/vr/ - Retro Games

>>8751651
Your birth

The inverted castle not being interesting enough to carry the second half of the game. Every path leads to a dead end with some lame item that you don’t need because you’re insanely overlevelled.

Too much Castle, too little -vania.

>>8751653
fpbp

>>8751651
This is what I like to call a spectacle game. It's doesn't have any difficulty so instead it relies on music and art to carry itself. Which is totally fine and the game deserves all the praise it gets.

>>8751651
Redditvania: Symphony of the Upvote is a classic case of Konami’s problem with making lackluster sequels that get overhyped due to non-gameplay related aspects such as storytelling or gimmicks such as in this case meme voice acting. See also Suireddit 2, Reddit Gear Solid 2 and, most famously, Reddit Hill 2.

>people claim about how amazing the ost is
>inverted castle only plays 2 or 3 different songs

>>8751694
Being contrareddit doesn't make you interedditing.

>>8751702
liking games based on story, soundtrack or meme voice acting makes you Reddit, sorry that’s just how it is

>>8751694
I mean yeah, everyone liked SotN not because its gameplay but because it had gorgeous art and was the swansong of that particular style for decades afterwards. It was really well-received at the time, nothing to do with Reddit or whatever.

The only thing wrong is people thinking the Saturn version isn't the best version

>>8751694
fuck off shit eating australia-kun

>>8751694
>SotN is well regarded because of the shitty meme gameplay
/vr/ is on some nuclear cope today huh

>>8751712
Too bad I enjoy SotN for the weird weapons you can find and fucking around with the mechanics. It's not particularly challenging but I enjoy seeing what kinda crazy shit the devs put in.

>>8751726
It's just one salty bitch boy that picks fights in Castlevania threads, along with Silent Hill 2 threads.

>>8751651
I mean, Rondo of Blood under director Hagihara was arguably already going in the direction of style over substance, as much as Rondo fans would hate to hear that. It shouldn't be much of a surprise that its direct sequel, which I think took years of development getting kicked from console to console (I think a Sega add-on to PSX?) and then ended up in the hands of Igarashi, who has been on record saying that he/they wanted to dumb it down to attract more players and give them other reasons to play, would be worse in that regard. Not that there isn't anything enjoyable about it, but it has very little, to the point that I question if they had any clue what the fuck they were doing, period. Even putting aside action and platforming, it's not even all that interesting as an adventure game, the level design is that boring and you just don't have that much going on, you know? Like the alchemy lab has a cannon you can set off for what's ostensibly a short cut, except you'll probably never have a reason to go that way once it's set up, and all you do is hit a switch. Actually having to put together the ingredients for gunpowder and then take it to the cannon would've made things more lively, but as it stands, you're pretty much just hitting levers like they're glorified keys. Just about everything feels like a glorified key, even the vampire powers, especially if you don't know about stuff like wing smash. Speaking of, the powers aren't that fun to use, either, because bat and wolf forms are clunky pieces of shit with shit abilities like taking two seconds to spit a horizontal fireball. Why can you only spit horizontal fireballs? Why do you even have to acquire bat form when that's something Alucard can do in CV 3 from the getgo? It's all just awful, and the irony is that the later metroidvanias generally have better gameplay because they adhered closer to what made the older games work if not borderline ripped the same ideas while using SoTN's template.

>>8751651
>T esrb

>>8751653
fpbp
opwnbaw

Nova Skeleton: Dick Laser

>>8751651
Igarashi was allowed to direct it.

>>8751996
>nooooo you can't just have threatening enemies at a point in the game where you have a literal invincible ethereal flying mist of death ability

>>8751687
>This is what I like to call a spectacle game
Do you remember where you picked up that terminology?

I want so badly to like this game but it just doesn’t seem to hold my interest every time I’ve tried. Which is weird because I love the Metroid games.
I will probably stream it since I am an attention whore and an audience watching me will probably be enough motivation to actually play it.

>>8751720
From what I hear it really sounds like the better version. It can’t possibly run much worse than the PSX version, can it?

>>8751651
Nothing. It's best castlemania by far.

>>8751657
The inverted castle works because it fixes a common problem in metroidvanias where you get all your cool upgrades and the game is already over before you can have fun using them. It's also cool as fuck.

>>8751687
The gameplay in SOTN is very good despite its lack of difficulty. Wing smash and gravity boots give you very satisfying, fast movement. Most weapons are varied and have additional attacks mapped to quarter circle and back forward motions. The level design of the castle as a whole makes it very fun to explore and navigate.

>>8751719
I like SOTN for the gameplay.

>>8751720
The map being so cumbersome to open literally makes it unplayable

>>8753839
It can.

(You)

PS1 isnt that bad really

Movement is too slow but if you shield dash it's pretty fun

>>8753891
The inverted castle fucking sucked. It didn't even feel like you were rediscovering the areas but all twisted. It just felt like the devs lazily and sloppily copied and pasted the whole map then arbitrarily filled it with the same enemies. You had 2 or 3 cool areas like the floating catacombs and then the rest of it was just upside down version of the levels with the same god damn skeleton enemy copy pasted everywhere. It fucking sucked. Just give me NG+ to play with my OP powers it practically is the same thing just less shit.

>>8751651
Inverted castle.

>>8751758
"Reddit spacing" is a newfag meme, think about readability next time instead of being called names by election tourists.

>>8753891
That's not how that sprite looks on a CRT.

Do any hacks fix it?

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6125/

Anyone try this?

>>8751651
tons of cool weapons, items, special moves, etc, and absolutely no reason to use fucking any of them due to a total lack of difficulty

>>8754392
Fixing SOTN's problems would basically require an overhaul from the ground up. Even permanent Lv1 in luck mode doesn't do it.

