Personally I love most the GBA/DS series so far. Granted I haven't played Circle of the Moon and haven't finished Harmony of Dissonance yet, but the rest of the games above there are all fantastic. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow was the first DS game I bought along with Sonic Rush, and DoS is easily still one of my favorite DS games (maybe even one of my favorite games in general). The music in DoS still gives me chills and some of the boss fights are pretty amazing. I don't think my jaw has dropped playing a DS game until I was fighting the boss in the tower, and halfway through the fight the floor breaks, sending Soma and the boss plummeting and smashing through 5 or so storeys (me still smashing him with an axe all the way down). Julius mode, eg, the unlockable mode where you play as Julius, Alucard and a sorceress character to make your way through the castle and destroy the resurrected Dracula could easily be packaged as it's own game and I'd buy it. I've gone through that mode multiple times since it's just so damn fun.
I was pleasantley surprised with Aria of Sorrow too. I'd played many hours of DoS and expected to be a little underhwlmed seeing as going from the DS to the GBA was a bit of a downgrade, but the gameplay, graphics and atmosphere were all still solid and captivating.
I enojoyed Portrait of Ruin enough to beat it and spend a good solid 20 hours or so, but it didn't grab me the way DoS did. Some great bossfights in there and an enjoyable game. I'd highly reccomend it (I'm actually thinking of buying it back and replaying it). It had some fantastic post-game gameplay modes too. I wasn't too fond of the tag system but it worked okay and the game didn't have any real flaws in my opinion.
I recentley bought Order of Ecclesia and rate this nearly as good as Dawn of Sorrow. Whereas the last few games' art styles were anime based, this goes for something more like Symphony of the night. Instead of exploring one huge castle, you pick which level you want to go to from the hub map and make your way through. It's a great system that really eases up on backtracking. The music is pretty damn fantastic in this game too, but it's probably the hardest game in this tread. I'm currentley up to fighting Dracula and haven't figured out yet if this game is harder than DoS or I just got worse at these kinda games.
Anyway, GBA/DS castlevania thread. Please use spoilers if needs be.
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They released Castlevania 1 on the GBA. WHY OH WHY did they never do Castlevania 2!?
Maybe a few good reasons here...
Provided you know what to do, Castlevania 2 isn't very hard. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to know what you need to do (crouching by the lake with the blue crystal, crouching by the cliff with the red crystal, showing the heart[?] to the ferryman, etc.) without some sort of guide.
The original Castlevania, on the other hand, requires an incredible amount of skill to beat.
I've always wondered how much easier the original would be if Simon Belmont could double jump, backdash, and whip in multiple directions. It's not that the Grim Reaper is tough - you just can't change your direction mid-air like you can in modern Castlevania games.
Increased mobility would make the early levels much easier. The later levels, where four hits is death (less if there's a pit around, and there always is) would still be very challenging, even with modernized controls.
Oooh, sweet, I was hoping for an Albus mode
Guh, I really made it way more complicated for myself when trying to avoid the bad ending. I ended up accidentally killing him purley using Trapor, the glyph that traps your opponent. I was determined not to kill the guy then realised the solution was much simpler than I thought.
Explain.
Also, something just occured to me. I think I've seen a rubber duckie in every single castlevania game I've played.... Anyone else noticed this?
:?:
Edit:
Ugh what a mistake. It does have some neat new features, but I really hated all the boss fights. Ended up selling it to a friend to get rid of it. I made it up to elgios(the centaur), was having trouble with him and just gave up. Had no issues with death though, too many years of beating him.
The fact all your weapons were mana based was kind of annoying too, especially when you got cursed.
Simple. It would be like playing Contravania, you'd never be in any serious danger of dieing. They could have done that on the NES, but it doesn't make sense.
If you want to play right when it started to cross into easy mode, Super Castlevania is where it's at, and is a damn good game. You've got the multi directional whip yet lack the "I can air dodge everything" simpleness.
No hit contra runs, pretty easy even though the game moves FAR faster, and throws FAR more objects at you. No hit CV runs, IMHO not possible without save states. That about sums it up.
See contra above, even in the later contra levels, which really spam crap at you, you won't really die. 3 lives is more then enough.
The death pits, only pose a threat because of reduced air control, remove it and that threat goes away, that sucks the threat from the enemies out of it.
CV's formula worked, it can be frustrating, especially if you started with SoTN or later where being hit, or falling, never really was a threat. But it works, and no point in changing it.
If you ever find the Wii Castlevania fighting game at or below your threshold for insta buying a cheap game (Mine hovers between 2 used and 8 new, 20 for weird collector items) buy it.
It's stupidy fun. It's kinda like Power Stone 2/Soul Calibur themed Castlevania with the art design of Death Note.
To keep it semi on topic the game can link up with OoE, the fantastic DS game released around the same time.
There was a townsperson who said 'Rumor has it', and I went all over town looking for 'Rumor'.
