Castlevania Thread

Dubs tell the truth.

Good going 8ch.

SOTN
Versalles from Bloodlines
Iron Blue Intention, Bloodlines version, POR version can go burn in hell's flames.
Actually Soma Cruz is great fucking concept and decent execution, I'll go with him
Rapier, because I'm that kid
Aria of Sorrow is the potentially best igavania of them all, easily the most coherent, balanced and free of reused assets one. What drags it down is platform it was released on - low resolution, shitty sound chip, horrible framerates, jesus christ, it could easily be the second SOTN.
Fuck nintendo, fuck anything nintendo. Last good nintendo console was snes, and even then it was worse than genesis.

As far as Rondo of Blood goes, I think it's a fantastic game, but heavily overrated. Controls and movement are vastly inferior to say Super 4 and Bloodlines, which alone makes it an inferior video game. But still it has some grandiouse scale, iconic music and boss fights, and should absolutely be played by everyone and their garndma.
I also think that psp remake is better solely because of muh art work.

Super 4 suffers from being on a nintendo console i.e. shitty sound chip, mudded color palette and weak level design. Still it features top tier controls and movement system making it on par with Adventure Rebirth and Bloodlines.

Circle of the Moon is one of the better ones. Weird box puzzles and stiff controls really drag it down, but it still way better than DOS, POR and that unholy abomination of Just's game.
It also uses shitty GBA hardware much better than AOS.

Nigga, haha, like, it say Castlevania right there on title screen, haha, like, learn to read nigga.

Good to know is broken for everyone and not just for me.
No it doesn't, it's shit. Only problem with Harmony of Dissonance is that weird glow in Juste and once you get rid of it with Romhacks the game it's way better than CotM in almost every way. CotM is just simulated difficulty with stiff controls tat sucks. Definitively the worst try at Classicvania+Metroidvania and luckily the only one.
I'm sick of faggots thinking it's the best game while it's just shit. Super Castlevania 4 had the best controls of a classicvania even if it was weak, CotM didn't, and thanks to that the exploration of the castle is fucking shit, without mentioning the doble tap to run.
All in all, CotM is fucking shit, at the very least compared to the other games on GBA.

Broken color palette is one of the smaller problems of HoD.
It tries to clone SOTN too hard, but fail at every single aspect. SOTN had super tight and unique controls and character movement, where Alucard took his sweet time to perform all his actions, but you had a number of cancels and optional in-between anamations for them, making it look absolutely beautiful in motion and super responsive in gameplay, HoD is just floaty piece of shit where animations blatantly cancel into each other making it painfull obvious that transitions weren't drawn at all.
They tried to recreate SOTN and failed.
Difficulty is all fucked up too, even more than SOTN with accidental spikes, but overall being braind dead. Too many gimmicks with magic and whip tips, that don't add any variety to gameplay.
It's a bad game overall, and one of the worst in the series.

COTM feels like nes castlevania, which is still better than HoD's floatyness.

Game: Castlevania IV
Stage: The Treasury (4)
Song: Demonseed (3)
SotN was the RE4 of Castlevania. It's a fucking masterpiece that absolutely ruined the franchise.

Should I remind you that 3D god of war-esque games were released alongside handheld metroidvania ones? Long before spaniards' remake?
Or that Adventure Rebirth and that one 8 bit styled mobile game were developed alongside said remake?
Konami ruined their shit, not one game.

You know the other games don't go for that kind of control on purpose, do you? Being able to turn in mid air takes away from much of the strategizing that Castlevania games require. Metroidvania games let you turn in mid air and have looser controls because each room isn't supposed to be a deathly challenge, just a minor endurance one. Classicvania games put you on the edge on every single room because you can't backtrack. You're basically following a series of challenges.

Basically, they go for different things. Doing good controls is not hard for Konami so that's not really a merit. It's more about what they're going for in that particular game.

Well that's why I mentioned weak level design. They needed levels to complement new control scheme, not to be destryed by it.
Refer to megaman franchise, where X and Zero iteration both improved controls and level design to maintain difficulty curve while giving you much more freedom over your character.

You kidding? It's true that compared to all metroidvanias except for CotM Alucard is pretty slow, but from there to being tight is a long ride.
Animation cancel is a shit gameplay design anyway
True, but the result wasn't necessarily a bad game, just not up to the expectations. Trying to recreate SOTN is exactly what they did right, instead of trying to mash classic and metroid together like CotM.
That places go to CotM, which is only circle jerked because of cult.
CotM tried to recreate NES clastlevanias with SOTN but it failed. Floatyness is a must in metroidvanias and most of those, including SOTN are floaty.

I hate to agree with you, but you're right. The problem is that they kept making metroidvanias instead of focusing in both to please both sides.

