I like it most when it's properly scaled with the progression of the game and you have to make do with what you've built up so far to handle challenges (like, say, Fire Emblem), and I find absolutely no appeal in doing repetitive things over and over just to essentially rob myself of challenge. But this almost made grinding appealing. For some reason this system, on top of just plain being more fun, made the increased stats feel more earned, like I was getting better along with Shanoa in a tangible way. It also helps that the effects of leveling up aren't nearly as pronounced in this game as in many others (and I should hope not, because it means that level 1 capped hard mode isn't nearly as ludicrous as it sounds, just really, really hard). 4: Ability unlocking is way less random. As I said before, Shanoa works a bit differently from other protagonists, in that her glyphs are a fusion of normal and special attacks. Now, in most igavanias, the majority of your special attacks are randomly dropped by enemies, which, when done right, adds fun and replay value to the game by mixing up the abilities you have access to each time. This is fun in its own way, but when you're designing really difficult challenges and making sure they have solutions players can reasonably expect access to no matter their luck, it doesn't quite work as well. So Order of Ecclesia does something a little differently. While you do have a handful of glyphs that randomly manifest upon defeating enemies (and a fizzled glyph that fails to fully appear will let you know which enemies you can get glyphs from), you get most of them by absorbing them from magic statues you can find in levels and smash open. Or by navigating to the end of optional obstacle courses, or solving puzzles, that have been created by glyphs irresponsibly cast in the middle of nowhere. Or even by absorbing glyphs other enemies are actively using to try to attack you, literally stealing their thunder. That last one is really entertaining and even a core gameplay mechanic against a few bosses. I love it. Basically, they reduced the randomness of your arsenal by swapping out monster drops for puzzles and exploration/combat rewards. And what this means is that they're able to construct much more tricky and difficult challenges, because the player has a much bigger guaranteed arsenal that they can count on the player having. It also means that this is pretty much the only game in the entire series where getting the absolute, ultimate abilities is just a natural thing that happens by the endgame if you're playing competently, and not something you have to spend any amount of time grinding against enemies to unlock or power up. Those are just the main four changes to core gameplay that really stick out to me, and holy shit do they make a difference. The hardest igavania I'd played before getting back to this was Portrait of Ruin. That was indeed a very difficult game on hard mode, with some very satisfying boss fights, and some pulse-pounding early game action exploring the castles and portraits, but I can't really describe how much better and more fun Order of Ecclesia feels. For all the fun I was having with Portrait of Ruin, I spent 90% of the time in that game spamming the same shuriken subweapon at everything that moves and recuperating for minutes at a time between rooms. In Order of Ecclesia, one moment I would be summoning swords to slash giant eagles out of the air with precise timing before they could drop fleamen on me and make my life a living hell, and the next I would be throwing handfuls of fire at giant skeletons like a maniac before they could start bringing on the hurt, and then I'd be switching to a third set of glyphs just because the glyph union they make is nuts and I wanted to rain hell on that one motherfucker that I know there's a strategy for but just seems to be impossible to dodge no matter how hard I try to figure it out. I wasn't just changing up my loadout from area to area. I was changing it up from room to room, or even between rooms using the glyph sleeve system that lets you switch glyph loadouts on the fly. It wasn't just a matter of using whatever latest new weapon I found for melee combat on the rare occasions the shuriken didn't work, and then using the shuriken at all other times unless I needed the cross or pie. I was pretty much never using the same set of glyphs for any two areas because the glyphs are all so subtly different, and good for very different situations. Yes, nearly every other game in the series technically has a much wider variety of attacks and weapons (especially since 18 of the paltry 73 glyphs in the game are upgraded versions of the initial 9 weapon summon glyphs), but there's a distinct theme of quality over quantity at play here, in that I found well over 80% of these glyphs to be useful for at least one section or another. Hell, I initially dismissed Vol Fulgur, the lightning spell, as utterly useless garbage due to its terrible damage even against enemies weak to it, but