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|  "Random Castlevania thread" , posted Thu 16 Aug 13:25  
With the recent Super Smash Bros. Direct featuring Simon, Richter, Alucard Assist Trophy, 34 Castlevania tracks that Sakurai's staff "were very eager to work on" (compared to Square-Enix's measley 2 tracks from FFVII), and a Dracula stage, the upcoming Season 2 of Netflix's Castlevania animated series coming this October, along with those previous rumors of Konami releasing a new Castlevania compilation/new game, I thought much like Dracula himself every 100 years, it would be appropriate to ressurect some form of discussion regarding Castlevania games...
As a person having not played Symphony of the Night, the prospect of a compilation does sound tantalizing, though it does beg question how the quality of the ports will turn out. (I do not mind these so-called changes made to Symphony of the Night in the Dracula X Chronicles compilation, for instance. All I care is that those pixels scale correctly and we don't run into emulation issues. Please give us Hexadrive/M2 staff!) Konami's development staff these days haven't been terribly bad... outside of Bomberman, though, it remains questionable. Here's hoping though that these compilations will finally get a much deserved PC port to be preserved for prosperity...
Speaking of which, I wonder what Cafe'ers think of post-SoTN-vanias. It seems we're all looking forward to Bloodstained, yet it still seems so far away. Meanwhile, it's nice to see more people give appreciation to the DS Castlevania's such as Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia (and some who like Portrait of Ruin too). I was thinking into dabbling into Aria of Sorrow as I hear it constantly being praised as the best Castlevania since Symphony. It's a shame I have been burned so badly by Harmony of Despair that I ended up returning the game when I was a kid.
Since then, I've come to appreciate the art of discecting Metroidvanias, the latest of which I've played was Hollow Knight...But I felt there was something distinct about Castlevania's character movement that made it distinctly Castlevania. Maybe it's the Belmont strut, Shanoa's stride, or Alucards moonwalk? There was always something about those jumps (which I'm so thankful is recreated in Smash, at least aesthetically) that made the games kind of made the games feel commital, especially when it came to the appearance of goddamn bats and Medusa heads where you were either required to perform a jump followed by a midair whip, or an all-in-one jumpwhip.
There was just something I miss about those clanky mechanics..that I think have translated very well into modern day Metroidvanias such as...gasp...Dark Souls (which could be considered the Castlevania of Metroid Prime)!
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| "Re(1):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Thu 16 Aug 15:01
quote:
I thought much like Dracula himself every 100 years, it would be appropriate to ressurect some form of discussion regarding Castlevania games...
WHO HAS AWAKENED ME FROM MY DEEP SLUMBER
Are you the dark priest Shaft? Truly, this is the thread that must stay open or at least be revived periodically. And it’s not even Halloween yet!
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As a person having not played Symphony of the Night
?!?!
This must have been a typo, unless you’ve been surviving on fast food burgers for all these years without tasting filet mignon (I have resolved to increase food metaphors at the Cafe).
The reality meanwhile is that even when it still understood video games, Konami sat on Vampire Killer/Bloodlines and other rare gems for years rather than making any money off of compilations (maybe due to the fact that the later Metroidvanias sold like one copy apiece in Japan, but still), so why now? M2 ports would be hot hot hot but we must sacrifice more virgins than normal this Halloween if that’s to happen.
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I wonder what Cafe'ers think of post-SoTN-vanias.
While continuously trying to recreate Nocturne/Symphony on weaker systems with smaller budgets was an exercise in futility, I must admit that Minuet/Aria was quite good for what it was, and certainly better than the poorly designed and unplayably unbalanced Circle or the unlistenably bad Concerto/Harmony. I’d had my fill after that, though Stolen Seal/Ecclesia looked very appealing, possibly due to the fact that it was no longer drawn by the rejected Shounen Jump artists they’d resorted to after even Kojima Ayami’s glorious art didn’t convince a single Gackt-loving DS owner in Japan to buy these things.
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something distinct about Castlevania's character movement that made it distinctly Castlevania.
I completely agree that in addition to the atmosphere and music that all undead denizens of the Cafe love, all good games in the series have marvelously thoughtful movement and physics. Tim called it “friction” in an excellent short piece on the mini-duels of precise movement that comprise Rondo, and I think it applies to the entire series. The Belmonts move like oafs compared with Mario, but both have focused on clearly defined physics with a sense of great impact to all moves (aided by perfect sound design) since the beginning. You know how good that whip feels when it hits a Medusa head with a crisp crunching sound during that perfect jump (during which it feels good to pull back even in games where the jump arc is not adjustable), whether you’re hapless Simon in the original or super Simon or (slightly) evolved Richter.
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the appearance of goddamn bats
I believe you meant to type “You Goddamned Bathead!”
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| "Re(1):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Thu 16 Aug 23:04
quote:
With the recent Super Smash Bros. Direct featuring Simon, Richter, Alucard Assist Trophy, 34 Castlevania tracks that Sakurai's staff "were very eager to work on" (compared to Square-Enix's measley 2 tracks from FFVII), and a Dracula stage, the upcoming Season 2 of Netflix's Castlevania animated series coming this October, along with those previous rumors of Konami releasing a new Castlevania compilation/new game, I thought much like Dracula himself every 100 years, it would be appropriate to ressurect some form of discussion regarding Castlevania games...
As a person having not played Symphony of the Night, the prospect of a compilation does sound tantalizing, though it does beg question how the quality of the ports will turn out. (I do not mind these so-called changes made to Symphony of the Night in the Dracula X Chronicles compilation, for instance. All I care is that those pixels scale correctly and we don't run into emulation issues. Please give us Hexadrive/M2 staff!) Konami's development staff these days haven't been terribly bad... outside of Bomberman, though, it remains questionable. Here's hoping though that these compilations will finally get a much deserved PC port to be preserved for prosperity...
Speaking of which, I wonder what Cafe'ers think of post-SoTN-vanias. It seems we're all looking forward to Bloodstained, yet it still seems so far away
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I did not play SOTN until late 2004. Looking for a good copy on Ebay was hard to come by for a good price. Because of all the hype and positive reviews, I had to buy one. Once I played the game, it felt as though it was nice but not all cracked up to be. This was after I played all the Post-SOTN games minus Aria. Same with Aria, did not play until 2013 I think and was less impressed. With that said, maybe not playing those games at the time of its release i wws not able to experience how well advanced it was presented.
With that said, Castlevania 64 and Circle are one of my favorites. Sounds weird yes. C64 just had that horror mysterious creepy vibe as you progress in that game. Yes I did broke three controllers in the process thanks to its wanky difficultly throughout, but I continued. The music was amazing also. It just gives a little chill in the spine and some goosebumps, I was young then.
Circle Moon felt to me more like.....really it's hard to say. I just felt that although presentation wise was not appaling, the gameplay and progression seemed stable and not up and down like others. Maybe it was a perfect SNES type Castlevania game. Harmony was so painful to play in was just forcing myself to complete the game.
However, no doubt that Ecclesia is by far the best and one of my favorites aside from Bloodlines. Dawn of Sorrow was awesome at the time but Ecclesia was amazing.
I agree with good ports in the compilation. Wonder what games will they add. I don't think we have had a Castlevania compilation consisting of more then three games. They can make three volumes just for the money. One for Nes,Snes, Genesis, and GB games. Other with Dracula X, DS, PS1, and GBA ones.
Long Live I AM!
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| "Re(5):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Sat 18 Aug 04:26
I am enjoying this slightly different set of perspectives from previous Cafe assessments! Very interesting to hear Neo0r0chiaku's take on Nocturne/Symphony long after the fact. While I really can't support Circle for reasons that would take several paragraphs, I sure remember the excitement of "it's portable Metroidvania, dude!!" Also a daring choice with the unloved N64 editions. While it was the butt of a lot of jokes with its motorcycle-riding skeletons, I recall hearing high praise for its music and creepy atmosphere.
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Speaking of (non-)remakes, wasn't Super Castlevania IV canonically just a retelling of the first game, but but with different core gameplay mechanics and different levels?