This is really shitty gameplay design and it's only acceptable in NES for the hardware limitation at the time. Being able to turn midair it's mandatory in any good platformer, basically freedom is better as long as you use it good.
Yeah, this, exactly, if you're going to add midair turn, you should accommodate gameplay and everything else to fit it. I agree with this user

Thank for you dredging this up from the depths of my memories

Come on. The games were built around that control scheme. Most NES games had the loose turn in mid air thing so it had nothing to do with the NES either. It was a deliberate design choice. If you don't like it that's fine but that doesn't make it bad.

There's a reason why castlevania is one of the few video games that did that. I seriously doubt it was deliberated, I just think Konami was incompetent.

I probably worded it wrong.
I like cancels when they don't look like one.
I don't like when anamtion abruptly stops and character magically phases into another one.
Alucard feels like a living moving actual being, Just feels like a bunch of pixels.

I think you overestimate the quality of your posts quite a bit, mate. Where, exactly, did you give an "objective" argument to tear down games that have a control scheme that doesn't allow you to turn in mid air? I see absolutely nothing in your post but an opinion. Look
This is an argument to you? Saying shit and not explaining why?
I already said this is false. Megaman, for example.
Again, this is not argument. it's like I said the Earth was shaped like a pentagon and didn't say anything else.
Again, this is just an opinion.
Nigger, my post wasn't even attacking you or anything. We were just sharing ideas. You didn't have to be such a faggot about it.

Symphony of the Night sure as fuck never "did it right". In fact, as another user pointed out, the only Metroidvania that's worse than Symphony of the Night is Harmony of Dissonance precisely because they were trying to ape Symphony of the Night so hard.

Play the NES Contras.

Bloodlines

Cheating a bit, but every stage in bloodlines is great.

Iron Blue Intention

John Morris, because even though he is not a Belmont, he still wields the vampire killer whip to fulfill his duty, even though it will eventually kill him.

Eric Lecarde's Spear.

It should be self explanatory, but if you have the better option, namely turning mid air, why not choosing it? There's no value in having no turn while you can make more with mid air turn like a lot of platformers did after the NES or megaman itself. If you like not turn is completely subjective,
Consider that Megaman came out a year before castlevania and contra. Maybe 2 and 3 did it on purpose, but pretty sure Castlevania 1 didn't. They only kept it to be faithful to the predecessors, but Super Castlevania 4 proved that wrong.
Mention one good game without mid air turn or momentum control.
It's more like deliberation.
I'm not attacking you either. If I sound mad, it's because I am, but not at you. S-sorry

I meant it as in SOTN and the GBA/NDS areunique in that combination of metroid and RPGelements. Most games that claim to be Metroidvania usually fails on it, like items and stats, and you get stuff like Shantae or Guacamelee, that are more Metroid than both Classicvania or Metroidvania.
I really just want to explore and have a lot of items and collectibles that can equip/unequip instead of the usual power-ups And I like the level system too since I think it helps with progression

t-thanks

I really have a hard-on for the original, bar some of the shitty boss fights like Frankenstein.
I don't know if SotN is the best overall as of today, but it's still a classic and it has a fantastic mood. Very memorable music, great sprite work and lots of little details. I want to give an honourable mention to Ecclesia, though. I had a lot of fun with it and it has a lot of stages outside the typical castle setting.
Can't say. Probably one of the many clock tower stages. Always frustrating and always memorable to me
It's a cliche and outdated, but maybe Vampire Killer from the original. Feels fucking epic strutting down the entrance hall smashing up zombies. Sets a great mood for the stage and the rest of the game. The SotN ost is great for the same reason.
I like the idea of Soma, but don't really like him when actually playing the game. I like Alucard as a slick, flowing and determined pretty boy. Fuck it, Simon in IV purely because he stomps around like a barbarian on a quest to just kill shit with no anime gubbins in the way.
Whip.
Never played the recent 3d nuVania games and I don't know anything about them. Are they really that bad or did they turn it into a GoW knockoff?

Metroidvania is not a genre. Games outside Castlevania that actually claim to be so are made by untalented indie hacks.

Next you'll tell me that MOBA games aren't a subgenre of RTS

… Which is not to say that the first Metroidvania wasn't also made by a massively untalented hack. It was.