its auto-targeting, long range, and ability to attack through walls ultimately caused me to keep using it all throughout one underwater segment, even against the boss, despite hypocritically complaining about the damage the whole time. And I think that serves as a testament to how few duds are in this arsenal. Another thing I love is how unafraid this game is to throw challenges at you that, on their face, seem flat-out impossible. But take it from me, they never actually are. There's always a trick to them you're not immediately noticing, some ability in your moveset you've been neglecting, or some quirk in their AI you don't notice because you keep attacking them the exact same way they're actually designed to punish. While again, the glyph union system guarantees you don't have so solve every puzzle in order to win and have a fun time with this game, it's always satisfying whenever you do crack the code and wipe the floor with challenges that once seemed insurmountable. Oh, and here are a few miscellaneous things I really liked while I'm at it: 1: Music is utterly amazing. Best overall soundtrack in the series, with the most memorable melodies, the fewest duds, and one of my favorite Castlevania songs of all time, An Empty Tome. 2: This game lets you mark places on the map. I never noticed that last time! When you go to the map menu on the pause screen, there are these five little pins in the top left corner that you can click and drag with the stylus. They won't show up on the top screen during play, only on the map menu, but it's still extremely useful and a long-overdue feature, and I can't believe the game it was finally introduced in is the game with the least amount of exploration and backtracking. But it certainly makes the exploration and backtracking there is way more fun. 3: I like how absorbing glyphs gives you hearts. Keeps them from ever being pointless to grab, given how dangerous it can often be. 4: I like how they gave Shanoa multiple death animations depending on how she dies. 5: The villagers were all quite entertaining and well-written, adding another dimension to how worthwhile a lot of the quests are. Also, I don't know where to begin explaining to you what the fuck the apothecary's personality is, but he makes me smile every time I talk to that lunatic asshole. 6: Every. Single. Glyph. In. The. God. Damned. Game. Is. Land. Cancelable. They know. They know. 7: I like how Barlowe talks in iambic pentameter. The rhythm is off in a few places, but it's still quite amusing to me and makes his lines more impressive. 8: The finale to the Brachyura boss battle is unquestionably in the top three Castlevania moments of all time. Words cannot do it justice. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you owe it to yourself as a Castlevania fan to play this game and beat that boss. 9: In an interesting instance of gameplay and story integration, I'm pretty sure Shanoa has the worst natural luck stat in the entire Igavania library. Nice touch. 10: They slowed down the fleamen to a speed where they're still a menace but can be more reliably taken down in melee combat if you know what you're doing. I'm certain this was to compensate for Shanoa being much more fragile than previous Igavania protagonists, and I like this change a lot. I had a hell of a lot of fun with this game. This is easily, bar none, no competition whatsofuckingever, the most difficult, feature-complete, satisfying, and fun hard mode the entire series has to offer, and I could probably sing this game's praises to high heaven for several more pages. But I can't, because this is getting reeeallly long, and I have to take some time to talk about... The Bad Spoiler I did have some complaints I took note of throughout playing the game. Most minor, some big, and one huge. 1: On hard mode, the game throws you a fairly difficult fight you're likely to lose at least once, before it gives you the opportunity to save for the first time. This means you have to go through the process of new game file creation every time you want to retry it. It only took me two tries, but on principle I have to criticize this. Dick move. 2: One of the many obstacles hard mode adds is putting infinitely spawning winged skeletons in the middle of horizontal sections so you have to deal with them while fighting other enemies and making your way to the goal. This works for the most part, but in some sections they can spawn beneath the floor of the screen and then arc upwards, which can be incredibly annoying and often is near impossible to see coming as far as I can tell (I could be wrong though, given how often things seem impossible). 3: On a similar note, medusa heads during magnet slingshot platforming sections are annoying as hell, as they often spawn offscreen in the direction you're shooting in where you can't see them coming (again, I think, with a noted lack of certainty). 