I mean, most of the broken stuff is hidden behind grinding (the meme sword for example) or behind some cryptic puzzle (like the circlet that cheeses galamoth).
And that's if you even have the foresight to equip stuff. This was probably many people's first introduction to RPG mechanics in a regular game, I know several people who like equippped the short sword at the start and then ran with it until they killed Richter.
The game never tells you how to activate the Shield Rod and by the time you get Alucard Shield you are already in the endgame. In fact, the game never tells you that weapons have hidden attacks and most first-time players will probably reach Dracula without even knowing that.
I agree it's a cheap way to have done it, but I disagree otherwise. This game is still the gold standard for me for Metroidvania length, and frankly I want to see at least one someday where I can expect to take 30+ hours to see the entire map.
How is level design in SotN better than in OoE?
The sheer number of copypasted rooms in each area(all the way down to copying shit like chest and item placement!) are OoE's biggest weak point by far.
>The sheer number of copypasted rooms in each area(all the way down to copying shit like chest and item placement!) are OoE's biggest weak point by far.
Anon the fricking inverted castle as a whole is mess to travel and the most lazy point in the game.
>Anon the fricking inverted castle as a whole is mess to travel
git gud at movement. you have all the transformations and gravity boots available before you enter the inverted castle >and the most lazy point in the game
true, the worst part is the lack of music variety
>git gud at movement. you have all the transformations and gravity boots available before you enter the inverted castle
Wow I didn't know that being forced to become bat or mist or change my equipment frequently was your definition of fun
>change my equipment
That anon's a jackass for trying to pass off SoTN's movement as fun, but to be fair, I don't think you actually have to equip the gravity boots to high jump. Still sucks and the bat form shouldn't be so shit in so many respects that slamming into the ceiling is preferable to it.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Shit? The bat smash is wonderful. No metroidvania has had faster and more fluent movement available so early before or since. There's also the drop kick.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>faster
Maybe. >fluent
No, but of course you'd lie about that. Of course you'd also neglect to mention that everything else about bat form besides maybe damaging echo location is garbage, including simple movement in being so slow. >There's also the drop kick
Well you might as well actually say something nice about it so I could maybe give a damn, especially since Alucard seems to have a worse habit than every other protagonist of getting hit in recoil for trying that shit on enemies.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Hey, don't take out you sucking at the game at me. You can always turn into a bat and you can always bat smash and you can always move it up or down. That's fluent. Compare it to the running boots in La Mulana 2 or that godawful shit in Hollow Knight that you can't even control. Or the speed booster in Super Metroid.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>y-y-you just suck at the game!111!!!1
8 months ago
Anonymous
Yes.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, you do suck at making an argument, as expected.
8 months ago
Anonymous
You didn't even bother to counter the post you're replying. Just low effort quoting.
8 months ago
Anonymous
You mean like how he thought it prudent to just dismiss mine by reiterating his nonsense about bat form being fluent and presuming that I and others just suck at the game? I don't need to put in the effort like you guys do, evidently.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>reiterating his nonsense about bat form being fluent and presuming that I and others just suck at the game?
But that isn't nonsense though, he's completely right
8 months ago
Anonymous
He's not. SoTN's bat form is illdesigned garbage that manages to be worst than just about every other games' take on it save for maybe Dawn's, and at least Dawn doesn't make you use it that often. The sad thing about it is that a game like SoTN should make shit like this rad as hell, you can even spit fireballs with this thing, but SoTN doesn't, so you can only spit them forward horizontally when your movement is already so slow.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Bat charge is like the fastest movement in the game though anon.
8 months ago
Anonymous
The game lets you switch between forms smoothly. Assuming you cleared the first castle, pick a large room and play around with the transformations. Wolf can be used to go fast on level ground or get a crazy boost jumping off of a staircase. Bat can chain wing smashes to zip past the shitty bumpy floor rooms in the inverted castle. You can chain gravity jumps and angle them. Sometimes you can switch to and from mist to clear a ledge if you're about to bonk it or miss it.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>The game lets you switch between forms smoothly.
Lol please, everytime you switch it takes a second and it makes you completely stationary, how is that smooth.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>The game lets you switch between forms smoothly
There is nothing smooth about transitioning between forms in SoTN, please, SoTN fan, stop lying. >Assuming you cleared the first cas
Beaten the game multiple times and already know everything you're talking about, please, SoTN fan, stop being an arrogant jackass belittling everyone who doesn't ride SoTN's dick like you do.
8 months ago
Anonymous
If the bat form was fluent then I shut my mouth but that was not the case my man.
Also the echo power is only useful in one place of the castle, maybe if they implementes more I would say otherwise.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Name 1 room you can't speed through with bat form.
If you want a foray into Classicvania, Rondo of Blood is one of the best. People praise 4 very highly as well.
All the handheld Castlevanias play more similarly to SotN.
If you're looking for something more experimental, try the N64 Castlevanias. The PS2 ones sort of fall in line as a successor to that style imo.
I played it on the PS4. I got all the trophies, and played every level, and every boss.
I should go back, and make sure I have done it all as Richter. I think I played through as both, but I should just make sure.
