/vr/ - Retro Games

Most people agree that Rondo, 3, or SOTN are the best ones. Some people lean towards metroidesque ones and others preer the classic style.

I personally reccomend starting with one of the NES ones, as it's really hard to play them after you've played something like SCIV.

Bloodlines

3 is awesome too

SotN is highly overrated

I'd say either 1 or 3 are a good starting point. After that you should try Super Castlevania IV or Symphony of the Night.

Play all of them, the GBA games are also good

Play the first one first.

3 can be pain in the ass, if you don't have a decent amount of patience, just skip it. Beating it is about as satisfying as it gets, but it takes a while.

The first Castlevania is probably the one I like the most. Never played Rondo of Blood, though. (I am gonna play it soon, I guess, both the remake and the original)

Well, here's another question from OP: which one has the weirdest, most creative enemy/boss designs? I would probably enjoy that a lot.

>>874332
Way too overrated indeed, but still a good game.

>>874363
That's one thing SotN does get right. If you play your first run without spoilers (except for how to get to the inverted castle) you might even see them for more than a few seconds each.

>Nobody saying super castlevania 4

>>874443
They know not the truth, anon.

>>874443
Except people did.

>>874443

Maybe that's because it's not that great

>>874367
Are the ones on the gba metroidvania oder more like the classic castlevania games?

>>874494
whoops, quoted the wrong post.

>>874336
>>874336
>>874336

>>874443
4 is too easy. Every encounter in the game simply entailed spamming your enormous stretch armstrong whip across the screen until everything died.

>>874483
I'll fight you.

>>874503
Not to mention that your whip has a wallhack, letting you kill some enemies before you walk into their attack range.

>>874363
Symphony of the Night. There are a ton of really insane enemies that show up in like one room and are never seen again. I replayed it recently and ran into a bunch of crazy enemies I barely remembered until I saw them again.

>>874332
>>874367
Yeah, SotN is absolutely overrated. I'm one of the people who overrates it. Looking at it as objectively as I can (which isn't very, but still), I think the gameplay is a bit rough around the edges, and the game on the whole is so easy that I have to wonder if it was playtested at all. The sprite animation is fucking great, though, as is the music, and for me it's one of those games that's significantly greater than the sum of its parts. I love the hell out of it, but I can understand someone who didn't play it when it was new not seeing what all the fuss is about.

>>874567
What pissed me off were the loading times. I mean, the shit you had to go through to resume playing after dying was offensive even by PS standards.

>>874443
Because it's flawed. Rondo and CVIII are the best classicvania experiences.

Bloodlines on genesis

I know I'm in the minority here, but Circle of the Moon is my absolute favorite.

It's a metroidvania, but it still maintains the difficulty level of the classicvanias. Stats actually matter.

>>874752
>difficulty
>powerups insta-win any encounter

>>874757
who are you quoting

Start with the first one and work your way up. If you aren't into adventure games you can skip Simon's Quest. Don't neglect the gameboy Castlevanias.

>>874752
mah fuckin nigga

I'm glad my thread is still up. Cause I decided to get Rondo and the first one. In Rondo (dumb question most likely), is there any way to refill your health ever? It took me a second to realize the hearts are just boosting my secondary weapons or something. I got past the werewolf boss after about 3 tries, so I'm ok if there are never any health refill items, but I'm curious.

Also, I really liked the werewolf boss fight.

I played Rondo of Blood first, and went on to the original trilogy, and that worked really well for me.

Rondo was perfect for me as a beginner, because I was casual as shit and just curious about the franchise. I played through mostly with Maria (easy mode) at first and then manned up and completed the whole thing with Richter. Then after I was comfortable with the whippin', 1-3 were a blast. Well, 1 and 3 were, anyway, but you know what I mean.

>>876282
Yeah, there's meat hidden in the walls. Whip walls to reveal it.

Also, Rondo is arguably the best Classicvania, but it has insanely bullshit stuff such as jumping down random pits that look like they'll kill you to get to an alternate path and subsequently a different level. For whatever reason this crap is complained about enough, probably because we have the internet and can look up how to find these things.

>>874310

If using an emulator or flash cart:
http://bisqwit.iki.fi/cv2fin/

Full translation for Simon's Quest. Game now suddenly makes sense.

>>877546
You know the townspeople were full of crap in the Japanese version, too, right? They probably just edited the script to make them give hints, which never happened in any official release.

>>877549

http://bisqwit.iki.fi/cv2fin/diff

He has a full page explaining his new translation and why it's more accurate. I'd love to see someone go through it and see if he's making things up. But according to him, the townsfolk give mostly helpful hints, it's just the translation got mangled badly in the localization. The manual saying the townsfolk are lying was just the translators themselves giving up and giving an excuse for why they made no sense.

>>877557
He points out a lot of the nonsense on that page, though. Even if CV2 did get a better translation, the townspeople are still headcases, for the most part.

The NES/Fami original is still the best. It's near-perfect. CV3 is much more expansive and has a lot of amazing features, but it also is very uneven and has outright bad segments, however few, unlike the original.

CV2 is a detour, it's not nearly as bad as some say, but it's not a very good game, far below the high standard of 1 and 3. The best thing about it is the music - a lot of classic Castlevania tracks originated in CV2.

The so-called Super CV4 is actually the next-gen remake of the first game. It is the Gears of War of it's time. It's a decent game, but it has nothing on the truly inspired Castlevanias like 3 or 1.

Aparallel to the original game there was a seperate Akumajo Dracula for MSX. It's more like SV2 and is not a good game at all.

Haunted Castle for the arcades is decent, but very challenging. It's on par with Makaimura (G'n'G) in terms of punishing difficulty, but isn't as good.

Dracula X Chi no Rondo is an interesting experiment with brilliant music, but it's very uneven. Fandom tends to overrate it, because the PCE game was hard to obtain and emulate for awhile, and it was the prequel to SotN. It's a good Castlevania game, but not great. See said fans lash at me for saying this below.

Dracula X was ported to the SNES. It's a different game, it's o.k., but not good. Has nothing on 1, 3 or even 4.

Symphony of the Night is too easy. If you're ok with no challenge at all, though, you may enjoy it. But it really is offputtingly easy. Music is great.

1/2

>>877604
There are three games for the original GameBoy. None of them are too bad, but neither are great. They are all typical aproximations of the NES/Fami experience on the portable.

Then there was another remake of the original game, now for the SHARP x68k home computer. It's called Akumajo Dracula again (like the first game). The game had an updated port for PSOne, named Castlevania Chronicles, which also contains the full original x68k version if you don't want the new sprites. It had an amazing soundtrack, and gameplay was about on par with the likes of Chinorondo.

Left are the two N64 Castlevanias. First of all, neither are good games. Second, both are lovable, and second is a much better game than the first. But there is no point in playing them when you have brilliant, challenging, thrilling games like CV1 and CV3.

When you play CVIII, make sure you're playing the Famicom version, called Akumajo Densetsu. It has uncensored sprites, an adequate damage system, and, msot importantly, the Famicom version, unlike NES, had an additional audio chip, so sound is much, much better, which is important for music-heavy classic chiptunes like the CV soundtracks.