I started with Symphony of the Night, and it's honestly the only thing that got me to take a look at the old games at all. Simon's Quest reminds me the most of that game, or more specifically of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Super Castlevania is the most . . . easily recognizable in terms of old vs new, and I attribute that solely to the fantastic work on the music and graphics because I still find the game totally unforgiving.
I think that's something most people should know from NES/Early SNES games, but in case they don't it bears repeating: the early games were not forgiving.
On a slightly different note, I never really found Order of Ecclesia to be challenging. Occasionally annoying (though for me that might be the same thing), but generally about to be overcome through constant grinding.
Perhaps I wasn't supposed to grind in that game, but I totally totally did, until even the hopping vampire became trivial.
Super is vastly more forgiving then I or III are. It's still brutal, but it doesn't hit the absurd level of brutal the 8bits do, plus it has a password system.
Totally true. I had to cheat to beat 1, and I have yet to beat III but I see that going about the same way.
I feel no remorse about cheating in old games. They were limited in scope and functionality by the technology of their time.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Harmony of Despair is . . . weird. At least in concept. I really want to play it, but it seems to feed most off players who've already played a lot of the series already.
Dracula X Chronicles is Rondo of Blood, plus SotN, once certain conditions are met, and since Rondo of Blood is the game right before SotN, it might be best to hit that as then you can geta clear before and after shot of the way the games worked.
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Dracula X Chronicles gets you Rondo of Blood (Classicvania) and Symphony of the Night (Metroidvania), as well as the original sprite-based version of Rondo. You need to find the classic games as hidden items in Rondo of Blood to unlock them.
Sotn as a standalone download will have the original translation of the script. I don't think it has Maria playable(?)
Dracula X Chronicles is a remake of Rondo of Blood for the PSP. I've never played it so I can't comment.
HoD is a multiplayer Castlevania game that is more of a loot crawler with the characters and mechanics of Castlevania games. It is absolutely fantastic if you have others to play it with, but don't make it your entry into the series, it would be meaningless and it's not terribly compelling solo.
Dracula X Chronicles is a remake of Rondo of Blood for the PSP. I've never played it so I can't comment.
HoD is a multiplayer Castlevania game that is more of a loot crawler with the characters and mechanics of Castlevania games. It is absolutely fantastic if you have others to play it with, but don't make it your entry into the series, it would be meaningless and it's not terribly compelling solo.
SotN is your best bet really, of those.
Well, if you're okay with/prefer the later translation of Symphonia, Dracula X Chronicles may be the better value, depending on the relative prices, as it also contains Symphony.
Though, you need to play a fair bit of Rondo first, to unlock Symphony.
Enlong on
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frenetic_ferretwildest weaselEast Coast is Best CoastRegistered Userregular
I started with Symphony of the Night, and it's honestly the only thing that got me to take a look at the old games at all. Simon's Quest reminds me the most of that game, or more specifically of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Super Castlevania is the most . . . easily recognizable in terms of old vs new, and I attribute that solely to the fantastic work on the music and graphics because I still find the game totally unforgiving.
I think that's something most people should know from NES/Early SNES games, but in case they don't it bears repeating: the early games were not forgiving.
On a slightly different note, I never really found Order of Ecclesia to be challenging. Occasionally annoying (though for me that might be the same thing), but generally about to be overcome through constant grinding.
Perhaps I wasn't supposed to grind in that game, but I totally totally did, until even the hopping vampire became trivial.
Super is vastly more forgiving then I or III are. It's still brutal, but it doesn't hit the absurd level of brutal the 8bits do, plus it has a password system.
Totally true. I had to cheat to beat 1, and I have yet to beat III but I see that going about the same way.
I feel no remorse about cheating in old games. They were limited in scope and functionality by the technology of their time.
It's actually beatable, you just have to have all the patterns down to sheer muscle memory to do it. Also the key is you need to do it in one live. If you can keep the tripple boomerang/cross from the first shot all the bosses go down like punks. If you get good at it the stages are pure memory and the bosses get slaughtered, but screw up once and start from scratch with nothing and it becomes vastly harder.
Curse of Darkness is fantastic. I'd put it behind LoS as far as 3D Castlevania games go, and is a genuinely good game even if it were named something completely different.