The most modern way to play it would be on the Playstation store called Castlevania: Requiem
That's just a port of Dracula X Chronicles on PSP (get the full save so you can play the pixel version)
You can get it on a Wii Emulator.
Then things get a lot more moronic.
It is literally Rondo of Blood as an unblockable.
There's also SOTN if you wanted to replay it. Requiem is literally just the ports of both of the unlockables in the PSP to modern consoles a decade later.
Good visuals and good soundtrack, but the later igavanias (and even bloodstained) are better in terms of actual substance. Though I guess the main "substance" with SotN are the crisp 32-bit visuals, so meh.
I think they're very close, with OoE slightly better. What cinches it for me are the bosses, OoE has some of the best bosses in the entire franchise and SotN's are either ludicrous (Galamoth, Beelzebub) or trivial (everything else).
Nta, but I'm just curious what game you consider to be worst and what songs you love the most from it?
Putting aside my subjective tastes, I would have to consider Adventure 1 to be the worst, probably, can't really even recommend it to anyone, but I fricking love its OST.
SCIV? The OST is actually one of the few things I really like about it. Very dark, atmospheric, and even melancholic at times, but it doesn't fit CV at all imo.
I actually played them back to back last year to reconfirm my suspicion about people making this argument. It's complete bullshit, they handle exploration and combat completely differently from each other, far from a clone.
I played them back to back as well. The reason why the exploration feels different is because Nintendo did a superior job. Super Metroid has very little backtracking compared to Castlevania SoTN. The gameplay is also similar as in it's slow and it involves good reaction time. The only thing that SoTN does differently is the RPG system which was half baked.
sotn is closer to zelda 2 than anything. the metroidgays are moronic.
Finally played through this game and cant believe its touted as some ''perfect game''.
The world design is decent, but there is too much uninteresting backtracking.
The inverted castle is awful. Its the same map, so exploration isnt interesting and having to traverse it is a pain in the ass because you have to use the bat constantly, which is slow as frick. Its kind of like the shitty artifact hunts from the Metroid Prime games everybody always complains about.
Its the combat that really ruined it for me. Most enemies are either annoying or tedious to deal with, and the massive knock back when you get hit is the worst. The fact that many rooms are filled to the brim with enemies and they all respawn if you re-enter every single time doesnt help.
Its a pretty fun game with some good ideas, cool aesthetics and the light RPG elements are really fun. but a ''perfect masterpiece''? How anyone could ever consider this a perfect game is beyond me.
He's right. The one thing that was really missing from the classicvanias in SOTN is that every encounter in those games was a life or death situation. They involved lots of patience and strategy. It's very similar in spirit to Soulsborne games and I think that's why they hold up so well today.
In SOTN however it's basically "lol hit until it dies xd", and then you get to a point where you shred everything, removing any modicum of challenge.
And the bat just fricking sucks. Period. It's lame and not fun at all to use. You're a masochist if you think otherwise.
You can't have every encounter be a life or death situation because it would make traversing the castle a tremendous chore and pain in the ass. You do know that many soulsborne games literally have areas filled with generic fodder troops that die in one or two hits right, but with the possibility of catching you off guard, it's the same shit in SOTN
Yes they were, and that style of gameplay implemented in SOTN would be a fricking terrible idea. Game's have to tone down the average encounter to accommodate for the fact that the player will probably go through an area back and forth to explore, there are still challenging enemies but classicvania design would be terrible because you'd constantly get nonstop assfricked by making a simple trip to the shop vender
All those generic fodder troops can easily kill you in souls games if you're shit at the game or just not careful. Its not the same in SotN at all. If you're halfway through the game and go back to the starting hallway with those zombies, you'd literally have to stand there and do nothing and it would take them half an hour to kill you.
>If you're halfway through the game and go back to the starting hallway with those zombies,
This basically applies to the shitty dreglings that barely hurt you in undead berg. Extremely dishonoest to say otherwise. It's an RPG, I don't know what you want
I played them back to back as well. The reason why the exploration feels different is because Nintendo did a superior job. Super Metroid has very little backtracking compared to Castlevania SoTN. The gameplay is also similar as in it's slow and it involves good reaction time. The only thing that SoTN does differently is the RPG system which was half baked.
[...]
Zelda 2 was inspired by Metroid, moron.
Both of those statements are so wrong I assume you're a moronic metroidgay, SOTN literally lives rent free in your head
8 months ago
Anonymous
>This basically applies to the shitty dreglings that barely hurt you in undead berg
It doesn't. Early game enemies will slaughter you if you let them, they can and will straight up gangbang you.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Only very early on, they do shit for damage by the time you get to anor londo
Good, but like others have said, suffers on the Reverse castle front. It's so cool when you go in blind and see it for the first time. It's annoying the second time. It's cool again when you play Richter and Maria.
Shame you have to give up the OG voice acting for Maria in later ports.