Indeed, there is no "IV," just another "Akumajou Dracula," one of many retellings of Simon's first adventure. See also: the X68000, Chronicle, arcade, and MSX versions. This is probably as good a spot as any to link the venerable Castlevania Dungeon for reference. While it's currently joined Drac in his 100 year sleep cycle, who knows what might awaken it?! Of particular interest to the Cafe is its music collection.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| "Re(2):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Sun 19 Aug 12:33
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As a person having not played Symphony of the Night
I think in the interest of reviving the trapped undead, a sub-topic of this thread should be what Castlevania games people have not played and who is missing out the most. You're definitely missing out on quite a bit with SotN. Just don't be tricked into thinking the Saturn port was the best version. I believe the PSP port had all the extra stuff in the Saturn version but fixed the framerate, visual effects and sound quality.
I wonder what Cafe'ers think of post-SoTN-vanias
I too would like to know what Cafe'ers think of Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness. Or if anyone here has even played them, because no, neither have I. I have a friend that insists they're good proper Castlevania games though, which intrigued me but not enough to make me pick them up.
I have not played all of the Lord of the Shadows games, Order of Shadow, Judgement, all the regular Gameboy games, and the kid Dracula one for NES. Have I really missed anything from those games?
I played and like Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness. I think they were OK games. Innocence felt repetitive at times and felt more repetitive with each section you go through looks the same as the ones you came from in the stages. But my oh my the soundtrack is phenomenal, playing these repetitiveness felt non existent when I really was tuning out to the music. Is that really bad for a game though?
Curse of Darkness was alright I guess. I just wanted to beat the game for what it was worth but could not beat the final boss for quite some time. Just gave up after that. I didn't really miss much or have great memories like other Castlevania games.
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While it was the butt of a lot of jokes with its motorcycle-riding skeletons,
Geeeez, I laugh so hard at this, I completely forget those guys were in there. It gave me a burst of memory of my days playing it and that funky "shudder" theme that comes on when fighting that big skeleton. Can't stop laughing.
Long Live I AM!
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| "Re(2):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Sun 19 Aug 14:03
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I think in the interest of reviving the trapped undead, a sub-topic of this thread should be what Castlevania games people have not played and who is missing out the most.
Even though it's allegedly a huge pain in the ass, I've always felt like a bit of a lamer for never having played Dracula II/Simon's Quest. After all, it did give us Bloody Tears, and the mysterious graveyard duck (in both languages!). I Am Kid Dracula always looked adorable, as well.
Just kidding. The game whose legendary brilliance I'm most ashamed of not having ever played, is, uh, Judgment, of course. Yeah, that's it, or something...
I would also like to remind everyone that the best Dracula game you've never played is actually Rusty! And that you can quite easily rig your computer to play it today!
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| "Re(3):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Sat 25 Aug 03:00
Ugh, I can't believe a week has gone by since Maou tipped me off about our Castlevania thread has returned to Earth again, without having to be summoned by Shaft. I think I'll mix game metaphors and say 'wise from your grabe'.
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I think in the interest of reviving the trapped undead, a sub-topic of this thread should be what Castlevania games people have not played and who is missing out the most.
Well, it got a sequel, but a direct port or even a virtual console version has been mysteriously absent since it was first released, so I'd suggest Castlevania Bloodlines. It always had this odd feel of a Treasure game or a first-party Sega game, but I feel like it is an unappreciated gem of the series, what with beefy old Jonathan Morris and all. I know where you're coming from about Simon's Quest Maou, but playing it on virtual console recently was just about the most frustrating Castlevania experience I've ever had (and I played Castlevania: the Adventure on GB to completion).
I'll mention again my perverse love for Vampire: Master of Darkness on the Game Gear and add to it a mention of Nosferatu on SNES as weird alternate universe takes on the general Castlevania style game. Neither is all that close to what makes Castlevania Castlevania, but they both are odd versions of 'guy in a castle' games in general and deserve more love than they get.
I also wanted to see what the Cafe thinks about why so many Castleroid games but almost no modern takes on the style of Castlevania game up to and including Rondo of Blood. I can't really think of any examples other than Bloodstained: Cure of the Moon, and that doesn't count since it's literally Castlevania in all but name.
Okay that's all I've got.
You have to carefully reproduce the world of "Castlevania" in the solemn atmosphere.
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| | "Re(4):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Sat 25 Aug 03:45
quote:
Ugh, I can't believe a week has gone by since Maou tipped me off about our Castlevania thread has returned to Earth again, without having to be summoned by Shaft. I think I'll mix game metaphors and say 'wise from your grabe'.
I think in the interest of reviving the trapped undead, a sub-topic of this thread should be what Castlevania games people have not played and who is missing out the most.
Well, it got a sequel, but a direct port or even a virtual console version has been mysteriously absent since it was first released, so I'd suggest Castlevania Bloodlines. It always had this odd feel of a Treasure game or a first-party Sega game, but I feel like it is an unappreciated gem of the series, what with beefy old Jonathan Morris and all. I know where you're coming from about Simon's Quest Maou, but playing it on virtual console recently was just about the most frustrating Castlevania experience I've ever had (and I played Castlevania: the Adventure on GB to completion).
I'll mention again my perverse love for Vampire: Master of Darkness on the Game Gear and add to it a mention of Nosferatu on SNES as weird alternate universe takes on the general Castlevania style game. Neither is all that close to what makes Castlevania Castlevania, but they both are odd versions of 'guy in a castle' games in general and deserve more love than they get.
I also wanted to see what the Cafe thinks about why so ma
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I think that for most people, games in the image of SotN CV are richer experiences player-wise that are also less dependent on highly precise level design developer-wise. The myriad of progression systems, the experience of backtracking/accessing, the looser difficulty because of the greater variety of mechanics and movement options, the longer campaign length... all of these come across as being "more" than the strict linear levels defined by mastery of a small set of rigidly defined mechanics that have no numerical progression systems. If you aren't a fan of that highly linear gameplay, those classic games feel more limited and simple, even though they have tremendous elegance. And it's totally true that exploration as a game feature is much more limited in those games, even taking into account route options.
The ongoing roguelike zeitgeist along with meta progression also encourages games that are generally less like classic CV. There are some exceptions to progression systems which are not based on stat/numerical changes: Spelunky for instance is very much not about stat upgrades and unlocking things that give better stats. However, with all this random zone generation and all of these mechanics and items and whatever else that players will get randomly, it very much encourages a looser style of game than the rigid and precise one of classic CV. From a developer standpoint, I think making a really good classic style CV can be actually harder, since you don't have the benefits of stats and random zones and varied mechanics. Classic style CV is easier engineering-wise, though.
In the case of both of the above, a linear game is probably also a harder sell. There are exceptions to this, like with Shovel Knight, and it may be that with the ongoing popularity of Souls-esque games and the glut of roguelikes, highly linear hand-designed experiences may soon be in vogue again.
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| "Re(6):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Sat 25 Aug 08:02
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What Spoon said
I understand your point, but honestly I would agree more if not for part of the point that Iggy has made about G&G-- there have been not one but two not so subtle homages to Ghouls N Ghosts, Malta Castilla and Battle Princess Madeline (not out yet, but the developer posts lots of gameplay videos). And G&G as a series is probably even more notorious for its punishing gameplay, its linear nature, and its crushing difficulty.
I also think SOTN-likes are super cool and still trendy to indie devs, so they get made. In fact, I was at a small conference a few years back where a game was being shown that was so close to SOTN in look and feel (think Alucard, but with black hair, but otherwise nearly identical) I worried it might have been some sort of sprite rip fan projects.
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It's true that other 8bit classics have had indie homages in recent years, and even small studios dedicated to this kind of homages (Not-G&G, Not-Ninja-Gaiden, Not-Strider), but there's surprisingly few that try to emulate the first Castlevania.
Odallus and Issyos are kinda there.... but not really.
I'm not sure what they lack.
Maybe the atmosphere of the first game is so unmistakable that you cannot do a pastiche without a castle, Hammer monsters, chandeliers, Death coming at some point, and if you're already there why not call it Castlevania since you're already here?