4: While Ruvas forest is really satisfying to get through as the first truly difficult level in the game, it's a pretty stark and sharp difficulty spike given you don't have access to the shop yet. Also, the semitransparent trees in the foreground can make it very difficult to see where you're going, and the bats, being so small and darkly colored, are hard to see against the backdrop to begin with. Also also, if you're going to make those red octopus things capable of killing you in one attack on hard mode, have the decency to make it instant death and not just lock you in an inescapable loop of four or five hits as all your life drains away and you can't do anything but watch. 5: I like the rings theme-named off of tarot cards, but I don't like that they're the first rings you get and that for the longest time there aren't any rings you can equip that just objectively improve your stats. They can be discouraging to equip in the early-game. 6: The invisible man shouldn't be that fast and aggressive when you can barely see him. It was nice that an HP up was placed right after him, but those things are just begging to be glyph-union'd and weren't that fun or appealing to deal with personally. 7: Pressing start in non-textbox pre-boss cutscenes doesn't actually skip to the fight. It just causes whatever sound effects are currently playing to stop playing. That's such a weird thing that I'm certain it has to be a glitch. 8: Glyph Sleeve swapping isn't quite as seamless as using the doppelganger soul in DoS was. I often found it hard to switch properly in high-tension situations and found myself wishing I just had two sleeves instead of one that I could switch between with the push of a button rather than remembering whether I need to press L or R after holding A to get to what I want. 9: The bones the Maneater boss spits and that bounce around the battlefield don't disappear when you beat the boss, and can kill you before you get the full heal. I was literally two HP shy of this happening to me. 10: Despite what I said about Vol Fulgur having its uses, it's still blatantly ridiculous that fire spells are way more effective against water monsters than your initial lightning spells are. 11: The emperor ring isn't so much a piece of equipment as it is a permanent upgrade, since there's nothing stopping you from only wearing it on the menu screen when you want to use items and enjoy its boost to their effects. Seems like a design oversight. 12: Visually, the fog effect isn't very good. It moves with Shanoa and the screen, not with the stage, so it seems to arbitrarily speed up or even reverse direction whenever Shanoa moves. In fairness this took me a bit to notice. 13: Goliath's super ground punch can reach offscreen, which is generally a big design no-no when you have to see him wind it up in order to have time to dodge it. 14: Irina's quests are pure tedious nonsense where you have to go out and kill X number of a certain enemy. They're boring quests incarnate in a game that is usually better about them. 15: Tonics seem kind of pointless and obsolete here. Given how fast MP regenerates, it seems amazingly pointless to spend money you could spend on healing items to just save you a second or two of defenselessness. Though in fairness I might just not be able to think of worthwhile uses for them since I don't use recovery items while enemies are on screen. 16: It's kind of weird how much of Barlowe's dialogue back at Ecclesia home base is optional, given it's a good chunk of the dialogue of the main plot. 17: I noticed audio overload issues in Dracula's Castle, where making too many sound effects cause certain instruments in the music to stop playing temporarily. Disappointing given how awesome the music is there, but I really only noticed it in the entrance hall area. 18: It's pretty disappointing how linear Dracula's Castle is. I understand why it's much smaller than the average iteration of it, given how much content there already is outside of it, but this was a perfect opportunity to do the Inverted Castle's concept well by doing a non-linear castle right. You have three macguffins you need to hunt down by killing three bosses in various parts of the vast castle, full of enemies that are roughly comparable in challenge between when you get there and when/if you hit level 50. This could easily have been an awesome opportunity to take off the linear leash and have some open-world exploration fun tackling the bosses in whatever order you wish. But in practice there are only two of the castle's four bosses you can choose the order you face them in. You need the first one's glyph to get to the second, and you need to kill the second before you gain access to the last two. In fairness though, I still had way more fun with this game's iteration of Dracula's Castle than I did with the inverted castle or with the four endgame paintings in Portrait of Ruin, or with the chaotic realm or the abyss in the sorrow games. So this is more lamenting a missed opportunity than any actual bad experience I'm complaining about. 