Symphony of the Night is a fun game with a lot going on. I didn't like it for the potential for competitive e-sports.
+3
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Difficulty mod implies making it harder btw. It was an absurdly easy game. The mod rebalanced items and made fights actually challenging. Though I still did find a way to become OP by the end, but the final boss still took a couple tries. The doppleganger on that mod though was almost unkillable.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Okay but modding the game isn't the actual game itself. You took measures to change the game.
I'd probably give it a play with a higher difficulty setting, but difficulty is also never really the itch where I'd look to the Castlevania series to scratch.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
I'd be cautious about conflating difficulty with obtuseness, but I'd say the early Castlevania games were often nicely-tuned and well-calculated challenges
+1
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
I'm paying the 60 buckos, so I voted for the exclusive stuff to stay available for anyone because I'm not a lizard-person.
I did the $125 tier that doesn't seem to exist anymore (alchemist + digital copy) and I also voted for to make any backer stuff avaliable to everyone via whatever means.
Because I have never understood the desire to prohibit other people from having something you have.
But; uh...does anyone know how to check what you chose for your game copies in the thingies ages ago?
Because I seriously don't recall what I chose. I think I chose WiiU boxed, Steam digital, but since (iirc anyway, and for obvious reasons) they're not doing a WiiU version, I might want to change that?
EDIT: and as soon as I hit post I remembered they sent out a thing some time ago that said people who chose WiiU were changed to Switch automatically and you just needed to do something if you didn't want that.
:rotate:
Anyway, while looking up my backing info I notice I've only backed 4 things, 3 of which have been released and I've been completely satisfied (anker/zolo fully wireless buds, battle chasers and everspace). Here's hoping that whenever bloodstained comes out it makes that 4/4.
I picked up a pair of crissaegrims and turned Alucard into a walking woodchipper. Good times.
SOTN can be very difficult depending on if you know anything about the magic system, which was not explained at all, and what weapons you get to drop. If you don't use one spell, it greatly can increase the difficulty. Whereas dracula fireball spam while holding up to teleport and give invincibility frames, greatly eases fights. Same thing with weapon drops and the RNG.
Play it straight up with no knowledge of the game, no walkthroughs, no grinding, don't use magic, and it can be very difficult with some excellent boss fights.
Eh, SotN isn't very hard even when playing blind. There are a couple tough bosses (looking at you, Galamoth), but in most cases basic action platformer skills and proper gearing (the game isn't that bad providing you with what you need when you need it) will let the average player prevail. I never had to cheese the game in order to beat it.
I wonder what it would have been like to play SotN if you weren't someone who was super into something like Super Metroid.
Because if you came straight from Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines or I guess Dracula X for what seemed like the 14 people who played it (I was not among them, but hoooollyyyyyyy shit did I play the living hell out of Bloodlines, one many people also seemed to have skipped) I can only imagine it would have been obtuse as shit.
Easily a ton of backtracking if you don't generally know where you're going and could end up down a long way that you can't access yet; bizarre secrets that aren't the slightest bit intuitive, and more than half the game behind a gear/time puzzle that I would argue that you could only believe the game even hints at after you already know it exists.
If someone wasn't super into the exploring but thought they were getting something like what they'd played in the series in the past, they likely wouldn't just stumble upon the rings, and even if they did, to have paid enough attention to otherwise ignorable hints to use them in the clock room (this is assuming, again, they would have ever put together the pieces to get the rings to begin with), and then the glasses with Richter, and killing Shaft instead; that's a lot of things to go right to even really know about a good portion of the game.
The way the game confronts bosses, even, I'd argue, is pretty different than any Castlevania prior, and they could have resulted in something seemingly difficult if you weren't really up on the genre or weren't used to paying attention to gear, or even figuring out the game had a magic system.
I'd say, the question of whether the game is difficult or not depends on so many factors it is hardly answerable. Even a player who got past all the opaque systems may just have had shit luck and ended up with no good weapons and ran into a boss that ended up being way more difficult than intended.
So I think I can really understand how a sequel to an already relatively niche series, that took it in a direction that was pretty novel for the industry (I actually think Simons Quest was way more influential than it is given credit for, but it had so many bad parts, either by design, or simple tech limitations) that probably narrowed the audience, could end up something so profoundly cult.
Yes, virtually every igavania that came after was better, in virtually every way, to SotN; but for some of us, none of those improvements put those sequels above SotN simply because of what it stood for. Of course, you see this all over the place in gaming (rabid debates over 3D marios, or LttP vs OoT, where Halo lies in the FPS genre, and on and on), so it shouldn't be unusual.
I just wonder what it would have been like to come into the game blind to what it actually was. Like a favorite book, or album, or movie, SotN for me could never be taken out of its important place in my own gaming history (despite having been gaming a decade or more prior to its release); but like those favorites, my perspective on it will never be rational, no matter how intellectually I can break it down. EDIT: But maybe if I didn't ever really get to see what it was, because I wasn't prepped for it, patient enough to figure it out, whatever; I might look at it now and think "why do people think this is so damn important that they will argue endlessly about it?"
SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
I bought SotN when it got a US release, but I had already discovered the game's existence via fan sites (probably The Castlevania Dungeon?) describing the game as being like Super Metroid. Unfortunately, I completely spoiled myself on a lot of things about the game, including the existence of the inverted castle. I did find moments in the game difficult, but as was intended, I just went back and levelled up a bit to trivialize those moments.
I wonder what it would have been like to play SotN if you weren't someone who was super into something like Super Metroid.
Because if you came straight from Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines or I guess Dracula X for what seemed like the 14 people who played it (I was not among them, but hoooollyyyyyyy shit did I play the living hell out of Bloodlines, one many people also seemed to have skipped) I can only imagine it would have been obtuse as shit.
Easily a ton of backtracking if you don't generally know where you're going and could end up down a long way that you can't access yet; bizarre secrets that aren't the slightest bit intuitive, and more than half the game behind a gear/time puzzle that I would argue that you could only believe the game even hints at after you already know it exists.
If someone wasn't super into the exploring but thought they were getting something like what they'd played in the series in the past, they likely wouldn't just stumble upon the rings, and even if they did, to have paid enough attention to otherwise ignorable hints to use them in the clock room (this is assuming, again, they would have ever put together the pieces to get the rings to begin with), and then the glasses with Richter, and killing Shaft instead; that's a lot of things to go right to even really know about a good portion of the game.
The way the game confronts bosses, even, I'd argue, is pretty different than any Castlevania prior, and they could have resulted in something seemingly difficult if you weren't really up on the genre or weren't used to paying attention to gear, or even figuring out the game had a magic system.
I'd say, the question of whether the game is difficult or not depends on so many factors it is hardly answerable. Even a player who got past all the opaque systems may just have had shit luck and ended up with no good weapons and ran into a boss that ended up being way more difficult than intended.
So I think I can really understand how a sequel to an already relatively niche series, that took it in a direction that was pretty novel for the industry (I actually think Simons Quest was way more influential than it is given credit for, but it had so many bad parts, either by design, or simple tech limitations) that probably narrowed the audience, could end up something so profoundly cult.
Yes, virtually every igavania that came after was better, in virtually every way, to SotN; but for some of us, none of those improvements put those sequels above SotN simply because of what it stood for. Of course, you see this all over the place in gaming (rabid debates over 3D marios, or LttP vs OoT, where Halo lies in the FPS genre, and on and on), so it shouldn't be unusual.
I just wonder what it would have been like to come into the game blind to what it actually was. Like a favorite book, or album, or movie, SotN for me could never be taken out of its important place in my own gaming history (despite having been gaming a decade or more prior to its release); but like those favorites, my perspective on it will never be rational, no matter how intellectually I can break it down. EDIT: But maybe if I didn't ever really get to see what it was, because I wasn't prepped for it, patient enough to figure it out, whatever; I might look at it now and think "why do people think this is so damn important that they will argue endlessly about it?"
Profoundly cult? SOTN was a player's choice title (million seller in other words) with heavy hype marketing from all the magazines about Playstation games that were out at the time. It's something like #5 in PSM's best Ps1 games of all time. For people who didn't partake in the magazine era of gaming, PSM was the best-selling one of its kind at the time.
I wonder what it would have been like to play SotN if you weren't someone who was super into something like Super Metroid.
Because if you came straight from Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines or I guess Dracula X for what seemed like the 14 people who played it (I was not among them, but hoooollyyyyyyy shit did I play the living hell out of Bloodlines, one many people also seemed to have skipped) I can only imagine it would have been obtuse as shit.
Easily a ton of backtracking if you don't generally know where you're going and could end up down a long way that you can't access yet; bizarre secrets that aren't the slightest bit intuitive, and more than half the game behind a gear/time puzzle that I would argue that you could only believe the game even hints at after you already know it exists.
If someone wasn't super into the exploring but thought they were getting something like what they'd played in the series in the past, they likely wouldn't just stumble upon the rings, and even if they did, to have paid enough attention to otherwise ignorable hints to use them in the clock room (this is assuming, again, they would have ever put together the pieces to get the rings to begin with), and then the glasses with Richter, and killing Shaft instead; that's a lot of things to go right to even really know about a good portion of the game.
The way the game confronts bosses, even, I'd argue, is pretty different than any Castlevania prior, and they could have resulted in something seemingly difficult if you weren't really up on the genre or weren't used to paying attention to gear, or even figuring out the game had a magic system.
I'd say, the question of whether the game is difficult or not depends on so many factors it is hardly answerable. Even a player who got past all the opaque systems may just have had shit luck and ended up with no good weapons and ran into a boss that ended up being way more difficult than intended.
So I think I can really understand how a sequel to an already relatively niche series, that took it in a direction that was pretty novel for the industry (I actually think Simons Quest was way more influential than it is given credit for, but it had so many bad parts, either by design, or simple tech limitations) that probably narrowed the audience, could end up something so profoundly cult.
Yes, virtually every igavania that came after was better, in virtually every way, to SotN; but for some of us, none of those improvements put those sequels above SotN simply because of what it stood for. Of course, you see this all over the place in gaming (rabid debates over 3D marios, or LttP vs OoT, where Halo lies in the FPS genre, and on and on), so it shouldn't be unusual.