Refer to the pentagon Earth example
It isn't better. The game was built around this limitation. You have to think carefully before taking any step because one wrong move is fatal. The gameplay is then slow because you have to take your time to look at the environment and strategize (that was also the reason why your character is relatively small, so you can kind of see a bit ahead of you, unlike Castlevania 4 where your sprite is bigger compared to the size of the screen), but that doesn't really slow the game down because the movement is slow anyways, unlike Megaman which has a faster gameplay and a faster movement to go with it. You can't take a million years either because you got a time limit so it keeps you on your toes.
Many of the obstacles in the game wouldn't really be obstacles in a game with a more free control. Again, that was deliberate. The game puts enemies in awkward positions and awkward movements. That forces you to use timing strategically and not just jump to the action like a retard. It also forces you to use sub items. Look at Castlevania 4 for example. I almost never used sub items because I didn't fucking need them. The whip was so powerful, efficient and versatile it was more than enough. I just piled up 99 hears by the end of every stage. Classicvania made it almost mandatory to use sub items strategically to overcome your own limitations. Choosing the best sub item was also a must, as each sub item was suited for a particular task.
Castlevania
Castlevania 3
Old Prince of Persia
No, it really was an opinion.
That kinda proves my point.
Alright alright, we cool

The problems were the Metroidvanias after SoTN…well…mostly sucked. They should have mixed them up.

Also, the Lord of Shadow series was really dreadful (One was okay, but 2 was a complete shit show).

It's a three way tie for me between Rondo, 3, and SotN.
Probably the Underground Caverns in SotN, something about it just felt really nice to me when I first played it.
Pretty much any version of Bloody Tears.
I have a soft spot for Juste from HoD, sure the game is shit but I had a lot of fun with it and didn't play any of the other GBA or even DS games until years later.
All of Maria's attacks in Rondo are so cool and cute.
Just that SotN Richter is a hottie.

I want to protect Shanoa's smile

NSFW game

SoTN, Harmony of Despair, Castlevania, and Super Castlevania

The cave in Super Castlevania 4

Lost Painting

Was always a Richter fag.

Valmanway/Crissaegrim

I wish Lord of Shadow wasn't horrible.

The music for the inverted Colosseum was perfect for that game and stage. It gave you that chill when you're going through it for the first time.

What a pointless, shitty fighter. What was the point of the game? (See where I'm going with this post yet?)

The Deathnote guy had a boner for points

The funny thing about Soma is the Western version of him is much more interesting than the Japanese one. Being a Western student made more sense than some random Japanese kid being Dracula reincarnated (even though Castlevania showing up in Japan is still pretty stupid).

I've been playing Order of Ecclesia recently.
I'm starting to reach the conclusion that this is the "thinking man" metroidvania, so far.

-Attacking involves alternating two buttons instead of just mashing one, if you want to dish out enough damage
-You've got 3 glyph layouts
-Tons of enemies are almost immune to one type of damage and that means you have to switch layout to something different on the fly, often from enemy to enemy on the same screen

I've actually never had to adapt and be this careful in combat in other metroidvanias, it reminds me of how in souls games certain weapons will be extremely resistent to some type of damage forcing you to use a different attack in the moveset, or switch weapons, only it's not a gimmick this thime and enemies are REALLY resistant to some damage, to the point where they take 1/10 damage from it and flat out force you to switch.

The best way i can describe this game is that it has it's own set of rules.
You can do the old trick of never using items and scrambling to the save location you memorized, the way the levels are designed means that going back to the save room could mean your death as you run trough a gauntlet of enemies that each have their own "you must do this to defeat me" and while you're low on HP and you can't stay focused, you're going to make a mistake and die, losing all your progress from the last save, so instead you're encouraged to push onwards and hope to get another save room, or simply exit the level and go back to the main town to restore yourself.
Then there's weird shit like encountering a succubus, aborbing her rune, and BECOMING the succubus yourself with her own moves, wich i didn't expect at all and frankly was quite fucking crazy (holy shit please tell me there's more transformations like that, it's so much better than AoS "i turn into X and just rush fowards").
This is such a well crafted and fun game, as long as you understand that it's rules are different from other metroidvanias, and you must play by it's rules else you die like a bitch.

While your post is mostly true, you forgot to mention all the wrongs with OOT.
If you really want to compare it to a souls game, compare it to Dark Souls 2. It would be the most apt comparison.
All the good dragged down by all the bad into an overall mediocre 5/10 game.

I disagree, partially.

The "only certain weapons are useful" is a problem of every single souls game aside Bloodborne, that's why i didn't mention it, i've been so conditioned by souls games that my mind automatically went "ok this is the shit i can actually use", not only that but in a minor way this was also a problem in SOTN itself, there's tons of weapons in that game that are completely outclassed by others that you'll never touch, either way it's not a problem exclusive to DaS2.
Level design isn't especially complex, but pushes you to master the game in order not to die, it's survival focused, wich isn't a bad idea in itself.
And finally, the biggest reason why i would never compare it to DaS2, is that the enemies in DaS2 were huge bullet sponges with autotracking attacks and a shit ton of poise.
In OoE, even enemies with ton of HP, will die reasonably quickly if you use the correct glyph on them.
Thus making the encounters rough and tense, but fair, unlike DaS2.

I do agree on the bosses, tho it also has Brachyura, a multi-phase boss i personally really liked.