I played it for the first time just recently hoping to love it, finished it a couple of days ago feeling a little underwhelmed. I think there were too many difficulty peaks and troughs, I didn't find many of the bosses memorable and too many items and abilities that I just didn't have any incentive to use. Spells were pointless, werewolf was pointless and equipping consumables from tge menu was a pain in the arse. 7/10 enjoyed bloodstained rotn more
Part of the reputation is that it was a beautiful 2D game in the middle of a grotesquely ugly 3D craze, and everyone who rightly perceived early 3D as disgusting latched onto it like a life preserver at sea
It's fun as frick so it deserves the praise. But that being said, it's still not perfect and the balancing issues are definitely a detractor. If you go in blind, you're not going to know all the tricks on your first run anyway, so it's still challenging enough for a newbie. SotN is one of those games where it gets really easy after you've beaten it a few times and know what you're doing.
SotN was an incredible effort, the castle's design is one of the best Metroidvania world designs, and the amount of content is crazy. I think the actual game is kind of weak though. It didn't inherit the tight level & enemy design, or the boss design, of the original games... but that was inevitable given that it's a pioneer and has much more content than the originals.
I wish people had done more with the formula this game laid out.
They did become more difficult but it's the only area where these games significantly improved imo.
>the castle's design is one of the best Metroidvania world designs
Not even close. If you're playing it for the first time you'll be doing plenty of tedious back and forth trips constantly. The game barely has any clever designs where it loops around or gives you a shortcut.
I agree but show me a Metroidvania game that doesn't make you waste a lot of time running around. It's why I generally dislike the genre. The castle in SotN has just enough logic, character and secrets that it feels like a believable location. I like the castle wall and the subterranean cave particularly. Other games feel like the castle is just a series of video game levels stitched together
I think its a problem with the terrible graphics, art design, and music of the gameboy and ds games
personally I didnt like sotn that much except for richter mode. it's fun inputting the fighting game movements for moves and movement, and you can go anywehre and do anything
the walkspeed is too slow in sotn, and most of the rooms are just flat and you hold right because it has to be a static distance to link up evenly with the other grids. it's bad design all around
The design isnt flawless but because you keep your subweapons permanently and can just equip them from the menu, i'd say its far better than SotN's system.
I never grinded for weapons because you'll get most of them anyway by just playing naturally
>extremely rare
Just pick up the first Holy Water in the Marble Gallery and enjoy SotN's superior movement, atmosphere, music, visuals, combat, and pacing. If you think that's less convenient than AoS randomly hamstringing itself by only nat-dropping bad souls, we'll have to agree to disagree.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>SotN's subweapons are better if you ignore the subweapons
What the frick is this argument?
Can SotNgays form a single coherent sentence without resorting to muh grafix and muh music?
8 months ago
Anonymous
My point was that SotN gives you your best tool 100% of the time. AoS randomly gives you trash. If for some reason you felt the need to get a different subweapon in SotN, all it would take is map knowledge to also get that 100% of the time, although you'd have to figure out the best point in your route to do that - actually using your brain instead of farming or getting lucky, which are the two ways AoS gives you your subweapons.
If only it wasn't on the GBA. On another not why do people like DoS so much, I get that the souls can be pretty cool but the weapon upgrading system kinda makes it so you never find any cool weapons and just upgrade the type that you like thats kinda lame for a game about exploring and finding shit.
>the castle's design is one of the best Metroidvania world designs
Not even close. If you're playing it for the first time you'll be doing plenty of tedious back and forth trips constantly. The game barely has any clever designs where it loops around or gives you a shortcut.
>The game barely has any clever designs where it loops around or gives you a shortcut. >five warp points (maybe could have used one more) >several blocked areas that can be opened from the other side to create shortcuts for backtracking >library card that works anywhere including inverted castle and you can buy as many as you want
>five warp points (maybe could have used one more) >library card that works anywhere including inverted castle and you can buy as many as you want
A warp point doesnt count as a clever loop/shortcut, dumbass. Its not fun or engaging level design.
>several blocked areas that can be opened from the other side to create shortcuts for backtracking
Some of these are usefull, but a lot of these shortcuts dont drop you in places where you actually need to be. I distinctly remember dropping down in the waterways and getting back to the start of the game with all those fricking fishmen, and having to backtrack all the way around again.
>warp points
Not that anon, but I don't know, on the one hand, some of them feel like they're placed as close to someplace useful as they could be, it'd be nice to have one actually inside the library, for example. On the other hand, at least with the first castle, I do think that if you're working the castle from bottom to top and then back down again, you can get some more mileage out of them. >blocked areas
Yeah no, I don't remember these being useful almost at all outside of my preferred route. That route you described is just plain annoying if you don't already have bat form or high jump to go back. I think later metroidvanias handled that sort of thing better.
>If you're playing it for the first time you'll be doing plenty of tedious back and forth trips constantly.
isnt that kind of like the point? that you're constantly going through the castle?
lets put it this way, a good metroidvania makes you go from A to C and back to B, onward to D and then maybe back to C. SotN makes you go from A to Z, back to A, etc.
To be clear, i dont think its that *terrible*, but to call it one of the best world designs is just crazy imo.
I know it's not Castlevania but I figure this is as good a thread as any to ask: how is Deedlit's SotN-like game?
IS it like SotN or does it just look sort of similar?
Pretty good, I enjoyed my 5-6 hours or so with it. Word layout and combat are above average, bosses are pretty good, soundtrack is just okay though. It seems like people agree their Touhou game is better but I've yet to play it.