I just wonder what it would have been like to come into the game blind to what it actually was. Like a favorite book, or album, or movie, SotN for me could never be taken out of its important place in my own gaming history (despite having been gaming a decade or more prior to its release); but like those favorites, my perspective on it will never be rational, no matter how intellectually I can break it down. EDIT: But maybe if I didn't ever really get to see what it was, because I wasn't prepped for it, patient enough to figure it out, whatever; I might look at it now and think "why do people think this is so damn important that they will argue endlessly about it?"
I wonder what it would have been like to play SotN if you weren't someone who was super into something like Super Metroid.
Because if you came straight from Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines or I guess Dracula X for what seemed like the 14 people who played it (I was not among them, but hoooollyyyyyyy shit did I play the living hell out of Bloodlines, one many people also seemed to have skipped) I can only imagine it would have been obtuse as shit.
Easily a ton of backtracking if you don't generally know where you're going and could end up down a long way that you can't access yet; bizarre secrets that aren't the slightest bit intuitive, and more than half the game behind a gear/time puzzle that I would argue that you could only believe the game even hints at after you already know it exists.
If someone wasn't super into the exploring but thought they were getting something like what they'd played in the series in the past, they likely wouldn't just stumble upon the rings, and even if they did, to have paid enough attention to otherwise ignorable hints to use them in the clock room (this is assuming, again, they would have ever put together the pieces to get the rings to begin with), and then the glasses with Richter, and killing Shaft instead; that's a lot of things to go right to even really know about a good portion of the game.
The way the game confronts bosses, even, I'd argue, is pretty different than any Castlevania prior, and they could have resulted in something seemingly difficult if you weren't really up on the genre or weren't used to paying attention to gear, or even figuring out the game had a magic system.
I'd say, the question of whether the game is difficult or not depends on so many factors it is hardly answerable. Even a player who got past all the opaque systems may just have had shit luck and ended up with no good weapons and ran into a boss that ended up being way more difficult than intended.
So I think I can really understand how a sequel to an already relatively niche series, that took it in a direction that was pretty novel for the industry (I actually think Simons Quest was way more influential than it is given credit for, but it had so many bad parts, either by design, or simple tech limitations) that probably narrowed the audience, could end up something so profoundly cult.
Yes, virtually every igavania that came after was better, in virtually every way, to SotN; but for some of us, none of those improvements put those sequels above SotN simply because of what it stood for. Of course, you see this all over the place in gaming (rabid debates over 3D marios, or LttP vs OoT, where Halo lies in the FPS genre, and on and on), so it shouldn't be unusual.
I just wonder what it would have been like to come into the game blind to what it actually was. Like a favorite book, or album, or movie, SotN for me could never be taken out of its important place in my own gaming history (despite having been gaming a decade or more prior to its release); but like those favorites, my perspective on it will never be rational, no matter how intellectually I can break it down. EDIT: But maybe if I didn't ever really get to see what it was, because I wasn't prepped for it, patient enough to figure it out, whatever; I might look at it now and think "why do people think this is so damn important that they will argue endlessly about it?"
I feel like this was me, and many other people who played it for the first time. I played All of the castlevanias on the NES, but had a Genesis primarily through the 16 bit era. My little brother got a SNES, and I played many games for it, I missed out on both Castlevania 4 because it was early in its life. Although I did play bloodlines for genesis because it was new when it came out, and I think I rented dracula X as well. May have just emulated it in the late 90's.
Super Metroid was also really late in the SNES library. I know I did not own it even though I played the hell out of metroid as a kid. By the time Super Metroid came out I was already looking at the Playstation and Saturn. I'm not sure exactly how I missed Super Metroid totally. I remember FF3 and Chrono Trigger being turn offs because of their price tag and again, the SNES was my little brothers system, so in his room. Although I beat the shit out of Super Mario World, Zelda, Super Punch out, and many other SNES greats.
Anyways, I got a PS fairly early on in it's life and got castlevania before it was a greatest hits at toys r us for 19.99 as it didn't sell well even though it reviewed high. I don't remember a whole lot about the whole experience besides I loved it, and played the shit out of it. I grinded for items, and just ran around the castle exploring every nook and cranny. It was one of the greatest games I had ever played, and even though we now call it a metroidvania, and I know metroid came first.
There's a reason there's a vania at the end and SOTN made the whole thing popular. If it wasn't for it, I'm not sure we'd all appreciate Super Metroid like we do.
I wonder what it would have been like to play SotN if you weren't someone who was super into something like Super Metroid.
Because if you came straight from Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines or I guess Dracula X for what seemed like the 14 people who played it (I was not among them, but hoooollyyyyyyy shit did I play the living hell out of Bloodlines, one many people also seemed to have skipped) I can only imagine it would have been obtuse as shit.
Easily a ton of backtracking if you don't generally know where you're going and could end up down a long way that you can't access yet; bizarre secrets that aren't the slightest bit intuitive, and more than half the game behind a gear/time puzzle that I would argue that you could only believe the game even hints at after you already know it exists.
