/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.3823460]

What is the best game in this series?

[Anonymous No.3823462]

>>3823460

[Anonymous No.3823473]

I expect to be in the minority here on /vr/, but my favorite is Lament of Innocence.

[Anonymous No.3823474]

>>3823460
/vr/ contrarians will swear by 1 or 3. Most people say that Classicvania is a tie between Rondo of Blood and IV, and Metroidvania is between Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow.

But the real path to proving you have the biggest epeen is proclaiming Bloodlines to be the best Castlevania

[Anonymous No.3823478]

>>3823474
>contrarians will swear by 1 or 3
No, contrarians will swear by titles that most people actually hate, like Castlevania Adventure.

[Anonymous No.3823485]

>>3823460
1, 3, and Rondo.

[Anonymous No.3823487]

>>3823460
there are a lot of good ones, why don't you try them out and decide for yourself?

[Anonymous No.3823489]

>>3823474
>Most people say that Classicvania is a tie between Rondo of Blood and IV

Pro-tip: 4 is not as popular as you think it is.

[Anonymous No.3823493]

>>3823489
why not? it's good

[Anonymous No.3823501]

>>3823493

[Anonymous No.3823505]

>>3823501
what's your problem with it?

[Anonymous No.3823509]

>>3823489
In 'retro' circles or with normies? Id wager if your average contemporary gamer has played anything prior to the ds games besides symphony of the night, it'll have been either Castlevania 1 or 4.

They definitely will have never even heard of Rondo, 2 they'll only know from AVGN, and 3 they'll only know exists because there's a number missing between 2 and 4.

[Anonymous No.3823517]

>>3823505
They're problem is AVGN praised the shit out of it so they have to hate it on principle.

[Anonymous No.3823519]

>>3823505
casual controls, takes nine stages for it to start getting interesting, none of the bosses are challenging, music is too ambient and dull, visuals are too muddy and mundane, over reliance on gimmicks, excessive slowdowns, lame secrets

[Anonymous No.3823521]

>>3823460
Simphony of the Night obviously

[Anonymous No.3823530]

>>3823474
>it's contrarian to think 1 or 3 is the best

This is what /v/ kids actually believe.

[Anonymous No.3823614]

>>3823485
Nailed it

[Anonymous No.3823621]

I heard the Amiga port of the first game is good.

[Anonymous No.3823624]

>>3823487
I don't really have an opinion, but I think "play them in order" is definitely underrepresented in castlevania recommendation threads.

[Anonymous No.3823835]

>>3823473
That game was alright. Not the best 3D Castlevania game, but pretty good

[Anonymous No.3823838]

It doesn't matter, because you should play them all anyway!

[Anonymous No.3823841]

>>3823501
*burps in agreement

[Anonymous No.3823878]

>>3823460
I unironically think Portrait of Ruin was the funnest old school style Castlevania I played.

[Anonymous No.3823883]

The first one is the only one I like enough to replay.

[Anonymous No.3824003]

>>3823462
>>3823489
>>3823519
>>3823621
Australia-kun is on the loose again?

[Anonymous No.3824012]

>>3823878
All the DS Castlevanias are pretty good, especially Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia.

The only lame thing is that the character's artwork in Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin are a bit generic instead of the distinct gothic style, but if you get over that they still are good games.

[Anonymous No.3824025]

>>3823485
>1, 3, and Rondo
This. Only you forgot X68K/Chronicles [spoilers]and Bloodlines, inb4 shitposting Nintendo fanboys.[/spoiler]

[Anonymous No.3824030]

>>3823878
>Portrait of Ruin
>old school
>fun
Turns out opinions can be objectively wrong. Who knew? Also: Not retro. Neck yourself.

[Anonymous No.3824039]

>>3823517
>Some e-celeb pleb makes a video pointing out why IV is shit.
>lololol they r youtube kiddies who only hate muh IV because sum1 else hates it!!

>Some e-celeb pleb makes a video praising IV
>lololol they r youtube kiddies who only hate muh IV because sum1 else likes it!!

The delusion of IVfags and their desperation to cling to it, ladies and gentlemen. A game so shit that Konami promptly dropped its 8-way whipping and tedious gimmicks right after making it.