I started with Symphony of the Night, and it's honestly the only thing that got me to take a look at the old games at all. Simon's Quest reminds me the most of that game, or more specifically of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Super Castlevania is the most . . . easily recognizable in terms of old vs new, and I attribute that solely to the fantastic work on the music and graphics because I still find the game totally unforgiving.
I think that's something most people should know from NES/Early SNES games, but in case they don't it bears repeating: the early games were not forgiving.
On a slightly different note, I never really found Order of Ecclesia to be challenging. Occasionally annoying (though for me that might be the same thing), but generally about to be overcome through constant grinding.
Perhaps I wasn't supposed to grind in that game, but I totally totally did, until even the hopping vampire became trivial.
Super is vastly more forgiving then I or III are. It's still brutal, but it doesn't hit the absurd level of brutal the 8bits do, plus it has a password system.
Totally true. I had to cheat to beat 1, and I have yet to beat III but I see that going about the same way.
I feel no remorse about cheating in old games. They were limited in scope and functionality by the technology of their time.
It's actually beatable, you just have to have all the patterns down to sheer muscle memory to do it. Also the key is you need to do it in one live. If you can keep the tripple boomerang/cross from the first shot all the bosses go down like punks. If you get good at it the stages are pure memory and the bosses get slaughtered, but screw up once and start from scratch with nothing and it becomes vastly harder.
That is kind of my point. If a game is that hard, it generally doesn't deserve my time (unless I can cheat in some way to beat it). I mean, even dying in Dark Souls isn't a total loss.
Curse of Darkness is fantastic. I'd put it behind LoS as far as 3D Castlevania games go, and is a genuinely good game even if it were named something completely different.
I always wanted to play that one but finding it, especially cheap, is a bitch.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Harmony of Despair is . . . weird. At least in concept. I really want to play it, but it seems to feed most off players who've already played a lot of the series already.
Dracula X Chronicles is Rondo of Blood, plus SotN, once certain conditions are met, and since Rondo of Blood is the game right before SotN, it might be best to hit that as then you can geta clear before and after shot of the way the games worked.
I'll see if I can get my hands on it.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Maybe I just beat the game into the ground too many times, but I thought SCIV was easy in comparison to the original trilogy. Castlevania is definitely unforgiving. Simon's Quest is both easy and flat-out broken. Dracula's Curse is hard as hell, too.
Stealth edit: I started writing this post at 8:30. I stopped in the middle of it to play SCIV. I got as far as the castle proper before dying for the first time (to Fred Ascare and the other bad pun). I died many, many times in the dungeon. Then I got to the treasure area and kept dying to a single bullshit platforming part where you have to leap from a collapsing floor to a ledge where a bat is going to hit you and a skeleton is either going to nail you with a thrown bone or he's going to land on you. Either case, you're getting knocked off the level to your death. I used to sail through this game all the time, usually without dying until the last couple of stages. What happened?
I never did play Curse of Darkness. I heard it was terrible from someone whose judgement I shouldn't have trusted. Now, unless it becomes available digitally, I'll never get a chance to play it. Lament of Innocence was great for its time and what it was, but it still left a bit to be desired.
I played Curse of Darkness. I beat Curse of Darkness. I can't remember a damn thing about Curse of Darkness 10 years later. I think you had a pumpkin familiar following you around? And your nemesis was a guy who refused to pull his pants up?
I played Curse of Darkness. I beat Curse of Darkness. I can't remember a damn thing about Curse of Darkness 10 years later. I think you had a pumpkin familiar following you around? And your nemesis was a guy who refused to pull his pants up?
The game is thoroughly forgettable.
What? No.
Sure, it's not "Yet another Belmont goes to Draculas castle" so that might be why you might have felt the story was forgettable :rotate:
You're an ex Dracula henchman fighting a different Dracula henchman who did shitty things to you. It's a revenge story. And a not bad one at that, relative to the stories in Castlevanias anyway.
And you have any number of types of pets following you. You level them up, 'breed' them, etc. It's a whole game within the game that can be a lot of fun and change the way you play. It's also got a fairly robust SotN style equipment and leveling system on top of it's 3D variation of metroidvania style exploration, maps and secrets.
