This is a game without game design. They threw in every shitty idea they had without any thought.
This is a game without game design. They threw in every shitty idea they had without any thought.
This is a game without game design. They threw in every shitty idea they had without any thought.
Yeah, and it was better than most games at the time. Shield rod is most efficient way to play, so why should you bother getting other weapons?
>Yeah, and it was better than most games at the time.
That's honestly a massive disservice to the other games of the time. You have Megaman Legends and Ganbarre Goemon releasing around the same time, along with Tomb Raider, Abe's Oddysee and tons of amazing shit.
Literealy every single indie metroidvania style game I've played is better designed than SotN. It absolutely is a pile of random shit with little to no design coherence, about as far from Super Metroid as you can get.
>It absolutely is a pile of random shit with little to no design coherence,
Only an assmad autismo Metroidgay would be upset about this
Basically you're mad that Castlevania isn't metroid but it's actually different and part of that is a fun collectathon with strange items and hidden quirks everwhere. The average person finds that fun, not everything has to be find the hidden 50 missile and energy tanks every single time.
>is a fun collectathon
I'd love it is this was actually so and its area design wasn't basic and repetitive as all frick.
and ended up being the best game in the series.
wut?
exploring the castle was great fun but to this day i have no fricking clue what starts the "side missions".
the what?
And despite all that it's fun
Maybe you're not as good a game designer as you think. Better watch more youtube critiques.
enough about starfield
.
Imagine someone playing SotN at release and making a disgusted face and saying "this is a game without game design". I actually can't imagine that. Nitpicking is fun but let's be real.
Nah OP is actually right
I can imagine a game design purist like Miyamoto playing SotN on release and being absolutely disgusted by it
>a game design purist like Miyamoto
lmao
Miyamoto fricking loves gimmicks what are you talking about? He's the exact opposite of pure.
Let's skip all of the levels of SMB 3 with tanuki tail and warp whistles.
>Imagine someone playing SotN at release and making a disgusted face
and saying
>Ugh, it's not 3D. Shit/10.
I don't have the picture.
been playing this on my chink boy the past few weeks and its still as fun as I remember, and also not as easy as I remember. Maybe just because I forgot where all the OP weapons were and didnt use a guide to find them all again but certain areas like with all the venus plants + rock knights in the inverted castle would kill me
No you're correct. Most people who point out the difficulty is easy is almost entirely because they abuse shield rod or Crissaegrim, playing the game normally offers a perfectly normal challenge level that pretty much gets glossed over because everyone knows about all the broken shit. Some ways to trivialize the game even defy normal logic, playing the game blind you wouldn't think that your first are better than the first sword you get but it's just the case
you're grossly generalizing, but you do have a point, there are weapons and spells that completely trivialize the game
they're cool but they ruin any challenge
>we need more content for our game, what should we do?
>lmao just invert the map and make em do it all over again
Sub 60 IQ design.
Did they 'need' more content or did they decide to add more content because they could? They could have thrown up some more roadblocks in the normal castle, even removed some relics and repurposed their rooms, and just added Shaft! and Dracula. It would have been easy to make a complete game that way
There's a ton of stuff in SOTN that doesn't 'need' to be in there, it's clear they were having fun with it.
Anyway I like the inverted castle, but I like mirror worlds in general. It's cool to explore areas you already know geographically but with a new twist, and to see what's different
>Anyway I like the inverted castle, but I like mirror worlds in general. It's cool to explore areas you already know geographically but with a new twist, and to see what's different
The inverted Castle is really not that bad when you consider Alucard has the ability to go anywhere he wants at once. It's only a pain in the ass for those seeking 100% map completion.
ITT: Seething Simon's Quest speedrunners
Did anyone naturally or accidently figure out the upside down castle thing? That's what I wanna know. I mean probably yes but it couldn't have been that large a pool.
Game desperately need a rebalance release. it has everything else going for it.
Considering every single post SotN Castlevania had the same exact balance issues its probably deliberate. Seems some devs leave in a busted option for shitters.
Seems like fans could easily mod it though.
It's a great game, fun to play for full completion and getting rare items. If it had a hard mode it would be perfect.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6125/
It does.
?si=tThVDbx6O39fJf9m
Play the superior Castlevania game.
>What if we made SotN, but good?
The only flaw being GBA sound and graphics
Not a flaw you moronic grafixBlack person c**t
Bottom looks way better
Jesus H Christ that is cursed.
the backgrounds and hud look good but oof.
>wolf specific tech
No one ever finds a use for the wolf form in casual play. I've only ever used it to make that one jump in the eastern tower to break that pot for the gem that speedrunners sell for infinate money after grabbing the fairy early. I just wanted whatever loot was in that pot, I didn't find out that was part of a speedrun strat until later.