>>8751651
Very little except the death of the classic series, but the 'troidlike series is good in its own right.

>>8751651
some dev played metroid i guess

>>8751651
Not balanced. The player becomes busted by the end even when they're not trying too. Dracula is the easiest boss in the game

>>8751651
>What went wrong?
>Konami

>>8751947
>newfag throwing around buzzwords

>>8751653
OH SHIT

>>8751651
Fuck Redditvania: Symphony of the Upvote. People only like it because of the meme voice acting. Second most overrated Konami game after Reddit Hill 2.

OP is probably just Bri'ish, innit?

>>8755040

>>8754380
Honestly wasn't even that, I just didn't realize how bad it was going to look.
>>8753891
>The gameplay in SOTN is very good despite its lack of difficulty
No, see, something like Kirby has good gameplay despite being easy. Shoot, Nintendo games in general are arguably this. SoTN is just bad and anyone who argues otherwise is likely lying.
>Wing smash and gravity boots give you very satisfying, fast movement
You're neglecting to mention that wingsmash and for that matter wolfdash are only particularly useful in certain spots because of how unwieldly they are, being borderline useless anywhere else, nevermind how the general clunkiness of the different forms including the transformation process in and out. Wingsmash in particular forces you out of bat form for no good reason and causes you to drop and lose altitude if you don't interrupt it with mist form.
>Most weapons are varied and have additional attacks mapped to quarter circle and back forward motions
I'm sympathetic on some level because the special moves are my favorite part of SoTN, but for one thing, most of those special weapon moves force Alucard to do them on the ground and generally hit in a straight line in front of him, with little in the way of variety, and second, most of Al's attacks with his weapons are either horizontal swings or stabs/punches. I don't think he has a single overhead swinging attack.
>The level design of the castle as a whole makes it very fun to explore and navigate
The level design is SoTN's most grievous sin, more than any of the games afterward. I've said this in this thread already, but I'll say it again, SoTN is not only bad as an action platformer but also as an adventure game, and the level design is part of it. Most of the game is flat hallways with dumbass enemies who can't fight their way out of a paper bag, and when it isn't that, it's basic bitch platforming that might as well not exist, because the game does practically jack shit with its area themes.

>>8751651
I played as a kid and never knew about the inverted castle wth

>>8753891
>>8755157
Want to rant more about the level design. The cave section has at least one platform actually crumble and fall, but then that's it. They don't do anything with this. Hell, you don't even have to get the bat form to fly and escape from here, it's just a pointless moment. It's especially silly considering Alucard's debut game was up to the brim with falling platforms, including the infamous falling block tower segment in that game's cave section.
>inverted castle
>>8754304 already covered a lot about why the Inverted Castle sucked, but I would add that outside of maybe the Marble Corridor, there wasn't a damn thing interesting about it, and that's just because of the spike traps. Everywhere is pretty much either a clusterfuck flouncing Alucard about with weakass damage or a nuisance to traverse because Alucard's aforementioned movement options suck. Yes, including the high jump, even if it's not as bad as the others, because double jump is just a little too short, so you have to hit your head nigh everywhere instead. In fact, in reference to your point about using the Inverted Castle as an excuse to flex with your powerups, that ends up falling flat because the level design doesn't allow for much and the powers suck anyway. Bat form should be far more enjoyable to use than it is, yet as it stands, it's arguably a step down from Al's bat form in 3 despite technically having more abilities since they're designed like they're tacked on instead of something either meant to be used or just existing for fun. Horizontal fireballs only can fuck right off.

>>8751758
>then ended up in the hands of Igarashi, who has been on record saying that he/they wanted to dumb it down to attract more players
>I question if they had any clue what the fuck they were doing
You already answered your own question. SOTN is by far the most popular in the series. They did exactly what they set out to do.

>>8751651
It's just too easy. That's it.

>>8755192
No, I mean, the thing about casualizing it is one thing, what their game design actually ended up being like is another. Being dumbed down isn't an excuse for poor design, and I would say that the latter looks like the result of not knowing what the fuck they doing while going about things that it's like they just threw whatever at it.

>>8755157
>Wingsmash in particular forces you out of bat form for no good reason
You can buffer another wingsmash while still in bat form if you're good enough

>>8755650
That's nice to know, but you shouldn't even have to do that in the first place.

>>8751651
Getting to the tower part and seeing the rain against the walls was awesome. Going back and seeing the rain had cleared up blew my kid brain apart. Made all my nes games look like garbage by comparison.

Too easy and not able to have builds from the beginning. Literally it.

I love the game.
I like most of the series, from the first game on NES up into the DS games, and I like Bloodstained Curse and Ritual. The atmosphere of the Castlevania is the thing that makes the games great IMO. Gameplay varies wildly, but that's fine. It's like how 2D SMB games and 3D Mario games are both great but vary wildly as well.

I'm not a snob.

>>8755041
based late90s videogames magazine

>>8755041
The absolute state of britbongs.

>>8756050
low tesr

>>8755040
Bong gaming magazines are some of the most idiotic trash to ever be printed

>>8751653
/thread

>>8751651
I don't think IGAvania ever quite nailed the RPG mechanics. Sure there's a lot of variety in weapons, and a longer game like this needs progression systems. But it just feels so tacked on, and more often than not fucks with the difficulty. It's too easy to break these games by simply being one level too high. Though other action RPGs suffer from a similar problem.

>>8751720
The Saturn version is the same game with a few graphical downgrades and some janky extra areas that seem like blatantly incongruous after-the-fact additions because that's exactly what they are.

If playing as Maria is such a big deal just play the Dracula X Chronicles version of SOTN. It has the extra familiars too.

>>8756614
>few graphical downgrades
dog...

Being inferior to the later games

>>8756757
/thread