/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8259621]

Redpill me on the PS2 Castlevanias. The clunky N64 ones at least have some people defending them, but the PS2 ones seem forgotten.

[Anonymous No.8259632]

>>8259621
They are ps1 dungeon crawlers with more polygons. Not that I don't like ps1 dungeon crawlers, but they clearly lack things that sixth-gen consoles could offer. I don't understand why konami abandoned this franchise at that time.

[Anonymous No.8259639]

>>8259621
They're action games with some exploration. They're generally compared to PS1 God Of War games but I don't really see it that way. Music is excellent but the gameplay is very divisive. You should at the very least play through Lament of Innocence, since it shows the origins of the Belmonts and it's a pretty short (less than 10 hours?) game.
The second one is kinda boring and grindy so I gave up on it.

[Anonymous No.8259642]

>>8259621
Lament of Innocence is a fun game. Short, engaging enough combat and exploration, great soundtrack that's a little off kilter for this series, great for the fall season. A good time that doesn't over stay its welcome, absolutely worth seeing through 100%.
Curse of Darkness is an absolute slog.

[Anonymous No.8259661]

They’re both fairly short games with a lot of similar looking corridors and pressing the same button over and over again. Curse is significantly better in terms of variety and depth but it can be very grindy in places and there’s still a lot of identical looking rooms and shit. Both games have fairly solid stories and both are supremely cheesy, so that’s a plus. Id say give both of them a go at least, Lament first since it’s notably shorter

[Anonymous No.8259668]

CoD is trying to be SotN in 3D. I liked it personally, but it should have had a ng+

[Anonymous No.8259671]

>>8259668
It’s got Trevor mode doesn’t it?

[Anonymous No.8259676]

>>8259621
better than sotn

[Anonymous No.8259704]

>>8259668
I liked the music on it, that's about it though

[Anonymous No.8259708]

>>8259621
LOI is good but has lots of flaws
COD is a masterpiece one of the best CV games of all times

[Anonymous No.8259715]

>>8259642
switch LOA and COD and your shitty post will be acceptable

[Anonymous No.8259716]

>>8259715
fuck you

[Anonymous No.8259718]

>>8259642
>>8259708

Spicy.

[Anonymous No.8259724]

>>8259715
Nah CoD's only exceptional aspect was the music

[Anonymous No.8259734]

>>8259642
>Lament of Innocence
>not a boring slog
>better than CoD
ah yes /vr/ contrarian mode is activated
now someone will say CV64 is the best 3D DV game

[Anonymous No.8259738]

>>8259734
nah, that'd be LoD

[Anonymous No.8259757]

>>8259734
You are the contrarian in this situation. This is the only thread I've ever seen anyone throw praise at CoD. It's usually agreed upon that Lament is a better game.

[Anonymous No.8259772]

>>8259757
>This is the only thread I've ever seen anyone throw praise at CoD
you are in a contrarian board you retard
every sane person knows COD is better than LOI except for contrarians

[Anonymous No.8259773]

>>8259621
>The clunky N64 ones at least have some people defending them, but the PS2 ones seem forgotten.
That's because the two PS2 ones (Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness) are better than the two N64 ones. (Castlevania and Legacy of Darkness) They defend the two ones on N64 since they're contrarian, and besides since they're more retro they've been defending them since before it was allowed to talk about the PS2 ones here.

But yes, the two PS2 ones are better games. It's OK to prefer the N64 ones, but both have issues that are utterly absent from the PS2 games. The N64 games struggled to make the transition into 3D--with the PS2 games, this transition is quite seamless. A valid counter-argument that could come from someone that prefers the N64 games would be that part of the reason for this is because the PS2 games are so straightforward--Lament of Innocence is a rather unoriginal action game where you proceed through maps that aren't that large, Curse of Darkness takes it a step further--it's a full-on dungeon crawler that doesn't even have platforming. It's just hack-and-slash after hack and slash with the occasional boss and customization options for swords, familiars, items, etc. It's true that the N64 Castlevania games were more ambitious as Adventure games in many respects, and I think Legacy of Darkness can stand on its own to be a worthwhile game in the series, but the final products really just weren't there yet.

