/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9696670]

Man this game was miserable to get through. I'm trying to play all the Castlevanias so I had to force myself to play this

>bosses are unreasonably hard and are complete damage sponges
>basement has no warp point, so you have to trek all the way there and back if you need to go there
>virtually 0 health potions, have to constantly go to save rooms to heal
>you get knocked back when hit, makes running through sections very tedious as you can't just jump over enemies
>2nd last boss has no save room close by, need to run through a long section with the hardest enemies in the game each time you die
>final boss shoots projectiles that are complete luck to dodge and take 25% of your health when hit.

[Anonymous No.9696683]

>>9696670
I thought it was good. It's more fun to play than Harmony of Dissonance.

[Anonymous No.9696686]

>>9696670
>I'm trying to play all the Castlevanias so I had to force myself to play this
The hardest part of being a gamer is stopping yourself from doing this shit with any big franchise. But then again maybe it help you to appreciate other games more? I don't know

[Anonymous No.9696696]

>he doesn't like challenge
i love this game. i've beaten it 15+ times with all the different modes. thief and shooter are my favorite. it feels like the closest thing to a classic x modern castlevania love child.

[Anonymous No.9696734]

>sotun/aria babbies complaining about the difficulty

The hardest part of this game was trying to find a decent light source on the non-sp GBA because this game was dark as fugg.

[Anonymous No.9696747]

I loved this game when I was a teenager, but now I find it just mediocre. Just about any other Metroidvania is better. It's still not a BAD game, but it has a lot of really old design philosophies while also trying to be new and interesting, so it ends up doing neither well.

[Anonymous No.9696750]

I mean, if you really did play all the Castlevania you wouldn't find it that bad compared to the real stinkers like Haunted Castle or The Adventure.

[Anonymous No.9696753]

wait so this game is an outlier in terms of difficulty?
only played classicvanias and SotN before this and thought they realized they made SotN too easy, but are the later games supposed to be easy too?

[Anonymous No.9696757]

>>9696670
I got lucky and the card combo that heals you when you stand still, but it’s a pain having to wait for the slow regeneration and mana restoration

[Anonymous No.9696760]

>>9696670
>bosses are unreasonably hard and are complete damage sponges
None of them are damage sponges. Were you not using any cards or subweapons?
I will agree that the Twin Dragon fight is difficult, and the necromancer fight (2nd boss) is quite difficult if you don't grind a couple levels.
>2nd last boss has no save room close by
That is indeed annoying. You can cheese those enemies from below on the way there, but now on the way back. I always recommend people to save all of their healing items for this particular part of the game. I also always recommend completely skipping the Arena until you've already cleared the game, it's pretty fucking difficult, make sure you bring the cross subweapon and have some items to restore your hearts.

[Anonymous No.9696767]

>>9696750
>Haunted Castle
Beat that once and i'm never doing it again. The music in it is fucking awesome though, i'd listen to that soundtrack any time, fuck it i'm going to listen to it now.

[Anonymous No.9696797]

>>9696750
I haven't played them all yet. I said I'm going through them now.
>>9696753
Yeah it's way harder than SotN.
>>9696760
I counted my attacks for the Twin Dragons and it took me 37 swings to kill one of them, so almost 80 to kill both, and I was using a fire sword I think. Every other boss I died a lot of times as well.

[Anonymous No.9696812]

>>9696760
>None of them are damage sponges
yes they are you fucking dweeb, whatever tactics you want to argue for the others the gimp goat is a damage sponge

[Anonymous No.9696874]

Is it true the Dracula fight is the hardest in the series?

[Anonymous No.9696945]

>>9696760
I don't see how you could call the zombie dragons anything but damage sponges. Adramalech at least stands still so you can abuse the Boomerang to shred him down but the dragons just swing their heads all over the place the entire time.
>>9696874
Probably yeah but as is often the case with CotM if you have the right card combo he gets a lot easier. Abusing Uranus/Thunderbird makes him pretty toothless.

[Anonymous No.9697006]

>>9696874
not really, you can rape the first form with the cross and then just super-jump whenever he charges at you in the 2nd form

[Anonymous No.9697017]

>>9697006
>then just super-jump whenever he charges at you in the 2nd form
half the battle is being stuck to the ceiling waiting for drac to stop sperging out.

