Castlevania was once considered one of the most well respected franchises in the industry. Sure there were some low points like the 3D action games from the Nintendo 64 era. The other 3D action games which eventually lead to the franchise’s death and Konami, who own the rights to the Castlevania, soiling whatever was left to honor. If we were to ignore the decline though we would see that Castelvania has a pretty great track record. The 2D entries are generally well received and remained cult status for more than almost a decade. Hardcore fans are still discussing what universe and characters the creators offered. Plus the series has seen a resurgence lately thanks to the highly acclaimed anime adaptation also known as Castlevania. Giving a reinterpretation of staple characters, expanding the universe, and offering one of the most engaging stories the franchise has seen. I knew about Castlevania and its legacy way before the anime adaptation came out, but my introduction and interest started there. The anime is a pretty damn good show. Not perfect as sometimes the facial designs look awkward and pacing tends to slow down a lot, but I can recommend it to a lot of people. The cast is memorable, the action is slick, exposition while long doesn’t waste your time, and the overall plot is well executed. It’s maybe like an 8.5/10 which is a good score in my opinion. Wait, why are we talking about the anime all of a sudden when the title clearly suggests the review is about one of biggest contenders in the franchise? The one that only transcended the basic formula from before, but became one of the two influential godfathers to one gaming’s biggest genre especially with the indie scene. I don’t know reader, but at least I found a way to transition into talking about Castlevania: Symphony of The Night and how a failure became well acclaimed.
Each 2D entry for Castlevania was directed by a different individual, but every time the lead producer was always Koji Igarashi who helped make the series what it was. The first project he ever worked on was back in 1997. Sony debuted with their new home console, the PlayStation, and needed help from third party studios to help it stand out. Konami was one of these companies hired and quickly they got to work. Toru Hagihara and Koji Igarashi were called upon to make a new Castlevania, but told to make it the grandest one to date. Showcase how far the series has come and that Castlevania was willing to adapt as new hardware stormed the market. For a while the team behind Symphony of The Night struggled to figure out what to do. They thought about following up the previous entry, Rondo of Blood, but they couldn’t just repeat the same formula again and call it good. This is when Koji Igarashi came in. He saw how linear the previous games were and that with enough skill they could be beaten within two hours. Once this accomplishment was reached players would never replay the games as there wasn’t much else content on offer and not many reasons to go back. That’s when Igarashi decided that Castelvania needed to be more open ended. It needed to be longer, bigger, experimental, and give the player reasons to replay and discover secrets they hadn’t found before. The main influence behind Igarashi’s new design philosophy was Super Metroid, another hit 2D side scroller at the time which took an approach towards more open ended design focused around exploration. The team played along with Igarashi and soon Symphony of The Night came into existence. The game was highly ambitious, but it didn’t sell all that well when it launched. Financially it failed and it made Konami reconsider whether they wanted to make more of the 2D entries. This unfaithful story would take a turn though. Critics began to realize how well polished Symphony of The Night was and word got out of the quality. Sales began to pick up and what could have been a failure became a sleeper hit. Picking up cult status and becoming one of the greatest games ever made. Castlevania: Symphony of The Night was a masterpiece and is still considered one of the best games ever made.
It has been almost twenty-four years since Castlevania: Symphony of The Night has come out and a lot has changed since then. Koji Igarashi left Konami long ago to fund his own project. Bloodstained, a spiritual successor to Castlevania which would combine all the good ideas from the past. It’s one of the few pure examples of how to do a Kickstarter project as slowly overtime content promised from the fundraising goals have been added in. The genre which Castelvania influenced, metroidvania, has received dozens of entries from small independent developers who have all offered some unique twist to the formula. Some metroidvanias remained nostalgic to the past while others decided to ascend to new heights and redefine what these types of games should be. We got Guacamelee, Axiom Verge, Blasphemous, Salt & Sanctuary, Steamworld Dig, Owlboy, Cave Story, Ori, Vigil, Ender Lilies, and one beautiful adventure you all may know as Hollow Knight. One of my favorite video games ever made. Without Symphony of The Night or Super Metroid all of these smaller indie titles would have never come into existence. It’s thanks to Symphony of The Night that these indie developers had something to aspire to, because we need more games like this rather than the linear ghost train rides we get poured onto our platters. Symphony of The Night is brilliant, but does it still hold up against all the new standards these indie titles have set up. The answer is luckily yes, because Symphony of The Night still feels like a polished game which can easily be enjoyed today for the first time. It aged like fine wine, and wine doesn’t spoil no matter how long you keep it lying away in a cellar. I just beat this game for the first time recently and man was it a joyride. There are still other metroidvanias I prefer and Symphony of The Night has a few hard to ignore problems, but I can definitely say this is one of the GOATs. Today we’ll be talking about why I loved Castlevania: Symphony of The Night and why it deserves your attention.
