Castlevania

COTM is the best metroidvania
SCV IV is the best classicvania

Of the GBA games the general consensus is that Aria of Sorrow is the best, I liked Circle of the Moon, Harmony is garbage but you can 100% it in like five hours because it's piss easy, try it out if you want.
Then you can move to the Ds. My favorite is Order of Ecclesia with Dawn of Sorrow being a close second, Portrait of Ruin is not as good as the other two but it's still alright, also dat Charlote.
Still if you wanna play the "Metroidvanias" I'd recomend you to start with SotN.
If you don't wanna play metroidvania skip 2 and play all of them in order.

The only two you have to play in order are Aria and Dawn of Sorrow, but still the plot is not that important

Well he sounded like he didnt want to play any more nes ones.

Fair enough, it is a big leap from III to IV and from IV when you compare them.

Nice, thanks. It can be really hard to tell with some games. I've always been intimidated by the amount of entries, but the art looks so good that I've always been interested too. I guess I'll start with AoS or SotN, depending on what platform I end up wanting to play on.

This right here.

I want to one day romhack COTM
Where do you start such a thing? Mapping out the rom's hex memory?

Plot:

>You must kill seal him away, usually as a Belmont family member
>Dracula does die for real in 1999, but no game has been made around this event, only referenced by Julius

Is this the real music? What game is that?

On Gamecanter CX I think they were saying SotN was an X game where they changed it to playing as Dracula's son trying to kill the original hero?

AoS has you play as Soma, who is a Japanese highschool student who inherits Dracula's powers, as do other people who get trapped in his castle.

For classic Castlevania games, any of the 4th gen ones are about as good as it gets. Rondo of Blood is probably the best from an objective standpoint, but Super Castlevania IV is my favorite. Sure, the sub-weapons are almost useless and the bosses are way too easy, but it's just so much fun to control Simon in that game.

It is, Rondo of Blood for PC Engine, my fav Castlevania, the character is Maria Renard, you have to unlock her

Rondo of Blood.
I just noticed my volume is cranked, so that mp4 is probably low volume. My mistake.

Damn, it sounds really good.

There's scarcely a "best" game of any series. Castlevania is no different.

Practically all games after SotN took after that game's progression style, usually referred to as "metroidvania"
I dislike the metroidvania, even though I love metroid proper, mostly because it relies on grinding, backtracking, and has powerups that become useless later on.

I recommend you first play SotN to get a feel for the metroidvania style. If you dislike it, you shouldn't go on to play anything released after that.

For all intents and purposes, no. They have about as much continuity as Super Mario. You don't have to play them in order to understand anything, but that might be an ideal way to see the gameplay progress. As I said, it all changes after SotN, so you can't go wrong treating them like a completely different series.

I really liked portrait of ruin because of all the whip variety. Otherwise I liked Aria of Sorrow because it was really well done and Julius Belmont a best.

I think one of the gameboy castlevania games had amazing OST for the platform. Can't remember which one though

Youre probably talking about circle of the moon.

I do believe it was before SOTN

A GB/Gbc game? I'll look into those.

Circle of the Moon is easily the best new style Castlevania.

Got it. It wasn't GBA, it was GB.

Are these good? they're the only ones I haven't beat yet

I remember them being pretty difficult, can't say if they were good or not.

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aria of sorrow is as good if not better than symphony of the night, possibly the best castlevania game ever made, so it's highly recommended.

circle of the moon is a hybrid between the old and new styles and it doesnt quite work out imo. it's a good game and it's challenging but the jumping makes you feel like you're on the moon and you have to doubletap forward all the time on the dpad to sprint and actually get anywhere which is pointless. it's worth a play but just be ready for something different.

harmony of dissonance is garbage. you can carry up to 99 health potions for the whole game after about the midway point and heal through everything. and konami were HUGE kikes about the game and decided they'd save 50c per copy if they used lower capacity carts, leading to the "second" castle being an exact pallet swapped clone (didnt even bother flipping it upside down) and the music sounds like nails on a chalkboard. avoid at all costs.

Nobody talks about this one much huh? The cover art makes me want to play it.

There's two covers apparently?

It's fucking amazing, play it you won't regret it, and yes, Shanoa a qt

Oh, okay, sweet. I'd probably rather play as her sultry ass than some one of those other guys anyway.

The only people who talk about it are waifufags, it's kind of shit, poor level design and uninteresting weapons ruin it.

Castlevania Chronicles is pretty god tier as far as "Simon Belmont as the protag" games go. Super difficult, but has up to 8 different "loops". Castlevania III is an awesome game in the same vein as Castlevania 1, essentially the expansion pack of 1. If you wanna play the best version, go with the Japanese release.

Bloodlines is the best 16 bit release, with Rondo as an incredibly close second and Super IV a distant third.