[Anonymous No.9697028]

>>9697017
it can get stale yeah, but it isn't hard to consistently avoid any kind of damage, CV3 and Dracula X are clearly harder and probably SotN too

[Anonymous No.9697045]

>>9697028
>>9697006
>>9697017
His comet attack is pretty hard to avoid though and it takes 1/3 of your health. If not for that attack he'd be pretty manageable, just super long and tedious as he has a million health points.

[Anonymous No.9697056]

>>9697045
get on one of the platforms as soon as you start falling, if you do it right he is going to be at your height (not ground level), 1/3 he does that flamethrower attack, you will completely avoid it while on the platform, there he is fully vulnerable and you can almost completely beat that phase with well placed crosses (depends on levels and DSS too ofc) so at worst you are getting just one comet attack

[Anonymous No.9697105]

>>9697045
do the comets do fire damage or dark damage? if they do fire damage then Neptune/Salamander will solve it and Neptune's not that hard to get

[Anonymous No.9697115]

>>9696670
ugly game because of shit resolution

[Anonymous No.9697125]

>>9696670
The rng is pretty wild in this one. I had nearly beat the game before I found potions even existed. On the flip side, I barely had to grind for the cards, and got one of the best armors in the game without even realizing it. Something the poison knights drop. Can't remember. All that being how it is, I loved the game, but I can definitely see how if you get worst rng you would say fuck this game.

[Anonymous No.9697130]

>>9696760
Ah, the twin dragons. What a pain. Pretty easy fight if you have the patience, but damn.

[Anonymous No.9697142]

>>9696670
>I'm trying to play all the Castlevanias
>I don't like hard levels / bosses, lack of convenient checkpoints or not being able to heal

[Anonymous No.9697143]

>>9697130
It’s ridiculously easy to cheese if you have the health regen card combo. They basically can’t hit you if you stand beside the left door so you can just sit still for a while and get back to full health.

[Anonymous No.9697236]

>>9697105
>>9697143
yeah but as the other anon said, having the right cards makes the game easy but first time players with no guide won't have them.

[Anonymous No.9697239]

>>9697045
>>9697105
High jump for the comets, it's not perfect, but it helps remove them from the screen and thus remove them from existence.

Since we're talking about it, for those of you having trouble anticipating where his eye will come from when he's done trying to ram you, I think what happens is that Dracula's body dissolves into the cloud of bats right where he stops. If you see him flying up into the corner while you high jump over him, he's probably starting the eye phase from there.
>>9697105
I think stone, actually, so you'll want cockatrice.

[Anonymous No.9697247]

>>9697045
i don't remember comets being an issue. i almost always have the 4-ball ice shield up, maybe that knocks the comets down

[Anonymous No.9697258]

>>9697239
I can't get past the eye part in the fight. I counted 30 attacks and he still doesn't die, meanwhile if I get hit 4 times by the bats I die. Doesn't seem possible unless I play ultra-conservative and hit once per cycle.

[Anonymous No.9697512]

>>9697258
You might be happy to hear that the bat cloud move is the last thing you have to deal with, take heart. He does take a lot of hits, and if you don't have a good DSS combo or subweapon with reach, it will take skill to hit his eye with the leather whip.

That all said, you can spin-whip to deal with the bats that go after you if you aren't already doing that, and as I've said, anything with more range than the leather whip, which is damn near anything, should be good enough for that. Scrounge up anything you have, the overhead Mars swords, the whip projectiles and extra throwables if you have the god cards for it. Maybe Mercury + Golem for the extra-long earth whip if you got it.

Finally, it bears worth mentioning that
>you can go back and save after Dracula's human phase
>you're probably at level 40-something by this point, consider grinding on a secret enemy like Nightmare or Lilith (look it up) to the 50s or even 60s
>cross subweapon is arguably better than most DSS combos and there's one at the castle entrance nearby

[Anonymous No.9697536]

>>9697512
I actually ended up beating him. I used the rose sword which is overhanded and long range. I just stood and swiped when he flew by and I got 2 hits per round. When he comes by and is close I just run off and he comes by a second time and I could get a couple hit in. Took a while but I did it without taking any damage.

[Anonymous No.9697567]

>>9697536
Fuck yeah, anon, I figured you'd pull it off. Where do you figure you'll go from this point?

[Anonymous No.9697675]

I spammed the shit out of summons in the Dracula fight. Thunderbird/Unicorn were my bread and butter.

[Anonymous No.9697679]

>>9697567
I dunno. I just played 3 in a row so Im gonna take a break. Maybe will go with the DS ones next.

[Anonymous No.9697684]

>>9696683
Actually, I picked HoD up again after I made that reply and it's actually pretty good.