If someone wasn't super into the exploring but thought they were getting something like what they'd played in the series in the past, they likely wouldn't just stumble upon the rings, and even if they did, to have paid enough attention to otherwise ignorable hints to use them in the clock room (this is assuming, again, they would have ever put together the pieces to get the rings to begin with), and then the glasses with Richter, and killing Shaft instead; that's a lot of things to go right to even really know about a good portion of the game.
The way the game confronts bosses, even, I'd argue, is pretty different than any Castlevania prior, and they could have resulted in something seemingly difficult if you weren't really up on the genre or weren't used to paying attention to gear, or even figuring out the game had a magic system.
I'd say, the question of whether the game is difficult or not depends on so many factors it is hardly answerable. Even a player who got past all the opaque systems may just have had shit luck and ended up with no good weapons and ran into a boss that ended up being way more difficult than intended.
So I think I can really understand how a sequel to an already relatively niche series, that took it in a direction that was pretty novel for the industry (I actually think Simons Quest was way more influential than it is given credit for, but it had so many bad parts, either by design, or simple tech limitations) that probably narrowed the audience, could end up something so profoundly cult.
Yes, virtually every igavania that came after was better, in virtually every way, to SotN; but for some of us, none of those improvements put those sequels above SotN simply because of what it stood for. Of course, you see this all over the place in gaming (rabid debates over 3D marios, or LttP vs OoT, where Halo lies in the FPS genre, and on and on), so it shouldn't be unusual.
I just wonder what it would have been like to come into the game blind to what it actually was. Like a favorite book, or album, or movie, SotN for me could never be taken out of its important place in my own gaming history (despite having been gaming a decade or more prior to its release); but like those favorites, my perspective on it will never be rational, no matter how intellectually I can break it down. EDIT: But maybe if I didn't ever really get to see what it was, because I wasn't prepped for it, patient enough to figure it out, whatever; I might look at it now and think "why do people think this is so damn important that they will argue endlessly about it?"
Profoundly cult? SOTN was a player's choice title (million seller in other words) with heavy hype marketing from all the magazines about Playstation games that were out at the time. It's something like #5 in PSM's best Ps1 games of all time. For people who didn't partake in the magazine era of gaming, PSM was the best-selling one of its kind at the time.
It sold like shit when it first came out. It was rereleased as a greatest hit and that's when people took notice.
*edit* they never printed more than the inital run because of sales and that's why the re-release and one of the first greatest hits titles from what I remember. People wanted it after they couldn't find it.
I wonder what it would have been like to play SotN if you weren't someone who was super into something like Super Metroid.
Because if you came straight from Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines or I guess Dracula X for what seemed like the 14 people who played it (I was not among them, but hoooollyyyyyyy shit did I play the living hell out of Bloodlines, one many people also seemed to have skipped) I can only imagine it would have been obtuse as shit.
Easily a ton of backtracking if you don't generally know where you're going and could end up down a long way that you can't access yet; bizarre secrets that aren't the slightest bit intuitive, and more than half the game behind a gear/time puzzle that I would argue that you could only believe the game even hints at after you already know it exists.
If someone wasn't super into the exploring but thought they were getting something like what they'd played in the series in the past, they likely wouldn't just stumble upon the rings, and even if they did, to have paid enough attention to otherwise ignorable hints to use them in the clock room (this is assuming, again, they would have ever put together the pieces to get the rings to begin with), and then the glasses with Richter, and killing Shaft instead; that's a lot of things to go right to even really know about a good portion of the game.
The way the game confronts bosses, even, I'd argue, is pretty different than any Castlevania prior, and they could have resulted in something seemingly difficult if you weren't really up on the genre or weren't used to paying attention to gear, or even figuring out the game had a magic system.
I'd say, the question of whether the game is difficult or not depends on so many factors it is hardly answerable. Even a player who got past all the opaque systems may just have had shit luck and ended up with no good weapons and ran into a boss that ended up being way more difficult than intended.
So I think I can really understand how a sequel to an already relatively niche series, that took it in a direction that was pretty novel for the industry (I actually think Simons Quest was way more influential than it is given credit for, but it had so many bad parts, either by design, or simple tech limitations) that probably narrowed the audience, could end up something so profoundly cult.
Yes, virtually every igavania that came after was better, in virtually every way, to SotN; but for some of us, none of those improvements put those sequels above SotN simply because of what it stood for. Of course, you see this all over the place in gaming (rabid debates over 3D marios, or LttP vs OoT, where Halo lies in the FPS genre, and on and on), so it shouldn't be unusual.
I just wonder what it would have been like to come into the game blind to what it actually was. Like a favorite book, or album, or movie, SotN for me could never be taken out of its important place in my own gaming history (despite having been gaming a decade or more prior to its release); but like those favorites, my perspective on it will never be rational, no matter how intellectually I can break it down. EDIT: But maybe if I didn't ever really get to see what it was, because I wasn't prepped for it, patient enough to figure it out, whatever; I might look at it now and think "why do people think this is so damn important that they will argue endlessly about it?"