It's basically what a lot of people bitched LoS wasn't a decade before LoS was out. And it had tight gameplay that felt satisfying and responsive. But no one played it.
It was a genuinely good game.
EDIT: It did, however, have extremely Iga-esque character designs.
SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
I enjoyed Curse of Darkness, but admittedly I spent a lot of time leveling up my familiars, or "Innocent Devils" as they are referred to in that game. There was also a goofy time traveling guy in a top hat and Trevor Belmont shows up at some point.
Castlevania IV is significantly easier than the previous 3 games. For me, the hardest part is near the end where the screen autoscrolls while a sawblade chases you upwards. The bosses after that are pretty easy. Even Death was a joke. Still probably my favorite from the platformer era; I think it wins me over on atmosphere.
Also dude who can't keep his pants up is voiced by the always awesome Liam O'Brien. It's interesting to hear his voiceover for it before he was the booming bass voice of War, Illidan and Caius.
I enjoyed Curse of Darkness, but admittedly I spent a lot of time leveling up my familiars, or "Innocent Devils" as they are referred to in that game. There was also a goofy time traveling guy in a top hat and Trevor Belmont shows up at some point.
Castlevania IV is significantly easier than the previous 3 games. For me, the hardest part is near the end where the screen autoscrolls while a sawblade chases you upwards. The bosses after that are pretty easy. Even Death was a joke. Still probably my favorite from the platformer era; I think it wins me over on atmosphere.
You can actually play through the game as Trevor Belmont after beating it as Hector. It takes out all the Innocent Devils, leveling and equipment, but instead you're much more powerful base and have classic Castlevania abilities and such.
It's a lot like playing SotN with Richter instead of Alucard. You find health ups and such, but are limited to more traditional styles of gameplay.
You know what? That's the reason I never got CoD now that I think about it: Iga. I remember seeing screens and thinking that it looked somewhat bland and the designs were just annoying to me. I don't have a PS2 to play it on now, anyways, so it's a moot point.
Going back to SCIV for a sec, it's funny what little things I remembered of the game. When I used to play it pretty much daily back when it came out, I had the entrance to the castle timed perfectly so that the shift in music took place when I was emerging from the last stairway. It felt right to have that two-note sequence playing at just that point.
Curse of Darkness has two big issues, large uninteresting rooms (sure they are filled with enemies sometimes) and Hector is kinda slow so it feels a bit sloggy to go through said large uninteresting rooms.
I still love this game, I loved Lament of Innocence as well so I'm not too picky
-plus Isaac battle music- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAPr9AAKVlY
I played Curse of Darkness. I beat Curse of Darkness. I can't remember a damn thing about Curse of Darkness 10 years later. I think you had a pumpkin familiar following you around? And your nemesis was a guy who refused to pull his pants up?
The game is thoroughly forgettable.
It absolutely is not. It's easily one of my favourites; finding and unlocking all the familiar types was super fun.
Even though it was only one week, Lords of Shadow 2 bombed pretty hard. It only managed 55k across all platforms with regards to physical sales. Thief 4, which was released the same day, was number four on the NPD charts. Lords of Shadows 2 was not in the top ten. The future of Castlevania is pretty bleak.
Just bumping that up since I noticed people talking about it from a few months back. I think with updated numbers, the game hasn't even crossed the 100k mark.
LoS2 was released on the final day of Feb. Konami hasn't released any sales information afaik, only to admit (might have been Cox actually) that it sold less at release than LoS did. 55k would be really low either way if it were true, but who even knows what that even includes. We know it doesn't include Steam, since Valve doesn't release that info ever, and likely doesn't include PSN or XBL sales. Plus NPD is only the US and not the EU, UK or Asia. But one day of a month that's not normally a blockbuster month anyway, I guess I wouldn't put too much faith in the 55k number, wherever it came from.
Given that LoS was, according to Konami, the highest selling Castlevania game ever, even if LoS2 did way worse from a few notorious reviews and bad word of mouth, 100k seems pretty unbelievably low, by a long shot.
Also, regardless of its total sales, Castlevania games have never been massive sellers...ever...at worst LoS2 having performed badly would make them think a bit longer on future 3D titles, but not any Castlevania titles.
