Just beat Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, are there any more "explorative" titles in the series I should play through?
I know Portrait of Ruin is one but I just want a definitive list of good ones to check out before I get to it.
Just beat Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, are there any more "explorative" titles in the series I should play through?
literally every CV game after sotn
Portrait of Ruin sucks dick
they're all good tbh, depending on what you like one or the other will probably be your favorite
My favorites are Aria and Dawn and I recommend them first
Aria of Sorrow is the safe bet since it's the most well liked after Symphony. Dawn of Sorrow is the direct sequel to Aria so that one is probably next
Those are the ones with Soma Cruz, right? I'll probably play those ones then.
it leans more into generic anime shit, including giving you a gun. The sigils were cool though. i recommend the rondo of blood thing for psp, has classic castlevania games with a fresh coat of paint more similar to sotn, also includes sotn that you have to unlock
aria
ecclessia
maaaaaaaybe dawn
the rest are gay
truth is none of the search action castlevania have the scale, production value and quality of SOTN so they all suck. you have to come to terms with the fact that SOTN was once in a lifetime miracle game which is never going to happen again.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is good
It's okay but doesn't really hold up to the best Castlevania entries.
No. Don't bother. That's the best one. The others are really low budget, asset flips with far weaker level design and music.
Everyone is going to say "aria" but i played it recently and it's so piss-easy that it's just boring, and it looks like garbage and the music is bad.
This is bait. It's absolutely awful.
Aria is harder than SoTN and has some pretty tough boss fights. Its level design is also not 50% the same castle but upside down.
Ender lilies can give SotN a run for its money.
But if you want specifically a castlevania game then all the DS and GBA castlevania games are of the same style.
Ender lilies is that good?
The problem is that future Castlevania console releases were expected to be 3D and so were shit because they never really figured it out. Future SOTN-style games got relegated to handhelds, where they ended up having less depth and scale.
Would still recommend Aria->Dawn though. You could also play Harmony of Dissonance if you want a more generic experience.
play Castlevania I II and III. they're the best
i really like the fast combat, build variety, secret weapons, soundtrack and graphics of SOTN but never played any of the newer games because i think they won't be able to top it, am i wrong? should i play them?
the only real problem with SOTN is how easy the game is, also i don't even care that much about it being a metroidvania, but it's good
enemy variety is also a great aspect of SOTN
Literally every single after sotn is better than it in most of those aspects.
They're all great games except harmony.
Casuals and normalgays always ignored those games because of handheld bias.
thanks, i'm gonna play them
i don't have a bias against handheld games, i was just burnt out on castlevania
he's very wrong. DoS especially sucks and is awful. Aria is good, portrait is okay, ecclesia is very divisive. none of them can be said to be better than SOTN (especially in terms of graphics, soundtrack as you have asked). keep your expectations in check if you are planning to try them out.
SoTN suffers from a pathetic difficulty curve, severe inventory bloat, a near useless shop system, unnecessary fighting game inputs for special attacks, dogshit weapon balance, weapons that feel very samey, dogshit transformations and an underwhelming second half. It looks and sounds great but the other games have much better gameplay.
>unnecessary fighting game inputs for special attacks
Are you disabled? Like some kind of fine motor skill impairment?
It works for fighting games because you're always facing the opponent. It doesn't belong in a platformer.
God have mercy. So this is why vampire survivors exists.
DoS does not suck you moron. Its only crime is the abyssmal change to a generic anime style for character portraits. This does nto affect the gameplay however. And no game featuring my boy Gergoth could ever be considered bad.
Also what did he do to derseve his fate?
Dawn sucks because of soul grinding and weapon crafting. It's a downgrade over AoS in every way but gameplay most of all.
I like harmony, the vibe is great and the castle is interesting but it's far too easy and the music is annoying
Circle of the moon however kicks fricking ass
>fast combat
>build variety
AoS is a big step up from SotN in these regards.
One thing people don't mention about AoS is that it made backdash cancelling a thing. Or did Harmony do that first? I don't remember. Anyway it's great.
It also took the varied items/gimmicks from SotN and streamlined them all into the same neat package. SotN's random drops were huge and contained some of the coolest abilities in the game - Aria went all in on that aspect with the Soul System. Now EVERY single enemy drops a unique Soul. A soul could be a passive that gives you more MP or gives you life drain, it could be a wacky damaging spell, or it could even be a familiar. It's such a big refinement and natural conclusion to what SotN was already getting at.
>backdash cancelling
To specify, I don't mean cancelling backdashes with blocking like in SotN. I mean a backdash in AoS will actually cancels your current attack animation. The backdash itself can't be cancelled. It creates a really nice rhythm to the combat.
that sounds great, i really liked how you could cancel many animations in SOTN
>AoS is a big step up from SotN in these regards
Its all so tiresome.
SotN has hearts and mana. You've got special attacks, transformations, spells, arbitrary unlocked abilities. familiars. Way more item crashes. And you have access to all of that at once- you use your entire toolkit as the situation demands.
Most of those technically exist as a soul in AoS, but since its all just part of the soul mechanic you never actually get to use any of it because you have two active souls equipped at a time and one mana bar that you just dump into your warg active soul and then wait for it to recharge.
It fricking sucks.
Three slots are fine. The problem is that some souls just consume too much mana and the MP regeneration is too slow.
SotN showers you in bullshit but only 1% of it is actually worth using. Grinding for hearts is miserable so subweapons are almost never worth using. The only time where subweapons come into play is when you spam all of them to cheese bosses, but that isn't satisfying either. The entire mechanic is basically invalidated because of the inherent inconvenience and shitty balancing. AoS makes it so hearts feed into your MP, and since everything costs MP, you're guaranteed to use it at some point. Every little bit helps.
