Lol dicks.
<3 you though. I need to finish Lords of Shadow, I got stuck in that damn Puzzle Box and it got added to the ever growing backlog. Damn good game though, donât know why it got crapped on.
I have all DS CV games, and two out of the three gba games (I donât count the double pack). All Iâm missing is CotM.
LoS is a piece of shit and shouldnât have the name Castlevania on it at all. After my 20 something years of playing all those fucking games, LoS is a god damn disgrace to the series. Half of what makes Castlevania awesome is the music but now theyâve turned it into a fucking Lord of the Rings soundtrack. The music is just a looping mess and has no fucking business being in place of the masterpieces created by Michiru Yamane. What the fuck were they smoking when they thought that would be a good idea.
And the enemies too. Castlevania has so many god damn unique fucking monsters and they had to go into fucking JR Tolkien lore in order to get inspiration? Where are my bone dragons or my ghost dancers and shit like that. What the FUCK. Look at this fucking list of classic Castlevania enemies
http://www.vgmuseum.com/mrp/lesslist.htm
Are you fucking kidding me Mr. David COCKS? Iâm sorry but this is a bunch of bullshit. Who the fuck thought Castlevania needed a fucking reboot? Same shit with Devil May Cry and Resident Evil. Fucking idiots man. Iâm not done here. Iâm gonna go play some RE5 mercenaries mode. Iâll be back assholes.
I thought CV needed a change. Sick of those Metroidvania games. Lazy garbage.
Call of Duty
Yea itâs lazy garbage to. Your point?
I personally think the formula could be refined much better. Most metroidvania games are easy as hell, from Super Metroid to SOTN to the DS entries. Metroid covers this by having better platforming and compared to Castlevania all the enemies die much faster. You can hold run and pop shots at every enemy your way while platforming to get through sections fast. Castlevania has a lot of situations where you have to pause a moment and focus on the enemy you are fighting a moment. But the problem is there is a point in the Castlevania games where you are too powerful. In all the Castlevania games theres a critical point where your offense is way too good and you donât have to rely on your skill anymore. It seems like the designers donât really try to think of the player strength at a particular point.
What Harmony of Despair did right was on hard mode, enemy patterns got faster and harder to evade. Like you needed to do shorthops or hop kicks do dodge things like retro draculaâs fireball. You had to utilize backdash or slide to get through things like Braunerâs pinwheels (unless you farmed speed boots, even then you need good position to not get sandwiched by double pinwheels). But the counter to all that is broken shit that gets you through all those with no effort like final guard and ancient armor which lets you tank stuff that you otherwise would not be smart to tank. Berserker was pretty fun in that one hit you die, but it made offense way to powerful where a boss can die without doing itâs first move. The first week of HoD where everyone had shit gear and had to dodge in a 6 man in hard mode was probably the most fun I had in this game.
Level 1 hard mode OoE is probably the closest you can get to the old games where each enemy felt like a threat. When you do platforming you had to take in account what the enemy was doing because each hit hurt, instead of how normally you could just take a skeleton hit and waltz through. Having an incentive (medals) not to get hit on bosses was pretty cool, though it would be better if Shanoa wasnât such a beast offensively after getting dominus agony that it shortened down these endurance boss fights to a few seconds that Agony gives you. The problem again after a certain point is that the really strong glyph combinations with something like Death Ring and union ring (Judgment?) still meant Drac died before he did anything. Luckily that came way later in the game.
I think in a way, the leveling system and the items is for the casual player. If you canât beat a boss by getting down itâs pattern down, they have a path to beat it through leveling up and taking the items to tank all the hits they can get. If the player was aiming for medals though, they cannot tank any hits at all, making you actually learn the pattern but the leveling and broken offense makes it too easy.
Considering that LoS started life as a different game I applaud Mercury Steam and Konami for turning it into the best 3D Castlevania around. Like itâs already been said people that see the combat as being a lesser GoW never got far enough into the game. The way everything is played out in fights once you get to âThe Castle thatâs not out right called Castlevaniaâ has this almost chess like feel to it. GoW is always about going right to business and taking a hit here or there isnât that big of a set back. Getting hit in LoS made you feel like the whole world was about to come crumbling down.