Profoundly cult? SOTN was a player's choice title (million seller in other words) with heavy hype marketing from all the magazines about Playstation games that were out at the time. It's something like #5 in PSM's best Ps1 games of all time. For people who didn't partake in the magazine era of gaming, PSM was the best-selling one of its kind at the time.
It sold like shit when it first came out. It was rereleased as a greatest hit and that's when people took notice.
To be in the Greatest Hit program, you had to sell a certain number of units to begin with. It's right there in the title of the program. Doing a bit of research, the bare minimum would have been either 150k or 250k. At the time, this was an EXTREMELY healthy sales number.
I wonder what it would have been like to play SotN if you weren't someone who was super into something like Super Metroid.
Because if you came straight from Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines or I guess Dracula X for what seemed like the 14 people who played it (I was not among them, but hoooollyyyyyyy shit did I play the living hell out of Bloodlines, one many people also seemed to have skipped) I can only imagine it would have been obtuse as shit.
Easily a ton of backtracking if you don't generally know where you're going and could end up down a long way that you can't access yet; bizarre secrets that aren't the slightest bit intuitive, and more than half the game behind a gear/time puzzle that I would argue that you could only believe the game even hints at after you already know it exists.
If someone wasn't super into the exploring but thought they were getting something like what they'd played in the series in the past, they likely wouldn't just stumble upon the rings, and even if they did, to have paid enough attention to otherwise ignorable hints to use them in the clock room (this is assuming, again, they would have ever put together the pieces to get the rings to begin with), and then the glasses with Richter, and killing Shaft instead; that's a lot of things to go right to even really know about a good portion of the game.
The way the game confronts bosses, even, I'd argue, is pretty different than any Castlevania prior, and they could have resulted in something seemingly difficult if you weren't really up on the genre or weren't used to paying attention to gear, or even figuring out the game had a magic system.
I'd say, the question of whether the game is difficult or not depends on so many factors it is hardly answerable. Even a player who got past all the opaque systems may just have had shit luck and ended up with no good weapons and ran into a boss that ended up being way more difficult than intended.
So I think I can really understand how a sequel to an already relatively niche series, that took it in a direction that was pretty novel for the industry (I actually think Simons Quest was way more influential than it is given credit for, but it had so many bad parts, either by design, or simple tech limitations) that probably narrowed the audience, could end up something so profoundly cult.
Yes, virtually every igavania that came after was better, in virtually every way, to SotN; but for some of us, none of those improvements put those sequels above SotN simply because of what it stood for. Of course, you see this all over the place in gaming (rabid debates over 3D marios, or LttP vs OoT, where Halo lies in the FPS genre, and on and on), so it shouldn't be unusual.
I just wonder what it would have been like to come into the game blind to what it actually was. Like a favorite book, or album, or movie, SotN for me could never be taken out of its important place in my own gaming history (despite having been gaming a decade or more prior to its release); but like those favorites, my perspective on it will never be rational, no matter how intellectually I can break it down. EDIT: But maybe if I didn't ever really get to see what it was, because I wasn't prepped for it, patient enough to figure it out, whatever; I might look at it now and think "why do people think this is so damn important that they will argue endlessly about it?"
Profoundly cult? SOTN was a player's choice title (million seller in other words) with heavy hype marketing from all the magazines about Playstation games that were out at the time. It's something like #5 in PSM's best Ps1 games of all time. For people who didn't partake in the magazine era of gaming, PSM was the best-selling one of its kind at the time.
It sold like shit when it first came out. It was rereleased as a greatest hit and that's when people took notice.
To be in the Greatest Hit program, you had to sell a certain number of units to begin with. It's right there in the title of the program. Doing a bit of research, the bare minimum would have been either 150k or 250k. At the time, this was an EXTREMELY healthy sales number.
I wonder what it would have been like to play SotN if you weren't someone who was super into something like Super Metroid.
Because if you came straight from Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines or I guess Dracula X for what seemed like the 14 people who played it (I was not among them, but hoooollyyyyyyy shit did I play the living hell out of Bloodlines, one many people also seemed to have skipped) I can only imagine it would have been obtuse as shit.
Easily a ton of backtracking if you don't generally know where you're going and could end up down a long way that you can't access yet; bizarre secrets that aren't the slightest bit intuitive, and more than half the game behind a gear/time puzzle that I would argue that you could only believe the game even hints at after you already know it exists.
If someone wasn't super into the exploring but thought they were getting something like what they'd played in the series in the past, they likely wouldn't just stumble upon the rings, and even if they did, to have paid enough attention to otherwise ignorable hints to use them in the clock room (this is assuming, again, they would have ever put together the pieces to get the rings to begin with), and then the glasses with Richter, and killing Shaft instead; that's a lot of things to go right to even really know about a good portion of the game.
The way the game confronts bosses, even, I'd argue, is pretty different than any Castlevania prior, and they could have resulted in something seemingly difficult if you weren't really up on the genre or weren't used to paying attention to gear, or even figuring out the game had a magic system.