19: While it was still plenty challenging, I do wish it wasn't so easy to trivialize a good number of the castle's enemies with either of the two big endgame glyphs, nitesco and acerbatus. They're awesome and ridiculously satisfying to use, to be clear, but there are so many enemies that will go down like chumps if you unload one of the two spells on them will both barrels blazing. 20: The triple-fakeout hidden room in Dracula's castle is hilarious and awesome, but honestly too much to hide the game's endgame bonus content behind. 21: Imps can make you spam glyph unions when they possess you. I don't know how to describe how rage-inducing that is. 22: Eligor, while an absolutely epic battle in scale, and really fun and satisfying once I figured everything out, was a bitch and nine tenths to get the hang of. First off, I found two instances where damaging him enough to activate one of his “in pain” animations while he's in the middle of another one will just cause him to instantaneously damage you in ways that are nearly impossible to avoid. The first is that if you break his kneecaps while he's doing his frontal sword stab attack, he just instantly swings his sword right through where you're likely to be in the process of raising his hands to the sky in pain. I had to stand around and do nothing while that animation played out and then attack him in between his attacks, which was annoying as hell because of this nonsensical oversight. The second is that if you do too much damage to his head while he's still on his knees and climbable, he'll rush to his feet and his horse back will temporarily cease to become a platform you can stand on and will become a hitbox, damaging you without warning. This killed me a few times when I was still figuring things out. Finally, the fact that it's really unclear where the safe platform that is his horse back ends and where the hitbox that is his human back begins made it really confusing to figure out where the safe spots were for his various attacks, especially that one where he reaches behind his back with his sword. And lemme tell you, when you only get 3 to 5 tries between lengthy attempts to get on his back by fighting through three different stages of attack patterns, the trial-and-error experimentation that was fun for every other boss in the game gets old and annoying real fast. I wound up giving up and watching a no-damage run of the boss to see what the safe spot was. Turned out more of the back was safer than I thought was, and once I knew that, the boss was a satisfying and fun challenge. But holy shit was it a pain to get to that point. The Really Bad Spoiler Alright. And now for the big one. My biggest, most intense critique about the entire game. This one glyph, this one goddamned glyph, that I feel was a fundamental design mistake, feels completely out of place, and single-handedly ruined what should have been the best boss fight in the game for me. What follows are not just story spoilers, but also gameplay spoilers, which I feel in this case are just as important to safeguard when it comes to enjoying this game. The knowledge I am about to impart to you, for all I know, could ruin your experience with what might be an entirely fun boss if you come up with an alternative strategy and never learn about mine. Turn back now if you haven't played this game yet, or if you don't want the fun of the fake ending's final boss to be ruined for you. Last chance... Here goes... The motherfucking shield glyph. I hate this glyph. I wish it didn't exist. I hate that certain boss battles were clearly designed with the existence of this glyph in mind, making them conclude it was acceptable game design. It is single-handedly responsible for turning the boss battle with Albus, which I was so excited for and was expecting to be as hype as the fight against Julius, what with the killer music and how emotional the moment is when you know what's really going on after your first playthrough, and just how awesome of a fighter Albus is in general... it was single-handedly responsible for turning that boss fight into one of my least-favorite boss fights in Castlevania history. Let me explain. The shield glyphs are a set of three glyphs (Scutum, Vol Scutum and Melio Scutum) that, when held down, manifest a shield either above or in front of Shanoa, blocking most projectiles from hurting her from those directions for as long as it's held. I don't like this. I didn't like shields in Symphony of the night either, but here they're worse. First off, holding down X or Y while still pressing other buttons, which the game totally lets you do and is thus the ideal way to use it, is completely awkward in the standard control mapping and, like I did with Symphony, really works better when you map the button to R instead of a face button. And frankly, if a single use of an equipment button slot merits a completely remapped control scheme to use effectively, I personally think that's a red flag that it doesn't belong with the rest of the things those buttons can do. But the main reason I hate it is because it doesn't require any skill