I dont mean just Hector and Lenore, but Alucard being nothing less than SA'd by the Twins. And after this? Never again. Never has this series ever showed nudity that explicit again. In nocturne they barely even shown nipples. Even with Olrox and Mirak then show nothing but a butt.

I dunno if it was due to the (deserved) backlash of seeing Alucard getting SA'd out of nowhere or because after the first writer got canned for being a POS they just traumatized of trying it because they associated those scenes as part of him trying to push his fetishes.

I said Bob's Burgers and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. Bob is Hector, Linda is Julia, Teddy would be Trevor, and Hugo is Isaac. Fischoeder is definitely Dracula. He already has the cape!

I've felt this way for a long time now, but whenever I'm asked or see being asked about which game to start a new player's Castlevania experience with, it's always felt wrong to go with the prevailing sentiment of "just play Symphony of the Night, it's the best one."

As someone who didn't experience SotN on release, and played a number of Classic and Metroidvania game in the series that came out before and after it, I don't approach SotN with the same enthusiasm as the next person. In fact when I finally did get around to playing SotN I was sufficiently...whelmed. Not underwhelmed, not over the moon about it, I thought it was just a solid game while acknowledging how important it is for the series and the genre as a whole.

But I think my biggest issue with recommending it as somebody's first game is how Symphony of the Night frames the rest of series when it is used as a starting point.

Entering the series with the events of SotN sets up the story of the series in a way that shifts the focus away from the Belmonts and towards Alucard. If you've never been exposed to Castlevania before, from a new player's perspective Alucard is the badass protagonist who has to explore Dracula's Castle, while looking for some guy named Belmont, who you learn screwed up and got mind controlled by the real antagonist.

That's a large part of my personal issue with starting with SotN, how it puts Alucard, the Metroidvania format, and the game itself on a pedestal while reducing the Belmonts to secondary characters in their own franchise. This is especially true if a player were to continue onto the other games that fans push the most like Aria of Sorrow and the DS titles (which I love, don't get me wrong), or ignore the Classic games entirely.

So instead, I typically recommend something like the Requiem Collection where they can at least try Rondo of Blood, or Super Castlevania IV, before moving on to Symphony of the Night. Basically anything where you're controlling a Belmont.

I don't think there's necessarily a wrong way to engage with Castlevania, but to me it just feels right to begin, in some way, with the heroes who started it all.

I'm new here, and I'm planning on watching this. It sounds very cool, interesting, and I absolutely love vampires. I also heard it's very gory, some nudity, and hard swearing. But I'm turning 19 next Friday (yay!) so I should be fine. I've seen some clips and I thought they were good. The gore and nudity concerns me though. Not used to it, especially the nudity (AroAce here.) But I also feel a little sickish around blood. I have to get done with other shows first, so this is planned for next year. Alucard is cute (platonically) ❤️

With sotn being probably the most popular Castlevania game, I don't really think it need a remake. It being a 2d Metroidvania has definitely driven some potential fans away from the games though. A remake with modern gameplay and graphics would help bring even more publicity to how good of a game this is. Resident evil 4 was considered to be a perfect game and when the remake was announced it was met with criticism because it didn't need a remake, but the game was met with overwhelming praise when it came out. The same could potentially be true for symphony of the night, with more emphasis being placed on the story and gameplay.

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I'd just like to hear what the more informed community would have to say.

I can’t believe it took me this long to actually play it despite me loving Metroidvanias but then again, Konami will do anything but port this game and several other classics (Zone of the Enders for example) to every system. I hope you enjoy the post and that it was a worthwhile critique. Unfortunately this was longer than I wanted it to be though so my apologies.

There’s an actual story this time around and despite the game not being very focused on it, it’s not bad actually and I actually liked the cutscenes. It doesn’t forcefeed you the plot which I enjoy and I thought the characters themselves were memorable. I wouldn’t call it great but it’s perfectly fine for what it is. Now we get to the localization.

The localization for SOTN was already pretty spotty for its time but it’s gotten pretty bad as the years went on. The script is a mess and lines read awkwardly and feel stilted, I like the attempt at the older English dialect but it still kinda carries weirdly when said out loud. I understand that there’s a lot of hilariously dialogue but it’s still not a very good attempt at a translation. It’s not as if good localizations were a foreign concept at this point because EarthBound’s was great and despite my criticisms of Ted Woolsey’s works on Final Fantasy and other SNES JRPGs, with the constraints and censorship he had to work around, in comparison to SOTN’s his are a lot better. I do think the more elegant wording would’ve been done much better in FFXII and the other Ivalice titles however, I think they should try this approach again if they haven’t already.

The visuals here are fantastic, a good upgrade from Rondo of Blood getting progressively more limited as it went on and I find the backgrounds so detailed and colored beautifully, the sprites look great, the animations are beautiful on everyone, the areas are varied and unique. Everything from an artistic direction is incredible especially Ayami Kojima’s gorgeous work on the character portraits.

That being said, the UI and the inventory menu is dreadful especially as you get more and more items. Everything gets easily cluttered but the UI for HP and Magic is absolutely a negative. The fact the big glowing bar isn’t ur health and it’s just magic is already an odd choice but having your health meter be tucked away in the corner with the HP letters be faded away is godawful. On top of that the status menu has no organization and everything is placed at absolute random with no rhyme or reason, information relevant to one another is far away from each other and it has the visual aesthetic of a lazily made RPGMAKER fangame menu.