>The combat knife is OP
There aren't that many knifes in the game but they're all fast as frick but the combat knife does decent per hit damage for mid game and I can't think of a late game knife.
>playing the game blind you wouldn't think that your fist are better than the first sword you get but it's just the case
I wish games gave the player trash items like the red rust more often, starting dark souls with a broken sword equiped just isn't the same.
>We should because Castlevania didn't contribute shit
That's kinda what I was getting at, sotn is just "what if metroid but swords?" and now they get to have their name on the genre too.
>No amount of seething will ever cause people to stop using the term Metroidvania
Also this for better or worse.
every aspect on AOS is inferior to SOTN
but it's still a good castlevania game if you like more of the same
AoS is better designed, better balanced, more focused, more streamlined and it actually plays to its strengths instead of being a confused schizophrenic mess of useless mechanics like SotN
>What if we made SotN on a lower budget and on shittier hardware and instead of having cool weapons with various different effects we just have normal weapons and you have to grind for the effects by constantly killing enemies for their souls so that we don't have to animate cool shit and we just reuse the enemy attacks
Soma is cringe
He should have been sodomized, not Alucard
nice reaction pic friend
I used to prefer this SOTN, but replaying them both back to back reversed that opinion and now I think think Aria is probably the most overrated game of all time.
You could say that your opinion was flipped upside down towards the end.
It's a story all about how his opinion got flipped turned upside down.
Aria is boring, but rpg elements when game first out was good.
>first four bosses (out of eleven or something in total) are just ordinary enemies
>Luck stat is still bugged due to inherited coding from Harmony of Dissonance (good thing it's not as much of an issue compared to Dawn of Sorrow which also had bugged Luck)
>soul dupes serve zero purpose so why do they even drop after first one
>Claimh Solais is so broken literally NOTHING else comes close to it (even SotN had several broken weapons / setups, not just one)
>only one armor / accessory slot, equipment is nowhere near as creative as SotN one (I guess all creativity went into Souls)
>just like any IGAvania outside of Ecclesia, game is braindead easy
All Aria did was moving SotN's
>familiars
>throwable items
>spells
>transformations
into one unified Soul system
It's a good SotN clone but it's hard to find anything it does better than original.
Boss enemies returning as regular enemies is an awesome design practice. Classic Doom did that and it was a cool way of making the player realize how powerful they had become. Claimh Solais being broken is justified by it being hidden away in the already optional, hidden away area. I'll say that Aria could have made better use of elemental damage so everything but Julius wouldn't get wrecked by it. The slots were simplified but it worked out fine as Aria had more weapon variation.
>Boss enemies returning as regular enemies is an awesome design practice.
Maybe if those enemies ever felt like a threat in the first place, but they didn't. Doesn't help that 3/4 of them get reskins later on with higher stats but zero additions to their movesets.
>Claimh Solais being broken is justified by it being hidden away in the already optional, hidden away area.
And Alucard Shield is hidden in Reverse Castle's Underground Tunnels, which is like one of the last locations you'd visit.
And Crissaegrim is a rare item from absolutely random monster you'd never expect such weapon to drop.
And Beryl Circlet is locked behind room in Reverse Castle Entrance that requires Bat + Wolf dash rock tunnel autism normal player would never think of doing.
Yet people b***h about those items ALL the time.
Konami could literally remake this and get billion dollars, but they choose not to.
Ironically I loved it until its most iconic moment, as soon as the castle flips traversing it becomes so much more goddamn annoying. Like it wasn’t designed to be flipped, there’s little ledges and shit that force you to use the animal transformations constantly and slow you down.
>get lost
>level up too many times while wandering
>enemies are no longer fun to fight
>adds difficulty
>expands a few systems, streamlines some others and has one very solid gimmick
Portrait of ruin and Ecclesia are some of the absolute best in gaming and they are still identifiably SoTNs offspring. So its not the game design dumbass, its the balancing
>its the balancing
Is people beelining for the library and farming for crissagrim truly a balance issue though? A lot of the worst imbalanced stuff kinda requires some player knowledge. Not that the game is especially hard without it but thats the stuff people usually bring up.
The combat knife is OP
The moon rod is OP
The alucard sword is OP
The gurthang is OP
The mourneblade is OP
Basically, you can stumble into OP stuff everywhere you look. In the first castle you can get to lv 25 fast just by punching the spiked ball and holding your fist out as an example
>The combat knife is OP
I mean its good sure but OP sounds a bit strong
Some of that other stuff is lategame
In any case you still have to actually kill shit instead of just having a nonstop deletion field like the criss
SotN has a lot of valid balance criticisms but Crissaegrim is not one of them. Nobody ever brings up the fricked up damage calculation where you either take a huge chunk of your health bar, or pathetic chip damage, with rarely anything in between.
>first transformation you unlock
>serves zero purpose
what were they smoking?