to use. It's just awkward and prevents you from dual-wielding as long as it's on your current glyph sleeve. Hold the button down and face the applicable projectiles, and they just go away. No dodging, no timing, no puzzles to work out, just hold it down and they're gone. And the fact that this answer exists can be negatively felt in the design of several projectiles that are clearly intended to be blocked with it when I feel they would be way more fun to dodge instead of block if they were modified just a little to make that more realistic. Which brings me to Albus. Fucking Albus. Now, most people who have played the game even once will know of his moveset. How can you not? His battle cries will likely be burned into your skull. VERTICAL SHOT! (Summons two energy balls, one light and one dark, that swirl towards you in a huge, expanding spiral trajectory.) HAAAAAAA! (Performs a flaming jumping spinning kick.) THINK YOU CAN DODGE THIS!? (Leaps across the battlefield, dropping torpor seeds on the ground that will freeze you if you're on them when they explode. And incidentally, Albus, yes, I can dodge this, because that attack never once hit me, owing to Albus himself not having a hitbox while he jumps.) GLYPH IN BULLET! (Summons the acerbatus glyph and casts that spell from his gun if you don't absorb it in time.) Simple enough, right? If you agreed, reader, then you forgot, as I did, about his more basic attacks, where he draws his pistol and fires either a standard bullet, or shoots ignis, grando or fulgur from his gun. And that's the problem. In hard mode, these attacks are instantaneous. The speed at which he draws and fires his gun to pop one of these off is mind-bending and pretty much impossible to dodge unless you know enough about his AI to know when he'll do them so you can dodge them in advance. I didn't learn that. Perhaps that would have been more fun if I had. But no. I just had to remember that Vol Fucking Scutum exists. You see, all four of those basic attacks can be blocked by either Vol Scutum or Melio Scutum. Flawlessly. Perfectly. Indefinitely. So all I had to do was remap the X button to R and vice versa, keep the shield held at all times, absorb his acerbatus glyph and use it against him, and just focus on dodging all of his other, called attacks that the shield can't protect me from. The only problem is that if you choose to do this, dear reader, then this pivotal semi-climax of both gameplay and story becomes one of the biggest farces in the history of gaming. Albus doesn't have any programming to recognize when his four quickdraw attacks won't work. So he keeps using them. At an alarming rate. At times doing it up to four times before he'll resort to an attack I actually have to dodge. And once he gets a comfortable distance away from you, if you just stand there, so will he. This fight, this pivotal battle against a poor, damned man who fought tooth and nail, abandoned the only home he had, and committed multiple acts of kidnapping, all to save the life of his beloved adopted sister, only to fail in his efforts to effectively take her place in what he thought was their duty, get possessed by Dracula, and have to be put out of his misery by that very same adopted sister who is now an emotionless empty shell who doesn't even remember what he used to mean to her... ...Consisted mostly of us standing about fifteen feet away from each other, him firing ineffectually into my shield like an idiot, me lobbing hate-meteors at him from behind my shield every couple of seconds, also like an idiot, while occasionally dodging his more serious attacks. It was the single dumbest thing I have ever experienced in all of my time doing this retrospective. It would have been hilarious if it wasn't so sad because it was so hilarious. In the aftermath of that fight, I felt ridiculous. I felt empty. I felt cheated. I felt angry. I was genuinely afraid that the rest of the game was going to turn out to suck because this oversight slipped through the cracks. It didn't, thank goodness. While scutum has a few more uses in the later boss fights, it is never more useful, more mandatory-feeling, or more challenge-ruining than it is in that moment. And the fact that I wound up using it in two boss battles after that, Barlowe and Dracula, does not stop them from being some of my favorite boss battles in the series, with the Dracula one being probably the best Dracula fight of them all, even better than the Portrait of Ruin one with the Death teamup. But I cannot overemphasize how much I wish this damned glyph wasn't in the game and its influence on boss battles was gone. The Final Pre-Bloodstained Ranking Spoiler 1: Order of Ecclesia 2: Aria of Sorrow 3: Portrait of Ruin 4: Dawn of Sorrow 5: Symphony of the Night 6: Circle of the Moon 7: Harmony of Dissonance That last giant complaint? It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to stop me from loving this game above and beyond every other game in the series. Its gameplay is brilliant, damn near every boss and