[Anonymous No.3824040]

>>3823474
How the fuck is liking Castlevania 1 and 3 a contrarian opinion?

[Anonymous No.3824043]

>>3823474
>Contrarian to like 1 or 3
Neo-/vr/ detected. Opinions discarded.

>Bloodlines is bad meme.
Opinions fired in to the sun.

[Anonymous No.3824047]

>>3823460
Classicvania: Rondo
Igavania: Aria of Sorrow (I would limit this to retro, but then I'd only have one choice)

[Anonymous No.3824052]

>>3824039
I remember reading posts here on /vr/ who said IV was shit because the Cinemassacre guys like it, though.
Especially Australia-kun who replied with "Hi, James." to any posts that talked mildly positively about IV.

Anyway, the real delusional person here is you if you think IV isn't good.
I mean, you're on your right if you don't want to like it, just don't expect people to take your opinion as popular.

By the way, Bloodlines has diagonal and down-ward whipping (as well as a "kill everything on screen" sub weapon)

[Anonymous No.3824057]

It was objectively proven years ago that X68K (or Chronicles) is the best Castlevania. Look it up.

[Anonymous No.3824058]

What do you guys think of Game Sack's top 16-bit games ranking?
Castlevania IV came out on first place, and even Joe (who si a die-hard Sega fan and harsh against Nintendo) claimed IV is excellent and better than Bloodlines.
Has he betrayed us?

[Anonymous No.3824072]

>saturn is best at 2D
>the only castlevania game it got was a port of SOTN with lots of slowdowns and missing effects
>no classicvania

It still hurts

[Anonymous No.3824085]

>>3824058
Literally who?

And can we please stop painting Bloodliness vs SCIV as a console war argument? It's a good game vs shit game argument.

SCIV is slow-paced, gimmick ridden shit that tried to destroy a franchise.

[Anonymous No.3824096]

>>3824085
But Bloodlines has
>jumping while on stairs
>way more gimmick-ridden (auto-scroller stages, gravity change stage, split screen stage)
>no numeral upgrades for sub-weapons
>blue orb that kills everything on screen
>a weird boomerang instead of the trademark cross

I mean, I still like it, and I think both IV and Bloodlines are good, but Bloodlines deviated too much from the original formula, more than IV.

[Anonymous No.3824101]

>>3824085
Game Sack, /vr/ hipsters like them because they're like uncles who were actually alive during the 16-bit wars telling stories about it.

[Anonymous No.3824120]

>>3824096
Yeah, but you can prove ANYTHING with facts, mate.

[Anonymous No.3824127]

>>3824096
you forgot you can also swing with the whip on Bloodlines, and it feels weirder than on IV.

[Anonymous No.3824773]

>>3824096
Yep. After Amigavania, the Castlevania franchise went to shit with poor design choices. What a shame.

[Anonymous No.3824810]

>>3824773
Please, amiga castlevania is bottom of the barrel, Bloodlines has its shares of gimmick here and there, but they're the good kind of gimmicks.

[Anonymous No.3824862]

Aria of Sorrow.

[Anonymous No.3824872]

>>3824810
>taking a joke seriously
Why /vr/ is so autistic?

[Anonymous No.3824883]

>>3824096
>>jumping while on stairs
Is this supposed to be bad?

[Anonymous No.3824885]

>>3824039
AVGN said it was good, not shit

[Anonymous No.3824886]

CvIV is just a tech demo for the SNES.

[Anonymous No.3824909]

>>3824883
According to some Castlevania "fans", anything that changes from the original Castlevania and makes it easier is bad.

[Anonymous No.3825446]

>>3824047
holy fuck, someone with the same opinion as me on 4chin

jesus bless you anon, you did good

[Anonymous No.3825464]

Circle of The Moon best igavania because of the progression. Though double tap running was pretty shit

[Anonymous No.3825748]

>>3823462
this.

[Anonymous No.3825750]

>>3825748
Look again. That's not the original Castlevania.

[Anonymous No.3825757]

id have to censor my opinion if i gave it. but its more something along the lines of >>3825464

[Anonymous No.3825764]

>>3824047
Aria of Sorrow is the best. it beats out harmony of dissonance and simons quest for sure. It also just barely beats out circle of the moon. but those are all the only ones that I've played.