I'd say, the question of whether the game is difficult or not depends on so many factors it is hardly answerable. Even a player who got past all the opaque systems may just have had shit luck and ended up with no good weapons and ran into a boss that ended up being way more difficult than intended.
So I think I can really understand how a sequel to an already relatively niche series, that took it in a direction that was pretty novel for the industry (I actually think Simons Quest was way more influential than it is given credit for, but it had so many bad parts, either by design, or simple tech limitations) that probably narrowed the audience, could end up something so profoundly cult.
Yes, virtually every igavania that came after was better, in virtually every way, to SotN; but for some of us, none of those improvements put those sequels above SotN simply because of what it stood for. Of course, you see this all over the place in gaming (rabid debates over 3D marios, or LttP vs OoT, where Halo lies in the FPS genre, and on and on), so it shouldn't be unusual.
I just wonder what it would have been like to come into the game blind to what it actually was. Like a favorite book, or album, or movie, SotN for me could never be taken out of its important place in my own gaming history (despite having been gaming a decade or more prior to its release); but like those favorites, my perspective on it will never be rational, no matter how intellectually I can break it down. EDIT: But maybe if I didn't ever really get to see what it was, because I wasn't prepped for it, patient enough to figure it out, whatever; I might look at it now and think "why do people think this is so damn important that they will argue endlessly about it?"
Profoundly cult? SOTN was a player's choice title (million seller in other words) with heavy hype marketing from all the magazines about Playstation games that were out at the time. It's something like #5 in PSM's best Ps1 games of all time. For people who didn't partake in the magazine era of gaming, PSM was the best-selling one of its kind at the time.
It sold like shit when it first came out. It was rereleased as a greatest hit and that's when people took notice.
To be in the Greatest Hit program, you had to sell a certain number of units to begin with. It's right there in the title of the program. Doing a bit of research, the bare minimum would have been either 150k or 250k. At the time, this was an EXTREMELY healthy sales number.
reading the wikipedia summing it up pretty much backs up my remembering of it. And now, 2 years may seem like a short time, but I was a teenager during it and actively buying games/reading the magazines. It was considered a failure saleswise at launch pretty much in NA and Europe. It only caught on later, and then, copies were hard to find.
If you print an initial run and sell through it completely and are invited to a "successful product" sales promotion line and still consider that a failure... I think that means you fail at business.
If you print an initial run and sell through it completely and are invited to a "successful product" sales promotion line and still consider that a failure... I think that means you fail at business.
I don't think any of the later games beat SotN in stupid bullshit like the eagle-room and singing-chairs.
Brain 1: Crissaegrim
Brain 2: Two Crissaegrim
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I played SOTN the first time on an emulator. Everyone and their mom was telling me I needed to play this game, and I'd just never done it. It became one of my favorite games over the course of the playtime of the game, and gave me my lasting love of metroidvanias. Later, when I heard an interview with Iga, I realized why I liked them so much, in that he was trying to make a game like Legend of Zelda, not Metroid. That's when I realized how similar they all are in terms of gear, more open worlds, items and traversal.
I think that SOTN is held as the gold standard mainly because unlike Castlevania 2 or Zelda 2, the game world was solidly made, and while the puzzles were obtuse (not unlike the original LoZ), the game world was encouraging. While later games refined the formula, SOTN was the more modern take on the mechanics that established the rest of the games.
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I recently played SOTN backwards, and it was reasonably challenging for a bit!
Trying to get all the secrets in the Clock Tower when you're like level 7 and definitely not supposed to be there was a refreshing challenge, especially since you don't have the Holy Symbol yet.
I wonder what it would have been like to play SotN if you weren't someone who was super into something like Super Metroid.
I never played Super Metroid. SotN was also the first Castlevania game I ever played. Maybe the game just clicked for me for whatever reason back in '97, but I never found it to be all that difficult, even in my first play. *shrug*
I mean, the bosses tended to have a set pattern, that you could teleport between save points hinted at backtracking, as did obviously blocked areas, and knowing what little I did about the Castlevania series (mostly food in walls), I would occasionally poke at random things; sometimes I was rewarded, sometimes I wasn't.
Maybe it's because I grew up with gaming in the 80's and 90's, but SotN never seemed like some obtuse endeavor to me.
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I'm rewatching the Castlevania series on Netflix and it's really making me wish that anyone but Konami had the Castlevania license because it's really making me want a good 3D Castlevania. I just got through Trevor's fight with the cyclops, and man would that be a fun fight to try and replicate via game mechanics.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I'm rewatching the Castlevania series on Netflix and it's really making me wish that anyone but Konami had the Castlevania license because it's really making me want a good 3D Castlevania. I just got through Trevor's fight with the cyclops, and man would that be a fun fight to try and replicate via game mechanics.
Is there another season of that yet? I feel like season 1 just got the show started.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
SotN is a favorite of my wife's, and she'll buy it every time. She had the original printing, but it got lost somehow, and now she has the ugly green Greatest Hits version she hates the cover of.
I'd dabbled, but never really played it through until after pretty much completing Portrait of Ruin (save for some online stuff, I think). It's cool. Not really sure why I never delved into it sooner.