My actual suspicion is that Castlevania 1 both feels too iconic and too basic in a lot of ways. Plus in all seriousness I think the whip is the thing that separates it from the others, as a weapon that doesn't really work like a real whip but that's so specific to the franchise. Honestly, there are a fair number of games for the NES/Famicom that feel a little like Castlevania but never quite enough to make the comparison stick, like 8 Eyes.
You have to carefully reproduce the world of "Castlevania" in the solemn atmosphere.
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| "Re(7):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Tue 28 Aug 10:18:
I'll second what Spoon and Karasu said here. I think the persistence of Metroidvania clones over platformer Dracula clones reflects the fact that a good platformer is much harder to design. Anyone can make a complicated puzzle-map requiring backtracking and searching for keys, but making a character who controls as perfectly as Mario or as imperfectly but satisfyingly as a Belmont is hard work, let alone putting them in interesting environments. If your game focuses on the former, the "game" of following a treasure map and finding a way around locked doors and inaccessible heights can obscure lackluster room design, character physics, or enemies.
You can even see this phenomenon in the reverse castle in the second half of Nocturne/Symphony, which I still love anyway. Unlike the tense and grueling first half of the game, the bosses here are all weaklings or tiresome hit-absorbers like Galamoth, and the weapons you'll inevitably find will dispatch Shaft and Dracula so quickly that you'll barely notice that their crappy one-screen room contains one of the sloppiest final boss sequences in the series. At least Alucard still controls well, but you can see how much less is required of a Metroidvania. If the reverse castle segment were a straight platformer, we'd be cursing its much more visible design mistakes like we rightly do for Dracula XX on SFC.
The other reason I think the thirst for Metroidvania persists is that there's still only ever been one properly budgeted entry with lavish music, voice acting, and visual effects. Some of the DS games look pretty sharp, but there's no use kidding ourselves into thinking that these are even remotely approaching the same majestic scale.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Tue 28 Aug 14:40] |
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| "Re(9):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Wed 29 Aug 02:21
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Totally offtopic, we had a thunderstorm last night which ended up looking like this at Tokyo Disneyland.
Riiiiight, completely off topic, hahaha!
All great points from everyone-- and Maou, I've had that same thought about the inverted castle but I'd never previously been able to articulate it! So, thanks!
Something else I'd like to mention is not that I think Simon's clunky movement only feels perfect now because it was a really formative game where the control and physics didn't have any weird tics or bugs, and then was subsequently copied by a thousand later games. Likewise Mario. If you go back to earlier platform games, they were either hampered by a miserably bad controller or by control schemes and physics that feel like they were never properly bug tested. I'm at a loss to give examples but I'm thinking games for Atari 8 bit computers. Mario and Simon feel right now because they were made lovingly exact. But for every one or two of those, there were a hundred games where odd design decisions were made, like not letting the player attack while jumping, or letting the player instantly turn around and travel in the opposite direction with no lag. Maou, I'd argue that player control is a place where your beloved, Rusty, doesn't quite measure up!
Anyway! This is all very interesting stuff!
You have to carefully reproduce the world of "Castlevania" in the solemn atmosphere.
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| "Re(10):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Wed 29 Aug 06:21
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 voice acting,
Ahahaha, I didn't even have the US version in my mind. The original of course is mostly really good (Maria's lines and acting are far too modern), right down to some stellar incidental text, as Iggy reminded us. (Like with FFVII, it's always a surprise to me that people playing the botched English versions can feel as warmly towards these characters as they do, given that they have literally never experienced the characters in intelligible form! I guess with Nocturne/Symphony, the English version unintentionally brought the series back to its B-horror movie roots, at least. Anyhow!)
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looking like this at Tokyo Disneyland.
I've forgotten the actual European castle that is the model for Cagliostro and/or Dracula's castle, but Akumajou Madman X is surely the new model for any future series.
I am still certain that there must be a Kid Dracula fan or two here, returning to the topic of underappreciated entries. Karasu is right about Rusty, meanwhile: its critical weakness is that it's really really hard to get Rusty to grab onto ropes while jumping, which is brutal in the last level. At least she can redirect mid-air, unlike the hapless Belmonts, but I have no idea how people survived it on keyboards without the benefit of a modern USB controller. It's still a fantastic Dracula game, though, unofficial nor not.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| "Re(2):Re(10):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Wed 29 Aug 07:26
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I've forgotten the actual European castle that is the model for Cagliostro and/or Dracula's castle, but Akumajou Madman X is surely the new model for any future series.
Ah, I'm sure it's either Neuschwanstein Castle, which was also the inspiration for Cinderella's Castle at Disneyland, or Mont-Saint-Michel, which was used very directly (and tackily) in the US box art for SOTN.
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I am still certain that there must be a Kid Dracula fan or two here, returning to the topic of underappreciated entries. Karasu is right about Rusty, meanwhile: its critical weakness is that it's really really hard to get Rusty to grab onto ropes while jumping, which is brutal in the last level. At least she can redirect mid-air, unlike the hapless Belmonts, but I have no idea how people survived it on keyboards without the benefit of a modern USB controller. It's still a fantastic Dracula game, though, unofficial nor not.
I am 100% a fan of Kid Dracula, although I have to confess I come to the character via him being playable in the SFC version of Parodius Da! It wasn't until recently that I found out the Gameboy version of KD was released in the States.
being atrocious
You have to carefully reproduce the world of "Castlevania" in the solemn atmosphere.
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| | "Re(2):The Twisted Tales of Spike McFarang" , posted Thu 30 Aug 13:04
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I perpetually have Kid Dracula confused in my head with this game:
I remember reading about it in Nintendo Power and thinking it looked hella cool!
Ha! Your association makes even more sense in the original, 超魔界大戦どらぼっちゃん (Chou Makai Taisen Dorabocchan), which not only references Chou Makai Mura in its title but also has a protagonist whose name means kid Dracula: Dorabbocchan, or "Young Drac." Never played it, though.
I like to think that Kid Dracula got more attention after its last boss, Galamoth, appeared in Nocturne/Symphony, though I'm not sure anyone (including me) remembered at the time.
Oh dang! I had no idea the games were connected in that way! I recall Galamoth being the strongest boss in the game by far. I didn't beat him until I had nearly cleared the castle 200%. Remember how you could get potions that when you toss them they summon an enemy? I'd been hoarding them the entire game. I beat Galamoth by throwing every single enemy summon potion I had, along with any other offensive potions. I hit him with everything but the kitchen sink. The game slowed to maybe 1fps as I joined in the fray by turning into a poison cloud. The ceaseless barrage was too much for him and he quickly fell. That's been one of my fav gaming memories! Sums up the appeal of Symphony of the Night for me. It's not necessarily balanced or whatever they teach you at game school, but man was it FUN.
www.art-eater.com
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| | "Re(5):The Twisted Tales of Spike McFarang" , posted Sat 1 Sep 07:16
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Huh, I thought complaints about Dead Cells would come from frustration with its randomly generated portions, not its writing. Then again, since the protagonist looks like the mascot for Bic pens I guess I wasn’t expecting there to be any writing in the game.
That's the worst thing: there was almost none in Early Access, and it was already enough.
But each update added gradually more, while it should have strived to remove as much as what was left.
I don't understand that, actually: indies face a big challenge with localization, since entitled assholes trash the Steam reviews of any random game that dares not to be translated in their language, so the developer has to outsource to cheap localization companies. The more text your game has, the more expensive this becomes, multiplied by the number of languages they want to sell to. In that context, the verbosity of some indies makes little financial sense on top of being a fault in the artistic sense.
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| "Re(2):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Sat 1 Sep 11:25
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I think in the interest of reviving the trapped undead, a sub-topic of this thread should be what Castlevania games people have not played and who is missing out the most. You're definitely missing out on quite a bit with SotN. Just don't be tricked into thinking the Saturn port was the best version. I believe the PSP port had all the extra stuff in the Saturn version but fixed the framerate, visual effects and sound quality.
I'm still hoping those rumors of a Castlevnaia compilation are true. SoTN on Switch would be a godsend! Not to mention Rondo of Blood on that screen.