Personally I still have yet to load up LoS2. Someday. Maybe soon. :rotate:
LoS2 was released on the final day of Feb. Konami hasn't released any sales information afaik, only to admit (might have been Cox actually) that it sold less at release than LoS did. 55k would be really low either way if it were true, but who even knows what that even includes. We know it doesn't include Steam, since Valve doesn't release that info ever, and likely doesn't include PSN or XBL sales. Plus NPD is only the US and not the EU, UK or Asia. But one day of a month that's not normally a blockbuster month anyway, I guess I wouldn't put too much faith in the 55k number, wherever it came from.
Given that LoS was, according to Konami, the highest selling Castlevania game ever, even if LoS2 did way worse from a few notorious reviews and bad word of mouth, 100k seems pretty unbelievably low, by a long shot.
Also, regardless of its total sales, Castlevania games have never been massive sellers...ever...at worst LoS2 having performed badly would make them think a bit longer on future 3D titles, but not any Castlevania titles.
Personally I still have yet to load up LoS2. Someday. Maybe soon. :rotate:
If I owned it I'd have played it already.
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LoS2 was released on the final day of Feb. Konami hasn't released any sales information afaik, only to admit (might have been Cox actually) that it sold less at release than LoS did. 55k would be really low either way if it were true, but who even knows what that even includes. We know it doesn't include Steam, since Valve doesn't release that info ever, and likely doesn't include PSN or XBL sales. Plus NPD is only the US and not the EU, UK or Asia. But one day of a month that's not normally a blockbuster month anyway, I guess I wouldn't put too much faith in the 55k number, wherever it came from.
Given that LoS was, according to Konami, the highest selling Castlevania game ever, even if LoS2 did way worse from a few notorious reviews and bad word of mouth, 100k seems pretty unbelievably low, by a long shot.
Also, regardless of its total sales, Castlevania games have never been massive sellers...ever...at worst LoS2 having performed badly would make them think a bit longer on future 3D titles, but not any Castlevania titles.
Personally I still have yet to load up LoS2. Someday. Maybe soon. :rotate:
The 55k came from a trusted source on NeoGaf. That person has access to all NPD data. It is the closets we will ever get to solid numbers for retail sales. The game selling poorly out of the gate is a huge deal considering Thief 4 came out the same day and did well despite the few days of tracking. As for other regions, I really doubt it made enough of a splash elsewhere to make up for the abysmal first outing here in the states.
What this was really about was making Castlevania, or rather the LoS series, another franchise Konami could bank on for solid sales. Comparing it to past games is disingenuous since their budgets were nowhere near that of LoS'. I really can't see Konami just shrugging this off especially now that IGA is no longer around to champion the series.
You can't possibly be suggesting that Konami would consider giving up on one of the most well known, liked, and respected series in the history of gaming, right? Konami might not always put out the highest quality content, but they're not as short sighted as, say, Capcom.
And again, assuming it was accurate it was 55k from one increasingly obsolete sales aggregator one one single day of a, sales-wise, irrelevant month.
It's not even remotely 'disingenuous' to compare it to sales of the past games in the series because that's precisely what they have to compare it to. LoS may have been the best selling game in the series but it wasn't exactly a blockbuster on par with your usual AAA releases. Their only numbers release was 1m shipped over a month after launch, and by that point it was already up against the likes of FO:NV, Black Ops, AssBro, and more. Considering how quickly it went down to bargain prices, I'd be shocked if it actually sold even that 1m.
It's perfectly reasonable to compare apples to apples, and I'm fairly sure we don't know what the budget of either LoS game was; but based on various statements by Cox around the release and follow up to Mirror of Fate, it sounds like it was really limited.
Iga may have had a lot of influence on the current state of the series, but it didn't originate with him, and it doesn't need him to continue. And I highly doubt, regardless of what the reality of the sales numbers actually were, that the series is doomed. Maybe it won't go back to 3D adventure any time soon, but that's fine, it's not as if the series is relegated to one single type of gameplay.
SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
So I guess Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth has captured my attention for now. I was going to rant about it on here for a while, but it turns out one of the main issues I have with it is related to the control style I selected. If you choose the "classic" style, your character jumps in the same style as in Castlevania I - III. That's no problem for me, but it turns out this setting also makes it so the only subweapons that appear in-game are the boomerang/cross and holy water. What a bizarre design decision. I'm going to switch to the other control setting that allows you to have an axe, knife, or stopwatch.