And the hate on the soundtrack is bizarre to me. Soundtrack is effing gorgeous. Game takes place in Europe and the music sounds like it. Good. If I would have heard Vampire Killer I would have stopped taking the story as seriously.
But sure it could have used some more enemies overall and did without the Titan battles (though if the third one would have been left in I would have been cool with it). The game ainât perfect but itâs a step in the right direction and the possibilities thanks to that crazy ending have me salivating.
Furry, about 5 renditions of Vampire Killer are in the game. Theyâre all in the music box arrangementâs.
Iâd personally like an updated Super Castlevania IV.
You mean in the witches music box? Iâm not counting that. I mean like if it were like any other Castlevania.
Yea, I was just sayin itâs there.
really interesting reads! posts were very imformative, even within arguments, things manage to stay on-topic and comments were very insightful. very few threads out there that can both drop dat knowledge and make you reevaluate your perspective on game design in general. having read both threads, iâve actually reconsidered my least-to-favorite titles in the series and now i have a deeper understanding of the ration/logic behind why. also was very surprised by your âconfessionâ but i digress, as an 80âs NES era kid you neither had the transportation or funds to make video games purchases on a whim, your parents practically dictated when youâd get your next game. if you werenât to wild on vampires, most likely you werenât gonna be wasting your next purchase on a castlevania game, which means you probably wouldnât be playing another castlevania game till about sotn considering how widely popular that game was.
yâknoâŚiâm actually in the camp that enjoys metroidvanias (not saying theyâre better, just i find them fun) and i can empathize with your hate of HoD (still annoys me how they couldnât think of another acronym, kinda confusing with the GBA HoD.) when this project was first anounced and the screenshots released i was elated. thought iâd never experience a multiplayer version of my favorite nds castlevanias with all itâs characters/weapons/stages/bosses fused together. it seemed like a crazy and ambitious vision, however, despite lacking some polish (some areas really did feel like a cutnâpaste job) it played rather well imo. first couple weeks were great, then the grindfest happened and the novelty of 6 player coâopvania ceased. sometimes iâd ask myself was it really even worth waiting several minutes in a lobby only to enjoy less than 2min of gameplay of stage 6 bcus some soma player decided he needed a 2nd valmanway. for the record if you actually try to play the game in single player with minimal grinding the game is pretty difficult.
lol you should be used to that shyt, you play dfo! 
also, concerning my thoughts on LoSâŚme likey.
Dunno what you guys are on about, I thought LoS was phenomenal and Iâve played and finished essentially every Castlevania game there is from the nes onward.
I really enjoyed the western take on it. The whole thing had a sort of Sleepy Hollow/Tim Burton vibe to it and it was exceptionally well done. They nailed the atmosphere about 100 times better than any of the Japanese games ever did. I especially liked the part with the ravens.
Sure it wasnât perfect, but you guys are way too hard on it.
Youâre right, but they could have done it differently instead of bastardizing 20+ years of Castlevania in the making. If the main characterâs name wasnât âBelmontâ or had a âwhipâ this wouldnât be a Castlevania game and everyone knows it. The series has taken a step in the worst possible direction by making it into just another stock action game.
^^ So Symphony of the Night isnât Castlevania then? 
Oh LoS guy, not really a Belmont but more of a Cronqvist I guess. Lol at love of mountains bit though. Game gave me a Panâs Labyrinth / David Bowie Labyrinth along with LOTR: Two Towers vibe, not that that is a bad thing though I adore the soundtrack and scenery.
Canât wait to see where they go with LoS2 but honestly after playing Dark Souls, maybe they should just go rip off that but add more platforming to it.
SOTN style gameplay is pretty much reminiscent of Castlevania 2.
Did you play through the game? Because everything oozes Castlevania from the atmosphere to the characters, and to the extent the gameplay if you relate it to the other 3D games. LoS is also the best 3D Castlevania by far. Did the other 3D games bastardize the series for you, too?
I agree with this. I didnât like the game, but out of Castlevania 64, and the two on PS2 - donât know if there were others, but those are the ones that I played - LoS is fantastic and very well done⌠But that doesnât mean I like it. Uncharted is a great game, and I could give a fuck about that as wellâŚ