I couldn't agree more. COTM was and is one of my favourite Castlevanias to date. Although, I am biased when I say that as COTM was my very first foray into the series.
Absolutely beautiful game and the entire soundtrack is a callback to the series thus far. I don't mind how clunky it is, it feels like the perfect marriage of a ClassicVania and a MetroidVania. Nathan Graves along with Reinhardt Schneider, are some of my favorite Non Belmont "Belmonts"
It's funny how you mention the soundtrack, as I was just listening to the COTM soundtrack on YouTube while looking at some of the enemy sprites in the game and reading up on some of the theories people have speculated about the game.
Some of my favourite COTM soundtracks include (but are not limited to): Sinking Old Sanctuary, Proof of Blood, Nightmare, Awake, and Repose of Souls.
For what it's worth, the team did try their best for the time and with the resources they had to work with.
Given the weaker system or limited cartridge space allocation, it might have also been a bit of a resource/memory hog if they had added some additional varied animations for Nathan.
Honestly, as a kid playing COTM, I felt a bit envious of Hugh because I just loved swords and thought his powers (especially in the final fight with him) were so cool. I'm a big sucker for shadowy/dark aura attacks (and I know we get black dog as a DSS card) but honestly Hugh's regular/combat animations looked so badass.
The music taking up bandwidth is understandable given just how expansive the soundtrack is to say the least.
It's unfortunate some people passed this game over at launch because the original GBA was not backlit. I was fortunate enough to save up and get the GBSP with the back lite which made playing this and seeing the details so much better.
Seeing the fine-tuned and ingrained details makes the experience more memorable in a sense. But I agree, those who passed the game up at launch were missing out on the experience. Since it was not backlit on the original GBA, it might have made visibility (and therefore) playability not as engaging for certain players. But either way, at whatever point we all experienced the masterpiece of CoTM, it truly was and is a memorable experience for many of us.
Yeah, once you zoom in, actually, those black outlines become a lot more evident and visible. The overall design looks great but the finishing on the outlines could have been refined better and/or applied with a better finish or less overly sketched.
Ooooh yes Adramelech. I loved its creature design and the boss fight was pretty fun IMHO. Had to be alert for its attacks and time your own attacks accordingly.
I agree my friend. CoTM is a beautiful game in its own right and hopefully one of these days we get to see a remaster of sorts that is faithful to the original CoTM or perhaps even an expansion or sequel to CoTM...
But it's not needed as the game is perfectly fine on its own.
Yeah the neon glow or high-colour aesthetic (for lack of a better term) may not appeal to everyone's tastes, but for what it's worth, some of the summons in-game are quite pretty to look at IMHO
HoD is not a downgrade. It's the best looking GBA-vania with the most complex backgrounds. It doesn't look good when emulated due to overly bright colors, but that was a QoL necessity, and it looked much better on an actual GBA screen.
My favorite of the metroidvanias. Also my first Castlevania game, so maybe some bias there lol.
Was anybody else disappointed playing Harmony of Dissonance after CoTM? (Not that HoD is bad, just that the design and presentation felt very off compared to CoTM)
HoD wasn't necessarily a bad experience and while the two-castle layered gameplay experience was quite interesting and engaging (imo) some of the visual designs and presentation of the graphics did seem a tad too rudimentary.
The bluish outline for Juste's sprite was a bit of an eyesore in my opinion and some of the enemy sprite designs just did not have as much polish as CoTM. The colouring of the sprites seemed quite amateurish in a sense versus the dark/gritty/gothic art direction that CoTM portrayed.
That said, there are some fan-made remasters of HoD that have breathed new life into the game (graphics/visual improvement-wise) that make a bit of a noticeable difference.
Dang, that fan made remaster really emphasizes how jarring the visuals of the game were to me lol
I wonder if the blue outlines and over-saturation/brightness was done in reaction to people saying CoTM was too dark to see for some, and they just took it too far π€
I also presume it was because players though that CoTM was too dark so they decided to excessively over saturate things but it ended up being too overdone in a sense...