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Dead Cells and The Messenger stuff
You see, here's the problem I have with the Metroidvania genre: They're a dime a dozen of them nowadays, to the point I actually crave for more games like Shovel Knight and Bloodstained: Curese of the Moon. I don't know if it was Guacamelee that ruined my love of them, but certainly after having played Hollow Knight, I feel I've had my fill for non-linear interconnected level design.
I enjoyed Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight for its more combat-oriented focus, while managing to grab those bits of the genre like backtracking in a manner befitting Dark Souls (where you don't really break open shortcuts a la Samus, but rather stumble into secret rooms using your new abilities). Momo4 also captures that same dynamic that Castlevania had lost (till Order of Ecclessia) of using a designated backdash button.
Axiom Verge capturesd that feeling of the strange/unknown in both a narrative and gameplay sense where it requires a level of experimentation to access diffrent secret areas and even traverse certain segments with well-times swings/warps (hope I'm not giving ability spoilers here). The author really set out to convey the feelings of how it was to have played the first Metroid (not Super), and I think he succeeded. There's a lot of sense of mystery to the world and with how to progress that the genuine moments of feeling lost don't feel like a detriment to the overall enjoyment (Hollow Knight almost suffered from this for a bit).
I definitely want to try out Iconoclast, but from what I'm hearing, it's just another story-driven OwlBoy, which was a linear story with the trappings of a Metroidvania without getting what makes Metroidvanias click in the first place.
And yeah, Guacamelee's writing was also cringe worthy.
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| | "Re(3):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Sat 1 Sep 12:14
Yeah, I really enjoyed Bloodstained Curse of the Moon, and I actually don't think Bloodstained proper is that appealing! The movement looks mushy and the graphics in Bloodstained are in that uncomfortable spot where it's detailed enough that you can feel bothered by its aesthetic. For the gnashing of teeth about how Curse of the Moon doesn't execute "8-bit plus" as well as Shovel Knight, Curse of the Moon feels like it has a more stable and better-executed aesthetic.
I didn't like that Momodora game as much as I expected mainly for two reasons:
- in spite of happily cribbing from Dark Souls in both progression structure, dodge-roll, and being fairly difficult, it somehow did not take Dark Souls immediate continuing. It feels like a pointless nuisance to show you the "continue" option.
- unlike Dark Souls, items you've picked up / environment things you've interacted with have their state reset when you die. Since you die a fair amount in the game, needing to go through the motions of picking them all up again feels like another nuisance.
- in spite of the animations being good, I didn't really like how moving my character around felt.
I think that many of the Metroidvania games have very good feeling mechanics, which definitely goes a long way towards making the game enjoyable to play. I think that the roguelike mechanics and progression systems often poison the games. I do think that the zone difficulty necessarily has to be tuned differently for games where you will backtrack often, because difficult zones that you need to re-tread become annoying very quickly, whereas in the purely linear style of classic CV, the difficulty can be sharpened since you only need to make it through once. Shovel Knight doesn't exactly have route choice in the manner of Rondo or CV3 in that you eventually have to hit all the levels anyway.
I guess what I'm saying is I want another Bionic Commando!
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| | "Re(5):Random Castlevania thread" , posted Sat 1 Sep 21:34
quote:
I guess what I'm saying is I want another Bionic Commando!
But which Bionic Commando? The obvious answer is NES Bionic Commando, but maybe someone out there wants arcade Bionic Commando, or maybe you really liked Elite Forces, or maybe you are in love with your arm and thus feel an affinity for the 2009 reboot...
There was Rearmed (remaking the NES game), and then Rearmed 2.
I didn't really like Rearmed. I played it, but it just felt off. I got so annoyed bumping against rocks and falling down a lift shaft that I went back and played the NES version, and noticed that there really were differences. (The prime example being that I had no trouble at the lift shaft in the NES version, while that area in Rearmed continued to be finicky.) I have no idea if it got better later.
I LOVED REARMED!
I don't love Rearmed 2.
I spent a lot of time playing the original Bionic Commando on the Famicom, and I didn't feel that there were big issues with the controls... if anything, they added an issue with the game in a later patch because the way in which you'd go into a sort of hitstun reaction if you swung into certain surfaces a lot of people complained about, even though that mechanic was in the 8-bit one. If the character feels a little... fatter, I wouldn't totally disagree. Still, I liked pretty much everything about the game!
The bosses dynamically switch to different attack patterns based on whether or not you have two players (e.g. if one player game overs part way through)! There is dynamic split screening! The deathmatch mode is INCREDIBLY fun! The challenge rooms are super precise and show that they understand the idiosyncrasies of their implementation of the characters movement quite exactly, and the new takes on the old weapons are overall good. I even like the music, which some people said injected too much noise into the originally clear melodies!
I think aside from EDF 2017, it's my favourite game that I own the Xbox 360!
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| | "Re(1):RE: fould" , posted Mon 3 Sep 05:52
quote:
 WAIT WAIT WAIT, I’m calling foul on the offsides... err... moving violation... uh... holding the man violation for threading a non-Castlevania game in thread that’s explicitly for Castlevania
The penalty is that you have to go play Haunted Castle for half an hour and think about what you’ve done.
Alas!
To quickly steer the topic back to Castlevania:
The whip gimmick of latching onto certain points and swinging or just hanging there was never really brought back in later CV games. I wish it did! In Bionic Commando you could only kill enemies with your whip by shoving them into pits Though a lot of movement gimmicks/mechanics would continue to be added with each successive SotN-esque game, the grapple movement was one thing that they never really decided to re-integrate. I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason is that the later protagonists are not tied to the whip as a distinctive weapon, but it's an avenue of gameplay that I always really enjoy when it's executed well.
One example of a major difference in grappling mechanic execution is actually across the three Bionic Commando games, Rearmed, Rearmed 2, and Wife-Armed. I don't think that CV4's grappling and swinging was done as well as Bionic Commando's, even though it gave you leeway in how long your swing radius was (BC only let you pull yourself up all the way, or not at all). The speed at which Simon swung and the physics-y quality of release is somewhat incongruous with the fixed-jump arc nature of classic CV, which I would somewhat peg as a reason to not have that mechanic featured prominently in a classic-style CV today: it's too big and too weird of a contrast. But in a game where jumping is already looser, like in SotN-style CV, such a movement style could fit fairly naturally. Shanoa could use a magnetic thing to launch herself in particular directions like a slingshot, which isn't actually so far removed from it, but still not the same.
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(3):RE: fould" , posted Mon 3 Sep 06:08
quote:
Alas!
Alas! Poor Yorick! Renaming the dully titled "Soccer Boy" skeleton chasing his skull in the US version was pretty clever. I recall hearing that even with the bizarre translation and clumsy writing, there's quite a few clever references added in the US version of Nocturne/Symphony, even if plenty more were lost.
As for the grappling hook thing! It's worth remembering that the SFC version ("IV") was actually one of the last platforming Dracula games, period, so there weren't many chances to even consider developing what Simon had learned. Richter didn't need it in Rondo because he was more about backflips, Simon in X68000/Chronicles didn't have it because the layout was meant to be verrry close to the original game, and I'm pretty sure John Morris had it in Vampire Killer/Bloodlines, though only a madman (hmmmm) would choose him over Eric anyway. Uh, I think that's the end after that!
Thereafter, people either didn't have whips or were so acrobatic they didn't need the grappling hook! Nocturne/Symphony Richter can of course fly around the room with his super-jump, none of the vampire type heroes needed it, and even hapless Nathan from Circle of the Moon had some serious Alucard-style jumping.
I would like to remind people that my girl RUSTY could use her whip (badly) as a grappling hook aaaaaand ran with bunshin shadows behind her before Alucard or anyone else did~~~
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(3):RE: Dracula XX super-gauntlet" , posted Fri 7 Sep 12:58:
quote:
use the whip in more interesting ways than just hitting stuff until their life bar is depleted.
Years after the monumental achievement of beating X68000 Akumajou Dracula (non-arrange version! I place this alongside somehow managing to beat Alien Soldier), I've yet to figure out an intelligent way to use the down-left and down-right whip motion while jumping. In an unforgiving game, that seemed like a surefire way to get killed.