[Anonymous No.9697689]

>>9697684
I'd like HoD more if the whip controlled a bit more like CotM's. You can't weave back and forth while jumping and swinging at the same time, you get locked into an arc like one of the classic games.

[Anonymous No.9697809]

>>9697536
chad

[Anonymous No.9697838]

>>9697689
yeah I'm playing HoD now straight from CotM and that took some adjusting to, actually died a couple times from accidentally jumping into things

[Anonymous No.9697842]

SUCK MY DIIIIICK!!

[Anonymous No.9697912]

>>9697689
>You can't weave back and forth while jumping and swinging at the same time
Finally, someone else who understands. I don't mind how later games including Harmony handle it, it's all pros and cons for me, but stuff like whipping enemies on both sides by whipping and turning around with the right timing is so satisfying and in some cases actually pretty convenient.
>>9697679
>Maybe will go with the DS ones next
While I'm partial to PoR and OoE, I don't think you can go all that wrong with any of the three DS games. Although, if you go for Dawn of Sorrow, if we're talking emulation here, you might consider grabbing some mods for things, depending on your preferences, like removing boss seals or fixing the luck stat. I say that since things like those tend to be what people complain about the most regarding DoS, your mileage may vary and all that.
>>9697838
HoD is funny like that. It's supposed to be easy, and really, it is, but you have to have a handle on how Juste handles or else you just slippy slide to your death. I do think he's so fun to play as once you do, though, motherfucker can dash cancel crouch attacks into crouching position like nothing changed. Juste and Nathan both have some tech going on.

[Anonymous No.9698021]

>>9696670
Yeahhhh, the appeal of CotM is exclusively that it had PS1 production values on a handheld. It's not a good game.

[Anonymous No.9698026]

>>9697912
Are the DS games metroidvanias or are they linear classic types?

[Anonymous No.9698041]

COTM has flaws but it seems the most divisive of the 6 GBA/DS games. It seems like you either think it's the best or the worst.

[Anonymous No.9698046]

>>9698026
metroidvanias of varying degrees.
Dawn of Sorrow has the soul gimmick from Aria only with the added ""benefit"" of being able to level them up. Also has stupid Magic Seals and if you fuck them up the boss regains 25% of its health back. Don't play this without a patch to remove seal drawing and a luck patch (originally it's bugged so that you get like +0.00001% droprate per luck point). Also has a cool mode where you play as Julius/Alucard/Yoko.

Portrait of Ruin has character swapping and a bunch of subworlds like Mario 64. Has a quest system you can fuck yourself over in, look up what quests need so you don't sell something off. Has 4 different gamemodes where you play as the normal duo/richter and maria/two girls from the story/an axe armor

Order of Ecclesia is the hardest of the three. A lot more linear than the others for most of the game with more a focus on combat. All of your attacks consume MP but you restore it quicker than other games. Shanoa mode isn't that amazing but Albus Mode is the shit.

[Anonymous No.9698052]

>>9698041
PoR>Aria>Order>Dawn>CotM>HoD
Circle would be better if it didn't have cheapshots like armor enemies shooting 200 damage death beams from just offscreen and had cards you didn't have to overgrind for.
HoD would be better if the whipping was a bit smoother and the second castle gimmick was done better, just feels like you're retreading ground even harder otherwise.

[Anonymous No.9698162]

>>9696874
He's gnarly for the "MetroidVanias" but I'm sure there's harder, just can't think of any at the moment.

>>9697028
There's that approach, which makes his fight kind of like cheesing the Twin Dragons but a lot more tedious.

[Anonymous No.9698204]

>>9698041
Opinions differ a lot, yeah. I think it's overall decent, but primarily, it's just not quite 'baked.'

Usable inventory items stand out, like little thought was put into them:
>basic healing Potions restore 20hp, which is a very modest amount by the start of the game
>they drop almost never, so to get a lot, you have to do shitloads of very tedious grinding
>that's assuming you know who drops it, too, have fun
>99x Potions would let you heal 1980hp, which sounds like a lot but it actually isn't, you'd use them up quickly if you weren't careful enough and that's not that much by the mid or late game
>rebuilding that stack takes a lot of time
>higher level enemies later in the game drop better Potions, but they're much meaner and less easy to grind, plus you'll kinda overlevel yourself
They're just not worth relying on at all, just be more careful and make sure to exploit Save Rooms and your DSS cards if needed.