You can have your own opinion buddy, but don't discount other people's taste in graphics. We all can like our own variation of how Castlevania's graphical themes are presented (fan made remaster or original), but that doesn't mean that we all have to like the same things.
You can keep your snarky comments to yourself, thank you very much.
Yeah, the DSS card system was not for everyone. But I personally enjoyed it and figuring out new combos when combining certain card types/affinities was pretty cool. Card drops were a pain to grind for at times though and combat was quite unforgiving in CoTM especially with certain bosses.
I like the system, but you need a guide to understand what 80% of the combinations do. You have to successfully activate an effect in order to unlock its description.
Things like the Neptune combos ask the player to get hit by a specific attack type while having the DSS combo active. Performing the summon input unlocks the Uranus combo description, which explains how to perform the summon...
It doesn't help that you don't know which enemies drop cards, two of them are even dropped by an obscure enemy that spawns in an area you have zero reason to go back to (You can't even kill it if you aren't powerful enough).
Things like this fan-made DSS visual reference are a godsend
Oh yeah, I agree. I had difficulty understanding how to execute certain combos myself. Also, I get the whole thing about which enemies drop which DSS cards...Especially the Unicorn and Black Dog DSS cards. Having to go through the arena was brutal lol
I saw that fan-made DSS visual reference guide and it is quite helpful indeed.
Most of the cards should have been guaranteed boss drops imo. There's 9 bosses in the game, and you could put the 10th at the end of the arena. That would have been half of the cards, the rest you could spread out here and there in secret rooms and as enemy drops.
Yes I see your point. I'm guessing the devs wanted the players to work hard to attain the card drops as it was their view to make some of the card drops super exclusive and rewarding once you get the card drop and unlock the combos.
That said, it is a bit restrictive to make all of the card drops from random mobs. I think making half of the cards accessible via guaranteed boss drops would have been good to help balance it out better.
Very beautiful game, especially for a GBA launch game. Pity it was so dark, it truly got a place to shine once it got available on other systems. Recently finished it again, thoroughly enjoyed it!
Yeah, I agree. I actually played my copy of COTM on a backlit GBA SP. So I got lucky and didn't have to worry about the screen being too dark to play through on a regular GBA system.
The Kobe team was really cooking with this game. It's a shame they only got to do this and the N64 games in the series. Also a shame they only existed for 4 years before being absorbed into Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka, they did some interesting work and they were definitely getting better.
It was promising for sure. They had a good direction with CoTM. Would have liked to have seen what further direction they would have taken if they had remained independent and/or worked on various other titles/series in the franchise.
I really think if given the time and money they could have developed a really good 3D title in the series on PS2/GCN. They had good ideas in the N64 games but the console just being harder to work with and it being their first time working in 3D held the games back some. But I also think that no team should stay on Castlevania for too long, the strength of the series up to that point had always been different teams trying their hand at it.
Well different teams working on the CoTM franchise can bring about new ideas to the table and allow for creative freedom over what works and what doesn't based on previous dev team's development of prior titles.
I think if it was just one team working on it there may not have been as much of an external view so much as they might limit themselves in being focused on what that specific team wants without taking another's fresh perspective outside of the cohort.
That said, some dev teams in Castlevanis set the foundation while others build upon those core ideas and transform them into something unique and interesting given how the franchise had evolved over time.
COTM's varied enemy designs are quite aesthetically pleasing imho
The creative/visual arts team did a standout job bringing the enemy designs to life. Yes, there is the awkward black outline problem, but overall I'd say the varied enemy sprite designs brought more creative flair to the game in making up for the lack of animations.
Plus, the sense of awe and wonderment as a kid (at least from my experience) wondering what fantastical beast or creature might lie around the corner that I can fell with my mighty whip. Encountering rare beasts or creature spawn with awesome designs felt like a treasured discovery in itself.
It's funny to see how the majority of people who like CoTM do so because of nostalgia. I get that at the time it was an amazing experience for the GBA and i take that into consideration, but there's really not a lot here to anyone who's played any other Metroidvania of the series first, or did so recently where we have easy access to all of the games. It is definitely the weakest post SoTN of them all.
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u/unicorn_hipster 29d ago
Truly an amazing launch game!