challenge makes you feel both like a genius and a total badass for clearing them, and I can count on one hand the number of times in this game in which I was not having a blast. I've gone on for something like 13 pages in my text editor and I'm pretty sure some other aspect of the game I could probably gush about even longer got left out here. I can't tell you how happy I am that Bloodstained's protagonist takes after Shanoa so much, and how much I hope that will translate to several design cues being taken from this game too. While I loved most of the games on this list and would love to play them again, if I had not saved this for last, this would probably have been the first time I'd feel an urge to go back rather than keep moving forward. This is, without a doubt, the best Igavania of them all. ...Well then! That's that. All that's left now is to wait until I get my copy of Bloodstained on Switch, play it like crazy, and figure out exactly where it falls among the seven igavanias that inspired its creation. I don't know about you, but I'm on the edge of my seat. NOTE: I'm going to have to ask people to not discuss Bloodstained in this thread when it comes out. I'm trying to avoid as much information about the game as possible, and there will be a week in which it will be out, but not for the system I want to play it on. Edited June 14, 2019 by Alastor15243 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted June 14, 2019 Share Posted June 14, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said: Let's start with the magical ticket. Essentially, for a paltry 100 gold, you can buy a magical ticket that instantly teleports you back to Wygol village, from anywhere, at any point. Except maybe during bosses, I didn't test it there. But anyway, I understand this was also available in Portrait of Ruin, but only after you spent 25k total at the shop to unlock it, and for the price of $1000. Here, not only can you buy it from the start, but it's also one tenth the price. Library Cards exist in SotN if you forgot that. Although bizarrely I don't recall a warp room anywhere near the Library. They were barely useful, unless you were far in the Inverted Castle and wanted to return to the old one for some reason (not that you ever need to). Never realized how good that one Glyph was for the one instance. I thought you were going to criticize Spoiler Magnes as being gimmicky. Although I never really did use Scutum much. Scutum I recall also being useful for the Jiang Shi. It'll be able to safely destroy those slow moving homing energy balls- but there is a risk that you'll sometimes take damage. And doing this stops him from using Mortus Fidelis, so you'll have to let an energy ball hang around at least once to steal the Glyph. And on Dracula, the one time he doesn't transform into a monster, is when he fights the best he every has. Just walking for once with his tremendous human body is terrifying. I remember PoR's Death and Dracula battle as too messy. Death occupies your airspace and Dracula has the ground, a bit chaotic. Was it? Glyph selection I agree is a bit limited (where is the whip Glyph?), and I can agree with plenty of the other criticisms from what I remember. Vol Fulgur was too light on the damage, the Nebula whip in PoR wasn't that weak but almost just as good for easy aiming (excellent against the Whip's Memory). Dracula's Castle was brilliantly aesthetically for some reason I thought, but I can't remember why. I recall bosses being very pattern-heavy, you don't see that as a fault? And one other thing, you forgot to mention how the enemies are fairly fresh after six games not uncommonly recycling old sprites. With plenty of new monster designs, and some old ones that were cool, but haven't been seen in a while returning- Tin Man anyone? Are you thinking of giving Albus Mode a spin? I mean it's cake (why doesn't he use his pistol as a machine gun in his boss battle?), but it is fun too. I wish Torpor Crystal and Quadruple Ignis were more useful, like Nitesco (two awesome attributes was too many for this), Optical Shot was too good. And mind if I rank the bonus modes?: For me I think it goes something like: Spoiler Great: Albus Mode = Julius Mode AoS Magician Mode Maxim Mode Good: Richter Mode PoR Julius Mode DoS Fighter Mode Luck Mode Alucard Thief Mode Gimmick: Shooter Mode (the Homing Knife is useless, Crosses still rock and this is just a nerfed Fighter Mode in practice) Sisters Mode Why? Old Axe Armor Mode Never Finished, But It Seems Dated (not actually ranking this): Richter Mode SotN And one random thing I just feel like saying and getting off my chest. I wish Bayonetta had a crossover DLC where the Umbran Witch for some minor or unexplained reason, is strolling through a forest on a moonlit night, sees a woman back turned to her standing steady, her mind fixed on the castle silhouetted by the moon in the distance. A terse word is spoken by the Witch, the black-haired Warrior turns around, and the two have a clash of Weaves and Glyphs. After a