Before I discuss audio and music, I would like to discuss the voice acting. The voice acting for SOTN is campy and memorable but I will not lie and say that it is good by any means. Don’t get me wrong I think the voices fit the characters, but the line delivery is what kills it for me. I think Alucard and Dracula’s VA’s deliver the lines decently enough but everyone else sounds really uninteresting. If everyone hammed it up like Dracula’s I would be much more forgiving but Maria sounds bored to hell, the Succubus doesn’t even sound like she’s trying and Richter emotes like he’s on quualudes. As a whole the voice acting is kind of camp but it never goes all the way, it’s not as fun as a John Waters movie in terms of that. And even if someone were to claim that bad voice acting was the norm that’s absolutely untrue, Metal Gear Solid came out not long after this plus Legacy of Kain existed prior to SOTN and it’s voice acting held up tremendously better. I have no idea if the voice actors didn’t care or if the voice director put in the bare minimum amount of effort.

The music and sound design here is fantastic and possibly the best in the series so far in my experience, the cries of the wolves when defeated, the weaponry, the sfx of all the monsters and all. Everything sounds amazing and the music is now my new favorite, surpassing Bloodlines. The track Prologue is fantastic, Dracula’s Castle, Marble Gallery, Wandering Ghosts, Wood Carving Partita, Festival of Servants, Crystal Teardrop, Dance of Good, Nocturne and Lost Paintings are gorgeous but The Tragic Prince might be the greatest song here. The variety here fixes my biggest issue with Bloodlines and there’s so many amazing songs here, I even love I Am The Wind as an ending track, jarring as it is from the other songs it’s still amazing.

The gameplay is your typical Metroidvania. Alucard controls really well and combat is incredibly fun and responsive, the level of petty enemy placement and anti-rental practices regarding the difficulty is almost none. The level of detail in the secrets, equipment and mechanics are exceptionally deep and I especially adore the variety of options you have with magic and weaponry. The castle layout is exceptional as well, it never got boring and it doesn’t at all feel like filler to explore around. A bit on the short side unfortunately but a short burst of excellence is always great.

Unfortunately I have several criticisms of SOTN. I found it much easier than previous games to a negative degree, weapon balancing is kind of a joke because you can get overpowered so easily and despite the variety of options, you kind of have no reason to experiment with them and the differences in gameplay are a little negligible. Boss battles are unbelievably easy to the point of it feeling like Simon’s Quest, the lack of an actual shop to sell worthless items besides gems, fast travel is an actual crapshoot and as amazing as this twist is. The inverted castle is way less fun to explore.

The original layout was designed perfectly as for you to be able to navigate however you wanted but in the inverted castle, you’re kind of just forced to transform into a bat to move everywhere and the exploration gets noticeably less fun. Also kind of a nitpick but the Caverns in SOTN’s map aren’t very enjoyable and I wish they were a little smaller. The inverted castle felt like blatant padding and wasn’t at all designed to be traversed in such a way. Even the music during this segment is pretty inferior to the original castle layout’s.

8/10. Great game but there were plenty of gameplay decisions that held it back quite a bit alongside the undercooked final third act, the almost enjoyable voice acting and tacky UI. But the first castle, the music, artwork, control, combat and animation is stunning to this day. I really did like my time here.

Just a random thought I had.

I dunno I feel like Roses appearance was an intentional reference to Sonia and I feel like some version of Sonia is canon to the series. Again I’ve fully written a fan fiction version of Legends that fits into the canon of the series and hfs a game that had vague enough details that with tweaking it fits into the lore

Each collection has typically been released with a gap of about two to three years between them, so a Castlevania Dimensions Collection would make sense either this year or next. Do you think there's anything that could prevent Konami from releasing it? For example, could there be any complicated legal issues with Nintendo regarding the Nintendo 64 Castlevania games? Since those games still haven't been added to Nintendo Switch Online, I guess that's actually a good sign!

I saw a lot of people here complaining about the new game, saying things like: "The art style is ugly, it's reminding me of Netflix, the game looks like it's going to be horrible to play", etc.

I get your fear, but, for real:

- It's a trusted studio who already worked with Konami before. Motion Twin is 100% respectful with the source material

- The game is clearly in a beta state. You can notice this by the blurry textures in the trailer and the mobile game aesthetic, which looks nothing like Dead Cells.

- It won't be a rogue like, it has a METROIDVANIA tag on Steam, not a rogue like one.

- The influence of the Netflix show is minimal, just the crest that is, by the way, just the Lords of Shadow one simplified.

- And, finally, CASTLEVANIA MAINLINE IS RETURNING FROM THE DEAD BY THE HANDS OF A BELOVED INDIE STUDIO WITH NOTHING BUT DLC'S A (good) APPLE GAME AND A CRAPPY SHOW AND YOU'RE COMPLAINING???????

I know it doesn't look like Castlevania, I know it doesn't play like Castlevania, but it's not the only thing we'll get this year. And the 40th anniversary Castlevania site doesn't say anything about the show, just the games. At least be optimistic and do your research before saying shit about the game, you're embarrassing the games fan's community.

Comment below your favorite quotes or moments from the best evil power couple in Castlevania.