Why Symphony of the Night Is Not True Castlevania

[Mahorfeus]

After years of seeing it placed before the word "fan," I think the word "true" has become one of my least favorite words in the English language.

My sentiments are the same as just about everyone here. SotN can be vaguely summed up as "Simon's Quest, except not shit." The last classic Castlevania game I played was Dracula X Chronicles, which is ironically how I got my first exposure to SotN. (Classic-looking Richter bothers me to this day; he looks like a freaking Street Fighter character.)

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Irritating clickbait is clickbait, but in the authors defense this is an actual 'controversy' for some people. Kind of like how the FGC hates any 'fighting' game (and they refuse to call them that) that isn't strictly 2d w/o powerups.

The butt-hurt when SMASH got brought to EVO that came out of them was glorious.

 

[09philj]

The problem with this article can be summed up in list form:
Super Mario 64
Final Fantasy VII
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Fallout 3
Grand Theft Auto 3
XCom: Enemy Unknown
Metroid Prime
Fire Emblem: Awakening (In my opinion. Also this is the best game ever made.)

 

[Denamic]

It's castlevania because it's literally castlevania. If your definition on what 'castlevania' is doesn't match the game, then your definition is wrong.

 

[Nojh]

This article is not up to the quality I expect from The Escapist. It's rhetoric is poor and it's argument feels like one side of a shouting match at a comic book store. I expected, with the given title, a than a well thought out piece about two classic video games and what it means to be a sequel or alternatively a deconstruction of the Castlevania series as a whole and not a review of one particular game and criticism of another.

 

[Kohen Keesing]

I came here to find out why SotN isn't a true Castlevania, but the author doesn't do a good job summing up their evidence to that effect. The article seemed to kind devolve into rimming Super Castlevania IV's ass half way through, and forgot to circle back around to the original point. There's a couple lines right near the end about SotN having a lot of backtracking and the music being recycled, but there's no definitive explanation of WHY SotN isn't a "true" Castlevania.

Plus, I have an issue with the first proper sentence of this article: "Even the most casual of game enthusiasts have heard the term". I talk to people not only in my backwards-ass country but also online all the goddamn time, and even people who actually still OWN THE SYSTEMS for the two franchises don't know that the Metroid or Castlevania games exist. Even among the rare few that do know of both, saying the word "Metroidvania" causes a momentary BsoD of the eyes as they figure out what the hell that means, and that it relates to genre.

No offense, but the wording in this article reeks of elitism.

Misplaced elitism at that for gushing about classic Castlevania without even realizing that Rondo of Blood exists. I know it was never released outside of Japan, but any hardcore Castlevania fan should know about it. It was the last of the classics, and considered by many to be the best of them.

I'll do you one better, this reads like the elitist bullshit I used to say and write when I was 12, and didn't comprehend that everyone hadn't played all the same videogames as me, and assumed everyone had the same opinion about everything as I do.

Read subjective statements (in no particular order) such as:
-"I already know what you're going to say" | followed by the author's own personal opinion.

-"And for what it's worth, Not that you care, I love it too." | best oxymoron I've ever read

-"Treacherously difficult franchise darling" | everyone has their own personal favourite boss

-"...everyone knows that the music from Symphony of the Night is legendary" | And yet so few even know the series exists

Also, read that last line of the article about "abandonment of gothic themes" and such. That little bit of opinionated rapid-fire there sums up that the whole article is written purely as an exercise in tasting Super Castle IV's ring-piece and is pretty much based on the idea the game should be as close to a time-locked nostalgia property as possible. Sure, it hasn't evolved in a way that the majority of fans agree with, but at least it's not stagnating in identical gameplay mechanics the way LoZ and Mario are.

Final Grade: C-
In summary, an amusing read, but a misguided opinion-piece that takes far too much for granted, makes a lot of generalizations, and even contradicts itself in small measures. I wrote essays similar to this when I was in highschool suffering from sleep deprivation.

 

[AgedGrunt]

No offense, but the wording in this article reeks of elitism.

The title should have given that way; it's a textbook example of No true Scotsman, and without reading one can infer the author is probably exclusionary or a purist in some excessively personal way.