I think its weird when the inverted castle is used as an argument to shit on the game. I always say it as extra content, not an essential part of the game. I mean unlocking it is kind of obtuse and something a lot of players wouldnt even do
Without the inverted castle you're missing out on a lot of bosses, enemies and items. When I got the ''bad ending'' it definitely felt like i played half a game.
I played this on Xbox live arcade when it came out there, before I learned about the ps1 and sega saturn release. Beautiful game, amazing sprite work and flow of gameplay, great weapons, great armor, great secrets, great bosses, figuring out how to get the real 100% on the map was actually kind of a shitty riddle and relied on me to Down+Up+Jump and go into dog form in that cavernous area, but other wise, a 10/10 MASTAH PEECE
Aren't they still trying to finish the game or some shit with the backer tiers? How long has it been out for again, like 4 fricking years?
You're high, AoS looks great and so do the DS games (aside from DoS and PoR's character portraits).
The only crime Aria has is the length, the final boss being boring and contrived way to get the good ending. How in the FRICK are you supposed to know to have those souls equipped?
>length
This is a good thing because Aria has no filler. It's short and replayable, it doesn't have a "THAT moment" like SotN's inverted castle. >the final boss being boring
Yeah fair enough. >contrived way to get the good ending
You need to collect 3 hint books and then match them with monster descriptions in the bestiary, which is a really neat puzzle. Also, once you know what to do you can just skip the books on subsequent playthroughs. This is great design.
It hides the best movement soul in the game, the best boss fight in the game (and arguably one of the best in the series) and a surreal inverted-castle-like mini-area which mashes together previous areas but doesn't overstay its welcome. Also a meh final boss.
I would argue it's "that moment" is the dark world or whatever it was. Rehashed shit is always lame, even if it's a handheld game. Shoulda just made a 3 rooms of new bosses or something.
I haven't played loads of Castlevanias, maybe 7 of them? But I'd rank it pretty low in that lost personally. I was pretty shocked when I played it. After really thoroughly enjoying many of the others I didn't really like this one.
but imagine not releasing this game on steam, wtf are they thinking?
It's not overrated at all, it's a 10/10 with some minor balance issues you could possibly detract a .5 from the score.
I mean, most of the broken stuff is hidden behind grinding (the meme sword for example) or behind some cryptic puzzle (like the circlet that cheeses galamoth).
And that's if you even have the foresight to equip stuff. This was probably many people's first introduction to RPG mechanics in a regular game, I know several people who like equippped the short sword at the start and then ran with it until they killed Richter.
The most broken thing is Shield rod + Alucard Shield and that needs no grinding and is not hidden.
The fact the the shield rod does anything special is a secret in itself, let alone what it does with the alucard shield.
The game never tells you how to activate the Shield Rod and by the time you get Alucard Shield you are already in the endgame. In fact, the game never tells you that weapons have hidden attacks and most first-time players will probably reach Dracula without even knowing that.
Netflix > Video Game cringe
It's good but Aria of Sorrow is better.
It was weird playing Aria after Dawn, and realizing how much fricking worse Dawn was in comparison.
>how much fricking worse Dawn was in comparison
I recommend playing the definitive romhack for it
it's 8/10, two points off for reverse castle because it's essentially filler to drag out the playtime
I agree it's a cheap way to have done it, but I disagree otherwise. This game is still the gold standard for me for Metroidvania length, and frankly I want to see at least one someday where I can expect to take 30+ hours to see the entire map.
The sheer number of copypasted rooms in each area(all the way down to copying shit like chest and item placement!) are OoE's biggest weak point by far.
>The sheer number of copypasted rooms in each area(all the way down to copying shit like chest and item placement!) are OoE's biggest weak point by far.
Anon the fricking inverted castle as a whole is mess to travel and the most lazy point in the game.
>Anon the fricking inverted castle as a whole is mess to travel
git gud at movement. you have all the transformations and gravity boots available before you enter the inverted castle
>and the most lazy point in the game
true, the worst part is the lack of music variety
>git gud
Come on anon, I get that you disagree with him but telling him to "git gud" at flapping around in bat form is a little silly.
>git gud at movement. you have all the transformations and gravity boots available before you enter the inverted castle
Wow I didn't know that being forced to become bat or mist or change my equipment frequently was your definition of fun
>change my equipment
That anon's a jackass for trying to pass off SoTN's movement as fun, but to be fair, I don't think you actually have to equip the gravity boots to high jump. Still sucks and the bat form shouldn't be so shit in so many respects that slamming into the ceiling is preferable to it.
Shit? The bat smash is wonderful. No metroidvania has had faster and more fluent movement available so early before or since. There's also the drop kick.
>faster
Maybe.
>fluent
No, but of course you'd lie about that. Of course you'd also neglect to mention that everything else about bat form besides maybe damaging echo location is garbage, including simple movement in being so slow.
>There's also the drop kick
Well you might as well actually say something nice about it so I could maybe give a damn, especially since Alucard seems to have a worse habit than every other protagonist of getting hit in recoil for trying that shit on enemies.