Let's see, wasn't one of the sub-topics of this thread praise for overlooked entries? Let's go bold: Dracula XX, a miserable little pile of game that becomes more obscure with every re-release of the glorious Dracula X instead. The received wisdom, chronicled most amusingly in this classic set of two images, is correct by any reasonable evaluation, but there must be someone big-hearted enough (not me) to cherish Dracula XX. Yeah yeah, Karasu makes a good-natured effort to at least praise the music during the semi-annual-ish Undead Threads, but I've never seen anything resembling genuine love for a game that's not only worse than its source, but worse than the other SFC Dracula, too.
BUT BUT BUT maybe its increasing obscurity (due to sucking) gives it a certain mystique, sort of like Lupin III: Legend of the Gold of Babylon?! Is Dracula XX the new counter-cultural Dracula of choice for the Madman's Contrarian Cafe?!!?!
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Fri 7 Sep 13:05] |
| | "Re(4):RE: Dracula XX super-gauntlet" , posted Fri 7 Sep 13:30
quote:
use the whip in more interesting ways than just hitting stuff until their life bar is depleted. Years after the monumental achievement of beating X68000 Akumajou Dracula (non-arrange version! I place this alongside somehow managing to beat Alien Soldier), I've yet to figure out an intelligent way to use the down-left and down-right whip motion while jumping. In an unforgiving game, that seemed like a surefire way to get killed.
Let's see, wasn't one of the sub-topics of this thread praise for overlooked entries? Let's go bold: Dracula XX, a miserable little pile of game that becomes more obscure with every re-release of the glorious Dracula X instead. The received wisdom, chronicled most amusingly in this classic set of two images, is correct by any reasonable evaluation, but there must be someone big-hearted enough (not me) to cherish Dracula XX. Yeah yeah, Karasu makes a good-natured effort to at least praise the music during the semi-annual-ish Undead Threads, but I've never seen anything resembling genuine love for a game that's not only worse than its source, but worse than the other SFC Dracula, too.
BUT BUT BUT maybe its increasing obscurity (due to sucking) gives it a certain mystique, sort of like Lupin III: Legend of the Gold of Babylon?! Is Dracula XX the new counter-cultural Dracula of choic
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
Dracula X/XX contains the hardest Castlevania final boss I have ever fought against. It is so difficult that it borders on comical.
The opening moments of SFC Dracula X, with the red-hot guitar riffs, I thought were AMAZING... but then when I finally got to play the game, I recall being deeply disappointed by it. Super Castlevania 4 felt like a next-generation Castlevania, with its amazing audio and whip gimmicks and graphics gimmicks... Dracula X, though possessing lovely sprites, felt more like a mere sequel to Castlevania 1. I still found a good time with it, but in my heart there was a constant murmur about how I wish it was Castlevania 4. Ah~
I don't think it's a terrible game at all, because its music and graphics and controls are all fine, and certainly better than plenty of other platforming action games on the SNES. Indeed, plenty of its sprites could be pointed to as being better than those in Super Castlevania 4! But it felt like a step backwards, and at a time when stepping backwards was not greeted so warmly as now, what with Curse of the Moon.
I wouldn't call it a bad game, but I agree that trying to appreciate its qualities as time passes will only grow harder given the ever-greater availability of Rondo of Blood. It will be regarded by most as a merely competent genre title, but not one which made a significant contribution to the oeuvre.
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(5):RE: Dracula XX super-gauntlet" , posted Fri 7 Sep 13:44:
quote:
a merely competent genre title, but not one which made a significant contribution to the oeuvre.
Ah, the faint praise continues! Still, if there is love for the N64 games in this thread, surely Dracula XX has hope! As the impossible final fight reminds us, there is a difference between difficult challenges which test your mastery of a game's controls and design, and willfully unfair challenges wherein the requirements outpace your character's abilities. In conclusion: Dracula XX is the Mario 2 ("Lost Levels") of Dracula games. But we still have nearly two months till Halloween and our fated annual discussion, so I hope someone will make a case for it! Maybe someone will tell me how much fun they had holding onto a key for like two levels without dying just to save Annette. At the very least, yes, this game's guitar version of the first level theme is HOT HOT HOT
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Fri 7 Sep 13:47] |
| | "Re(9):RE: Dracula XX super-gauntlet" , posted Sun 9 Sep 09:39
quote:
Undead legions: there are 53 days left till Halloween to find something nice to say about Dracula XX. I know one of you loves it!
This is the hardest challenge of Dracula XX since the last boss of Dracula XX.
quote:
Speaking of under-loved games, right on cue, here we have Igarashi praising Dracula II/Simon's Quest as an enabler of Nocturne/Symphony's exploratory approach. While I think that Rondo and Akumajou Densetsu/"III" were already halfway there with their branching routes and secret levels, there's a fair point to be made.
I haven't read that article yet, but my take is:
Simon's Quest is a much more open and free-to-explore game than CV3, and CV3 I see as a game developed in response to Simon's Quest. Simon's Quest entirely discarded the idea of progressing through levels, introduced backtracking in addition to being able to freely scroll left/right to CV, had areas that were much much lower in difficulty for a Castlevania area, had XP point levelling, towns with NPCs to talk to, an all-new aesthetic to the backgrounds... it was a really huge departure from CV1!
While it wasn't as refined in its action as CV1, it definitely felt like a huge increase in ambition compared to CV1, trying to marry the precisely designed action of CV1 with a huge sprawling RPG adventure. CV3 in comparison is much less ambitious, returning to not only the overall level structure of CV1 but also the aesthetics of CV1. While there was the addition of branching in the levels, there was no backtracking, and levels were still very much about "start" and "finish" in a linear fashion. All of the RPG trappings were discarded. Even Curse of the Moon, which is very deliberately an expansion of CV3's ideas with the addition of various collectible upgrades and special routes, feels more like CV1 than CV2.
SotN feels like an attempt to realize the ambition of CV2 rather than expand upon CV3, whereas Rondo feels like an expansion of CV3 what with its demarcated stages. Rondo allowed backtracking with a given stage, but once you cleared a stage, you were warped into the next stage and no return to the previous stage was possible.
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|  "Re(9):RE: Dracula XX super-gauntlet" , posted Fri 14 Sep 06:15
quote:
Dracula XX: "It's better than GBA's Concerto/Harmony." 
Undead legions: there are 53 days left till Halloween to find something nice to say about Dracula XX. I know one of you loves it!
Unless there's another, it's me, I confess to the heresy! I'm the sort of semi-human ghoul who was saddened when its US 3DS release was delayed and who gleefully signed in to the store to buy it once it was actually released!
And I like plenty about it, from the excellent (but not necessarily better) arrangement of the music from Rondo, to the great looking burning town stage, to the way the Rondo sprites look as reinterpreted for the SNES. I've mentioned it on a similar thread for every year since time immemorial that I think we'd have nowhere near the hate we have in general for XX if it hadn't been for its superior-but-inaccesible-to-westerners-in-the-90's PC Engine version, AKA many peoples' best Castlevania.
Anyway, it's far from the best Castlevania (I'm not the kind of monster who would make such a claim) in that it's punishingly, unreasonably hard, it removed the branching elements of Rondo, and it suffers from some lousy boss designs, but it's undeserving of much of the hate it gets.
You have to carefully reproduce the world of "Castlevania" in the solemn atmosphere.
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| | "Re(10):RE: Dracula XX super-gauntlet" , posted Fri 14 Sep 11:36
quote:
Dracula XX: "It's better than GBA's Concerto/Harmony."
Undead legions: there are 53 days left till Halloween to find something nice to say about Dracula XX. I know one of you loves it!
Unless there's another, it's me, I confess to the heresy! I'm the sort of semi-human ghoul who was saddened when its US 3DS release was delayed and who gleefully signed in to the store to buy it once it was actually released!
And I like plenty about it, from the excellent (but not necessarily better) arrangement of the music from Rondo, to the great looking burning town stage, to the way the Rondo sprites look as reinterpreted for the SNES. I've mentioned it on a similar thread for every year since time immemorial that I think we'd have nowhere near the hate we have in general for XX if it hadn't been for its superior-but-inaccesible-to-westerners-in-the-90's PC Engine version, AKA many peoples' best Castlevania.