Story
Count Dracula, the most feared being known to man and one of the smartest minds the world has ever seen. He’s lived for hundreds of years and during that time he has accumulated knowledge. Learning advanced science, practicing magic, and even experimenting with necromancy. He constructed a castle to perform his dark magic and experiments in, and every so often this castle would take on new shapes and sizes. Rearranging its rooms and relocating whenever it needed to be. The castle is also infested with the fiercest beasts and monsters, and anyone who dares to take down Count Dracula would have to face them first. Luckily, there is a long running family of vampire hunters who are called every few centuries to take on demonic evil such as this. The Belmont Family, the only ones aware that Count Dracula will always return. The most recent heir to the family is Richter Belmont who journeyed to the peak of Dracula's Castle to slay the evil man. With the help of his companions and holy weapons Ricjther was able to kill Dracula and seal him away for good. However, the castle didn’t disappear upon Dracula’s death and was left standing there. An ominous storm of clouds began to form around the castle and the monsters continued to spread. The next year Richter was called upon again to investigate, but never returned from his expedition. The cycle had been broken and there was no one left to help.
We then cut to a mysterious white haired man dashing towards Dracula’s Castle. He possesses similar clothing to the castle’s lord and has quite a bit of knowledge on him. Alucard, the son of Dracula and once helped kill his father in the past. The real reason as to why Dracula hates mankind is that hundreds of years ago he fell in love with a human woman. They had a son together and this crossbreed would become Alucard. The woman would practice the alchemy which Dracula taught her, but the church opposed her actions and believed she was working with the inventions of the devil. The town strapped her to a pole and burned her body to a crisp. This then enraged Dracula and made him believe humans were cruel even to themselves. He summoned an army of demons to terrorize the land and began creating monsters of his own. Yet, his son would gain three noteworthy companions to take him down. A sorceress named Sypha, a pirate named Grant, and Trevor one of the heirs of the Belmonts. They successfully defeated Dracula, but Alucard would seal himself away. Knowing his father may return someday and that his cursed energy mustn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Alucard begins fighting his way through Dracula’s Castle only to be approached by Death, one of the followers and close friends of Dracula. The grim reaper tells Alucard that Dracula is bound to return and he’ll do whatever he can to stop him. Death then steals a majority of Alucard’s equipment and flies away. This leads Alucard to explore the castle and find new gear to replace his stolen stuff, but along the way he begins to hear rumors. A new lord has taken over the castle and wishes to resurrect Dracula from the great beyond. Maria, a female huntress, has come to the castle in search of her friend Richter and states he wouldn’t disappear out of the blue to then go back to the castle he cleared out a year earlier. Alucard becomes more concerned and decides to work towards the truth. Find Richter Belmont and stop whatever evil force is trying to resurrect Dracula. Maybe he’ll even have to reconcile with his families’ tragic past.
Gameplay
Symphony of The Night was one of the two godfathers of the metroidvania genre and if you don’t know how these types of games work then let me give you a breakdown. You progress through each area slaying enemies and picking up items, but rather than traverse them in a linear fashion you instead explore. The whole world is this sprawling maze with different zones, and shortcuts that open up and loop back into earlier sections. Some pathways will be locked off and require a certain powerup, item, or skill to open. This is when exploration kicks into play and you are encouraged to go off the designated path. Open up a map, see what areas you haven’t fully explored yet, go back, and maybe find the key item you need to progress. There’s a lot of backtracking involved, but luckily it can be cut down by those aforementioned shortcuts and upgrades to open them up. Enemies who troubled you before will be less of a nuisance thanks to stronger gear and you really feel the sense that you are growing stronger over time. Reaching an overpowered godlike state. This is one of the many factors I love about metroidvanias so much. There’s clearly a goal which you must work towards and it’s fun to do so, but taking the time to find new equipment and get stronger will make the later challenges that will curb stomp you into the ground more bearable. The mindless dinking around is made fun through satisfaction.