Hey, don't take out you sucking at the game at me. You can always turn into a bat and you can always bat smash and you can always move it up or down. That's fluent. Compare it to the running boots in La Mulana 2 or that godawful shit in Hollow Knight that you can't even control. Or the speed booster in Super Metroid.
>y-y-you just suck at the game!111!!!1
Yes.
Yes, you do suck at making an argument, as expected.
You didn't even bother to counter the post you're replying. Just low effort quoting.
You mean like how he thought it prudent to just dismiss mine by reiterating his nonsense about bat form being fluent and presuming that I and others just suck at the game? I don't need to put in the effort like you guys do, evidently.
>reiterating his nonsense about bat form being fluent and presuming that I and others just suck at the game?
But that isn't nonsense though, he's completely right
He's not. SoTN's bat form is illdesigned garbage that manages to be worst than just about every other games' take on it save for maybe Dawn's, and at least Dawn doesn't make you use it that often. The sad thing about it is that a game like SoTN should make shit like this rad as hell, you can even spit fireballs with this thing, but SoTN doesn't, so you can only spit them forward horizontally when your movement is already so slow.
Bat charge is like the fastest movement in the game though anon.
The game lets you switch between forms smoothly. Assuming you cleared the first castle, pick a large room and play around with the transformations. Wolf can be used to go fast on level ground or get a crazy boost jumping off of a staircase. Bat can chain wing smashes to zip past the shitty bumpy floor rooms in the inverted castle. You can chain gravity jumps and angle them. Sometimes you can switch to and from mist to clear a ledge if you're about to bonk it or miss it.
>The game lets you switch between forms smoothly.
Lol please, everytime you switch it takes a second and it makes you completely stationary, how is that smooth.
>The game lets you switch between forms smoothly
There is nothing smooth about transitioning between forms in SoTN, please, SoTN fan, stop lying.
>Assuming you cleared the first cas
Beaten the game multiple times and already know everything you're talking about, please, SoTN fan, stop being an arrogant jackass belittling everyone who doesn't ride SoTN's dick like you do.
If the bat form was fluent then I shut my mouth but that was not the case my man.
Also the echo power is only useful in one place of the castle, maybe if they implementes more I would say otherwise.
Name 1 room you can't speed through with bat form.
>and frankly I want to see at least one someday where I can expect to take 30+ hours to see the entire map.
It's overrated by soibeards and secondaries, but it's still a fine game. The sprites and music are still good by today's standards.
The soundtrack alone makes it one of the best.
I mean, if this ain't a perfect game to you, then I don't know what your fricking deal is.
Every metroidvania since has tried to be this good and none have succeeded without deviating hard from the formula, like La Mulana.
OoE is better
this is the only castlevania i've played, which other ones are worth playing?
Aria/Dawn of Sorrows
the old ones are like violent mario bros.
try castlevania 64
I was so disappointed with that game. Wasn’t bad just a let down. Think it’s the last game I ever rented too.
If you want a foray into Classicvania, Rondo of Blood is one of the best. People praise 4 very highly as well.
All the handheld Castlevanias play more similarly to SotN.
If you're looking for something more experimental, try the N64 Castlevanias. The PS2 ones sort of fall in line as a successor to that style imo.
>Rondo of Blood
Whats the most non-moronic way to play it?
I played it on the PS4. I got all the trophies, and played every level, and every boss.
I should go back, and make sure I have done it all as Richter. I think I played through as both, but I should just make sure.
download the "PC port", which is basically just a prepackaged PCE emulator with the bin file in there all ready to go.
This anon is also right, that's a good and easy one to do too.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cPPsCMPpjX9WQFtIS144qe5FXK_pOnoT/view
there it is if anyone wants it. I don't blame you if you don't want to click it though. I don't trust other anons' links.
The most modern way to play it would be on the Playstation store called Castlevania: Requiem
That's just a port of Dracula X Chronicles on PSP (get the full save so you can play the pixel version)
You can get it on a Wii Emulator.
Then things get a lot more moronic.
>get the full save so you can play the pixel version
the pixel version is the actual original game, or just a filter over the remake?
It is literally Rondo of Blood as an unblockable.
There's also SOTN if you wanted to replay it. Requiem is literally just the ports of both of the unlockables in the PSP to modern consoles a decade later.
Good visuals and good soundtrack, but the later igavanias (and even bloodstained) are better in terms of actual substance. Though I guess the main "substance" with SotN are the crisp 32-bit visuals, so meh.
I disagree. STRONGLY disagree. Compare the enemy design in SOTN to Bloodstained and the level design in OoE to SOTN. Night and fricking day.
How is level design in SotN better than in OoE?
>Level design in SotN is better when the awful inverted castle exists
%3D%3D
I think they're very close, with OoE slightly better. What cinches it for me are the bosses, OoE has some of the best bosses in the entire franchise and SotN's are either ludicrous (Galamoth, Beelzebub) or trivial (everything else).
Only insufferable, pretentious homosexuals use "m-muh overrated..." when discussing things so I wouldn't know.
Maybe a little, but it's still a really good game. It needed balanced big time because every few rooms has a save point that fully heals you.
