/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9700601
Rondo lets you change direction if you hold the jump button, nevermind that you can jump on and jump off stairs through floors, you start with a full-powered whip and the ability to throw multiple subs, item crashes pretty much ends bosses, the bible, some things you pretty much ignored in that other anon's post, because of course.
>>9702739
>still fucked with the formula
And then there's this. On top of Rondo doing its own part in "fucking with the formula", IV arguably is something of a culmination of Castlevania up to that point, regarding how player characters handle. 1 already introduces the idea of subweapons that can attack in an arc, 2 trades it for the for-demand temporary invincibility, infinite shield against most projectiles, overly powerful projectiles of your own and a diamond that can go in even more arcs in the right situation. 3 gives us three extra player characters with abilities that pretty much break the game in their own way.
Grant
>climbs walls and ceilings in ways that let him climb into the scoreboard above and even bypass obstacles and sections of a level
>faster, has even more jump control over direction and height than IV!Simon and even changes direction of attack
>can spam subs from the other side of the room from walls and ceilings
Alucard
>can abuse his transformation sequence with good timing to let enemies harmlessly pass through
>ability to switch characters and transform at will even while being hit means you can get out of falling into pits if you're quickwitted
>three-pronged attack that makes short work of smaller but potentially deadly enemies
Sypha
>ice and lighting spells firing off in semi-circles and covering half the screen homing in on enemies

I don't think it's out of the question to argue that IV is the direction the series was heading, multi-directional whipping included. Indeed, pic related seems to suggest that the idea wasn't already thrown in because of tech limitations.

>>8538842
>traditional gameplay
Stuff like upward whipping had apparently been planned since the first game, the one Gameboy game didn't even have subs and used hearts for healing among other things, and the other two NES games had things like timed invincibility on demand and an all-over ice shit that let you jump off enemies and kill red skeletons. Belmont's Revenge came out afterwards and let you pick what order to do levels in, even. It wouldn't be until X68000 and Rondo of Blood that anything like a set of rules for gameplay would kick in, and even then, games like Bloodlines, SoTN, and the N64vanias would subvert it.

Not that you can't give IV flak for how it did things, but the idea of the franchise having traditional gameplay, especially by that point, is bull.

>>7385417
I have to agree with other anon to an extent, Castlevania 1 was an action platformer with an emphasis on action. It says something that the hardest level in the game doesn't even have pitfalls of any sort. However, I agree with you about 4 being easy on the first run, and would add that if anything, there was an increased emphasis on platforming since 2, nevermind Adventure 1 and 3.

In fact, 4 is more or less the logical evolution of the series, contrary to formulafags. Having more than one direction to whip was planned since the first game, 2 eschews any sort of directional attack going so far as to drop the axe, and then 3 sees Trevor complimented by three different partners who either had stupid levels of mobility that trivialized nigh everything or had at one possible multidirectional attack, like Sypha's ice and lighting spells or Alucard's hellfire spread. The real caveman logic is that Belmonts shouldn't be able to whip in more than one direction with their fucking ancestral weapon and instead have to rely on a handful of screen-covering attacks, if even. 4 might not have executed its ideas in the best way, but it's absolutely stupid that it was all thrown away in favor of either essentially gimmicks like Rondo's character movement abilities or literally just to appeal to a hardcore PC crowd like with X68000 with their frankly dumb harder=better logic. I like the games that came out afterwards, in some ways more than 4 and particularly Chronicles, but I won't pretend they're perfectly designed and that 4 is objectively worse if not straight up garbage that doesn't belong in this series.