On the flip side:
>one of the earliest enemies in the game is a whirling ball of purple snakes hanging from the ceiling
>these drop down lone snakes on the floor, constantly
>in COTM you can whirl your whip around in a circle, kind of like in some of the other games if that ability was automatic instead of manual
>still kind of a shit ability which is almost never useful, but you did the math already, you stand by these snakes as they continue dropping and you hold down attack, automatically swatting the snakes
>this provides basically free XP and lots and lots of Antidotes
>only takes a few more levels until you can just stand right under the snakeball and hold attack and you don't even have to stop and go collect stuff
It's just comically easy to collect 99x Antidotes right at the beginning of the game, essentially nullifying an entire status effect right away, and this doesn't take a lot of experience with the game or a lot of thinking to achieve, that's something I figured out on the spot way back in the day (and I was a dumb kid, see).

[Anonymous No.9698208]

>>9698204
why would you play the game like this?

[Anonymous No.9698213]

>>9698208
You don't, it's tedious. Except for the part about the Antidotes, because that's really easy and basically does itself for you, if you want to do that.

[Anonymous No.9698272]

>>9698046
>Don't play this without a patch to remove seal drawing and a luck patch
Nah, always go vanilla first. The patches are nice but I'm tired of everyone pretending the game is some unplayable broken mess without them.
Also where's the proof that the luck stat is "bugged"?

[Anonymous No.9698286]

>>9698272
>Nah, always go vanilla first
in some cases that's not the best idea, like playing CotM without autorun versus playing it with.

[Anonymous No.9698304]

I see so many complaints about this game on /vr/. This is the only GBA Castlevania I've played, but when I beat it I thought it was great. Some people complain that you have to grind for cards, but I really enjoyed just rolling with the punches and using what I had to help me when it came to the cards. Maybe if you autists just played the game through without only allowing yourself to touch every last inch possible the first time around then you just might enjoy the game. This is my advice with almost every action game with rpg elements though and it is not compatible with most of your brains.

[Anonymous No.9698313]

>>9698304
>Maybe if you autists just played the game through without only allowing yourself to touch every last inch possible the first time around then you just might enjoy the game.
Thing is, when i first played i got only "flame whip" and "ice whip" and absolutely hated the game. I had a lot more fun once I just used the DSS glitch.

[Anonymous No.9698325]

>>9696670
sounds like a skill issue. are you doing them in order? I feel like you skipped the original trilogy. I was doing this too, played everything but the 3D ones now.

[Anonymous No.9698335]

>>9698313
Sry rng did that to you anon. The only card I really missed out on a childhood play with no idea of farming is Uranus. I went through the whole game without summoning and even when I read about summoning online I had no idea how you would have known the button combo to do so. Does the game tell you at some point?

[Anonymous No.9698340]

>>9698335
The game doesn't tell you what any combo does unless it activates, so there is nothing ingame to tell you how to use summons or item crashes. I dont know if it was in a manual.

[Anonymous No.9698342]

i remember liking this game when I played it when I was like 10 but I couldn't beat the last boss no matter what I tried at the time probably like 2002?

[Anonymous No.9698371]

>>9698162
Belmont's Revenge Dracula will consistently fuck you up, but that's mainly because his fight demands memorization.

[Anonymous No.9698413]

>>9696670
Sounds like you didn't play your cards right

:^)

[Anonymous No.9698573]

>>9698272
>Also where's the proof that the luck stat is "bugged"?
It softcaps at a low amount and even that only adds 0.03% to the drop rate. In Aria, it takes an astronomical amount for it to have any influence on drop rates. The stat is effectively useless despite there being multiple items that boost it. This is clearly unintended.

[Anonymous No.9698575]

i thought aria was worse, felt like a literal sotn port and the choices were braindead

[Anonymous No.9698606]

>>9698204
Whenever I play CotM it's usually the card mode hack.
Aside from making DSS cards a reward for exploration, instead of grinding enemies for a rare drop (which also requires knowledge of what enemies drop what cards), it also changes it so that the enemies that dropped cards now drop tasty meat instead, which restores 50 HP.

These changes alleviate some of the major issues with the game:
>DSS, a major feature of the game can be thoroughly enjoyed and experienced on a first playthrough
>Healing items are not unnecessarily rare and do not require farming
>Exploration is much more rewarding when it expands your capabilities, instead of just boosting your maximum HP, MP, or hearts
Though one annoying change it makes is that one of the DSS cards is the reward for clearing the arena.