I made it to stage 5. The stages in this game are a bit annoying at times. They feel a lot longer than the old games, which makes the whole convention of starting at the beginning of the stage when you lose all your lives extra aggravating. And up until a few minutes I didn't see any option to continue if you've shut off the system, but apparently if you hold right on the D-pad at the start menu, it'll let you choose any stage you've completed so far. I'll have to test that out.
My takeaway thus far is that the game is good, but not great. Maybe switching the control scheme will help. I might increase my total number of lives too, because it's not as fun now to lose my last life at a boss and have to trudge through the whole stage again.
Are you locked into a control scheme, or can you switch any time?
Once you start playing, you're locked into a control scheme. You can only change it on the main menu. I guess we'll see if I can continue my progress from stage 5 when using the modern control scheme...but I read about people having to start over if they chose a different difficulty in the main menu, and there's a possibility that changing the controls will do that too.
You can't possibly be suggesting that Konami would consider giving up on one of the most well known, liked, and respected series in the history of gaming, right? Konami might not always put out the highest quality content, but they're not as short sighted as, say, Capcom.
And again, assuming it was accurate it was 55k from one increasingly obsolete sales aggregator one one single day of a, sales-wise, irrelevant month.
It's not even remotely 'disingenuous' to compare it to sales of the past games in the series because that's precisely what they have to compare it to. LoS may have been the best selling game in the series but it wasn't exactly a blockbuster on par with your usual AAA releases. Their only numbers release was 1m shipped over a month after launch, and by that point it was already up against the likes of FO:NV, Black Ops, AssBro, and more. Considering how quickly it went down to bargain prices, I'd be shocked if it actually sold even that 1m.
It's perfectly reasonable to compare apples to apples, and I'm fairly sure we don't know what the budget of either LoS game was; but based on various statements by Cox around the release and follow up to Mirror of Fate, it sounds like it was really limited.
Iga may have had a lot of influence on the current state of the series, but it didn't originate with him, and it doesn't need him to continue. And I highly doubt, regardless of what the reality of the sales numbers actually were, that the series is doomed. Maybe it won't go back to 3D adventure any time soon, but that's fine, it's not as if the series is relegated to one single type of gameplay.
Giving up no, but Konami has a lot of series from the 8/16bit era that never really got the AAA treatment on consoles and more lived on portables, like say Contra.
I'd be happy if they killed 3d Castlevania and went to cranking out 1080p HD 2d games like that Contra game for the PS3/360, that game was boss.
You can't possibly be suggesting that Konami would consider giving up on one of the most well known, liked, and respected series in the history of gaming, right? Konami might not always put out the highest quality content, but they're not as short sighted as, say, Capcom.
And again, assuming it was accurate it was 55k from one increasingly obsolete sales aggregator one one single day of a, sales-wise, irrelevant month.
It's not even remotely 'disingenuous' to compare it to sales of the past games in the series because that's precisely what they have to compare it to. LoS may have been the best selling game in the series but it wasn't exactly a blockbuster on par with your usual AAA releases. Their only numbers release was 1m shipped over a month after launch, and by that point it was already up against the likes of FO:NV, Black Ops, AssBro, and more. Considering how quickly it went down to bargain prices, I'd be shocked if it actually sold even that 1m.
It's perfectly reasonable to compare apples to apples, and I'm fairly sure we don't know what the budget of either LoS game was; but based on various statements by Cox around the release and follow up to Mirror of Fate, it sounds like it was really limited.
Iga may have had a lot of influence on the current state of the series, but it didn't originate with him, and it doesn't need him to continue. And I highly doubt, regardless of what the reality of the sales numbers actually were, that the series is doomed. Maybe it won't go back to 3D adventure any time soon, but that's fine, it's not as if the series is relegated to one single type of gameplay.
Giving up no, but Konami has a lot of series from the 8/16bit era that never really got the AAA treatment on consoles and more lived on portables, like say Contra.
I'd be happy if they killed 3d Castlevania and went to cranking out 1080p HD 2d games like that Contra game for the PS3/360, that game was boss.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
You can't possibly be suggesting that Konami would consider giving up on one of the most well known, liked, and respected series in the history of gaming, right? Konami might not always put out the highest quality content, but they're not as short sighted as, say, Capcom.