The PS2 ones have more polish but are not fantastic games either like Symphony of the Night was to the original Playstation. This is where the series sort of went downhill. We just got a new 3D Reboot, (Lords of Shadow) a godawful fighting game (Judgement) and a whole slew of portable Symphony of the Night clones and HoD which is a derivative of them. Originality just fizzled out for Konami, unfortunately.

[Anonymous No.8259778]

>>8259772
you need to spend less time here, sad!

[Anonymous No.8259782]

>>8259778
COD is better than LOI
keep seething

[Anonymous No.8259784]

>>8259773
I liked judgement. But I want to know if mercury steam will return to work in castlevanias after dread's success

[Anonymous No.8259790]

>>8259782
>COD is better than LOI
listen anon I really don't care if you have shit taste, you can like CoD more all you want

[Anonymous No.8259823]

>>8259715
CoD is fucking garbage mate.

[Anonymous No.8259836]

>>8259784
>dread's success
What "success"? The game is decent but it's nothing special at all. The only success it got it's because Switch-era Nintendo fanboys eat up anything first party. And considering Mercury Steam's Castlevania contributions, it doesn't take much to find a better developer if Konami by any chance wants to make a new entry.

[Anonymous No.8259856]

I really enjoy the whip combat in Lament of Innocence. Exploration kinda sucks. I can never get too far into Curse of Darkness though, it has novel weapon crafting stuff and the stealing mechanic is kinda neat. But it also promotes unfun max autism plays by waiting for enemies to open themselves up so you can steal from them. Sure, you can just focus on beating the shit out of the enemies, but if you want the strong weapons or the weird off the wall shit that's fun, you're gonna have to steal.

This is even worse when you realize bosses carry special items necessary for the really fun items so you'll waste a lot of time fucking with bosses trying to get the steal chance. The innocent devil system is cute but I never really felt like it contributed much.

[Anonymous No.8259858]

>>8259836
Jesus, stop being a salty contrarian.

[Anonymous No.8259860]

>>8259856
This post made me want to play CoD now. Are there lots of novelty equipment?

[Anonymous No.8259871]

>>8259860
Oh there's a fuckload of wacky shit like a big spike shield that increases your defense and hits hard, but it has no combo so you only get one big swipe.
Another novel weapon is the baseball bat where you can do a home run swing and send fuckers flying.

It pisses me off because there's cool and creative shit in there, but you have to do super boring shit to get to it. If you can get past the stealing autism then there's a lot of content to be had, but it never set right with me. I prefer Lament's straight forward whip combat with the combos and shit. Curse of Darkness puts more focus on variety in weaponry and equipment.
Even with my complaints I'd still recommend both games happily to people.

[Anonymous No.8259875]

>>8259871
>baseball bat where you can do a home run swing and send fuckers flying.
Absolutely sold.

[Anonymous No.8259876]

>>8259856
I liked the steal technique. it's pretty skill-based. however it depends on you knowing where the enemy will appear and it is even worse in the case of bosses where it is a trial-and-error situation. Emulators make this less of a problem, but I don't want to have to use an emulator for everything

[Anonymous No.8259880]

>>8259875
I forgot about the gatling gun and electric guitar weapons too.

[Anonymous No.8259881]

N64 games rules over the souless PS2 games

[Anonymous No.8259882]

>>8259621
One of the best action dungeon crawlers on ps2 is shaolin monks. It's sub-zero mythologies without autism and combat is better

[Anonymous No.8259921]

If you want to play a 3D Castlevania, play the Maximo games. Nothing captures the combat action platforming gameplay of the classicvanias like these, way more than it does Ghosts and Goblins.