It can't fix issues like the Arena becoming little more than a strength check and somewhere to spam subweapons, since the arena constantly drains your MP (as opposed to not allowing it to recharge naturally).
There are rooms in the arena that suck, like the fucking Minotaur room.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkeRpLAhjKg

[Anonymous No.9698776]

>>9698606
>It can't fix issues like the Arena becoming little more than a strength check and somewhere to spam subweapons, since the arena constantly drains your MP (as opposed to not allowing it to recharge naturally).
>There are rooms in the arena that suck, like the fucking Minotaur room.
I remember in my old playthrough that I try maxing out my MP and pull a quick No Subweapon Item Crash in the arena for the most annoying rooms so it can be cleared fast. Of course can be very hard since you have no subweapon and needs to rely on whips most of the time. Very expensive on hearts though since 1 use is 100 Hearts so I need alot of Heart Ex to maintain.

[Anonymous No.9698821]

>>9696753
It varies. They are generally harder than SotN but most are pretty easy. Exceptions I can think of are Order of Ecclesida, which has some hard parts. Dawn of Sorrow Julius Mode, which can be hard depending on your route due to removing the RPG mechanics in that mode and this.

Honestly I don't think this game is particularly hard. It's a weird middle ground between classic castlevania games and the metroidvania ones and I think the knockback and harsher difficulty is a way to replicate that. At the start of the game you can even only walk. A part of me wishes it stayed at that speed and they just made the maps a bit smaller, would have been more interesting than it just turning into a harder, but more stripped back SotN later on. They may as well because there's not too much meaningful RPG mechanics in the game given you have only one weapon and relatively limited options with cards. Would probably have been better with no RPG mechanics at all.

[Anonymous No.9698823]

>>9698026
It's a lot like how other anon put it.
DoS relies hard on farming for souls for soul leveling and weapon fusion. There's maybe one junction in the game I think of where you can pick between two different places, but other than that, Soma mode is actually rather linear putting aside the rooms connecting areas that you can open up. This completely changes come Julius mode, though, you got a lot of leeway of when to go where, especially once you got Alucard to tag along.

PoR is where the linearity is more obvious, but more forks in the road as well. There's not much for me to add to this but that do NOT skip the ending cutscene after Death's boss fight, other anon mentioned not selling certain items because you can screw yourself out of completing certain quests, but doing that spoiler can fuck you out being able to see that quest in the first place, AND it can lock you in a room, to boot. Other thing to mention is that PoR and OoE both have a Hard mode with level caps once you beat the game. I'll forever stand by PoR Richter Lv 1 Hard and even OoE Shanoa Lv 1 Hard, fresh in both cases.

OoE is indeed probably going to be the most difficult of the three, with only CoTM and PoR really rivaling it. And yeah, it's also pretty linear, even in Albus mode, though I do think that it bears worth pointing out that there's plenty of hidden stuff to be found on first and later visits to sequestered areas, some more well hidden than others like the Justice ring in the falling block area, you still have enemy drops and quests and even an attribute system tied to general glyph/weapon types like slashing swords and burning fire rather than specific souls and subweapons, so you still got that metroidvania in there. OoE will perhaps feel like the NES games and IV had sex and SoTN carried the baby to term, if you've played those.

[Anonymous No.9698934]

>>9698776
I didn't know about the secret item crash for when you lack a subweapon.
There's no way to get rid of your subweapon once you collect your first one though is there?

[Anonymous No.9698947]

>>9698934
>There's no way to get rid of your subweapon once you collect your first one though is there?
As far as I know, so its also considered a sort of challenge run as well until you got to use the Item Crash DSS.
Harmony of Dissonance also have this through No Subweapon + Summoning Book, but this will just make Juste use a healing spell. Its possible to lose your subweapon in HoD though so its easier to pull off in late game.

[Anonymous No.9698983]

>>9696670
What ruins this game is that changing direction during an air attack will also change the direction of your attack, meaning you cannot simultaneously dodge and attack. As a result you are very rarely able to go on the offensive during a fight. No other Castlevania does this because it's retarded

[Anonymous No.9698985]

>>9696760
>Were you not using any of the RNG drops?
lol

[Anonymous No.9698991]

>>9698046
>Shanoa mode isn't that amazing
Shanoa mode is the best CV

[Anonymous No.9698994]

>>9698272
Why would I want to do the seal bullshit.i don't care if it's the developer's intention because my intention is to have fun.