And again, assuming it was accurate it was 55k from one increasingly obsolete sales aggregator one one single day of a, sales-wise, irrelevant month.
It's not even remotely 'disingenuous' to compare it to sales of the past games in the series because that's precisely what they have to compare it to. LoS may have been the best selling game in the series but it wasn't exactly a blockbuster on par with your usual AAA releases. Their only numbers release was 1m shipped over a month after launch, and by that point it was already up against the likes of FO:NV, Black Ops, AssBro, and more. Considering how quickly it went down to bargain prices, I'd be shocked if it actually sold even that 1m.
It's perfectly reasonable to compare apples to apples, and I'm fairly sure we don't know what the budget of either LoS game was; but based on various statements by Cox around the release and follow up to Mirror of Fate, it sounds like it was really limited.
Iga may have had a lot of influence on the current state of the series, but it didn't originate with him, and it doesn't need him to continue. And I highly doubt, regardless of what the reality of the sales numbers actually were, that the series is doomed. Maybe it won't go back to 3D adventure any time soon, but that's fine, it's not as if the series is relegated to one single type of gameplay.
Giving up no, but Konami has a lot of series from the 8/16bit era that never really got the AAA treatment on consoles and more lived on portables, like say Contra.
I'd be happy if they killed 3d Castlevania and went to cranking out 1080p HD 2d games like that Contra game for the PS3/360, that game was boss.
With a bit of a tighter control scheme (the one present was a little too floaty) I think games such as Mirror of Fate would be good too; 3D graphics in a 2D plane is fine with me, and it is kind of cool to get to execute dudes via kill animations in that game.
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SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
Well, I certainly made a huge mistake when I decided to play Castlevania the Adventure ReBirth with the "classic" control style a few days ago. After switching it back to normal, the game is far more tolerable. I made it to Dracula and beat his second form after one try, only to be surprised by a third form. Whoops! I'll get back to that tomorrow.
I think the light-gun...er...light-whip arcade game was 2-player as well.
Speaking of HoD, I'm down to missing only 2 items in the entire game (Alucard's unique sword from Hard Ch.7, and the Feather Boots from Hard Ch.10). I've still got a few items I need to collect duplicates of for maximum effectiveness though (ie. R.The Count Souls, Philosopher Stones, a second Valmanway +1, etc.).
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SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
edited August 2014
Finally beat ReBirth. Drac's last form is a pain and took me 10-15 attempts. I found a video of the fight, and it's harder than it looks: http://youtu.be/xuHhqLTuo2U
edit: the third form starts at around 3:00 if you want to skip ahead.
SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
I know this thread has been pretty silent for the last few weeks, but I figured it's worth noting that Dave Cox of Lords of Shadow fame is leaving Konami:
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Totally true. I had to cheat to beat 1, and I have yet to beat III but I see that going about the same way.
I feel no remorse about cheating in old games. They were limited in scope and functionality by the technology of their time.
Harmony of Despair is . . . weird. At least in concept. I really want to play it, but it seems to feed most off players who've already played a lot of the series already.
Dracula X Chronicles is Rondo of Blood, plus SotN, once certain conditions are met, and since Rondo of Blood is the game right before SotN, it might be best to hit that as then you can geta clear before and after shot of the way the games worked.
Dracula X Chronicles gets you Rondo of Blood (Classicvania) and Symphony of the Night (Metroidvania), as well as the original sprite-based version of Rondo. You need to find the classic games as hidden items in Rondo of Blood to unlock them.
Sotn as a standalone download will have the original translation of the script. I don't think it has Maria playable(?)
Dracula X Chronicles is a remake of Rondo of Blood for the PSP. I've never played it so I can't comment.
HoD is a multiplayer Castlevania game that is more of a loot crawler with the characters and mechanics of Castlevania games. It is absolutely fantastic if you have others to play it with, but don't make it your entry into the series, it would be meaningless and it's not terribly compelling solo.
SotN is your best bet really, of those.
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Well, if you're okay with/prefer the later translation of Symphonia, Dracula X Chronicles may be the better value, depending on the relative prices, as it also contains Symphony.