(I was really young at the time)
The best part of OoE was unlocking that giant obstacle course.
Aria and Dawn are both incredible.
PoR was good in the same was HoD was good, but also not as good as the first CV on their respective systems. Ecclesia was really good, and pretty hard (shut up, psychotix). The linear nature was something of a turnoff, though.
The Metroidvanias work really well on the handhelds, really. Though I'd love to see some high-res CV for the consoles, of course.
For example, enemies that do damage just by touching you rather than having to actually attack? That shit needs to go back to the 80s, where it belongs. And how about some combo attacks? You know, something to add a little bit of depth to the weapon selection beyond the minuscule differences in length and speed they have now? Hell, I'd settle for the basic 3 hit combo that's been in every action game since the 90s; anything is better than that godawful "alternate between X and Y" system they have now. These are the things you think about when you're making an action sidescroller, but the developers obviously couldn't be bothered to.
Despite this rant, I still enjoy the games enough to keep buying them, even if I didn't finish PoR or OOE. I just wish Iga or whoever would put the tiniest bit of effort into them, rather than simply putting out the same tired, increasingly archaic game every year.
It also makes me sad that the only other Castlevania game I own is SOTN which I've barely played.
Time to nitpick this fucking idiot. Though, off the bat I will agree with him that the music, graphics,and atmosphere were all Castlevania appropriate (especially the music).
- He complains about the nighttime / daytime thing as being unimportant to interrupt the gameplay. Disagree. Night time meant towns weren't safe to be in and enemies were stronger.
- He complains about hearts going away when you die. They go away when you continue, first of all, and maybe you shouldn't suck at the game if you don't want to lose them.
- He addresses shops being closed and having nothing to do; night time is "hunt for hearts" time if you need to buy from the shops. If you've been through the game once, you can use this formula of play to rarely get caught in having to wait for day.
- No shit free-exploring wasn't done greatly, it was NES and you're looking at it in hindsight.
- OH MAN TYPOS IN THE TEXT
- "Don't look into the Death Star" is the only bad hint in the game. :?
- The water complaint is genuine.
- The garlic dropping is hinted at in-game; non-genuine complaint.
- He sucks at platforming, so he bitches about jumping segments. His fault, not the game.
- He gets hit on the stairs- HE COULD'VE MAYBE ATTACKED
Okay he's doing CV3 now so I'll stop. The point is that Castlevania 2 is an alright game, it's just different. This Angry Nerd guy is such a fucking hack. If he's trying to be entertaining, he's doing a bad job of it and just being disingenuous.
The games since have been kind of underwhelming. Competently executed, but they don't make me give a shit about them.
猿も木から落ちる
Also, Soma is fabuloooooooouuuuus.
Don't really think AoS has aged especially well compared to the DS trio, though.
Really? I think AoS is alright (I actually played through it again this past week) even now. It's the most "right" with the formula out of the GBA games.
I can't decide if I like OoE or PoR more. I'm really hard pressed to find which of the DS games is my absolute favorite. I know my least favorite though, if my last post wasn't an indicator. Which isn't to say it's bad; it's not. It's just not as good.
OoE's my favorite despite it's linearity. After that, probably DoS.
Uh, aren't they all linear? :P
OoE is much more so, only a portion of the game is in the castle, the rest is going from left to right in small mini locations.
What does the amount of castle have to do with linearity? All of the DS games are linear, with side rooms here and there.
Because in say Dawn of Sorrow, you are constantly moving back and forth through the castle as you get new powers.
OoE is, go from left to right, never come back unless you need to grind a soul..err seal. Also they aren't castles, they are like, mountain trail1, mountain trail 2, sea path1 sea path2.
edit - I suppose PoR is somewhat 'linear', and Ecclesia moreso, but Dawn of Sorrow is as nonlinear as any other game in the genre.
Ah, okay. I dunno. Sometimes not having to backtrack is a good thing. Like in Aria of Sorrow, how many times do you -have- to go through the starting area at some point or another? The music is groovy and all but it can get old. I guess this point is moot though considering that the sceneries in OoE are re-used and just with different color palettes.
Wanna point out where I said that? When I say people should try not sucking at a game, it's in response to people saying games are bad because of some difficult element to the game. Instead of being objective and saying, "I don't like this sort of thing in games because I'm admittedly not great at it." Nope. It's the game's fault. Kiss my ass.
He was regarding linearity in the way of back tracking or changing direction often. Super Metroid is the most non-linear game ever, in both senses since you can sequence break and you end up going one way then the other.
But the Metroidvania games are linear in the sense of there being a path to follow. There isn't necessarily a lot of room for sequence breaking. I've done it a couple of times in HoD, using getting hit in the air to reach places I'm not supposed to yet. That's all I can think of off-hand.
Yeah. They pulled that crap on the Metroid games after Super Metroid as well, which is a shame. I think that sequence breaking could be a strong marketing point if you ask me. But oh well.
So... A remake of the old GB game on WiiWare?