Game goes from 10/10 to 5/10 after richter
Everything before inverse castle is a waste of time.
nah, Inverse's problem is Finale Toccata
Considering it's the ONLY game on ps1 that holds up and did not age like milk, I'd say it's rated accurately.
Overrated as all hell and SoTN fans are and have always been the biggest contrarians and liars in the fandom. Still decent, though.
Crissaegrim/10.
Thought it was good, but Castlevania 4 is better.
SotN deserves even more praise
It's that good
>now that the dust has finally settled...
the dust was settled before 80% of this board was born
I haven't played the game, but I can tell you straight up the soundtrack is ass.
homosexual.
How's it feel knowing even the worst game of the franchise mogs your OST?
Couldn't say because the music in the game is amazing so I'm not sure what you're talking about
Nta, but I'm just curious what game you consider to be worst and what songs you love the most from it?
Putting aside my subjective tastes, I would have to consider Adventure 1 to be the worst, probably, can't really even recommend it to anyone, but I fricking love its OST.
SCIV? The OST is actually one of the few things I really like about it. Very dark, atmospheric, and even melancholic at times, but it doesn't fit CV at all imo.
(You)
You made that first comment just so you could use the perfect image. I’m on to you.
game still rules
https://sotn.io
play the safe randomizer for a fresh experience
play the lycanthrope randomizer if you gotta go fast
I played this and got the rune sword in like the first room.
hey i got no sound
I got the Crissaegrim just casually killing ghosts it was a sweet surprise. I didn’t know how OP it was.
It was kino
rondo and even super castlevania are still better. not a bad game however
Yes, it's a shitty Metroid clone.
It doesn't play like Metroid, obessed trannoid
It has literally the same game design except Konami is a dogshit developer unlike Nintendo
I actually played them back to back last year to reconfirm my suspicion about people making this argument. It's complete bullshit, they handle exploration and combat completely differently from each other, far from a clone.
sotn is closer to zelda 2 than anything. the metroidgays are moronic.
I played them back to back as well. The reason why the exploration feels different is because Nintendo did a superior job. Super Metroid has very little backtracking compared to Castlevania SoTN. The gameplay is also similar as in it's slow and it involves good reaction time. The only thing that SoTN does differently is the RPG system which was half baked.
Zelda 2 was inspired by Metroid, moron.
>Super Metroid has very little backtracking
The funny thing is that I know what you are trying to say but you are too moronic to phrase it properly.
Finally played through this game and cant believe its touted as some ''perfect game''.
The world design is decent, but there is too much uninteresting backtracking.
The inverted castle is awful. Its the same map, so exploration isnt interesting and having to traverse it is a pain in the ass because you have to use the bat constantly, which is slow as frick. Its kind of like the shitty artifact hunts from the Metroid Prime games everybody always complains about.
Its the combat that really ruined it for me. Most enemies are either annoying or tedious to deal with, and the massive knock back when you get hit is the worst. The fact that many rooms are filled to the brim with enemies and they all respawn if you re-enter every single time doesnt help.
Its a pretty fun game with some good ideas, cool aesthetics and the light RPG elements are really fun. but a ''perfect masterpiece''? How anyone could ever consider this a perfect game is beyond me.
>use the bat constantly, which is slow as frick.
>Its the combat that really ruined it for me.
You are bad at the game I see.
He's right. The one thing that was really missing from the classicvanias in SOTN is that every encounter in those games was a life or death situation. They involved lots of patience and strategy. It's very similar in spirit to Soulsborne games and I think that's why they hold up so well today.
In SOTN however it's basically "lol hit until it dies xd", and then you get to a point where you shred everything, removing any modicum of challenge.
And the bat just fricking sucks. Period. It's lame and not fun at all to use. You're a masochist if you think otherwise.
You can't have every encounter be a life or death situation because it would make traversing the castle a tremendous chore and pain in the ass. You do know that many soulsborne games literally have areas filled with generic fodder troops that die in one or two hits right, but with the possibility of catching you off guard, it's the same shit in SOTN
I haven’t played them as an adult but those first nes games were hard as frick. A tiny step below Ninja Gaiden.
Yes they were, and that style of gameplay implemented in SOTN would be a fricking terrible idea. Game's have to tone down the average encounter to accommodate for the fact that the player will probably go through an area back and forth to explore, there are still challenging enemies but classicvania design would be terrible because you'd constantly get nonstop assfricked by making a simple trip to the shop vender
All those generic fodder troops can easily kill you in souls games if you're shit at the game or just not careful. Its not the same in SotN at all. If you're halfway through the game and go back to the starting hallway with those zombies, you'd literally have to stand there and do nothing and it would take them half an hour to kill you.
>If you're halfway through the game and go back to the starting hallway with those zombies,
This basically applies to the shitty dreglings that barely hurt you in undead berg. Extremely dishonoest to say otherwise. It's an RPG, I don't know what you want
Both of those statements are so wrong I assume you're a moronic metroidgay, SOTN literally lives rent free in your head
>This basically applies to the shitty dreglings that barely hurt you in undead berg
It doesn't. Early game enemies will slaughter you if you let them, they can and will straight up gangbang you.