Though, you need to play a fair bit of Rondo first, to unlock Symphony.
It's actually beatable, you just have to have all the patterns down to sheer muscle memory to do it. Also the key is you need to do it in one live. If you can keep the tripple boomerang/cross from the first shot all the bosses go down like punks. If you get good at it the stages are pure memory and the bosses get slaughtered, but screw up once and start from scratch with nothing and it becomes vastly harder.
Curse of Darkness is fantastic. I'd put it behind LoS as far as 3D Castlevania games go, and is a genuinely good game even if it were named something completely different.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
That is kind of my point. If a game is that hard, it generally doesn't deserve my time (unless I can cheat in some way to beat it). I mean, even dying in Dark Souls isn't a total loss.
I always wanted to play that one but finding it, especially cheap, is a bitch.
I'll see if I can get my hands on it.
Stealth edit: I started writing this post at 8:30. I stopped in the middle of it to play SCIV. I got as far as the castle proper before dying for the first time (to Fred Ascare and the other bad pun). I died many, many times in the dungeon. Then I got to the treasure area and kept dying to a single bullshit platforming part where you have to leap from a collapsing floor to a ledge where a bat is going to hit you and a skeleton is either going to nail you with a thrown bone or he's going to land on you. Either case, you're getting knocked off the level to your death. I used to sail through this game all the time, usually without dying until the last couple of stages. What happened?
The game is thoroughly forgettable.
In case I haven't been clear: get that one
What? No.
Sure, it's not "Yet another Belmont goes to Draculas castle" so that might be why you might have felt the story was forgettable :rotate:
You're an ex Dracula henchman fighting a different Dracula henchman who did shitty things to you. It's a revenge story. And a not bad one at that, relative to the stories in Castlevanias anyway.
And you have any number of types of pets following you. You level them up, 'breed' them, etc. It's a whole game within the game that can be a lot of fun and change the way you play. It's also got a fairly robust SotN style equipment and leveling system on top of it's 3D variation of metroidvania style exploration, maps and secrets.
It's basically what a lot of people bitched LoS wasn't a decade before LoS was out. And it had tight gameplay that felt satisfying and responsive. But no one played it.
It was a genuinely good game.
EDIT: It did, however, have extremely Iga-esque character designs.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Castlevania IV is significantly easier than the previous 3 games. For me, the hardest part is near the end where the screen autoscrolls while a sawblade chases you upwards. The bosses after that are pretty easy. Even Death was a joke. Still probably my favorite from the platformer era; I think it wins me over on atmosphere.
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He's surprisingly different sounding as Isaac.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
You can actually play through the game as Trevor Belmont after beating it as Hector. It takes out all the Innocent Devils, leveling and equipment, but instead you're much more powerful base and have classic Castlevania abilities and such.
It's a lot like playing SotN with Richter instead of Alucard. You find health ups and such, but are limited to more traditional styles of gameplay.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Going back to SCIV for a sec, it's funny what little things I remembered of the game. When I used to play it pretty much daily back when it came out, I had the entrance to the castle timed perfectly so that the shift in music took place when I was emerging from the last stairway. It felt right to have that two-note sequence playing at just that point.
I still love this game, I loved Lament of Innocence as well so I'm not too picky
-plus Isaac battle music-
It absolutely is not. It's easily one of my favourites; finding and unlocking all the familiar types was super fun.
Just bumping that up since I noticed people talking about it from a few months back. I think with updated numbers, the game hasn't even crossed the 100k mark.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
The 55k came from a leaker in the NeoGaf February NPD thread. You'll have to do some digging since I can't access the thread for some reason.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=784224
The 100k is unverified since I can't remember if its LTD sales were ever posted by the same person in a subsequent NPD thread.
LoS2 was released on the final day of Feb. Konami hasn't released any sales information afaik, only to admit (might have been Cox actually) that it sold less at release than LoS did. 55k would be really low either way if it were true, but who even knows what that even includes. We know it doesn't include Steam, since Valve doesn't release that info ever, and likely doesn't include PSN or XBL sales. Plus NPD is only the US and not the EU, UK or Asia. But one day of a month that's not normally a blockbuster month anyway, I guess I wouldn't put too much faith in the 55k number, wherever it came from.