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SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
There's a new Bloodstained backer update that's been sent out where they note that the backer survey that lets you choose your platform has been updated with a new question. You've got to choose what platform you want the side story minigame on, and it took me a while to find the link because they only put it in an image in the email. I tend to ignore images.
It has been a long time since I played Symphony. Probably 15 or more years. But I never completed that game. I got lost somewhere in the castle. Heck, I think I even own it on the PS Vita, but I haven't played it. I should dust it off and give it another whirl. Maybe present-me can succeed where past-me failed.
This Bloodstained de-make looks hella appealing. I didn't know about it, and I am so on board. Looks kinda like a ninja gaiden/castlevania hybrid with cool bosses.
Symphony could be hard but you have to watch yourself. It’s easy to overlevel through too much exploring.
Just have to remember not to reflexively use Soul Steal to fix all your problems.
But it's so powerful...
I need another good -vania game. Got in deep with Hollow Knight and there's still more DLC coming, but I want a new big fat 2D world to explore. Preferably with minor RPG elements.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Can non-backers get that 8-bit game?
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SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
I'd be very surprised if they didn't make it available to everyone.
It looks pretty cool! I wonder how Kayin of I Wanna Be The Guy fame feels since he's putting out a very 8-bit Castlevania style game this year.
Had I checked my twitter feed, I could have easily seen Kayin's reactions! Basically, he's got mixed feelings (BEP is his Castlevania-like game called Brave Earth: Prologue):
Posts
I'm unsure about where you are going with this, but I think you misunderstood some thing about my posts?
I did the $125 tier that doesn't seem to exist anymore (alchemist + digital copy) and I also voted for to make any backer stuff avaliable to everyone via whatever means.
Because I have never understood the desire to prohibit other people from having something you have.
But; uh...does anyone know how to check what you chose for your game copies in the thingies ages ago?
Because I seriously don't recall what I chose. I think I chose WiiU boxed, Steam digital, but since (iirc anyway, and for obvious reasons) they're not doing a WiiU version, I might want to change that?
EDIT: and as soon as I hit post I remembered they sent out a thing some time ago that said people who chose WiiU were changed to Switch automatically and you just needed to do something if you didn't want that.
:rotate:
Anyway, while looking up my backing info I notice I've only backed 4 things, 3 of which have been released and I've been completely satisfied (anker/zolo fully wireless buds, battle chasers and everspace). Here's hoping that whenever bloodstained comes out it makes that 4/4.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I picked up a pair of crissaegrims and turned Alucard into a walking woodchipper. Good times.
SOTN can be very difficult depending on if you know anything about the magic system, which was not explained at all, and what weapons you get to drop. If you don't use one spell, it greatly can increase the difficulty. Whereas dracula fireball spam while holding up to teleport and give invincibility frames, greatly eases fights. Same thing with weapon drops and the RNG.
Play it straight up with no knowledge of the game, no walkthroughs, no grinding, don't use magic, and it can be very difficult with some excellent boss fights.
Or just play as Richter. Game can be hard.
Because if you came straight from Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines or I guess Dracula X for what seemed like the 14 people who played it (I was not among them, but hoooollyyyyyyy shit did I play the living hell out of Bloodlines, one many people also seemed to have skipped) I can only imagine it would have been obtuse as shit.
Easily a ton of backtracking if you don't generally know where you're going and could end up down a long way that you can't access yet; bizarre secrets that aren't the slightest bit intuitive, and more than half the game behind a gear/time puzzle that I would argue that you could only believe the game even hints at after you already know it exists.
If someone wasn't super into the exploring but thought they were getting something like what they'd played in the series in the past, they likely wouldn't just stumble upon the rings, and even if they did, to have paid enough attention to otherwise ignorable hints to use them in the clock room (this is assuming, again, they would have ever put together the pieces to get the rings to begin with), and then the glasses with Richter, and killing Shaft instead; that's a lot of things to go right to even really know about a good portion of the game.
The way the game confronts bosses, even, I'd argue, is pretty different than any Castlevania prior, and they could have resulted in something seemingly difficult if you weren't really up on the genre or weren't used to paying attention to gear, or even figuring out the game had a magic system.
I'd say, the question of whether the game is difficult or not depends on so many factors it is hardly answerable. Even a player who got past all the opaque systems may just have had shit luck and ended up with no good weapons and ran into a boss that ended up being way more difficult than intended.
So I think I can really understand how a sequel to an already relatively niche series, that took it in a direction that was pretty novel for the industry (I actually think Simons Quest was way more influential than it is given credit for, but it had so many bad parts, either by design, or simple tech limitations) that probably narrowed the audience, could end up something so profoundly cult.
Yes, virtually every igavania that came after was better, in virtually every way, to SotN; but for some of us, none of those improvements put those sequels above SotN simply because of what it stood for. Of course, you see this all over the place in gaming (rabid debates over 3D marios, or LttP vs OoT, where Halo lies in the FPS genre, and on and on), so it shouldn't be unusual.
