I just found out that Castlevania Symphony of the Night was the first game in that series to have the branching exploration and powerup-gated areas that came to be known as Metroidvania. All the Castlevania games before it were just action sidescrollers with not even a whole lot of complexity. Moreover, Symphony of the Night came out three years after Super Metroid. So really the whole genre should be called Metroidlike. Castlevania didn't really do anything to define it, just like Souls is the only one who spawned its genre
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>So really the whole genre should be called Metroidlike
You are correct. But SotN was really good so it's ok if the name is shared.
fpbp. As a metroidgay I still like SotN and I think it deserves to stay.
SotN was also inspired by Zelda and not Metroid so the connection is weak.
>SotN was also inspired by Zelda and not Metroid so the connection is weak.
Kek
Please stop trying to bust my balls with lies further than the truth already stands. Metroid doesn't need trampled any more.
>get new item
>can check out a few new spots on the map
>either locate or re-locate those spots and use your new item
>repeat
SOTN replaced Castlevania's old progression with item gating.
Item gating is a core element of Zelda. Or it was, until BOTW came along. Don't fall for the gaslighting.
>make top-down game where you explore an overworld to find dungeons
>yes, my game was inspired by Halo, thanks
Zelda II, to be precise. Which is also not too unlike a really crude version of the future Metroidvania formula.
Zeltroidlike then? Metrolda?
Metroid is just a natural evolution of sidescrolling Zelda frankly
>souls spawn it’s genre
Anon the same dev made Kings Field that made Demon Souls. Castlevania 64 also exists.
The RPG-like elements present in SotN are a part of it that got carried into the Metroidvania genre title though
eh, i'd say they're optional. enough to be called "rpg-like elements" separetely.
Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest was also a "branching path" game. Technically it is Castlevania 2 and Metroid that make this genre the "Metroidvania" genre
Choosing to go up or down doesn't a Metroid game make. Not even close
its called metroidvania because symphony of the night was one of the major games that made the style popular. the other being super metroid
the whole genre should be called metroidlike because modern metroidvanias are far more metroid than vania
The most notable example is probably hollow knight
>extremely expansive world with branching routes and route variety, probably best in the genre
>only charms, no alternate weapons whatsoever
worth mentioning plenty others like ori 1, blasphemous
actually they can't be called Metroidlikes, since ZX Spectrum game Jet Set Willy did it first
they are Willylikes
Sotn is overrated trash and people only praise it because they think it invented the genre. The rpg elements are crap and metroid did everything else better.
I remember an old C64 game called montezumas revenge, and many NES games such as dr chaos, legacy of the wizard, and of course metroid, that had fully branching, open ended platforming gameplay
super metroids claim to fame is that it built upon the decade-old nostalgia memory of metroid 1, and was also almost perfectly designed to allow you to explore freely while also holding your hand just enough to keep you on track without a player guide
the limitation on game design was always memory, storage space, and computer/console capability
more tools led to developers doing the things they had thought of decades before
Metroidvania started out as a term defining the Castlevania games that had a Metroid-like progression system.
It later went on to be taken as a general term for all exploratory platformers with some degree of item gating.
It's hard to say exactly why this shift occurred, but personally, I think it has to do with ordering.
If it were Metroid and then a slew of imitators, then it'd just be "Metroidlike". But since we had time to go from Metroid games to Metroid-like Castlevania games before the boom, Castlevania became part of the genre's "canon".
It was probably misused by morons and popularized because it has a ring to it for people that don't know what the frick they're talking about and played either game.
Even back then when metroidvania was used to differentiate between the arcade castlevanias to sotn and their spiritual successors I thought metroidvania was an insult to metroid. I've always despised that term and always will.