Given that LoS was, according to Konami, the highest selling Castlevania game ever, even if LoS2 did way worse from a few notorious reviews and bad word of mouth, 100k seems pretty unbelievably low, by a long shot.
Also, regardless of its total sales, Castlevania games have never been massive sellers...ever...at worst LoS2 having performed badly would make them think a bit longer on future 3D titles, but not any Castlevania titles.
Personally I still have yet to load up LoS2. Someday. Maybe soon. :rotate:
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
If I owned it I'd have played it already.
The 55k came from a trusted source on NeoGaf. That person has access to all NPD data. It is the closets we will ever get to solid numbers for retail sales. The game selling poorly out of the gate is a huge deal considering Thief 4 came out the same day and did well despite the few days of tracking. As for other regions, I really doubt it made enough of a splash elsewhere to make up for the abysmal first outing here in the states.
What this was really about was making Castlevania, or rather the LoS series, another franchise Konami could bank on for solid sales. Comparing it to past games is disingenuous since their budgets were nowhere near that of LoS'. I really can't see Konami just shrugging this off especially now that IGA is no longer around to champion the series.
And again, assuming it was accurate it was 55k from one increasingly obsolete sales aggregator one one single day of a, sales-wise, irrelevant month.
It's not even remotely 'disingenuous' to compare it to sales of the past games in the series because that's precisely what they have to compare it to. LoS may have been the best selling game in the series but it wasn't exactly a blockbuster on par with your usual AAA releases. Their only numbers release was 1m shipped over a month after launch, and by that point it was already up against the likes of FO:NV, Black Ops, AssBro, and more. Considering how quickly it went down to bargain prices, I'd be shocked if it actually sold even that 1m.
It's perfectly reasonable to compare apples to apples, and I'm fairly sure we don't know what the budget of either LoS game was; but based on various statements by Cox around the release and follow up to Mirror of Fate, it sounds like it was really limited.
Iga may have had a lot of influence on the current state of the series, but it didn't originate with him, and it doesn't need him to continue. And I highly doubt, regardless of what the reality of the sales numbers actually were, that the series is doomed. Maybe it won't go back to 3D adventure any time soon, but that's fine, it's not as if the series is relegated to one single type of gameplay.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I made it to stage 5. The stages in this game are a bit annoying at times. They feel a lot longer than the old games, which makes the whole convention of starting at the beginning of the stage when you lose all your lives extra aggravating. And up until a few minutes I didn't see any option to continue if you've shut off the system, but apparently if you hold right on the D-pad at the start menu, it'll let you choose any stage you've completed so far. I'll have to test that out.
My takeaway thus far is that the game is good, but not great. Maybe switching the control scheme will help. I might increase my total number of lives too, because it's not as fun now to lose my last life at a boss and have to trudge through the whole stage again.
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Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Once you start playing, you're locked into a control scheme. You can only change it on the main menu. I guess we'll see if I can continue my progress from stage 5 when using the modern control scheme...but I read about people having to start over if they chose a different difficulty in the main menu, and there's a possibility that changing the controls will do that too.
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Giving up no, but Konami has a lot of series from the 8/16bit era that never really got the AAA treatment on consoles and more lived on portables, like say Contra.
I'd be happy if they killed 3d Castlevania and went to cranking out 1080p HD 2d games like that Contra game for the PS3/360, that game was boss.
Hard Corps Uprising, courtesy of Arc Systems and Daisuke Ishiwatari.#metal
With a bit of a tighter control scheme (the one present was a little too floaty) I think games such as Mirror of Fate would be good too; 3D graphics in a 2D plane is fine with me, and it is kind of cool to get to execute dudes via kill animations in that game.
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In fact I'd be a huge fan of that, if it was just something to carry them through a few years.
Also I would be 100% ok with them making a followup to HD because multiplayer Castlevania is something we have way too little of.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Speaking of HoD, I'm down to missing only 2 items in the entire game (Alucard's unique sword from Hard Ch.7, and the Feather Boots from Hard Ch.10). I've still got a few items I need to collect duplicates of for maximum effectiveness though (ie. R.The Count Souls, Philosopher Stones, a second Valmanway +1, etc.).
edit: the third form starts at around 3:00 if you want to skip ahead.
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