Anyway, it's far from the best Castlevania (I'm not the kind of monster who would make such a claim) in that it's punishingly, unreasonably hard, it removed the branching elements of Rondo, and it suffers from some lousy boss designs, but it's undeserving of much of the hate it gets.
"It's not TERRIBLE, it's just not as bad as anybody says it is" as the prevailing sentiment we have for it still feels like damning it (UNTO HELL!) with faint praise, though!
It's like when I see this one game that is often on sale in the 3ds/switch eshop that proudly displays "7.5/10" on its product page!
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(10):RE: Dracula XX super-gauntlet" , posted Sat 15 Sep 02:29:
quote:
I think we'd have nowhere near the hate we have in general for XX if it hadn't been for its superior-but-inaccesible-to-westerners-in-the-90's PC Engine version, AKA many peoples' best Castlevania.
Have at you! Actually, I'm really glad to see some kind (but reasonable) words with which we can consider poor Dracula XX. The big question, like with all those terrible Square ports of its 16-bit RPGs, is whether the game is any good when you ignore Rondo. Karasu reminds us that it is, at least musically.
On the other hand, I can offer an alternate experience as someone who played the series completely out of order (Nocturne/Symphony, "IV," Dracula XX, Vampire Killer/Bloodlines, X68000 Chronicles, Rondo, GBA series, I, "III") because I didn't get the American B-movies aesthetic of the original entries and required Nocturne's gothic elegance to draw me in. I didn't have Rondo to compare Dracula XX to at the time, but I do remember being disappointed by how poorly Richter controlled compared to 16-bit Simon and how infuriating I found his lack of an invincibility window after getting hit, leading to another hit (invariably into a pit).
Maybe Dracula XX's biggest misfortune was that it had the same Rondo Richter physics for the wrong game! In Rondo, Richter's limited moveset is carefully arranged to allow him to interact precisely with his enemies and environment: the backflip actually will save you, and the ability to moonwalk backwards after holding the attack button makes it easier to fight Axe Knights, as I recall. I don't recall any of this working with Dracula XX's cruel enemy placement, again bringing me back to the Mario 2/USA comparison (spaces rearranged to be harder, but not in a good or thoughtful way).
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Sat 15 Sep 04:16] |
| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Unspeakable horrors: Dracula XXtasy" , posted Thu 11 Oct 06:09
My copy of PCE Dracula X just arrived, but since it’s still early for Halloween fun and I am a crazed maniac/professional vampire killer, I naturally decided to first inflict SFC Dracula XX on myself again instead to see if it's as miserable as I remembered. Result: what a terrible night to have a curse!
The first thing I noticed is how it was made on the cheap. The wonderful new opening music cannot make up for the absence of Rondo’s opening stage coach ride, which was thrilling yet not resource-intensive. But even if we judge it on non-Rondo terms, the start of XX still lacks the artistry seen in the perfect musical-graphical atmosphere of Simon’s break-in from SFC Dracula/"IV," XX's immediate predecessor. Actually, there is not a single set piece in this game. Anyway, “IV” has a slightly dull palette, but XX has this weird flatness and lack of detail that reminds me of a DOS game. After the good flame effects on the first screen of stage 1, everything turns ugly quickly. This is a 1995 game, people!
And here’s where issues with design and graphics meet: Dracula XX is a weird hodgepodge of levels built more around inflicting maximum suffering on Richter than any identifiable geography for each stage. Yeah, it sucks that Rondo's ghost ship and waterfall are gone, but the problem is more basic: while Pre-Metroidvania games never had the grand scale of Mario, they did have cohesive architecture. Look at Jeremy Parish’s classic “anatomy of a game” for the very first Dracula, where the later stages are architecturally clever and even show the final stage in the background. In Dracula XX, you never know where the hell Richter is. Stage 6 starts out in a featureless cave before depositing you in…the iconic clock tower?!
Of course, what people really never liked about XX is not just that it isn’t Rondo, but the cruelty of its design. First: I swear on Undead Fred’s ghost that I am not a lamer. I have beaten the X68000 game on non-arrange mode and welcome Medusa heads above pits. But we don’t even need to go to the infamous last boss to know something’s up: look how even in stage 1, they are forcing you to make the kind of “extended jumps” that aren’t required until world 8-1 of Mario 1...you know, the ones where you have to know to stand halfway in mid-air in order to clear a gap. Actually, Dracula XX is more like an entire game of that pipe in world 8-4 of Mario 2/“Lost Levels” where you have to walk into space and bend physics. Anyway, in stage 1, I noticed how they punish attempts to experiment with killing the behemoth more than in Rondo: you’ll probably get gored and then propelled straight into the numerous pits that Dracula XX loves so much.
I’m also convinced that the invincibility window is about half a second less than Rondo or any other Dracula game, so that you’re almost guaranteed to get double-hit by mermen and especially by the hated purple spear guards who frequently guard stairs now. Speaking of which, Rondo’s sense of one-on-one duels with moonwalk escapes sort of vanishes when Dracula XX is crawling with these spear guards who somehow take five (!??!) hits to kill and who will rush you down, making large parts of the game about hammering attack and hoping they don’t get to strike back first. Here is an emblematic Dracula XX scene from stage 2 (!!) which combines the lack of invincibility windows with evilly placed spear guards who stab you from the side and above. Hint: you are already dead.
The design-free stage 3 (theme: pain) really brings its Mario 2/mugen philosophy home with areas specifically engineered to take advantage of Richter’s poor moveset rather than presenting an agility challenge. In this scene, Medusas threaten Richter’s clumsy ascent of stairs while a fireball from a newly spawned bone pillar on the right (they can now shoot them in arcs in Dracula XX!) soars towards the back of his head and he cannot attack any of them. Note the spinning platform just to its left for good measure that drops you back down.
Later in stage 3, the mugen-ness of this seven-enemy stack of bone pillars truly reaches amazing proportions that made me laugh out loud, which is pretty dangerous since you’re above pits. Oddly enough, the apex of irrationally brutal design is here, where the pits don't kill you for once if you fall. Instead, you’re banished to stage 4', permanently cutting you off from the regular stage 4 and the good ending, three stages into the game, based on a single mistake. In “IV,” I think there’s like one secret pit that doesn’t kill you but instead takes you to a huge item room together with that great ghost man who mourns his ghost dog if you kill it. That’s...a little more fun!
In conclusion: Dracula XX still feels like a worse game on its own merits than its immediate SFC predecessor, “IV,” let alone Rondo. I may like the proverbial sting of the Belmont whip, but even I have my limits! Karasu's benevolent tolerance truly makes him...the Tragic Prince!
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| | "Re(2):Unspeakable horrors: Dracula XXtasy" , posted Sat 13 Oct 02:52
quote:
purple spear dudes
Hahaha yes, there sure were a lot of those enemies! It's one thing that they seemed like one of the most fully-featured enemies, what with having the ability to poke downwards, twirl their spear, walk backwards and forwards while ostensibly duelling you... but man, there were a lot of them!
The green armored axe knight was often quite obnoxious, too!
I thought the huge bone pillar that was more a bone tower was AWESOME. That was almost certainly one of my favourite things in the game!
Surprisingly, I don't think I felt that annoyed about the sudden shifts of locale. The idea that one level could be fairly disjoint from another in place from another was something I was just used to, even in really great games. Contra 3 occasionally has a fairly clear logical connection between some levels (e.g. motorcycling in the wasteland, followed by a top-down level in a desert, the boss of which is a big organic thing, the next level of which is inside an organic setting), but I don't think I figured that out until years later. I think the idea of each level being an exotic locale was enough, and Dracula's castle is such a weird place in the first place was ok.
That however, doesn't excuse it from having some places that just feel bland. The individual tiles are great, but in some of the great sprite tiled games is that the repetition of the constituent elements doesn't get strongly felt.
Also Dracula X (and XX?) introduced us to the "final attack" from the bosses that they do uniquely upon dying, and I totally died to the werewolf's one. I was so mad! Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon sees EVERY BOSS do this, which to me is the real enduring legacy of Dracula XX.