brief skirmish, the two with no animosity at all towards the other quietly agree to move forward and step into this castle wherein the Warrior has an immortal foe to slay. What follows is a castle romp where the Witch and NPC Warrior slice through waves upon waves of the Dark Prince's servants, including the Reaper and perhaps one other great peon, before dancing with the castle's lord and destroying him for now. As the Demon Castle crumbles, the Witch and Warrior escape to terra firma, and the Witch politely departs. Of course, Shanoa would be unlocked after this as playable in all of the main Bayo game. She could learn Witch Time as a "gift" from Bayonetta herself, and would have a fixed moveset, replacing Punches with "physical" Glyphs like the Confodere, Arcis, and Macir; and Kicks with "elemental" Glyphs like Ignis, Pneuma, and Vol Umbra. Glyph Unions are the replacement for Wicked Weaves. And some minor other changes to make her more than a weapon swap from Bayo in gameplay. I might play OoE again now you describe it so. Level 50 or 255 Hard I think. And thank you for these comprehensive reviews! They've been entertaining to read. Edited June 14, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 14, 2019 Author Share Posted June 14, 2019 17 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Library Cards exist in SotN if you forgot that. Although bizarrely I don't recall a warp room anywhere near the Library. They were barely useful, unless you were far in the Inverted Castle and wanted to return to the old one for some reason (not that you ever need to). Yeah, I kinda did forget about it, or at least to mention it, because it just doesn't have the utility that the Ecclesia one has and didn't really register to me as being remotely the same thing. 18 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Never realized how good that one Glyph was for the one instance. I thought you were going to criticize Hide contents Magnes as being gimmicky. Although I never really did use Scutum much. Scutum I recall also being useful for the Jiang Shi. It'll be able to safely destroy those slow moving homing energy balls- but there is a risk that you'll sometimes take damage. And doing this stops him from using Mortus Fidelis, so you'll have to let an energy ball hang around at least once to steal the Glyph. And on Dracula, the one time he doesn't transform into a monster, is when he fights the best he every has. Just walking for once with his tremendous human body is terrifying. I remember PoR's Death and Dracula battle as too messy. Death occupies your airspace and Dracula has the ground, a bit chaotic. Was it? (not sure why you're spoiling this, but I will too in case I'm having a brain fart) Spoiler I didn't really find Magnes gimmicky, and it was fun having a new way of platforming. It was used to fun effect, though with the medusa heads it was pushing it a bit. I totally agree about Dracula. It's basically the classic Dracula fight, but amped up with all sorts of tricks to catch up with the modern igavania moveset. Try to jump over him during his first stage attack patterns? He swats you out of the sky as you pass over his head. Try to fly? Prepare to be shot out of the air with demonic fire before you even know what's going on (though that did make volaticus pretty damned pointless given how late you get it). Really the only thing I dislike about it is the fact that scutum is so useful in the second phase against his destruction rain. As for PoR's Death and Dracula battle: chaotic? Yes. Messy? No, not really. It just requires you to pay attention to more and keep moving. I liked it, personally, though it was hard as hell and I had to use the ancient armor to beat it. 24 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Glyph selection I agree is a bit limited (where is the whip Glyph?), and I can agree with plenty of the other criticisms from what I remember. Vol Fulgur was too light on the damage, the Nebula whip in PoR wasn't that weak but almost just as good for easy aiming (excellent against the Whip's Memory). Dracula's Castle was brilliantly aesthetically for some reason I thought, but I can't remember why. A whip glyph would have been fun, along with some less generic magic. More stuff like fire-light lasers and spite meteors would have been fun. But again, I used way more of this game's arsenal than I usually found myself using in most other Castlevania games, so it feels like a quality over quantity thing here when it comes to usefulness and design. 26 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: I recall bosses being very pattern-heavy, you don't see that as a fault? No more pattern-heavy than castlevania bosses usually are. Honestly Julius is probably still my favorite battle in the series for how alive and real it felt. But it was a hell of a lot of fun figuring out what the hell I was supposed to do with the patterns, because a lot of attacks are cleverly disguised as comically unfair before you figure out what to do. And of course even when you figure it out, mastering the timing of dodging them is a task in and of itself, one I found very rewarding. I'll have to play again though, see if the challenge still holds up now that I know all the answers. 