Only very early on, they do shit for damage by the time you get to anor londo
if you rank games properly, you don't have to rerank them years later
a game does not get an 8 out of 10 just because 'well, I'm having fun with it'
DIE SHANOA
It’s overrated and a masterpiece. 9/10.
I played it for the first time earlier this year and it completely holds up with any other modern game of the same genre.
Correctly rated
one of the greatest video games of all time
It’s great. I played it for the first time about 6 years ago and it reawakened a drive to play vidya in me that I had lost.
Good, but like others have said, suffers on the Reverse castle front. It's so cool when you go in blind and see it for the first time. It's annoying the second time. It's cool again when you play Richter and Maria.
Shame you have to give up the OG voice acting for Maria in later ports.
I played it for the first time just recently hoping to love it, finished it a couple of days ago feeling a little underwhelmed. I think there were too many difficulty peaks and troughs, I didn't find many of the bosses memorable and too many items and abilities that I just didn't have any incentive to use. Spells were pointless, werewolf was pointless and equipping consumables from tge menu was a pain in the arse. 7/10 enjoyed bloodstained rotn more
Why the FRICK didn't Alucard have a forward dash? I fricking HATE back dashing everywhere like an idiot, it looks stupid.
casualvania started here, extremely gay art that ruined the series forever and a game that was just way too easy
Part of the reputation is that it was a beautiful 2D game in the middle of a grotesquely ugly 3D craze, and everyone who rightly perceived early 3D as disgusting latched onto it like a life preserver at sea
HYDRO STORM!
MAGNIFICENT
It's fun as frick so it deserves the praise. But that being said, it's still not perfect and the balancing issues are definitely a detractor. If you go in blind, you're not going to know all the tricks on your first run anyway, so it's still challenging enough for a newbie. SotN is one of those games where it gets really easy after you've beaten it a few times and know what you're doing.
SotN was an incredible effort, the castle's design is one of the best Metroidvania world designs, and the amount of content is crazy. I think the actual game is kind of weak though. It didn't inherit the tight level & enemy design, or the boss design, of the original games... but that was inevitable given that it's a pioneer and has much more content than the originals.
I wish people had done more with the formula this game laid out.
What do you mean? Did none of the following Castlevanias improve on it?
t. recently beat sotn and had a good time with it
They did become more difficult but it's the only area where these games significantly improved imo.
I agree but show me a Metroidvania game that doesn't make you waste a lot of time running around. It's why I generally dislike the genre. The castle in SotN has just enough logic, character and secrets that it feels like a believable location. I like the castle wall and the subterranean cave particularly. Other games feel like the castle is just a series of video game levels stitched together
AoS is literally SotN but improved in every way including the castle design. Anyone who disagrees is blinded by nostalgia.
I played these 2 games back to back just this month and the difference is night and day. AoS is so much more refined and polished.
I think its a problem with the terrible graphics, art design, and music of the gameboy and ds games
personally I didnt like sotn that much except for richter mode. it's fun inputting the fighting game movements for moves and movement, and you can go anywehre and do anything
the walkspeed is too slow in sotn, and most of the rooms are just flat and you hold right because it has to be a static distance to link up evenly with the other grids. it's bad design all around
You're high, AoS looks great and so do the DS games (aside from DoS and PoR's character portraits).
Agreed anon, the big thing SotN needed was for subweapons to be random drops
The design isnt flawless but because you keep your subweapons permanently and can just equip them from the menu, i'd say its far better than SotN's system.
I never grinded for weapons because you'll get most of them anyway by just playing naturally
Because making subweapons extremely rare and making you carry only one at at time was SO much more convenient
>extremely rare
Just pick up the first Holy Water in the Marble Gallery and enjoy SotN's superior movement, atmosphere, music, visuals, combat, and pacing. If you think that's less convenient than AoS randomly hamstringing itself by only nat-dropping bad souls, we'll have to agree to disagree.
>SotN's subweapons are better if you ignore the subweapons
What the frick is this argument?
Can SotNgays form a single coherent sentence without resorting to muh grafix and muh music?
My point was that SotN gives you your best tool 100% of the time. AoS randomly gives you trash. If for some reason you felt the need to get a different subweapon in SotN, all it would take is map knowledge to also get that 100% of the time, although you'd have to figure out the best point in your route to do that - actually using your brain instead of farming or getting lucky, which are the two ways AoS gives you your subweapons.
If only it wasn't on the GBA. On another not why do people like DoS so much, I get that the souls can be pretty cool but the weapon upgrading system kinda makes it so you never find any cool weapons and just upgrade the type that you like thats kinda lame for a game about exploring and finding shit.
>the castle's design is one of the best Metroidvania world designs
Not even close. If you're playing it for the first time you'll be doing plenty of tedious back and forth trips constantly. The game barely has any clever designs where it loops around or gives you a shortcut.
>The game barely has any clever designs where it loops around or gives you a shortcut.
>five warp points (maybe could have used one more)
>several blocked areas that can be opened from the other side to create shortcuts for backtracking
>library card that works anywhere including inverted castle and you can buy as many as you want
>five warp points (maybe could have used one more)
>library card that works anywhere including inverted castle and you can buy as many as you want
A warp point doesnt count as a clever loop/shortcut, dumbass. Its not fun or engaging level design.