Yeah, I mostly agree with you. I don't think Shantae or Guacamelee are bad games at all, and some "Metroidvanias" I've played are fairly good, but they aren't what I'm looking for, namely something more like SOTN andthe rest of the games.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. I finished Castlevania 1 hundred of times and I don't Strategize that much and the things coming at you don't really leave you option than to act. Castlevania is more action than strategy, because even if you plan something ahead you have to act against a medusa head coming at you, and there's where the limitation fucks up.
I wouldn't say Castlevania is as fast as megaman, but that's the problem. Most enemies are a lot faster than you, so it was only natural that you had to be as fast. Thankfully, most of that was solved in Castlevania 3.
I disagree, although I wouldn't ask for freedom as in Castlevania 4, but a little faster jump and reaction would have been nice, and that was, again, solved in Castlevania 3 which proves that what you're saying is wrong,after all Trevor and all the other playable characters are a lot more responsive. As I say,and considering that, I'm completely sure it was Konami's incompetency that limited the original game that much,
It should have been obvious that castlevania shouldn't be included.
I meant a year after. Most probably before Megaman or even Contra a lot of games didn't use mid air turn, nor even Mario did.

One of the reasons I bought the Wii was for that game. What a disappointment, but it was worth it nonetheless.

The point is you have to use your timing carefully.
You might have beaten it doing it the wrong way but using sub weapons makes the game much easier.
That's exactly what I said, it isn't. Read again.
No. Most enemies are faster than you, so you have to plan your timing carefully and use sub weapons when necessary.
Bullshit. Castlevania 3 was different because it had to accommodate for character selection. You couldn't make the other character better than Belmont in all regards so they had to tune him up a bit so you had a reason to use him.
I don't care if you disagree, you're just wrong. Any jump where there's a pit and there's a medusa head coming your way wouldn't be deadly if you time if wrong because you could just turn your jump back to the platform where you came from. It just takes from the challenge of timing your jumps carefully.
Your autistic criteria doesn't matter. Castlevania 1 and 3 were good games. Super Ghost and Ghouls also comes to mind.
OK, forget Megaman.
How about Super Mario Bros.,Ice Climber, Castle Excellent, and many other examples.
For fuck's sake.

A tie between SotN and OoE

Clock Tower in general. While the quality of the level design of the many renditions of it vary greatly, I love it thematically.

The Tragic Prince

Julius

Shanoa's glyphs in general was the tits

I'll just go ahead and add
Brachyura, the crab boss in OoE's Lighthouse. Never has a boss suffered such a glorious slaughter.

Tie between 64 and LOSes
Probably Tower of Sorcery, always liked the song and scenery
First Struggle or Enough Talk
Soma was done pretty well
Revelations Crissaegrim
WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT

The gentle and all-emcompassing despair that the series is raped, and left to bleed out in an alley somewhere, abandoned almost wholesale by both its creator and betrayed by its owner, without remorse or care.
All that is left is that which it inspired. Nothing made under its name can ever be good again, and even the genre it created is steadily dying.

Like a dead god from Discworld, it can only remember the glories of the past, it cannot even recall the context of its own magnificence. It will never be what it was, for it has lost vision of that. It cannot even grasp why this is so sorrowful.

The despair is wonderful.

worst boss in the entire game. i like OOE, but your taste in bosses is just pure shit.

guacamelee is shit

Actually, AOS is my second favorite (I've only played CV64 as a kid and borrowed POR in high school so I didn't get very far)

I enjoy the technical things you can do in it, such as backdash and landing animation cancels, and it was fun using the Up+B Red Minotaur to kill anything disgustingly fast end/postgame. It had secrets to discover which was cool.

It had a flawed execution in a few ways, like the shop just felt forced and kind of "there", like why only sell 2 maps? Why are there no maps for every region? Collecting 100% souls was also quite tedious.

Have a bump

One last bump

CV III, Rondo, SotN

CV III Clock Tower.

Vid related. Yes it's from a JP only lightgun-esqe game no one here has played. Who gives a shit.

I liked Shanoa's concept and playstyle, but too bad the game she came from wasn't exactly great in the design department.

Claimh Solais from Aria of Sorrow. High attack power, fast, has good coverage and hits the two most common weaknesses in the game.

No shit sherlock. You can whip it, hit it with a sub item, or avoid it if your timing is right. What exactly is your point? You don't need to be able to alter your trajectory mid jump to deal with medusa heads.

...

Don't even start to remind me dude if they dropped that shit tomorrow I would buy it in a fucking heartbeat

Everybody probably already seen this. But in case they didn't here it is.

amateur hour

While visually impressive, the only thing he is doing that's mildly impressive is that he plays with his arms spread apart. On a single piano you already have to play melody and harmony separately on each hand.

Embed unrelated to castlevania however…