Zero Punctuation: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

[TheRocketeer]

CastleVania: Symphony of the Night is an interesting game in that you can clearly tell the developers had no fucking idea what they were doing. Don't get me wrong; the game is amazing despite that. But its easy to see that Konami was in uncharted waters in this title.

Yahtzee wasn't just referring to the whole series when he said this game made up the latter half of 'MetroidVania;' this very game was the first of the series to actually go in this direction, with the previous games in the series being simplistic and thoroughly unfun platformers with a bit of hack & slash.

SotN was the first to pursue the RPG elements and the huge, free-roaming, exploration based maps, and collecting items, and pretty much everything that has defined the series since except the whole 'Dracula oh noooooo' concept the series has had since its roots. And it really shows its origins, in often incongruous ways.

It's a bit hard to explain, really; it's like if a country that used to make farming tractors wanted to start making regular cars, and their first offering was a muscle car with 4-foot rear tires and no windows.

Symphony of the Night remains a very odd game at times due to what could honestly be called a lack of polish, but it is still and always was an amazing title, very indicative of a series just coming into its own.

Now if only Konami would stop missing the point by rehashing SotN forever and ever. Seriously, does anyone think 'Genya Arikado' is a good character? Anyone?

I remember when I played through SotN I found a shield and weapon combination that would make everyone who touched you take 1k damage. It felt like a cheat.

Ah, the Alucard Shield Rod Cheese Bonanza. You must be one of the few who actually found it by accident. It's only purpose is beating Galamoth, whose dong-diculous HP just makes it seriously un-fun otherwise. Other than that, yeah, it's pretty much a ridiculous 'WIN' button.

 

[daxterx2005]

I used to play the floor is lava too!
That game was so much fun!
They should make a video game version of it

 

[Buried_At_Sea]

Yahtzee I'm curious, what is your opinion of Chrono Trigger? It's one of my favourite games and I feel like it's one of those games you'll either love or fucking hate.

 

[dmase]

Symphony of the night was my first castlevania game and it was fucking awesome... minus the back tracking.

 

[Anatotitan]

Oh good. I've been waiting 14 years to know whether or not it was ok for me to like Symphony of the Night. Thank god Yahtzee showed up to give his approval!!

I kid, I kid. I mean really I just want to congratulate Yahtzee on remembering to actually INCLUDE INFORMATION ABOUT THE GAME HE'S REVIEWING. After his Portal 2 video I just assumed he forgot that you should talk about a game's content in a video game review. Good work Yahtzee! I'm so proud of you!

 

[Mstrswrd]

Actually, Count Alucard, the son of Dracula, is from an American-made movie in the Black-and-White horror film days. "Son of Dracula" is the third film in the Universal "Dracula" horror series, following "Dracula's Daughter" and "Dracula."

The Japanese just love to make Dracula have a Dhampire son; for another example of this, see the extraordinarily awesome "Vampire Hunter D" light novel series. The Alucard thing is, in Hellsing, a bit of a joke (Kohta Hirano, despite being slow as hell, does know his Dracula mythos fairly well), and Alucard in Castlevania is actually Adrian Farenheights Tepes, taking on the name Alucard se as to be the opposite of his father.

That doesn't stop the fact that the name Alucard shows up a lot in Japanese media about Vampires, but it does explain where it's from and why it's used in these situations.

 

[OroCrimson]

SOTN is my favorite game of all time during that era of gaming. I literally GREW UP with this game: as a small child my step-dad and older brother would always play this game. I finally got my hands on it and LOVED the game.

I actually have a full LP of it up on YouTube. For those of you cautious about getting it because you don't quite know what it's like, go ahead and check out my LP :3

Did you know that the original version (not Greatest Hits) is a collector's item worth 121 dollars now?

 

[metal mustache]

I know exactly what he means with portal 2. Going back to my old games like call of duty after beating portal 2 was seriously depressing.

 

[Bradax24]

The name "Alucard" was actually used in the third Dracula movie, "Son of Dracula," in 1943. Though I don't know the reasoning for why Japan likes to use the name.

 

[Yoshemo]

Darn it! NOw I have to play this game for a week again. Thanks a lot

 

[LogicNProportion]

The fact Hellsing was mentioned at all made me oh so happy.

Nice vid as always, Benjie.

 

[PeterTheBoss]

A fan of the old, classical games myself, I found SOTN a great game with great ideas and a decent story. However, it is true that it becomes a tad easy once you get the Duplicator (for those of you who never played SOTN, the Duplicator is a trinket that lets you use an infinite amount of any *use* item that you carry) and buy a flaming shuriken that can insta-kill almost enemy you fight, even though this is balanced with the fact that it costs 500,000 bucks. Took me 3 hours to get that much. Anywho, nice to see that you have the spark of nostalgia in you, Yahtzee, unlike most retarded people this day in age.

 

[Mangue Surfer]

Hey, Quake II was the first game to include colored lighting, so don't put that in the same bag with the grey-brown-shitty games of today, aight?

Still the game is 99% brownm and red (a little green here and there). Great game although.

 

[Axelhander]

I was hoping Yahtzee would touch on some of the reasons Symphony of the Night is monstrously overrated, like the giant empty hallways of boredom and the entire second half of the game where the area isn't called "Frozen Catacombs" and doesn't recycle the game's worst BGM (Finale Toccata or whatever it's called) ad nauseum.

 

[C. Eleri Hamilton]

Why the hell is he ragging on Myst?

Because it is in the Seekrit Society Of Game Critics Rulebook- Thou Shalt Not Admit you liked Myst, or any of the sequels, because doing so makes you a Braniac Nerdling, and we Can't Have That.

Myst fandom is the secret shame of gamers everywhere... except for those of us who have come out of the library closet.

 

[RottingAwesome]

lovelovelove the retro reviews and I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I wouldn't mind more of them in place of some of the more obviously bland titles

 

[sleekie]

Utena flashback.

By the way, there's a Castlevania roguelike, if you're into that sort of thing.

 

[Technicolor]

I really liked Castlevania SoTN but I really hate that all Castlevania games are following it as the model rather than improving upon the classic Castlevania games

Non-linear gameplay still needs strings of linearity in order to keep the player on track or to avoid boredom. I think everyone can agree that the Inverted Castle was comparatively sloppy and aimless compared to the first half, without anything to give the player drive to move on beyond reaching the end.

Whereas Linear gameplay allows the player to assess a situation with multiple endeavors. Super Castlevania was a prime example of this, it had gameplay fairly fine-tuned in order to keep the game challenging because of level design rather than vague character & enemy strength.

Egoraptor explains this utilizing castlevania 1 & 2, which were linear & non-linear respectively

Egoraptor's piece is very insightful (I hope he does more like this), but I think he overlooks the entire exploration angle that SotN and its successors have. When I play one of those Castlevania games, the best single moments are when I look at the map and realize despite the hours I've played the game, I'm still only at like 27% completion of the map, which means there's so many more interesting environments to tread over. This is not a mechanic that has any analogue in the older Castelvania games and doesn't show up in Egoraptor's comparison.

This is true, but you said you are only at 27%. The begining half of SoTN is very well designed, and still challenging. Therefore still fun. however as both Egoraptor & Yahtzee stated, the game eventually has your character so strong that he practically breaks the game.

Eventually at this point when you have all your powers, there are still plenty of minor things to grab (like those health & magic power ups) but by then the levels aren't designed around the player's abilities, but rather by vague avatar strengths (such as having a sword that does like 200 damage per swing).

SoTN is a great game (it is a little too long), but I really just miss the old linear style. My problem is that Konami justs wants to continue with Metroidvanias rather than Classicvanias