My favorite Metroidvania is Aria of Sorrow, followed by Circle of the Moon. Symphony of the Night has absolutely the best presentation out of any of the exploration platformers, with a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack and spritework. Too easy of a game, though.

Legends was only decent. Belmont's Revenge is great. Adventure was… ugh.

Adventure isn't worth your time, but Belmont's Revenge is alright.

If you have a hacked Wii and a way to obtain Wiiware ISOs, I highly recommend The Adventure REbirth.

Dont give the now Pachinko dead Konami more money than they deserve.

Try and find a way to slip M2 10 bucks through the mail since they did really great work developing the game.

It's pretty good. But there's a New Game+ Hard Mode that hurts me.

Nigga, Circle of the Moon is in the OP- you cannot piss on OoE when Circle of the Moon is in play.

It's not as good as PoR or DoS but it's leagues beyond CotM. Also it's memorable for the balls to the wall challenge.

I also liked the level design despite the lack of secrets and the narrow/linear way they were strung together.

Aria's the best out of the three. HoD has probably the gloomiest atmosphere of the entire series. It's pretty cool if you're into that. CotM is trash and does literally nothing better than any other game in the series; don't bother with it.

I bet you like Lords of Shadow too

Couldn't be any less interested in God of Vania, actually. And CotM is shit, plain and simple. I really can't think of any reasonable defense for that game.

I could never get past (i think) level 4, the one that starts you off infront of a (cant remeber the name) skeleton snake. That is the hardest level of any castlevania ever.

I'm hoping you got HoD and CotM switched up, because HoD is far from being "gloomy", considering how colorful they made it to counter the gba screen.

I meant in overall atmosphere, like the areas and the soundtrack. The game isn't just colorful character sprites.

God I love portrait of ruin so much

reminder that crucifx held close is a much better name than cross your heart

How bad/good is Lords of Shadow 2? I liked the first but I hated mirror of fate. what a joke of a game that was.

What's the preferred spot to grab Nintendo/GBA roms these days? Last I used was CoolRoms but they got C&D'd a while ago

emuparadise?

Emuparadise

Well Harmony of Dicks was at least playable & memorable. It's hard not to nostalgia trip over it.

But CoM is brutal.

Well, the arena provides a lengthy challenge. There's lots of secret areas that are difficult to find. Emulators make it look pretty good as it's rendered too small on a GBA or DS screen.

The card combos are fun and provides and incentive to collect them all, and you can only get them as rare drops which makes that… A pain in the arsehole. But still nice for their first attempt.

It also feels closer to the pre-SotN titles.

But the soundtrack had shit sound quality and the only interesting area in the game was the bone hoard.

Since everyone said emu I'll say theisozone.com

The sound quality was sub-par, yes, but that doesn't make the tracks themselves (i.e. the compositions) bad. I actually enjoy HoD's ost quite a bit.

And, eh, I like the areas in general. Especially the Chapel of Dissonance and Sky Walkway.

How to get through CVIII without a heart attack?

The art of Git Gud usually consists of

A lot of the PC Engine games had God Tier OSTs that shat on everything else of the era.

Excellent

If you want something that actually has some challenge in it and is like the older games, only have a whip, play circle of the moon. Aria of Sorrow is probably the peak of all the metroid-style castlevania games. Harmony of dissonance is fine if you can get past the fucking horrendous graphics.

This nigga's got some top-tier taste, IV's incontestably the weakest of the 16-bit games and I dunno why everybody drools over it so badly.

Recommend Adventure Rebirth alongside all the others though, it's absolutely fantastic despite being a Wiiware title few've heard of

I wouldn't call it shit it had some interesting things. Just that level design is a real bummer. A series of small levels is just kind of boring. Could have used more weapon variety as well.

Is PoR good I played through it once and wasn't really feeling it. Lord of Shadow 2 was a fucking trainwreck. This coming from someone who actually really liked Lords of Shadow 1. It has horrible forced stealth mechanics and a completely nonsensical story. They also made the combat a lot easier. They made navigating the environment extremely slow and tedious and removed all the challenge from it. Then since it's a fake metroidvania you're forced to retread the same areas over and over again.

Castlevania started on NES for most westerners, so logically they looked to the SNES for the continuation of it. This meant less fans had a Genesis for Bloodlines, and, of course, almost no one would have been able to play Rondo of Blood. Then, given the amazing beginning moments of the game with Simon's Theme, plus Mode7 and directional whipping with swinging mechanics, and you have a game that wowed many a child who didn't have any of the other 16-bit games to play.

I think it's more that the game is so incredibly easy compared to 1 and 3. Imagine being a kid at the time and just wrecking through a new castlevania game you'd feel pretty cool as a kid.

I'm sure that's a part of it, but that still ties in to the fact that nostalgia is a big factor in the massive love for IV that lots of people have. It's a good game, but people tend to put it on a much higher pedestal than it really deserves.

Well that's what I mean imagine that feeling then it's hardened over 20 years of nostalgia.

