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Hot damn is Super Castlevania IV overrated
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Also, the scaled back difficulty is a huge plus, the SNES was the first time I really felt able to actually complete console games I owned, and see the endings, and feel great. a lot of older games either had no ending, or are "Nintendo hard" (hehehe)
On that note, one of my most memorable gaming moments has been Zelda : Link to the past and it's fantastic ending.
(Also, I will always hate Super Double Dragon for ruining Double dragons and having a single (probably misspelled) paragraph as an ending)
The complain about "MIDI music" makes no sense to me, especially as you state you love "synth-driven soundtracks," which is basically, MIDI-like music.
It took me a second round of Super Castlevania IV to get me to appreciate it more. My only complain is those goddamn stairs.
Anyway, while the SNES wasn't quite superior in the sound department, it came pretty darn close when programmers put the effort into it:
Best thing Bloodlines did, though, is make Portrait of Ruin possible.
Ah, much better.
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I think these games are mostly a case of you had to be there at the time. Nowadays, Super Castlevania isn't anything special but when it first came out a couple months after the SNES's release in the US, it was amazing. It looked and sounded much better than the NES games and it was much more accessible (probably the first Castlevania that many people were able to actually beat). Sure, Castlevania 3 had the better design but it was also way too hard for most people.
And you should really try Order of Ecclesia. It's a great mix of the old school and Metroidvania Castlevania sensibilities.
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I've got your problem right here.
Rondo of Blood came out TWO YEARS after CV4. CV4 was a launch title on the SNES. Rondo of Blood seems to have better sounding music? Well CV series has always had great compositions, now we couple that with an optical disc.
I agree with this 100%. Castlevania IV will always be one of my favorites; the graphics blew me away at the time, and the music is still great. On the previous page when TSR did a comparison between the CV4 and RoB Bloody Tears, I still fall on the side of the CV4 soundtrack in that case.
That being said, I agree about the mode 7 levels being a bit too much of a tech demo (and only crap does that one hallway have a ton of slowdown when you kill skeletons!).
was contemplating trying to learn a few of them on guitar lately
Because goddamn
That game was a real disappointment, right there
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I enjoyed Lords of Shadow.
Imma kill this thread.
Ten years from now, Dracula will be retconned again just to purge that piece of trash.
They warned me and I Youtubed it and simply watching it made the whole experience worse. I feel bad for anyone who paid for it.
do it
Controversial Castlevania Opinions:
I also like CV2.
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I fucking love CV2, even though it's one of the hardest games I've ever played and my grandmother and I would never have beaten it without help due to how fucking vague a lot of the shit in it is.
One of the biggest problems I had with the metroidvanias is that there was barely ever any challenge unless you purposely gimped yourself. Of course, if the areas you had to repeatedly traverse were challenging, getting around would be a huge pain in the ass. OoE addresses that problem by making the game a little more linear, but by doing so they're able to make areas more challenging again. There's also a bonus area of challenging platforming!
I remember the first time I saw Dracula X in a demo booth and heard the music and I was sooooo amazed. Then I played it and wondered where my 8-way whip and slack whip were. I also think that the Dracula X final boss fight is one of the harder ones... I think it's interesting that the PC Engine dracula X final boss was really just a re-creation of the original CV final boss (with what felt like to me an easier final form), while the SNES Dracula X completely changed the arena, and even the appearance of Dracula's final form.
TSR wins for being able to word what I find wrong with Super Castlevania's music better than I have in the past.
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A man after my own heart!
The Training Hall was actually pretty easy platforming. The only hard part is when you have to use the Magnes glyph within that one room with the rotating fire rings. And that's it.
The big accomplishment of OoE was creating a difficult Metroidvania style game. But right when Konami succeeds, they say they don't like the Castlevania series and all we have so far from them is a shitty reboot.
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Is that in-game music, or is that the arrangement? Either way, pretty rad.
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Did you miss the part where I said it was also a step down from Castlevania 3, released years prior, on a system released 6 years prior?
I'm sorry, I'll consider Castlevania 4's feelings in future posts.
The same thing happened with Super Mario Bros. 3, if you think about it; that game is more advanced / feature driven than Super Mario World. Yes the latter looks better, but for an NES game, SMB3 is pretty fucking complex and has a TON of level design awesomeness going on in it.
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The thing about the transition from Mario 3 to Mario World, is that the foundation didn't shift between titles. Whether or not you think the level design (or art direction or music, etc) in Mario 3 is better than Mario World, the games are still similar enough in mechanics that it would be easy to imagine someone plucking 1 level out of one game, and dropping it into the other game, and having it all just work. in fact, they did just that, with Mario All-stars.
That can't happen with Castlevania 4. It doesn't feel like any other game in the series. I could see someone taking a stage from Castlvania 3 and dropping it in Bloodlines or Rondo, but with Castlevania 4, the entire game is just too different.
If Castlevania IV is your favorite, you might just hate castlevania.
The mark of the truly defeated. Do you think this is clever? Can't put up a real argument?
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You shut your filthy whore mouth.
(Even though you may or may not be correct, depending on who's doing the rating)
But man, Castlevania. IV was indeed, lackluster...though the issue may be that I didn't play it until it came out on VC. Played the NES installments back in the day, and 2 (Simon's Quest) was my favorite. Curious how well it holds up.
Symphony of the Night will probably always hold a special place in my heart. Main problem now is that they keep putting out new ones on consoles I don't fucking have; my DS is dead, only ever played one of those, and I had a couple of the GBA ones. Still prefer SotN, probably because I prefer playing it on my TV. And because it's fuckawesome.
I'm not trying to be clever.
The idea that you're so offended that I made a discussion on a game I got for christmas plays into my claim that there is massive group think associated with this game.
I don't think there's anything wrong with having a discussion on not liking something as long as it can actually be discussed with various points and comparisons drawn. TSR has done a better job than people traditionally do.
I may be biased (I'm not saying that as a joke) because I just so happen to not like Super Castlevania.
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I can't imagine the amount of malice if I made a 'Platformers suck' thread.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Because "platformers suck" is an awfully big blanket statement, and no one has played every platformer ever. Making an "I don't enjoy platformers" thread would be better, as that's an opinion call and something worth discussiong (i.e. the merit of platformers, what people actually find enjoyable about them).
This isn't a broad topic. It's my views on a specific game. That's the difference.
EDIT: And if you ever did make a topic about how you do don't like the collect-a-thon platformers, I would be there front and center agreeing with you. I think completing a level should be sufficient challenge and goal in a game, without having to artifically pad the length by making a player explore every single uninteresting inch of a level.
But that's a different topic
I get what you say about Mario 3 to Mario World, but I'm confused how the same wouldn't apply to Castlevania 3 to Castlevania 4. At face value, I mean. Health works the same, same sub-weapons and they work more or less the same, same whip attack. But now you've made me consider something; Castlevania 4 controls, in a huge way, more floaty compared to other Castlevania games of that time (edit - clarification: I mean jumping). I think Rondo / Dracula X even managed to make things step back into the proper feel.
Nevertheless, most of my problem with CV4 is that it has an odd aesthetic, not unlike Harmony of Dissonance, and its soundtrack was bad.
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I'm talking about engine, not necessarily attributes. I said in the OP that it doesn't look or feel anything like a castlevania game, but rather an unrelated game using the castlevania theme.
To me, the difference between Classicvania and castlevania is akin to the differences between God of War and Dante's Inferno. On a superficial level, they might appear to be the same game, but when you actually play them, there is a lot that id not the same.