[Anonymous No.9698997]

>>9696874
circle really doesn't deserve the credit it gets for good bosses, nearly all of them rely on inflated health pools to cover up too few clunky repetitive patterns. Only one I'll give a little credit inspite of being a sponge is the twin dragons, that at least had some variety, I guess hugh is fine.

[Anonymous No.9699008]

>>9698994
You do you.
Just know that if you didn't do the seals you didn't beat the game.

[Anonymous No.9699023]

>>9699008
Fine by me cause OoE is better anyway

[Anonymous No.9699496]

>>9698983
Yeah a lot of bosses are just 'wait for your opening to attack then dodge projectiles for 5 minutes'. The worst was the dracula fight when he turns into the eye. You have to dodge his charge attacks then go on the offensive. The dodging isn't hard at all once you know to super jump so they should've just had the eye form the whole time instead. Would've made it less tedious.

>>9698304
reminds me of the post where anon said he didn't finish Aria because he got tired of grinding for all the souls. Like, you really couldn't just finish the game as is when you realized you got bored of the grinding? It's completely optional, not to mention there's like 100 souls to get if you want all of them.

[Anonymous No.9700143]

>>9698272
>Nah, always go vanilla first.
As someone who bought Dawn Of Sorrow when it was new, and have played it many times with the seal mechanic, I'm going to state with firmness that you really are not missing anything by taking it out, like the rest of the stylus shit, it's an EXTREMELY tacked on mechanic which doesn't serve the gameplay at all, and which interrupts the flow of the game.
The touch screen really has no business being foisted onto a sidescrolling action platformer like that, you don't have three fucking hands.

Patching it out is a substantial improvement, it's like the original Doom and mouse turning, where removing the input for the mouse walking you back and forth when you move the mouse back and forth (because there's no looking up or down), vastly improves your controls and how the game feels, allowing you to make much cleaner turns and moves.

[Anonymous No.9701273]

>>9700143
If they ever rerelease Dawn of Sorrow, I really fucking hope they get rid of the seals and the bug with luck.

[Anonymous No.9701297]

Worst metroidvania by a long mile
>CONSTANT double tappinh to run
>Korean MMO drop rates
And all this with a 100 hour grind at the end to get through the arena
>Hurr get gud
No. The game is poorly designed
>Hurr play through multiple times so you can get different cards
Once is enough. I'm never double tapping to run through this shit heap again

[Anonymous No.9701310]

i don't understand why double tapping to run filters so many people. imho the controls feel great in this game. i think double tapping is a great way to allow players to run and walk without wasting a button assignment.
the alternative is something like Aria where there is no running at all (until the end of the game with the black panther soul). i love that game, but sometimes it feels a little sluggish to get around.

[Anonymous No.9701502]

>>9701310
>Filters
You have to do it constantly throughout the entire playthrough. Double tap to get in range, double tap to run away, double tap to move forward faster than a snail, stop to whip an enemy twice, double tap to run 5 feet forward, there's another enemy, oops, stopped little out of whip range guess what gotta double tap again, rinse repeat. You never encounter even a 5 second stretch of gameplay where you don't have to stop and double tap again. That's not a filter, that's shitty game design.

[Anonymous No.9701557]

I agree that DSS cards should be a reward for exploration and not just random enemy drops
But making gealing items more common is a big mistake, if anything they shoul be removed, the limited healing options is what makes the game actually challenging and not some baby shit, not like there aren't enough save rooms in the game already

[Anonymous No.9701745]

>>9701310
>dash boots are 2 minutes into the game
>there is never a reason not to run
>because of the doubletap requirement you'll often end up in situations where you'll either fall far short of a jump because the second tap didn't come out in time and then get hit
It's plain bad design and the game is much smoother with autorun modded in.

[Anonymous No.9702079]

>>9701557
The healing is more an issue with how hard enemies hit. Nowhere is this clearer than the ice armors in the sewers, they snipe you from offscreen, and unless you're mashing really hard, they hit you with a followup and just like that, 60% of your life is gone.

[Anonymous No.9702519]

>>9701745
Try explaining that to peeps who play Super Metroid without patches

[Anonymous No.9702563]

>>9701310
In my case I would die a lot in boss fights because I meant to run but didn't and it would fuck with my rhythm.
>Aria where there is no running at all
Pretty sure there was a dash or slide button at least. It's way better than just walking.

[Anonymous No.9702845]

>>9697689
My biggest problem with the game is the lack of shortcuts between rooms and pathways. It makes backtracking through the castle a chore.

