I can’t imagine you got through LoS if all you did was mash. God of War WAS mashy but LoS certainly wasn’t.
Ecclesia was the best of the bunch, but boring characters brought that game down. Neither Shanoa nor Albus were all that fun to play imo though the game definitely was the best of the three in terms of level design.
Rugal stop being a dumbass on multiple accounts.
I’ve been replaying LoS on PC. It’s a good a port. It could use better AA and keeping the cinematic at 720p was dumb but I like this port. It’s a relief to not have the game drop frames in combat.
It’s not that farfetched that I’m not the only one that hates those games, fool.
I beat Mirrors of Fate a while back and give it a 7.5/10 or so. It’s a good game overall and the combat is fun, but the removal of a lot of Metroidvania features fucking sucks.
-No stats
-No random items from enemies/chests
-No items to equip like armor/rings/weapons/whatever
-Each character only gets 3 sub-weapons
-No different weaponry
-Exploration is very shallow compared to traditional Metroidvania games. Yes, let me back track a bit for a…scroll that adds enemies to the bestiary? Exploration doesn’t feel rewarding because of this, and because typically when you backtrack all you’re getting is an extra room or two to explore
-Level up system doesn’t add shit but the occasional new combo string
-Very little replay value, especially since exploring doesn’t reward you for shit
-Load room for every new room/area(I’m playing the PS3 re-release)
Game felt more like LoS than a Metroidvania. Game was very easy too, parry rapes everything just like it did in LoS. If their were more Metroidvania elements, replayability and more weaponry, with some cool unlockables after you beat the game it would’ve added a lot.
It was still a good game, but it could have been so much more. The combat is very fun though, I hope they do a game in this style again and go all-out.
Whatever LoS’s flaws are, mashing your way to victory isn’t one of them. Mashing earns you fuck all if an enemy isn’t getting stunned.
And lol @ all the DS games being good. Try “okay at best,” and even then, only like one of them (Ecclesia). Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin are like SotN 2 (that isn’t a compliment).
I liked Dawn and PoR. Aria and Circle of the Moon >> them overall, though. I really, really liked DoS though. There’s something about that game…I think it’s great and is one of the better Metroidvania’s even with its ugly-ass animu artstyle(which PoR also had, which Ecclesia thankfully got rid of.)
Ecclesia is pretty top tier.
They’re all good. It’s just they’re just SOTN 2.0
None of them really changed it up from SOTN and even used most of SOTN’s resources.
The games still turned out to be pretty awesome. Don’t care that they’re re-using sprites from the mid 90’s(dem Rondo sprites, goddamn.)
Only specs doesn’t like SOTN, and I remember him saying it’s because there were a lot of “long, empty stretches.” Personally, I think those empty areas were put there on purpose so you could soak in SOTN’s legendary atmosphere and gorgeous artstyle. 
Edit: Any DS CV > Mirror’s of Fate.
I love SotN but the long empty or almost empty stretches were annoying.
I’m also not a big fan of SOTN. I mean it’s alright, at best, but that’s about it. It’s pretty and it sounds really good. I’d still rather just play Super Metroid.
I should clarify – and I realize I was dippin’ into the ol’ hyperbole sauce on my last post – that I actually like playing SotN.
I just feel it’s overrated, worth nowhere near the amount of praise it receives. It’s fun but far too much of it is dull.
I like every single Metroidvania game outside of Harmony of Dissonance on GBA. I hate that games shitty-feeling “flow” and crap music.
I didn’t like the PSN/Live release of that one CV game, either. Some aspects of it were pretty cool, but it just didn’t feel all that fun to me(mostly since every character in that game is a nerfed version of themselves copy and pasted from random CV’s.) If that game and Mirrors of Fate were more fleshed out they’d be so much better than they are.
SOTN is mostly fun, at least for me because there is a lot of broken ass things and little tricks you can do just for the hell of it. You can check out vids of Romscout (the guy who holds the record for any% alucard speedruns), he has gone through and broken down a lot of things about the game. Even if you were going blind in SOTN there is a good chance you would find something abusable or broken just by chance. If you are bored with the long stretches, players have found techniques to get through areas much faster like shield dashing, chaining air dashes with Richter, good bat charges, some tricks even going through walls in the castle to skip sections, etc. I would say SOTN Richter is my favorite Richter because of how fast he is. He is not nearly as good in POR sadly.
I could see how people would be bored if you played normally and just walked around everywhere, playing the game with farming and leveling like one would expect with its rpg elements. But SOTN is like a ridiculous fighting game such as Hokuto No Ken, you just want to see how batshit insane and broken it can get once you see some of the dumb stuff. Though one could argue why would I go out of my way to make something not dull, but I guess I just like looking at games at the high bar at what you can do. Every Metroidvania has a lot of dumb stuff, like zips through the castle, messing with the memory via glitches to get items and souls. Order of Ecclesia is the least broken because they probably decided to at least have some resemblance of balance, even then Shanoa can pretty much one shot bosses with the right setup later in the game. Though the shields in that game probably were put in for shield dashing. Sure they can block small projectiles but honestly 99% of players rather dodge and smack the shit out of enemies.
I enjoy SOTN a lot. Its ARPG elements add a lot of depth and replay value, and exploring the castle was always really fun to me. Little things like item descriptions and a lot of items having unique, sometimes hidden effects and stats was very interesting to me. That and, in every Metroidvania afterwards, items and weapons were never as diverse(although things like the Claymores in the Sorrow games are pretty cool, as well as the Soul system.)
Richter in SOTN is broke, yeah, and while his PoR version isn’t as good, he still has most of his tools from his SOTN version and can slam everything in PoR with ease.
I wish Konami wasn’t fucking up hard and let IGA make a new CV game. While I enjoyed LoS and MoF, I’d be fucking lying if I said I enjoyed them as much as most of IGA’s games.
I’m ready for a 2D Castlevania to return to the classic style. Metroidvanias grew stale for me.
All I need is a Metroidvania with more focus on platforming being a threat again, it’s one thing I liked about MOF with the fall damage.
See, this is why they need IGA putting out oldschool or Metroidvania-style games on PSN/Steam/Live/whatever every 1-3 years.
Ecclesia was too good, and so was REbirth. Purposely make these 15-20 bucks a pop while keeping MercuryS on the 3D side of CV.
Metroidvania needs to have the platforming not suck period. I played Guacamelee a few months ago and I wish other games put would put more emphasis on platforming and have platform puzzles like that game did.
I don’t get companies who have these legendary style of games, like metroidvanias CV, or classic style resident evil, and just refuse to touch them… There’s enough room for everybody. Just give us a downloadable metroidvania every couple years, and and classic style re every few as well. Keep the main series wonky 3d button mashing for cv and blow up everything in sight run n gun for re, But just give us an alternative as well once in a while.
But castlevania doesn’t have to be relegated to handhelds. Like I said imagine Dante’s look in umvc3 and picture an alucard or soma in that style in an enormous castle… It’d be the greatest thing ever.