[Anonymous No.3826035]

>tfw hate both 4 and bloodlines

[Anonymous No.3826053]

>>3823460
In my opinion, Circle of the Moon (in b4 contrarian, in b4 not retro). I think Circle of the Moon takes the best aspects of Metroidvanias, mixes it with control and difficulty reminiscent of Classicvanias, and cuts out the Iga easymode RPG bullshit, and in my opinion it's the best game in the series for it.

The extra modes make for a LOT of actual replayability, meaning it's not about extra story bits or steamrolling through the game, it's about radically rethinking your strategy and progression with each new mode. The DDS system helps a lot in making each challenge bearable and interesting since you have so many creative ways to get around hard spots.

Finally, the music is awesome (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I5mUeRKOhg)), the character design is among the best in the whole series (best Dracula ever), the graphics are nice (as long as you have a backlight) and the story is understated enough for it not to be completely fucking stupid (as in Aria).

Amazing game all in all.

Rondo and Bloodlines are pretty good too.

[Anonymous No.3826067]

>>3823460
Normie rankings
1: 9/10. Superb arcade action, with just some design flaws because it's an old fucking game
2: 4/10. Zelda, II is that you? So much fun, go forward on flat fields and hit random monsters.
3: 7/10. Didn't click much. More of 1 but worse
GB games: 5/10. wat
4: didn't play, it looks like total shit.
Bloodlines: 8/10 very good for a few levels, then it was some bullshit that made me quit.
Dracula X: 9/10. Whoever says this game is shit can't form his own opinions.
Rondo: didn't play
SotN: 8/10. For all the hype, it lives up only with atmosphere. It's straight up amazing, but the rest is… eh. Good, but not GOAT.
CotM: 9/10. Whoa, it's actually very good. Too bad the style is a bit off
HoD: didn't play
AoS: 9/10. Short but great. Too bad it's on GBA, the sound is shit.
DoS: 9/10. Near perfect. Adds leveling up souls, better Julius mode, better fucking everything. Probably one of the best games if only not for some occasional shitty graphics.
PoR: 8/10. Good, but the graphics… My eyes. Some of the worst looking levels I've seen
OoE: 7/10. AWFUL graphics. AWFUL new sprites. Moderately good gameplay, but my eyes bleed when I see those atrocious new enemies. barely feels like CV anymore, just some spin-off
N64/PS2—didn't play. 3D is not how I remember it.
3DS—didn't play and not going to
All the remakes—see above.

[Anonymous No.3826092]

>>3826067
>OoE
>AWFUL Graphics

Did we play the same game? It was the only DS Castlevania that actually looked good, IMO.

[Anonymous No.3826167]

>>3826092
It constantly mashed together several styles of sprites. Some looked like paintings, while other had black outlines. It just clashed together and clashed hard, it's like they took 3 different games and put it into 1. Many locations were ugly as fuck, Minera Prison is the dullest Castlevania has ever been. It wasn't anywhere on the level of AoS and games before it.
Another thing I remember is the levels being extremely flat. The open air pieces were just ridiculous. It was just walk straight and attack. Add to this the towns with needless diearly gone Metroid-style exploration… It didn't even feel like Castlevania to me. It had some cool ideas, but they were lost to me behind shit level design. Maybe it got better towards the end, but I couldn't force myself to play it any longer.

[Anonymous No.3827368]

>>3823460

My list:

Castlevania Apocalypse (Castlevania 64)
Dawn of Sorrow
Aria of Sorrow
Bloodlines
Symphony of the Night
Simon's Quest
Dracula X
Castlevania (NES)

[Anonymous No.3828102]

>>3826167

OoE is easily the prettiest Castlevania.

Also, it's not actually Castleoid. The levels are flat because that's basically what original Castlevania is.

OoE's only fault is that you have to play it on hard mode lvl 1 cap to get the real experience, yet you have to beat the game before you unlock that.

[Anonymous No.3828870]

>Your opinion is wrong

Everytime. This is fun

That being said, I find Bloodlines to be a bad and gimmicky game. It's like CV was being forced to be megaman or something.