Now, Curse of Darkness is more of an action RPG with tons of cool collectibles and a neat combat system, but you need to know what you're getting into. It's like if Dark Cloud dropped the procedural dungeons but kept their length, and got some nice DMC combat in it. Play it if you're in the mood for a grindy game. It is fucking grindy, and the levels are looooong with tons of enemies. If you feel like playing a JRPG or on of those trash mobile games with exp and shit play it instead, sure beats hitting the same button over and over, at least you get a prety nifty playset of weapons mechanics and those summons, probably the most advanced form of monster collecting and evolving in a fully realized 3D game I've seen. At the very least I admire the game for padding itself with rooms of enemies to fight ie: gameplay, rather than Uncharted Climbing or dopey puzzle solving. It knows what it is and sticks to its guns. Music and story/characters are also top notch, this is peak gothic Kojima/Yamane Castlevania, it helps it hold up.

It's been a long time since I played Lament but it was fine, definitely less RPG-ish and shorther than Curse, I gotta revisit it.

[Anonymous No.8259923]

>>8259621
Lament of Innocence is one of the few games in my collection that I've never beaten because I bored the crap out of me. Maybe I try it out again one day.

[Anonymous No.8259927]

Lament of Innocence has some pretty sweet music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AohscTU5PZc

[Anonymous No.8259960]

>>8259927
No fucking kidding. These games were peak Michiru Yamane, are they the highest budget productions she's composed for? Wouldn't be surprised if they are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm_8daZJar4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izj8elq1o1Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8EfxAhz8-o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZLRnQqEyt0

[Anonymous No.8260432]

>>8259621
i like lament. once you get the full whip moveset and few spells, which doesn't take very long imo, the combat is a lot of fun. problem is they designed about 5 rooms per level and copy-pasted them to make 50 rooms. the two or three rooms with platforming and shit are cool but the overall game is a lot of beating the shit out of the same skeleton. also the story is total dog shit and ruins the series
curse of darkness has better presentation and some cool new ideas but they swapped out the whip for a million other weapons. really fucks things up imo since each weapon is then very simplistic. i hated working with the pokemon too. why design an action game and then let me command the AI to fight for me

[Anonymous No.8260439]

>>8259921
>play the Maximo games.
>you need to pay to save

[Anonymous No.8260468]

>>8259621
Your enjoyment of the PS2vanias is going to hinge on how well you cope with the level design. At worst, it brings down everything, making even the good parts of about the games feel repetitive, to the point you might as well not bother with them. At best, you'll tolerate it, because much of everything else about game design centers around the combat and its related parts, with easy to learn combos that change how you attack as the game goes on, subweapons with increasing options, magic relics or heart giving extra options to interact with things and being tied to a frankly nifty defense system, all tied up and well balanced so no one thing really dominates the others or the games themselves. There's a lot to like if not love about the PS2 games if you're not put off by their level design.
>>8259773
Nice bait.

[Anonymous No.8260580]

>>8260439
Failure insurance ain't cheap!

[Anonymous No.8260908]

>>8259836
kek, get a load of this doomer cringe.
haven't seen a Metroid game generation this casual discussion in social media in years.

that game's gonna be a done at 3 million once the Switch 2 is out.

[Anonymous No.8260912]

>>8259836
You will get LoS3 and will like it
You will get War of 1999 by them too.

[Anonymous No.8261231]

>>8260912
Not him but wasn't LoS2 critically panned? Mirror of Fate kind of as well. I think that ship has sailed. Nothing of value was lost though, a tryhard LotR thing with butchered DMC fighting and awful Uncharted climbing padding everywhere never spoke Castlevania to me.

I think I liked Samus Returns in spite of Mercurysteam, Hosokawa and his people must be doing a lot to rein their ugly habits in their work, and even still, there's so many annoyances like the flashy cinematics, the pre-boss checkpoints and that stupid counter. That shit was not only one-note and an excuse to turn enemies into bullet sponges to use it, but also completely retarded visually. I will never forgive Smash Bros for making people think Samus punching and slapping with her arm cannon was okay.