The Belmonts will never have Frank Frazetta-tier designs again.

well shit I forgot my meme arrow.

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user if it was only that it wouldn't be so bad. The Belmont's will never slay Dracula again. We will never get the game where Julius finally puts him down for good. The last game we will ever get will be Lords of Shadow 2 and a fucking pachi-slot machine. Konami destroyed so many's hopes and dreams.

Well, this put me in a fucking mood.

I'll be honest, I never liked Simon's or Trevor's original designs. John Morris was cool, though.

Bloodlines is pretty underrated tbh

I really liked that they used Elizabeth Bathory, would've love to see her again

SotN has the worst level deisgn in the series. It goes from mediocre to irratating when the castle is turned upside down because you can barely move anywhere without traveling in bat or mist form because every jump- EVERY JUMP is just slightly too high to make. That's not good level design. That's -This feature was blatantly thought up at the last minute and we didnt have time to adjust the room layouts for it - design.

And most of the powers are fucking useless. The wolf form in that game somehow manages to be more useless than the one in Twilight princess. Even when you get the ability to dash as the wolf, it's only doable in 2 or 3 rooms and isn't needed for anything.

Symphony of the night is atmospheric fluff. It's garbage.

Portrait of Ruin has a very interesting rendition of the Legion boss. Play until you get to that.

After that point, It's still worth beating if you really want to. As long as you experience that boss I'm good.

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>mfw no one will play it because console exclusive and konami are a bunch of tards

I'm kind of surprised no one tried to make an indie CV already. The horror, the whips, the slow pace, great music, something out there must be somewhat similar?

Say, whatever happened to Slain! ? I remember hearing about that and thinking it looked cool but I haven't heard about it in a while.

I think there was a Touhou Metroidvania out there.

And it being console exclusive is the least of its problems.

I'm just not a big touhou fan and I want a classicvania.

Also what do you mean least of its problems? I haven't played much of it(about 20 minutes) before quitting so I wouldn't know about it.

The loot system I mentioned before is an extreme crapshoot that depends on how much combined luck you have in your party. If you go in solo, it's nearly impossible to get good drops. Also, since each level is a long timed mission, farming said drops can take several minutes at a time.

Also Soma is retardedly broken and highlights the very disparate skills of each character.

And if you're a stickler for graphic cohesion, the game will trigger you since it's a hodgepodge of every recent 2D Castlevania.

Not really much of a sticking point when every game that can get away with it's reused Symphony of the Night's sprites to one extent or another, typically the only new sprites I noticed in Dawn of Sorrow/Portrait of Ruin were bosses and new field-monsters

I'll bump you and the night.

julius belmont vidya when?

Also what are the best Castlevania fangames, spinoffs and clones?

Castlevania Fighter is a pretty good boss rush game. The touhouvanias aren't exceptional, but they're alright. There's a roguelike, but I'm not sure of its quality.

Bloodborne is probably the closest we'll get to a 3D Metroidvania that has a dash of Classic Castlevania to it

I kind of like it when several game(s) reference a major event that happened offscreen that deserves a game but never got one. It invites all sorts of fun fanwank about what happened during that time gap because we know what occurred before and after

Here's something unrelated I made in /agdg/ about a year ago and never finished

Also this is kind of off topic but the bit that starts here reminds me a lot of one of the castlevania tracks, although I'm not sure which one. Can anyone recognize it?

youtu.be/NZf15xVrOW8?t=2m42s

Simon's theme
youtube.com/watch?v=AKVmvVRXXCM

Man I should play super CV again, a lot of the tracks from that were really good and I can't remember of those their titles, I can only hum them.

But bloodline is the best, obviously.

Circle of the Moon was pretty good. My folks got me two games when I got my GBA as an Xmas gift: Castlevania: COTM and Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase.

COTM is very fair: you don't need to use the DSS system to progress in the game, but it's handy when you can actually get cards to drop. The platforming elements are tight, the boss battles are great, and the fact that the title actually makes use of all of the systems damn buttons is a breath of fresh air.

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It has the best controls and the best atmosphere.

So I figured out the format that COTM's save files are in, so I can basically add any items or stats to my saves, now. Eventually I want to redo where cards drop so even if its a 1% drop rate, Skeletons could drop Black Dog and change up the gameplay significantly.

Kick Boots are kind of retarded, in my opinion.

who bloodstained here?

Fuck the twin zombie dragons, I can't believe I had problems with that boss.

The thing with Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is that it's horribly uneven.

Some backgrounds and enemies look great other look horribly shitty. Color pallets for some stuff are also wacky (probably due to devs trying to make things visible on the shitty first GBA screens).

Same with music it's either good or shit, there's rarely something in between.

The ridiculous amount of backtracking also doesn't help.

The game reeks of wasted potential.

SotN is the sequel of Rondo of Blood where you play as Dracula's son to stop Dracula because nobody else is there to stop him.