29 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: And one other thing, you forgot to mention how the enemies are fairly fresh after six games not uncommonly recycling old sprites. With plenty of new monster designs, and some old ones that were cool, but haven't been seen in a while returning- Tin Man anyone? Ah yes. That is a nice change of pace, though the sprite recycling didn't really bother me or even become all that obvious until I played Symphony of the Night, and with the exception of Dracula, a lot of the "big things with lots of moving parts" sprites they added, like demons and such, felt a bit wonky. 32 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Are you thinking of giving Albus Mode a spin? I mean it's cake (why doesn't he use his pistol as a machine gun in his boss battle?), but it is fun too. I wish Torpor Crystal and Quadruple Ignis were more useful, like Nitesco (two awesome attributes was too many for this), Optical Shot was too good. I'm considering it. I remember it being one of my favorites due to Albus just being such a fun concept. 33 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: And mind if I rank the bonus modes?: For me I think it goes something like: Hide contents Great: Albus Mode = Julius Mode AoS Magician Mode Maxim Mode Good: Richter Mode PoR Julius Mode DoS Fighter Mode Luck Mode Alucard Thief Mode Gimmick: Shooter Mode (the Homing Knife is useless, Crosses still rock and this is just a nerfed Fighter Mode in practice) Sisters Mode Why? Old Axe Armor Mode Never Finished, But It Seems Dated (not actually ranking this): Richter Mode SotN Interesting. I have a lot of similar rankings there, though I'd have to replay them all in order to really be sure. It might be a good idea for a follow-up retrospective, though I'd REEEEAAAALLLY have to space out the Circle of the Moon ones to keep interest. Also, I really wish that game let you play as Hugh at some point. 35 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: And thank you for these comprehensive reviews! They've been entertaining to read. My pleasure! Hope you enjoy the Bloodstained one too when I'm through with that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dai Posted June 14, 2019 Share Posted June 14, 2019 I never, ever used the Shield Glyphs. I'm far too offensive-oriented in my combat...in games that aren't a straight turn-based RPG, that is. Makes the Albus fight being such a challenge for me in retrospect make sense since I didn't know so much of his moveset COULD be negated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeaceRibbon Posted June 15, 2019 Share Posted June 15, 2019 After reading these reviews, I might just consider picking up Order of Ecclesia and experience a little bit of this history for myself. Will probably have to buy cartridge only off eBay but them's the brakes for not putting the game on the Wii U's eshop I guess. Buuuut my budget's tight and I still gotta save up for Bloodstained, Three Houses, Luminous Avenger iX, a month's subscription to SWTOR in September... I might just have to wait until the Igavania collection is released in 20XX. 😛 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted June 18, 2019 Author Share Posted June 18, 2019 A quick reminder that I won't have access to Bloodstained for another week, and I'd like to go in as blind as possible, so please do not discuss Bloodstained's content or quality in this thread until I post my review. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punished Dayni Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 On 6/14/2019 at 2:25 AM, Alastor15243 said: But playing Symphony of the Night made me realize that this difference is mostly an illusion. As I said during my ranking of it, Symphony is the only game in the series that really gives you anything resembling true freedom of exploration, and it paid dearly for that freedom in many other aspects. Seen in that light, the only real difference here is that for most of the game, what's keeping you from getting to the next area isn't an inability to jump up to the door, but the fact that you haven't unlocked it on the world map by clearing the previous area. Beyond that, all Ecclesia is doing is changing the context and aesthetics, trimming the fat, and letting itself focus on delivering a tight, satisfying gauntlet of challenges for you to overcome using every ounce of skill and wit you have. Eccleisa does sound interesting. It's DS though, right? That might be tricky honestly for playing (It's like me trying to play DoS on Desmume, I do not have the ability to effectively use those sigils) I kind of guessed this would be first though, you sound like you had a (mostly) good experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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