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(3):Unspeakable horrors: Dracula XXtasy" , posted Sat 13 Oct 16:17
quote:
bone pillar that was more a bone tower
This is an apt description of Dracula XX in general! A serious case of boneitus, or at least a trip to the bone zone.
...actually, to give the game its due and acknowledge Karasu's brave love for it: Dracula XX reminds me of FFVII. It's the worst in the series but still probably more fun than many other similar games. I still think Rusty easily aces out XX and several other Dracula games, though.
quote:
final attacks: the real enduring legacy of Dracula XX.
It's true! While revenge attacks by dying bosses originated with Rondo, including the unexpectedly vicious stage 1' serpent boss and maybe one other, Dracula XX naturally took this unkind mechanic to the extreme and put it everywhere. I have to admit it works given how hateful the game is. Here, even the series' perennial loser, the hapless vampire bat, is kind of hard and gets his own revenge attack. Incredible!
Speaking of the serpent, he's unbearable to fight in Dracula XX, and just like the last boss, he's an unintentional demonstration of the technical problems that lie at the core of the game's psychotic design errors. Since the guy coils around the bridge in "3D" and is really long, in Rondo you're supposed to be able to stand in the gaps where he's not gripping the bridge. But since the SFC hardware isn't good enough to have him create large loops around the bridge or move very fluidly, there's really no way to avoid getting hit. With the last boss, it's even clearer that the reused Rondo assets have been misapplied to level design that's not simply unreasonable, but literally unable to accomodate Richter's controls. All fighting Dracula atop narrow columns above bottomless pits does is highlight how Richter's fixed jumping arc does not match the distance between pillars from most starting positions. Simon from "IV" could handle this.
BUT WAIT! In addition to the revenge attacks, I have to admit there are a few other cool and unexpected ways Dracula XX's legacy endures. This is the first instance where the failure to save Annette results in her being transformed into the vampire Carmilla for Richter to fight. Dracula X Chronicle has her becoming the Succubus boss, and Nocturne/Symphony has unused audio on the disc for a cut scene where Alucard fights an evil Maria after she's been possessed by Shaft.
Dracula X Chronicle also took inspiration from Dracula XX's decision to make stage 5' a water ruin housing the relocated serpent boss, as opposed to Rondo's mysterious stage 5' docks which are mostly reused graphics with no boss. In Chronicle, stage 5' is now a water ruin like XX and features a new serpent-like hydra boss. That's kind of cool!
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| | "Re(6):Unspeakable horrors: Dracula XXtasy" , posted Thu 18 Oct 06:32
quote:
I draw the links at Haunted Castle though! I’m not a monster!
Oh my... This totally sends me back to the 90s. One day I went to my usual arcade just to find out they had a new coin-op, no less than "Haunted Castle"!!! Imagine the thrill! I had conscientiously finished NES Castlevania and candidly thought ... mmmh, I know the game, this coinop will be a nice way for me to be playing a good 30s on one credit héhé, all the while impressing the blokes around who didn't own a NES (and only owned a Commodore/or Amstrad! so big in France, Amstrad). I thought I might just as well make ADVANTAGE of my NES-castlevania lore to shine at the arcade!! Oh my (I know, I should use another idiom now), how was I deceived... The rest is well documented: Haunted Castle is nothing but a cash cow, let it burn in hell.
Haunted Castle is really impressive in how much it bungles!
The visuals that stick out to me among many wtfs:
Simon has much more detail and more animation frames and even walks around with a slightly different pose where his arm is pulled back and on the whip, and yet all of his animation is WAY MORE AWKWARD than in the original! His hunch looks awful, hit gait is utterly bizarre. It's clearly based off the original sprites, but it messes it up so weirdly! The new axe knight is now lanky rather than tank-like!
There is virtually no meaningful platforming in the game! Not only that, there are places where there are no platform tiles (e.g. after just going up some stairs, the animation of which is super terrible because Simon just pops up onto each big huge stair tile!), and I thought "I'm going to fall and die!" but instead you just walk along and it's like that third Indiana Jones movie where there's an invisible bridge and you're fine.
It somehow has a good version of Bloody Tears, though!
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(3): Shaft is the true Count Dracula" , posted Sat 27 Oct 07:02:
While only a madman (not ours) would put a gem like "IV" so far down behind the (still quite good) X68000 version and a B+ entry like Vampire Killer/Bloodlines, the propagator of the Metroidvania moniker still deserves respect for a thoughtful list! I like his reference to the "entire hateful philosophy" that undergirds Dracula XX.
Speaking of the PS4 Dracula X set, the people doing the trophies appear to be much cleverer than the main translators, and are also still referencing the original translation. I looled at "Nothing But Annette," and thank god the designers know that only criminals fail to jump to catch the magic orb after beating a boss. (ANTI-DRACULA XX SIDENOTE: when you catch an orb in this game, you don't freeze midair so you can admire your backflip (which of course you did), but instead get whisked straight into the password menu. Weak!)
Also: a modest proposal: SHAFT IS THE TRUE LORD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE. This seemingly incidental character is actually much more powerful than the vampire he keeps resurrecting: by my count, in a five-year span, he is killed three times (twice in Rondo, once in Nocturne) and somehow revives twice, at least one of these times entirely on his own, whereas old Vlad only has to be killed twice and is revived thanks to Shaft both times!
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Sat 27 Oct 07:06] |
| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "the great Dracula X picture show" , posted Sat 10 Nov 15:18
Hi, my name is Maou and I'm here to tell you the Good Word about Rondo of Blood. Or specifically, about a recent playthrough in honor of Halloween, the release of the Dracula X PS4 collection, or Day of the Dead. I assume all good Cafe undead have undertaken similar dark rituals this year~~~~~?
You all know how Rondo's greatest joys are apparent right away: the great set pieces and music, and the way that Richter's moveset is configured precisely for his environments here, in contrast to the Mugen-ish stages of Dracula XX that seek to torment him. So instead I paid attention this time to all the wonderful little incidental details that led straight to the same traits in the Metroidvania games. The pictures below are kind of sucky and small, but I just don't care!
So obviously, the little addition of having Richter map out his plan of attack like a boss in the opening sets the stage for so much excitement throughout the game, and I'll always love how Death pursues you on the coach ride into town and laughs like a freak. But this is also where Rondo starts to build on the sense of geographical space that's been present in the best entries, since the very beginning: you can see Dracula's castle in the distance as Death flees and Richter approaches stage 1, and closer still at the end of it. I love the attention to detail with Richter's horses staying there when you pull into town.
Even more impressive is how Rondo works to keep the atmopshere and geography even when the map forks into main and sub-routes. If you detour out of town on stage 1, you still see the castle, slightly further away now. And while stage 2 has that great approach by the werewolf at night once you're inside the castle, the alternate stage 2' isn't night yet but still darkening as you approach, so that if you re-route back to the main stage 2, the sky is different now! It also rules that if you look realllly hard, you can see the behemoth's eyes following you outside on the left at the stage 2 castle gate before he breaks in to chase you later. (B-B-BONUS: years later, I only just learned about the small detail of the glorious Key Punch technique! You can actually kill him with just five hits of the seemingly powerless key to Maria's prison.)
All the lovely environmental details really come to life pre-Metroidvania in Rondo. It's cool how the main route basically goes through main buildings while the lower route takes a detour through a series of swampy, watery levels. I like how the first appearance of the Bible sub-weapon is in the stage 3 chapel. I dig the secret corridor where (harmless) moths first swarm around lamps, then the treasure that comes out of the lamps, then you if you take the treasure. I love this poor skeleton who's sitting in a chair and who falls into dust if you bump into him or walk by. I like how the minotaur's room has a Greek statue you can climb, probably of Poseidon, who provided the bull that produced the mythical minotaur. I like how after eagles carrying treasure chests help you during the exciting ride down a waterfall in stage 4', a final eagle drops a warning sign by the abyss with a pun that means both "death is approaching" and "valley of death."
...though I guess that most of all, I like that Maria's inclusion allows for the fight with Carmilla to re-enact the erotic lesbian vampirism of the original novel, and that steamrolling poor Dracula with Maria rewards/punishes you with a truly moronic ending. Obviously, this is the only true, canonical ending allowed.
quote:
He's a complicated man, but no one understands him but his woman.