Symphony of The Night was one of the first metroidvanias out there to apply RPG mechanics to the formula. You still explore areas and unlock new upgrades, but there’s a leveling system and inventory menu. Your attack power increases every time you gain enough experience points and level up, and your stats will increase as you discover and equip better gear. Different weapons and tools can change your playstyle and how you approach a fight. Bloodstained tried combining so many ideas from previous Castlevania games. From a crafting system, ability to cook meals, and shards to summon demons. However, what it failed to realize is that Symphony of The Night was streamlined and approachable. It didn’t need all of those elements to be a fun game, because all it did was confuse what should be a simplistic and approachable formula. Every new sword, cloak, and chest piece should be stronger than the last. Just equip whatever has the highest stat boosters and you should be good to go.
The power ups you pick up include the ability to double jump, turn into a mist cloud and phase through gratters, morph into a bat and fly around, ascend quickly towards the ceiling, and much more. These power ups not only open up new pathways, but change how you approach the game entirely. How you traverse around the environments or avoid tricky attacks during frenetic boss fights. Enemies also come in a variety of flavors. We have big guys and small guys. Ones who fly and ones who stay along the ground. Those who attack up close with mighty swings and others who unleash a storm of projectiles onto your behind. We have invisible enemies, blokes with shields, some who can be resurrected even when slain, and others who can teleport within an instance. All of these enemies provide variety and uniqueness to each of the game’s areas, but when it comes to how to take them down it’s always the same approach. Use your sword and slice them away. Simple strategy, but effective. Nothing needs to be made more complex or more confusing than it should be. You shouldn’t have to worry about elemental weaknesses or special weapons made for specific bosses. Just create fun combat that anyone can pick up and understand easily.
You do have a health bar though and when that reaches zero it’s game over. You lose whatever progress you made since the last checkpoint and have to work back to where you last were. This means you have to be careful when exploring and always wonder when the next stop will show up. However, I do think Symphony of The Night is more forgiving than Bloodstained and doesn’t rush down on the player so much. It’s best to take things slowly and conserve whatever supplies you have just in case a difficult fight pops up. Don't get too greedy and always have an idea of what may lie around the next corridor. You can also unlock fast travel points in the world, but compared to Bloodstained not every area has one. You walk to a majority of locations and you can’t easily abuse this mechanic. I like this, because it gets the player to explore the world and slowly memorize the layout of each area without having to bring up the map.
Finally there are the bosses which stand between you and progression. The bosses are these ferocious beasts that use numerous attacks to hound down on the player. They can be brutal at times, but some bosses will signify to the player that maybe they are going the wrong way. They should come back when they are stronger, have better equipment, and properly leveled for the area. So you do and then these fights become cake walks. I mean you basically remove all challenges from the fight, but think of it as an award for exploring and taking your time. A demonstration of how far you have come. Usually I’d be giving more complex explanations during the gameplay portion of these reviews, but this is as simple as it goes. This is one of the two godfathers of the genre and this is where a majority of staple ideas stem. The groundwork that helped make Symphony of The Night and dozens of other games such classics. Hopefully you can explore the chambers of the castle and stop whatever evil is lurking within.
Thoughts
Castlevania: Symphony of The Night was an absolute blast to play. I’m so glad I took the time to finally sit down and go through the entirety of it. For 1997, this game aged beautiful and still feels like a polished product that could have been made today. The only aspect that aged poorly with Symphony of The Night was the voice acting. If you’ve seen footage of the voice acting then you know how horrendous it was, but part of it was due to technology at the time and what the team could record. Personally I really don’t have a problem with it and the performances add a bit of finesse. It was like watching a stage play. Some of them were good and the rest of them were bad, but deep down you knew they tried. They rehearsed, remembered their lines, and gave it their very best. You can look back and respect the performance they gave you.
The pixelart of Symphony of The Night still looks splendid and it’s amazing how they got certain effects to work on the original Playstation. Everything is 2D, but occasionally 3D models are thrown in to help certain objects and environments pop towards the player. I love the amount of monsters and fiends you encounter across your journey, because overtime Dracula’s Castle starts to feel like a home for all the world’s monsters. A culmination of every horror idea ever created by man has taken refuge in one sinister location. The animation is very smooth and each of your attacks have an impact. They don’t have weight to them, but you can sense your sword as they clash against the enemy. Slicing through their skin and delivering a mighty blow. The controls were tight and it never felt like Alucard was unresponsive. He snaps towards the right direction, gets enough air time to readjust his jumps, doesn’t gravitate toward the ground so easily, and doesn’t take too long to swing his blade. Truly great stuff on offer.