Thumbnail made me think he was gonna do the romscout which is wolf specific tech
god I hated that moment where I tried to use the wolf to jump to those ledges on left by building up speed above the stairs and it just fricking pulls you down and he does the smallest jump possible
>they threw in every awesome idea they had*
Fixed it for you
Everything OP said is true, yet somehow it's still one of the best games ever made. I mean, it's only THE game that people are referencing when they say 'metroidvania', otherwise we'd be calling them 'metroid-likes'
I miss that old "throw everything we got against the wall and see what sticks" mentality of game design sometimes.
It was also back when every game was allowed to have batshit controls because we hadn't figured out what to do with the left analog stick yet. I think that mostly just shows how far we've come since the ps1 era that we now expect our games to make some kind of internal sense.
What OP fails to mention is that even with flaws in level design, Alucard feels fan fricking tastic to control, and killing enemies is simple and yet addicting. Personally, I think OP is wrong, there is design in progression for SOTN but it's subtle enough for people to not generally appreciate or notice
I still think letting you use magic spells and special moves by inputting fightan combinations was genius, especially with how you don't need to learn them if you already know how to pull them off. So awesome.
>it's only THE game that people are referencing when they say 'metroidvania'
It's not. Super Metroid is the quintessential metroidvania and also the one most modern devs take inspiration from
>otherwise we'd be calling them 'metroid-likes'
We should because Castlevania didn't contribute shit
lol
well I do agree some "metroidvanias" should just be called metroidlikes as they don't have any actual vania in them
I always see this salty ass mentality in every thread about SOTN
It's called Metroidvania because SOTN was considered similar design to Metroid while still playing like Castlevania, not because people thought every 2d exploration game was like Metroid + Castlevania. But it gets weird because regardless if you like it or not, Indie 2d explorations games ARE taking influence from SOTN's design and gameplay. Metroid-like ends up being a bad term because it implies a lot of these games really play exactly like Metroid similar to "Diablo-likes" but the truth is, they are pretty unique and may end up playing like one or the other or even NEITHER. No amount of seething will ever cause people to stop using the term Metroidvania
>not because people thought every 2d exploration game was like Metroid + Castlevania
Never said they did, frickface. This
dude said that.
>Indie 2d explorations games ARE taking influence from SOTN's design and gameplay.
What influence? Did SotN invent action platformers? GTFO Black person.
If they did take influence then they would be slapped-together gimmickfests just like SotN.
Except they aren't, because that's not a good thing and not something to aspire to. Instead, most of them try to capture the focus and tight design of Super Metroid.
Don't take my word for it you fricking idiot, take Indie devs words themselves, a lot of them are vocal about Castlevania inspiration. It's not even a secret. You just sound like an assmad metroidgay
you're right. nostalgia tards will cry, that's all
/thread
It's crazy how much seething SotN inspired
The funniest part is it all feels recent, I never remembered people crapping on the game so much in the past
Why do I get the suspicion some youtube essayist is behind this
It is recent, look at Ganker's top 100 games. SOTN was always on there. Egofapter somewhat contributed to SOTN hate so it could be an essayist at fault.
It's widely considered one of the best PSX games of all time and has always been on top lists for console games in general. I have no idea where this revisionist history crap is coming from
lol looks like the thread was a youtube pseud psyop after all
>hourly "good game actually BAD" thread
Don't you nolife morons ever get tired of this shit
wheredoyouthinkweare.jpg
>dude it's freaking VEE lmao xD
Stop
Very well then, polite sage.
I like the actual combat a lot and the art style and music are second to none. Progression is good for the most part but there are some bullshit ass parts that are vague as frick and I don't understand how anyone was supposed to figure them out pre google. Like you could tell some of them were designed just to sell prima strategy guides with is some BS. I had to look up a guide to activate the upside down castle but I could beat Aria of Sorrow on my own as a kid with zero guidance so it's still my favorite to this day.
>pre google
I think we had yahoo
and ask jeeves
and I'm 100% sure I used gamefaqs for SotN.
>gamefaqs
pure sovl
The part that tripped me up my first time playing was in the ice caves where you have to hit that hidden button which spawns an ape skeleton in the room with that bridge, where you then have to lure it over to the bridge and get it to throw the explosive barrel so that it blows up the bridge, thus opening the pathway down below. There is a message that shows up when you hit the button hinting at what to do in fairness, but it threw me for a loop until I looked it up as I put the game down for a while and came back not remembering what I did last. Theres a few things like that throughout the game.
Aria was my first CV game, so I didnt know anything at all when it happened, is it too obvious for a veteran player how to get the true ending?
I'm pretty sure there's a message after the bad ending almost spelling that you should equip an item to get the true ending, if you paid attention it would be obvious which item it is, DoS was much more cryptic
Nah. Soma is just like "The adventure is over but I feel like something's missing, the castle is calling me" which some would take as a sequel hook, but then again there's that black wall of energy that is still unresolved.