>metroidvania was an insult to metroid
and why exactly is that? Is there some element of Metroid you feel is missing from SOTN, or is it some part of SOTN that you think just doesn't work well with the Metroid portion?
of all the things they borrow from metroid, there's not a single thing they do better
and the only thing they are to stand out, are the rpg elements which is a weak adition
I just don't like these games, and I've beaten sotn, circle of the moon, dawn of sorrow and portrait of ruin
I still have to give a chance to aria of sorrow which is beloved by some to be the best one
They don't really have to do better to be overall fairly worthwhile games made by people who genuinely seem to understand game design.
OP here, I just beat Aria of Sorrow today which spawned my research and this thread. It's genuinely great, the snappy Zero Mission equivalent to normally sluggish and monotonous castlevania. SOTN was good too but not even close to Aria
Now that you've learned the truth it's time to play the Classicvanias and realize how much better they are on average.
That’s not true though. Castlevania 2 Simon’s Quest and Castlevania for MSX both have exploration style gameplay. Also the producer of SotN says Zelda was his main inspiration.
Exploration isn't what makes Metroid different, it's how you explore and item-gating specifically, with the power creep into godhood that logically follows toward the end of the game.
exploration is about 50% of the metroid formula. the next 25% is item collection and backtracking because of it, the remainder is a various range consisting of space theme, ayylmaos, storyline, and mainly how you get so fricking powerful in every game that toward the end most enemies can't really do jack shit to you unless it's a boss
A PlayStation 1 game came out after a Super Nintendo game? MIND BLOWN
Demon Souls. Say it's name. SAY IT
yeah it should be metroidlike, frickin castlevania was just action. i was playing the original a few weeks ago, it was literally just a mario clone with some hidden items in walls. completely linear, level-by-level, nothing remotely exploration based about it.
>b-but they released the same year!!!!!
don't give a frick. metroidvania as a term sucks. shantroid makes more sense at this rate, at least shantae was open world and had a decent powerup system. basically just metroid but middle east (?) with hot brown chick instead of armor wench
I say we rename the genre to Metroidium
all those moronic reasons stated as to why metroidvanias are called that way.
no, the only correct answer is that castlevania fans needed a term to separate between castlevania games in the style of pre SotN and games in the style of SotN. and because SotN was very similar to metroid it was called metroidvania.
so you have castlevanias which are the classic action sidescrollers and metroidvanias, which play similar to symphony of the night, which itself plays similar to metroid as a whole.
And what do you think of the reasoning for why the term metroidvania broadened presented in
>I just found out that Castlevania Symphony of the Night was the first game in that series to have the branching exploration and powerup-gated areas that came to be known as Metroidvania
Go back
To where, Black person? You've never even played a Metroid game.
>redditfrog
>cancerjak
have a nice day
SotN is why RPG progression and gearing are part of the genre, if anything modern Metroidvanias that stick to progression-based upgrades exclusively should just be Metroidlikes while the Metroidvania label is kept for ARPGs with that formatting.
That said, how in the frick were you not aware of Classicvanias? The original game, III, IV, Bloodlines, & Rondo are excellent games. They even made a couple of them after SotN changed the series, like The Adventure ReBirth.
Zelda focused more on exploration than Metroid.
So did Simon’s Quest. Castlevania stayed more linear for a while because Simon’s Quest sucked balls.
The -vania comes from fricking shitty RPG elements shoehorned in for zero reason.
Boy I sure do love random drops and stats!
How is Ori and the Will of the Wisps? I’m churning through my backlog, and I may do it next
As I came to understand it, Metroidvania was just used as something to differentiate Classicvania from the new direction SotN was going with. It was later adapted to fit the genre as a whole but a particular subset of people took it to mean that SotN's differences such as leveling and non essential weapons/equipment somehow were essential to it being a Metroidvania, effectively making Metroid games not Metroidvanias.
I frankly find the whole debate to be stupid just as is the case with Roguelikes and Roguelites so I just have decided to call the genre Hollowlikes because it's frankly what these people deserve for not coming up with a proper name for the genre.
>All the Castlevania games before it were just action sidescrollers with not even a whole lot of complexity.
That's actually not true. Simon's Quest could be considered proto-SotN.