[Anonymous No.9702884]

>>9702845
I also forgot how varying your jump height isn't like the others. You can do short hops, but you can't really do medium jumps since you'll do your full jump instead.

[Anonymous No.9702953]

>>9701557
>the limited healing options
the problem is that not even limited, the drop rates for healing items are so low in the base game that it basically isn't a mechanic, like something the vestigial the devs forgot to completely patch out.

[Anonymous No.9703459]

>camera always puts you in the centre of the screen
>ALWAYS
Fucking hate jumping in this

[Anonymous No.9703489]

>>9703459
nathan is pretty small though. i never felt like i couldn't see around me

[Anonymous No.9703668]

>>9703489
yeah the game was designed with that in mind

[Anonymous No.9703907]

>>9696874
Not really.
>Use thunderbird summon twice
>Restore MP
>Do it gain
>Dead drac

[Anonymous No.9703924]

>>9696874
I think I beat him 2nd try. For the exploration games sure I guess, haven’t played anything past harmony (I think cotm is way better than harmony). All the classicvania Dracula’s are harder though. Except for rondo.

[Anonymous No.9703928]

>>9703924
unless you have both the cockatrice immunity and a good summon(which is unlikely if you're playing vanilla) I would honestly disagree. The comets are hard to avoid for a such a long fight and the eyeball is very difficult to get hits on. outside of bloodline having limited continues the only drac fight I would say is harder is 3. I think you're kind of a fluke.

[Anonymous No.9703936]

>>9702845
At least all the backtracking makes it more likely you’ll eventually get some card drops

[Anonymous No.9703941]

>>9703936
Stockholm syndrome

[Anonymous No.9703990]

Speakin of Igavanias, have you checked out the new recolor version of AoS by JoanGuitar? And he is updating the HoD one too.

[Anonymous No.9704000]

>>9703907
I like how people obviously used a guide or just got really lucky and got the optimal cards and are like 'nah bro he's so easy'. Try fighting him with just an enhanced weapon and see how easy he is then.

[Anonymous No.9704006]

>>9704000
Why would I do that?
The summons are a game mechanic, I'm just using the tools the game gave me.

[Anonymous No.9704009]

>>9704006
Yeah I get that, it's just a lot of players wouldn't be getting the summoning card so they have to go at it with just a weapon like I did. I guess it's just the nature of the game being an RNG fest unless you specifically go for all the cards.

[Anonymous No.9704015]

>>9704000
I've never fought Drac without either using the DSS glitch or hacking for all the cards. I can't even imagine fighting him with just the whip.

[Anonymous No.9704806]

>>9704015
>>9704009
>>9704006
>>9704000
>I can't even imagine fighting him with just the whip
I can, because I did. It's hard.

For me, CoTM is this great duality between the game actually being pretty possible to get through without the cards or even equipment and even beating bosses without being hit, and really probably a good idea to go get those cards and equipment because CoTM isn't at all a pushover like the other metroidvanias released near its time. By the time you get to Dracula, if you haven't already grinded for shit, you might consider doing that or just scrapping by with what you got, which can be its own joy, really.

[Anonymous No.9704817]

>>9696670
try getting good faggot

[Anonymous No.9704846]

Yeah, HoD might not be the best game but at least it has some pretty good backgrounds and some of the areas are nice even if they don't make sense or are out of place (sewers and bone cave)

[Anonymous No.9704863]

>>9704015
>I can't even imagine fighting him with just the whip.
I did and beat him when I was a kid with only like 1/3 of the cards in the game, it's a fucking brutal fight that will eat up all your health items. Magician mode made him a joke since I could just use the invulnerability card

[Anonymous No.9704865]

>>9704846
The sewers are perhaps a bit odd for where they are, if they are sewers, but HoD's clocktower actually has some water stuff going on in some of its backgrounds, AoS and PoR's clocktowers seem to have water stuff going on too, so maybe HoD's sewer/aqueduct is where it is to power the clocktower?

The skeleton cave is totally the catacombs where the bones of Dracula's minions are placed, though, and Castle A has that one room with a big, purple portal in the background, which I always figured is where the evil spirits pour in through once the castle is ready. One of HoD's spookier things to think about.

[Anonymous No.9705441]

>>9701310
>>9701745
In my eyes the movment speed is deliberate to make it feel more like a mix between SotN and classic Castlevania. You're given a dash as a tactical option, but I really don't think you're intended to just be in constant run mode all the time. If that was the speed they wanted the player to always move at then it would have been a straight upgrade, not something you have to activate every time you use it.