>but only 1% of it is actually worth using
Well thats obviously not true.
>N-NUH UH
SotN has notoriously shitty balancing and useless abilities. Who the frick used bombs and throwing stars in their playthrough? The answer is nobody except the 0.1% of players that were autistic enough to grind for Duplicator.
Play them in order of release, first play the GBA ones then the DS ones.
you didn't beat it you just thought you did now follow a guide and collect very specific items to turn the map upside down
Nah Reverse Castle was frickin' great, I got 197%.
Just play the GBA and DS ones, plenty of exploration
OP the list is this
>SotN
>Harmony of Dissonance
>Circle of the Moon
>Aria of Sorrow
>Portrait of Ruin
>Bloodstained: ROTN
Forgot Curse of Darkness which is also styled like an Igavannia
in terms of quality:
AoS > PoR > SotN > CotM > DoS > OoE > HoD
Is Harmony of Despair even playable still? I remember getting it a few years after it released and the game just seemed weird, I played online and there was only one other person online and it was some guy in Japan playing a character I had never seen before and he speedran the level while I had no idea what to do.
no one’s said it yet - Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is a very good SotN ripoff
Ecclesia is the only one that I like more than SotN because it doesn't feel like a SotN lite.
If your looking at metroidvanias only Aria and Dawn are must plays. Do them in order. Eccelsia is very underated. Its short but unlike every other one you dont become overpowered halfway through and it remains very challenging the whole time.
Aria of Sorrow is a better version of this type of game. Dawn of Sorrow is less good but still enjoyable. Portrait of Ruin is solid but the level design is kinda of ass.
Bit too lazy to make another thread so I'll just piggyback here.
Does anyone else feel like "Metroidvania" is 98% castlevania games and 2% metroid games? I rarely ever try a game in the genre that I enjoy like I do Metroid.
Hollow Knight was supposed to be this godsend, but I got bored about 8 hours in and dropped it.
All Castlevania games but the ones in 3D are good or great, LoS games aren't Castlevania games
Holow Knight is boring because the OST and artstyle are boring, there has never been a game in history that is great without an OST that is at least good
Just play Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
I feel like once again i should remind the homosexuals arguingnin this thread that you can like more than one game. Just because AoS or SotN is your favorite doesnt mean all the other gsmes are shit.
t.
I care deeply for this topic. For once you shit flinging homos should talk about things you like about these games rather than look for reasons the ones your not picking are all actually shit.
No get stuffed. The move from actual videogames to "streamlined" handheld titles that overstressed japanese salarymen can play on their way home from their horrible job KILLED a good series.
We could have gotten a Curse of Darkness 2 instead we got portrait of ruin and order of ecclesia AND THEN THE SERIES DIED.
Instead of thousands of dark souls clones we could have ended up with thousands of curse of darkness clones.
YOU TOOK THIS FROM ME@!!!!!
Anon I don't want to shit on what seems to be your favorite game, but Curse of Darkness much like Lament sucked dick.
YOU sucked dick. And you probably still do as well.
nta and dont care about castlevania but Curse of Darkness was fun
>play some random kings field indie clone
>Robert Belgrade as the narrator and his voice still sounds as kino and as recognizable as ever
How does he do it?
Just play all of them, moron
they're all worth a play. even harmony (of dissonance, not despair. moronic that they did that) is worth a play despite being probably the worst one.
aria and dawn are the most sotn like. circle is pretty challenging unless you abuse the card system. portrait has these mini stages that change up the style a lot. order has the most interesting magic system and combines classicvania stages with sotn like ones. level complexity takes a hit though. best artstyle also.
Harmony of despair was cool. I enjoyed playing it with Ganker recently.
Portrait also has the only OST that is good enough to be comparable to the one in SoTN, its made by Koshiro after all
Is Castlevania Advance Collection on Steam worth getting? I'm a newbie in the genre, recently finished playing blasphemous 1&2 and the last similar game I've played was a castlevania on SNES some decades ago.
You should learn to emulate instead of being a steamie
>crt shader on DS
>disgusting overlay
You learn to emulate first homosexual.
Use the handheld lcd shader and play it on a single screen.
There's also a fanpatch which removes the shitty stylus parts of the game.
Its not a CRT shader, that's also a PoR romhack, DS games are made to be displayed on a small screen, shut the frick up
Not him but the shader is simply shit
>Its not a CRT shader,
So? It's still shit and not how DS games are meant to look like.
You play them on a 4x native res single screen with the lcd3x shader from retroarch.
>You play them on a 4x native res single screen
Lol, lmao even, most NDS games have a lot of 2D elements too so that's literally a no-no
>Lol, lmao even, most NDS games have a lot of 2D elements too so that's literally a no-no
That is why you increase the native screen 4 times and keep the aspect ratio. And with the lcd shader they look exactly how they are supposed to.
I'd know because I have a fricking DS.
Here is how it looks. The shader is called dot."(whatever render you use).This is at 3 times native.
you need to open the image btw since pre view has compression and also you have to be away from a certain distance from the screen since it's moronic to play these games at your desk.
thank you for answering the question
>I'm a newbie in the genre
Metroidvania is a shit genre term.
Castlevania games are 2d action RPGs unlike most other "metroidvanias"
I'd just emulate the games.
Portrait of Ruin is my favorite, but yes there are more exploration games.
Circle Of The Moon, Aria Of Sorrow, Harmony Of Dissonance and Dawn Of Sorrow is what you want.
Portrait Of Ruin and Order Of Eclessia are hybrids between classic games and exploration ones.
4x screen no shader
I prefer this. Not saying it's more accurate, I just like it.
Sure why not. Can't argue with "I like it".
4x screen no shader menu
Portrait is dog shit
Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow are the only ones worth it