[Anonymous No.3830404]

>>3828102
>OoE's only fault is that you have to play it on hard mode lvl 1 cap to get the real experience, yet you have to beat the game before you unlock that.
Alright, I didn't get that far, but this is a bit of a bummer. Why make the aftergame the good actual experience, while the main game is pretty meh?
> OoE is easily the prettiest Castlevania.
Ummmmm, I'm not sure I'm following you here. Sure, it does make a translation from outlined pixel art to nice oil painting style for BGs, and some of these indeed look good; but other are so painfully bland it's almost doujin tier. The clash of styles certainly doesn't help. The main character sprite animations are IMO lacking even compared to previous entries.
> The levels are flat because that's basically what original Castlevania is.
More like Simon's Quest. I agree the first 'vania did have somewhat flat levels, but it offset this with a lot of platforming, challenging enemies with tricky patterns, etc.

[Anonymous No.3831241]

>>3823462
without a doubt

[Anonymous No.3831667]

>>3831241
Pay attention to the bottom-left part of that image.

[Anonymous No.3832986]

>>3823460
Symphony of the night or Rondo of Blood
Richter is best Belmont

[Anonymous No.3833103]

>>3823460
Rondo. Bloodlines is also good.

[Anonymous No.3833632]

>>3823460
MSX port called Vampire Killer.
It's the only correct answer.

[Anonymous No.3833690]

Classic: 3 or Bloodlines
MV: Aria or Ecclesia. Dawn is also not a bad pick. Love SOTN but other games are more polished imo.

[Anonymous No.3833710]

>Bloodlines is gimmicky

I mean sure, it had stuff like the tower scrolling and crashing walls. But can we all agree that the core gameplay is very solid? The difficulty felt perfect, it had a cool storyline, and the choice between Lecarde and Morris made the game super replayable. Not to mention extra bosses in hard mode, generally smooth controls, and cool bosses (the water mage, the gear dude, etc.)

Even so, the term "gimmick" has an unnecessary negative connotation. The split perspective in Stage 6 was cool as shit (and challenging). The rotating tower in Stage 3 was pretty memorable, especially when you got to the boss at the top. I really think "gimmicks" in a game are not a bad thing if they aren't a substitute for the core gameplay. In Bloodlines case, they only made the game better.

Plus the soundtrack is super memorable. Iron Blue Intention was an amazing song. Calling From Heaven is the best Castlevania song that never got a new version/reappearance. The setting was super cool.

It was a really well put together game.

[Anonymous No.3833896]

>>3833710
It is a good game (just like every other japanese-developed console Castlevania), and yes, "gimmick" is just a buzzword used by tryhards to bash games they don't like.

That said,
>The split perspective in Stage 6 was cool as shit (and challenging)
Eh, I thought my cart or console was glitching at first, I don't see how it's cool. And it's not really challenging as it is annoying, it's like playing the a glitched screen. Still, it's not that bad, the whole sequence is just a few jumps and a few bats/skeletons, if it wasn't for the glitched screen thing, it would be one of the most average stages in the game, design-wise.

>water mage
Go right, jump, whip, go left, jump, whip, repeat 4 or 5 times. It's a really shitty "boss"

>gear dude
It's not a completely bad boss fight, it's alright I guess, but the design itself felt a bit lazy. The idea of a monster made out of gears is good, but I don't think the final result in the game was what they had in mind.

>The rotating tower in Stage 3 was pretty memorable
Visually yes, but it's pretty dull to play and longer than it needs to be.
I also didn't like the auto-scroll vertical tower with the medusa heads. There isn't any sense of danger at all, you just wait until the screen slowwwwwwly scrolls up to jump, there isn't any challenge in the jumps, and the medusa heads never really try to hit you, they're always a few pixels below you (unless you wait too much to jump)

>It was a really well put together game.
Yeah, despite a few things I didn't like about it, it is a well put together game. It's Konami in the 90s.

[Anonymous No.3834019]

Just played through Blood lines, had lots of fun as Eric, not so much as John honestly.

The "gimmicks" are pretty neat if you ask me. Auto-scroll is always a bitch but it made sense thematically that the level is draining and you need to wait it out in comparison to say Super Mario World their auto scroll levels are there just cuz.
the split screen was pretty cool as a 'last level' hazard, not too disorienting and a way to induce fear through a 94 Sega cart

I'd say it deserves it's praise
would_play_again/10

[Anonymous No.3835619]

>>3823460
no other answer than 1 come on