I just wonder what it would have been like to come into the game blind to what it actually was. Like a favorite book, or album, or movie, SotN for me could never be taken out of its important place in my own gaming history (despite having been gaming a decade or more prior to its release); but like those favorites, my perspective on it will never be rational, no matter how intellectually I can break it down. EDIT: But maybe if I didn't ever really get to see what it was, because I wasn't prepped for it, patient enough to figure it out, whatever; I might look at it now and think "why do people think this is so damn important that they will argue endlessly about it?"
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
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Profoundly cult? SOTN was a player's choice title (million seller in other words) with heavy hype marketing from all the magazines about Playstation games that were out at the time. It's something like #5 in PSM's best Ps1 games of all time. For people who didn't partake in the magazine era of gaming, PSM was the best-selling one of its kind at the time.
I feel like this was me, and many other people who played it for the first time. I played All of the castlevanias on the NES, but had a Genesis primarily through the 16 bit era. My little brother got a SNES, and I played many games for it, I missed out on both Castlevania 4 because it was early in its life. Although I did play bloodlines for genesis because it was new when it came out, and I think I rented dracula X as well. May have just emulated it in the late 90's.
Super Metroid was also really late in the SNES library. I know I did not own it even though I played the hell out of metroid as a kid. By the time Super Metroid came out I was already looking at the Playstation and Saturn. I'm not sure exactly how I missed Super Metroid totally. I remember FF3 and Chrono Trigger being turn offs because of their price tag and again, the SNES was my little brothers system, so in his room. Although I beat the shit out of Super Mario World, Zelda, Super Punch out, and many other SNES greats.
Anyways, I got a PS fairly early on in it's life and got castlevania before it was a greatest hits at toys r us for 19.99 as it didn't sell well even though it reviewed high. I don't remember a whole lot about the whole experience besides I loved it, and played the shit out of it. I grinded for items, and just ran around the castle exploring every nook and cranny. It was one of the greatest games I had ever played, and even though we now call it a metroidvania, and I know metroid came first.
There's a reason there's a vania at the end and SOTN made the whole thing popular. If it wasn't for it, I'm not sure we'd all appreciate Super Metroid like we do.
It sold like shit when it first came out. It was rereleased as a greatest hit and that's when people took notice.
*edit* they never printed more than the inital run because of sales and that's why the re-release and one of the first greatest hits titles from what I remember. People wanted it after they couldn't find it.
To be in the Greatest Hit program, you had to sell a certain number of units to begin with. It's right there in the title of the program. Doing a bit of research, the bare minimum would have been either 150k or 250k. At the time, this was an EXTREMELY healthy sales number.
reading the wikipedia summing it up pretty much backs up my remembering of it. And now, 2 years may seem like a short time, but I was a teenager during it and actively buying games/reading the magazines. It was considered a failure saleswise at launch pretty much in NA and Europe. It only caught on later, and then, copies were hard to find.
Hi Square Enix
Brain 1: Crissaegrim
Brain 2: Two Crissaegrim
Brain 3: Shield Rod
I think that SOTN is held as the gold standard mainly because unlike Castlevania 2 or Zelda 2, the game world was solidly made, and while the puzzles were obtuse (not unlike the original LoZ), the game world was encouraging. While later games refined the formula, SOTN was the more modern take on the mechanics that established the rest of the games.
Trying to get all the secrets in the Clock Tower when you're like level 7 and definitely not supposed to be there was a refreshing challenge, especially since you don't have the Holy Symbol yet.
I never played Super Metroid. SotN was also the first Castlevania game I ever played. Maybe the game just clicked for me for whatever reason back in '97, but I never found it to be all that difficult, even in my first play. *shrug*
I mean, the bosses tended to have a set pattern, that you could teleport between save points hinted at backtracking, as did obviously blocked areas, and knowing what little I did about the Castlevania series (mostly food in walls), I would occasionally poke at random things; sometimes I was rewarded, sometimes I wasn't.
Maybe it's because I grew up with gaming in the 80's and 90's, but SotN never seemed like some obtuse endeavor to me.
Is there another season of that yet? I feel like season 1 just got the show started.
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
8 Episodes, Summer 2018.
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I'd dabbled, but never really played it through until after pretty much completing Portrait of Ruin (save for some online stuff, I think). It's cool. Not really sure why I never delved into it sooner.
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
Here's the link to retrieve your survey via email.
My Backloggery
Just have to remember not to reflexively use Soul Steal to fix all your problems.
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But it's so powerful...
I need another good -vania game. Got in deep with Hollow Knight and there's still more DLC coming, but I want a new big fat 2D world to explore. Preferably with minor RPG elements.
I'd be very surprised if they didn't make it available to everyone.
It looks pretty cool! I wonder how Kayin of I Wanna Be The Guy fame feels since he's putting out a very 8-bit Castlevania style game this year.
My Backloggery
https://store.steampowered.com/app/838310/Bloodstained_Curse_of_the_Moon/
It has a Steam page, so yes.
Looks great, hope it turns out well
Had I checked my twitter feed, I could have easily seen Kayin's reactions! Basically, he's got mixed feelings (BEP is his Castlevania-like game called Brave Earth: Prologue):
And later, Iga stopped by to play his game:
My Backloggery