Ha, "ya damn right!" I hear that the Netflix Dracula is also a complicated man who spends most of his time moping around while his monsters argue a lot.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(3):the great Dracula X picture show" , posted Fri 16 Nov 07:52
At last! Like deism's divine clockmaker, you set this magnificent thread into motion but then vanished, so I was thinking about how to seek you out to see if you'd since played the two Dracula Xs (Rondo and Nocturne/Symphony), your thoughts on other games, etc.
Don't worry a bit about the video's spoilers---I knew there was a reverse castle long before I ever played, and I just didn't care. As long as you aren't holding a map or watching this video in realtime, you'll feel a great sense of exploration and get lost regardless. Plus, half of the joy is in the atmosphere, all the little incidental details (just like Rondo above), and getting strong enough to explore. The scale is so much greater than the handheld ones...more rooms, more majestic music, and more fun little throwaway joke encounters, items, and details.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| | "Re(2):Oh What a terrible night" , posted Tue 25 Jun 07:11
quote:
Speaking of bootleg Castlevania games, has anyone tried Bloodstained yet?
It is Symphony of the Night with the serial numbers filed off, which is pretty much exactly what backers wanted. Ritual of the Night is not a blind, soulless copy. It isn't a Mighty Number 9 situation, either. It is a decent to solid title. Not quite as polished as what we might have seen under Konami's watch, but the whole reason this went to independent Kickstarter is because Konami wasn't interested anymore.
It certainly helped that the various people responsible seemed to learn from the mistakes of others, as well as paid attention to at least some of the criticism. And to spend extra time and money to fix issues (like replacing Inti Creates with DICO or bringing in WayForward to overhaul the graphics). I think it was also a good idea that they were willing to take the potential criticism of pushing the stretch goals off as "future free DLC" in order to focus on finishing the core game.
At this point, I'm more interested in where Igarashi goes from here. Will he head a sequel? If he does, will it be 2D or 3D? (They've now learned that 3D graphics are not the money saving deal that they initially believed. At the same time, they've now got a game's worth of 3D work to recycle and build upon.) Or did this release scratch Igarashi's itch?
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| PSN: entropytempts
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| "Re(2):Oh What a terrible night" , posted Tue 25 Jun 07:48
quote:
Speaking of bootleg Castlevania games, has anyone tried Bloodstained yet?
Yes! Bloodstained was the first crowdsourced project I ever backed, and that $60 was a much greater sacrifice those many years ago. To say that I have a lot of expectations riding on this is an understatement. A number of real life factors came together to prevent me from playing most of this week, but this weekend I crammed in 50 hours. I'll give my initial thoughts now and a more proper review later.
If it matters, I'm playing the Steam version using Cinematic (top) settings in 3840 x 2160.
- It looks and sounds great. Like really great. 99% of the time animation is smooth, and although I have noticed the odd frame drop here or there, that's likely due to my cranking the sliders. The tunes have the classic spirit to them for sure. I don't know if they're mechanically as interesting as the old stuff, but take that with 30 years of bias. The labels are gone but you'll traverse burning towns and mow down zombies and traverse a marble entrance hall and meet a fabulous vampire in the library.
- There's absolutely tons to kill, grind, farm, craft, discover, and do - the variety is staggering. Iga's bizarre chair fetish strikes again, this time even manifesting as a conjure shard (nee "bullet soul"). The map is huge and backtrack-y as it should be. I decided before launch that I wanted to go in blind and play this game on "instincts" and it's been mostly rewarding. At first I started my file by cranking my Luck stat at any expense and sanitizing the first area from top to bottom, collecting every shard, item, weapon and quest possible. By the end of the third area I decided that this wasn't sustainable if I wanted to beat the game in a week or so, and to put the rest of the collectathon off until new game+. But there are absolutely tons of different weapons and most have a unique special attack to master (which unlocks the attack for use with other weapons of the same type) or otherwise unique attribute (like certain swords and whips that you can keep holding the button to delay).
- The difficulty .... well, this one might be my own fault. I started in Hard mode as that felt the perfect medium between my vet status and learning whatever new elements could be thrown in. Since I had already run through this area twice in the last few years (once in the sneak preview and once in the backer beta), I was pleasantly surprised to find that the starting area included many extra mob formations that weren't present before. However, due to my extreme prejudice I mentioned above, I went from feeling great about staying slightly ahead of a difficult curve to monstrously overpowered somewhere around 10 hours in. Then my methodical questing unlocked a "Crissaegrim / Valmanway" at about 15 hours. I have absolutely ROFLstomped every boss I've encountered with no whim or worry about their patterns or environments, and that's a darn shame for a FIRST run. Here's hoping that Boss Rush or a higher difficulty will give me the rush I crave.
- Speaking of environments, it's obvious that Iga's team struggled a bit with doing this all in 3d. I love games where the stage is 3d and you just meander through it on a linear 2d plane (like Strider 2) and several areas like the castle entrance and tower area tickle that fancy. However, there's some serious issues with the collision on item drops. You lose one here or there, oh well, chalk it up to the game. But in a game where collecting is everything, it is really not cool that I should lose roughly 25% of my drops to the ravenous maw of the Z axis, staring hopelessly at MY! loot sack, hoping some random environmental detail will dislodge it back into my plane, until it dissolves before my eyes. (This may be a case of "it's a feature, not a bug" as you can grind up a shard midway through the game that can autocollect items within a certain radius, and this seems to act as a proper sphere and not just the circular overlay it's presented as.)
- I love how integrated the crafting systems are tied back into the gameplay. There's a cooking system, which at face value would be tacked on. But you get a bonus to certain stats - PERMANENTLY - the first time you consume a new cuisine, whether you craft or farm it, giving me purpose to the usually personal and mundane act of maddeningly scouring courtyards for soy sauce. Although once I put together that I could decraft the food drops back into components and get apples a bit early to boost my mana regen, the difficulty took another dive.
I've already lost 30 minutes at work over this so I'll wrap by saying this may look like a bitch list, but it's overall a beautiful and fun game, that I can't wait to eventually explore online with friends in coop, and maybe I'll redeem the bosses in the promised Boss Revenge mode. If you're an early adopter, be prepared to live with a few bugs, but it's absolutely worth the price of admission and definitely scratches the itch.
"Hai ... Shindekudasai?"
Anyone still playing Phantasy Star Online 2?
Ship: 2
ID: entropytempts
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| PSN: entropytempts
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| "Re(4):Oh What a bloodstained night" , posted Wed 26 Jun 07:45
I suppose you could always choose not to use it. But once you've had a taste...
Because in hindsight last post seemed super negative, here's some cool stuff:
- back in the beta, there was an issue where the controls were a bit "fuzzy" and would sometimes prevent you from doing simple cancels like jump attack > land cancel stand attack > backdash cancel stand attack consistently. That has been completely fixed and mobility is perfect. The new lazy fast travel technique is the slide (RIP backdash). I've noticed you can interrupt the backdash animation with a down input but I don't have the dex to do this over and over and exploit for anything. After unlocking double jump / dive kick, you can clear incredible amounts of ground with the dive kick > slide.
- Familiars are fun! Although I was spoiled by the first one I picked up (think heatseeking medusa heads) I eventually got around to the others. Buer can be used as a portable platform to dive kick off from. The fairy familiar can perch on your shoulder and sing a song. I completely ignored the Book until I realized he can buff you, but you can then quick switch to a more damaging loadout and retain the buff.
- You can simultaneously cast a "Soul Steal", heal over time spell, and a passive regen effect to
- passive shards such as INT up or Resist Petrification work just as they did back in castlevania (equip shard, get effect). However now you have the ability to sink in a bunch of resources to grind your shard into a global, permanent effect while you go on to equip and grind your next passive. fantastic!
- You can be Shovel Knight, kind of
"Hai ... Shindekudasai?"
Anyone still playing Phantasy Star Online 2?
Ship: 2
ID: entropytempts
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Finally, a Dracula clone (besides Rusty) that's actually useful. 