>DoS was much more cryptic
Really, anon?
>"Hey Soma here's an item for you to remember me by, it doesnt do anything but you can equip it".
>Dont equip it, instant bad ending where absolutely nothing gets resolved.
Oh you're right, I mixed up the requirements, DoS is the one with the talisman and the mirror demon, AoS is the one with the specific souls
>is it too obvious for a veteran player how to get the true ending
After SotN and HoD added several endings (and I'm not even talking about Classicvanias like Rondo or CV III) you were kinda used to such concept in IGAvanias and expect them to appear in future games.
Books are a big hint to True Ending, and if you figured out that monster glyphs near waterfall are souls that allow you to get past it then you should realize that monsters on books are also hints for souls (and red / blue / yellow colors make it easier to do the connection). The only bullshit is to figure out WHERE to bring this soul setup, but once you realize that
>you have a soul that shoots firebals
>you have a soul that turns you into a giant bat (which is a huge stretch because Dracula rarely, if ever, turned into bat in Castlevania games and instead turned into some grotesque demon / winged demon thing)
>you have a soul that allows you to suck out life out of your enemies
sounds like vampire kit (Alucard or Dracula) you'd at least try to bring it to Graham's fight
>ITT: inverted castle mass coping
>Invert the map
>Clocktower is still hell
sovl
I liked the inverted castle
All games should have an inverted mode
This would be the undisputed GOAT platformer if it wasn't so easy but even as easy as it is, it was great fun and I replayed the shit out of it.
SOTN is sadly a victim of what came after it. I'm sure when it came out it was amazing but now ARPG's and Metroidvania level design has been done to death.
I guess this was never a problem to me because I'm not a zoomer
Nah it's still a lot of fun to play
It just werks
SOTN is ruined by how braindead easy it is. All the bosses are wasted and so is nearly all of the gear. Bloodstained is better
it has the exact same problems lol
Bloodstained isn't what I'd call hard but it's gear balance and difficulty scaling is a lot better. Literally the only hard boss in sotn is Galamoth who becomes the easiest one if you know about that circlet.
Has anyone made a decent hard-mode mod for SOTN? It occurs to me that'd elevate the game significantly
Short and shit, with 3D in it for no reason. A let down from COTM, the only good one.
why do you think COTM came first?
And it turned out to be one of the best games ever. Turns out that throwing a bunch of cool stuff into a game can work, even if it doesn't meet some supposed "game design" standards.
SotN vs. Super Metroid remind me of Final Fantasy VI vs. Chrono Trigger arguments. CT is more polished and tightly designed, while FFVI is bigger and messier with tons of cool ideas thrown in. Stuff like Gau's Rages and secret Imp equipment. Both types of games can be great, and which you prefer just comes down to personal preference.
You make a good point anon
Polish and tight design makes for a focused and highly competent experience, but having a cool mess to play with feels great. It makes a game feel passionate, provides a lot of discovery, and makes the world feel bigger (and potentially more authentic)
But enough about bloodstained
Woops, wrong pic.
Anon... just because they threw a lot of cool shit in there for the sake of it doesn't mean it doesn't have game design. It very clearly does. There just isn't much in the way of balance and that's okay.
I know OP just wanted to talk about SOTN, and Ganker only replies to bait.
But man, Why can't people appreciate this game as a masterpiece of it's era?
Why compare it to modern games that solved many of their issues?
Do morons also start talking shit about old masterworks simply because modern works have better tech?
Do you also go and claim Don Quixote is le shit, becaus modern shonen is better?
Is the nine symphony of beethoven bad, because we can do more autistic symphonies now?
Is shakespeare now obsolete because we now have a black person making rap of his sonnets?
I know this is a bait thread, but man, sometimes you can't stop but wonder some shit.
I appreciate SOTN for what it was and it still is a better metroidvania than literally everything released since hollow knight, HK included, it just bothers me when people act like it was the perfect game when several of the igavanias that came after it did the formula much better
>igavanias
What the frick is that?
The castlevanias that aren't classicvanias
I think the core reason, as a big SOTN fan, that SOTN nails down such perfect combination of music, gameplay, story, art.
Where every element is of such quality, where they are work in conjunction in such perfect delivery.
That while other games may be superior in a single aspect.
There's really not other metroidvania that surpass SOTN as the combination of all the elements.
It's such a high level the game is, that even today, is the average fan of the genre considers the peak.
Not because there aren't better metroidavnias with better gameplay.
It's the combination of elements here, more than a single aspect.
completely agreed anon, it's one of those rare games that's combines a lot of high quality elements into something better than the sum of those parts
the only glaring flaw it has is being too easy
Because it's not, you moronic Hispanic.
Super metroid came out earlier and was better so this is a false equivalence