>several blocked areas that can be opened from the other side to create shortcuts for backtracking
Some of these are usefull, but a lot of these shortcuts dont drop you in places where you actually need to be. I distinctly remember dropping down in the waterways and getting back to the start of the game with all those fricking fishmen, and having to backtrack all the way around again.
>warp points
Not that anon, but I don't know, on the one hand, some of them feel like they're placed as close to someplace useful as they could be, it'd be nice to have one actually inside the library, for example. On the other hand, at least with the first castle, I do think that if you're working the castle from bottom to top and then back down again, you can get some more mileage out of them.
>blocked areas
Yeah no, I don't remember these being useful almost at all outside of my preferred route. That route you described is just plain annoying if you don't already have bat form or high jump to go back. I think later metroidvanias handled that sort of thing better.
>If you're playing it for the first time you'll be doing plenty of tedious back and forth trips constantly.
isnt that kind of like the point? that you're constantly going through the castle?
lets put it this way, a good metroidvania makes you go from A to C and back to B, onward to D and then maybe back to C. SotN makes you go from A to Z, back to A, etc.
To be clear, i dont think its that *terrible*, but to call it one of the best world designs is just crazy imo.
> Wow, I wonder whats in this secret room in this ancient castle, home of evil incarnate
> its ham and eggs
It's alright. Could've done without the inverted castle though and just thrown in those extra things into the regular castle.
I know it's not Castlevania but I figure this is as good a thread as any to ask: how is Deedlit's SotN-like game?
IS it like SotN or does it just look sort of similar?
Pretty good, I enjoyed my 5-6 hours or so with it. Word layout and combat are above average, bosses are pretty good, soundtrack is just okay though. It seems like people agree their Touhou game is better but I've yet to play it.
Played it 2 years ago for the first time it was absolute kino
It's the unchallenged best in both its own franchise and its genre.
I think its weird when the inverted castle is used as an argument to shit on the game. I always say it as extra content, not an essential part of the game. I mean unlocking it is kind of obtuse and something a lot of players wouldnt even do
Without the inverted castle you're missing out on a lot of bosses, enemies and items. When I got the ''bad ending'' it definitely felt like i played half a game.
>not an essential part of the game
yes it is you dumbass
I will say that "mess" is the right word to describe Symphony.
Aria and Portrait are way better designed.
I played this on Xbox live arcade when it came out there, before I learned about the ps1 and sega saturn release. Beautiful game, amazing sprite work and flow of gameplay, great weapons, great armor, great secrets, great bosses, figuring out how to get the real 100% on the map was actually kind of a shitty riddle and relied on me to Down+Up+Jump and go into dog form in that cavernous area, but other wise, a 10/10 MASTAH PEECE
somehow still the best metroidvania. i dont know why but no other game has managed to capture the feeling of the castle in SotN
>somehow still the best metroidvania
Not when H_____ K_____ exists.
One of my favorite games of all time. Can't wait for the Saturn patch to be updated to remove all the slowdown.
Are the Bloodstained guys up to anything? I enjoyed Bloodstained and the game that tried to be like NES Castlevania.
Aren't they still trying to finish the game or some shit with the backer tiers? How long has it been out for again, like 4 fricking years?
The only crime Aria has is the length, the final boss being boring and contrived way to get the good ending. How in the FRICK are you supposed to know to have those souls equipped?
moron, the game has three hint cards scattered through the castle.
>How in the FRICK are you supposed to know to have those souls equipped?
https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Ancient_Books
>length
This is a good thing because Aria has no filler. It's short and replayable, it doesn't have a "THAT moment" like SotN's inverted castle.
>the final boss being boring
Yeah fair enough.
>contrived way to get the good ending
You need to collect 3 hint books and then match them with monster descriptions in the bestiary, which is a really neat puzzle. Also, once you know what to do you can just skip the books on subsequent playthroughs. This is great design.
I never got the good ending in AoS. Does the game hide a lot of content behind this like SotN or is it just a different ending cutscene or something?
It hides the best movement soul in the game, the best boss fight in the game (and arguably one of the best in the series) and a surreal inverted-castle-like mini-area which mashes together previous areas but doesn't overstay its welcome. Also a meh final boss.
I would argue it's "that moment" is the dark world or whatever it was. Rehashed shit is always lame, even if it's a handheld game. Shoulda just made a 3 rooms of new bosses or something.
They are working on new content for the game, wew.
It's the best igavania, the other ones are harder but worse in every other aspect.
Aria of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia did things better, so yes. It's shorter, harder, and replayable.
I still haven't finished sotn. Lost motivation after the inverted castle.
How did they drop the ball this hard? It's not quite on the level of like CV2 or BL but its definitely among tbe worst Dracula fights in the series.
For being a fusion of all the monsters, that form needed way more moves.
I haven't played loads of Castlevanias, maybe 7 of them? But I'd rank it pretty low in that lost personally. I was pretty shocked when I played it. After really thoroughly enjoying many of the others I didn't really like this one.
My favourites are Dawn of Sorrow and 3.