The story isn’t all too much, but looking back at the time this was the next step for Castlevania. They wanted to explore the characters and universe more, and make them feel more like soulful individuals rather than just the guy you controlled or the villain you slay. Alucard being the main protagonist was the biggest change in the series. Normally we would control a vampire hunter, otherwise a member of the Belmont family, but instead we are playing as the son of Dracula. A crossbreed between monster and human. Someone with a completely different view point and stand in this sort of world. Alucard could hate mankind like his father, but deep down he knows there is good in people. Mankind is willing to adapt and change for the better. His mother is the one who taught to always have faith in people even if you despise them. Alucard’s journey isn’t deep, but it teaches the player that you should be a forgiving person. Remember those you hold dear and the lessons they have taught you. There’s a boss fight later on where you basically fight resurrected versions of Alucard’s old friends. They aren’t the real characters, but it did get me to think. Alucard is basically immortal. He can live as long as he likes and the only way he can die is if someone kills him. All his friends are dead and the ones he has now will die eventually. He will have to watch everything suffer around him, but no matter how much stress is placed onto his shoulders he always does the right thing. He determines the difference between doing what makes you happy and doing what is morally right for everyone. I can’t believe I just went on a rant on how cool Alucard is and why he’s better than half the protagonists this series has seen. By the way, this man is gorgeous!
The gameplay and design of Symphony of The Night is perfect in my opinion. It’s understandable why this is one of the most influential games ever made, because every design choice adds up and not a single one falters another. The exploration, while containing a lot of backtracking, is fun and rewards you for going off the beaten path. Giving you better equipment and upgrades that improve your resistance to enemy attacks. Unlocking shortcuts feels rewarding itself as it can show you how far you’ve gotten through a difficult section. Leveling up feels great and it’s satisfying to see enemies in earlier sections being one shot by the strength you’ve accumulated. The game is pretty well balanced in that it never felt too hard or too easy. Well, that’s kind of a lie. There are times when a boss killed me within seconds, or I killed a boss within less than a minute. It’s because of one of two reasons and they are both understandable. The first is that you didn’t understand their attack patterns and moveset. One thing I disliked about Bloodstained is that some fights were hard for the wrong reasons and the only way to survive was to jack yourself up on healing items. Here the boss fights were fair and there was never a point I needed to jack myself up as I always had the right stats and tools for the job. The second reason is that to overwhelm a boss you must become overpowered, and the way you do that is by exploring and picking up upgrades. In some way this can be considered another reward. It’s to show that the time you spent drinking around was worth it and something that could have killed you easily was now made bearable now that you are stronger.
One final statement is one that I’ve been meaning to address for a very long amount of time. Metroidvanias have the best approach when it comes to difficulty and balancing. More so than any of the soulslikes I’ve review for this site. The reason most players would side track in other video games is because they are underleveled. They need better equipment or to come back later when they are ready. That is fine. However two problems may arise. The side tracking may be boring or tedious, and there are difficult sliders which remove exploring any of the side content in general as you now plow through the next mission. Both of these are pretty bad, because you want the player to explore as much of your world as possible and enjoy what there is on offer. Metroidvanias and soulslike fixed the problem of difficulty and balancing a majority of video games have. There are encouragements to explore side areas and find new content. This new content will then benefit the player and have the mind set that secrets are always lying around each corner. Checking every hallway laid out and witnessing a majority of what the developers have made. Most of the time these games have no way to change how easy or hard they are, but it means every player has equal experience and opportunity. Some may not pick up as easily, but everyone should go through the same thing. Struggle at certain bosses, find specific power ups at designated times, and have the same feeling of triumph when they finally overcome adversities. It’s hard and confusing, but it’s not impossible and you will win at some point. It doesn't matter how long it takes, because you will reach that point. That’s why I love these two genres so much, because they challenge their players in the right way.
Castlevania: Symphony of The Night is a brilliant masterpiece that almost every gamer should play. There aren’t any major problems at all, and while the story may not be much, it makes up for some of the best gameplay and exploration I’ve seen in a very long time. If we didn’t have Symphony of The Night then some of the other greatest video games ever made wouldn’t have come into existence. We wouldn’t have gotten Hollow Knight, Dark Souls took heavy inspiration by the world design of Symphony, and without Dark Souls we wouldn’t have Bloodborne. So many great titles and it’s all thanks to what Symphony of The Night achieved. So in the end I am going to give Castlevania: Symphony of The Night a 9.5/10 for excellence at best.
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