You can say you think it's bad game design because you should be able to just run all the time. But it can equally be said that they like in real life running is harder than walking, and so in this you can run, but it's a decision to be made and comes at a cost. I see that as a good thing.

[Anonymous No.9705474]

>>9705441
>But it can equally be said that they like in real life running is harder than walking
in real life falling a mile underground kills you but guess what you start the game doing?
No, there's no reason for it to not be the default speed. It's indefensible and I think you're just playing devil's advocate.

[Anonymous No.9705620]

>>9705474
I am not playing devil's advocate. I think this game is decent, but not incredible. I do think that given it's goal was a mix between classic CV and SotN meant that the movement speed was a deliberate choice. It may be one you disagree with, you would hardly be the first person to not like the game, but I don't see it in any way as a bad thing. Not everything that makes a game easier and more casual necessarily makes it better. Sure you can hack it so you run all the time and don't have to think about it as it's own mechanic because that makes it easier. You could also make it so that every card is easily found on your first playthrough so it's even easier in that regard too. Ohh, never mind.... people do that too.

I'm going to say it and I know it's going to be unpopular. The reason so many people hate on CotM is because it's not a piss easy power-fest like SotN and feels far more like open world classic Castlevania similar to Simon's Quest. People hack it to make it easier because that's what they want. A nice easy side scrolling loot fest like SotN. Which hey, enjoy every other post SotN CV, but whining about CotM is kinda sad.

[Anonymous No.9705651]

>>9705620
nta, but that second paragraph makes me think of OoE. I find OoE to be absolute garbage, story, level design, combat, you name it. And a lot of it comes from it being a weird hodgepodge of Simon's Quest and SotN. Yet, I like CotM. I don't think its because OoE isn't an easy game, but because it neuters the explorative metroidvania sandbox feel that CotM retains. That being said, OoE has some real teeth, and it still has its fair share of confused fans.

[Anonymous No.9705664]

>>9705620
It's not that I dislike CotM, because I don't. But the running was clunky and it was my biggest problem with the game, and I'm glad patches exist to fix it.
The cards in general were just plain handled badly. I get wanting to make them rare but when it's a 1/255 drop chance from a single enemy that only spawns in one room long after you've killed the boss there, there's a problem. The only cards i ended up with my first time were the garbage Flame/Ice whip cards. Cards definitely should have been made more common one way or another.

This isn't even saying anything about how the game hides what the cards do until you "see" their effect, leading to situations like needing to get hurt by a specific element so you can be told that combo helps protect against that element, or needing to perform an obscure series of inputs so you can be told what that series of inputs is.

[Anonymous No.9705679]

>>9705664
>This isn't even saying anything about how the game hides what the cards do
Not to defend the dss implementation too much, as it IS handled pretty fuckin shoddy, but I think the secret cards and secret inputs were done because the cards were balanced around being bonuses. The sorrow games feel incomplete without souls. With whip and subweapons, cotm's cards feel more like Rondos' item crashes.

[Anonymous No.9705683]

>>9705679
i like the rarity of the cards in vampirekiller mode because (unless you grind for cards) each play through feels different, depending on what drops

[Anonymous No.9705689]

>>9705683
I assumed that was how you were supposed to play. The 1st few cards, and the antidote, have a high drop rate to show off the mechanic. The the rest is up to the dice. Like a more rougelite castlevania. Plus, fireball mode was just gravy

[Anonymous No.9705694]

I can't stand COTM anymore, and I played it a lot, probably more than 10 times.

But the primary reason I don't like it has nothing to do with people's usual complains. I never had an issue with the cards, because all the "main" ones are obvious. Find a secret a room with an a new enemy inside, enemy you've never seen before and won't appear again before 2-3 areas? Then you KNOW it drops a card, and if you don't, learn to video game.
Then, it's not like you need all the cards or are even supposed to get them all. The main ones are easy to locate, then other ones are harder to acquire or even hidden for a reason.
This is like people complaining about drawing in Final Fantasy 8
>waaaah I have to draw every magic for hours
when the game is never balanced around having to do that and you play the game like a sane person everything is fine.

No, the main reason why I can't stand COTM anymore is that the level design is atrocious. Everything is too big, too long, the entire SCALE of the level design is just plain wrong. This leads to really bad platforming with longjumps and running all the time in empty areas, but also enemies shooting at you from off-screen.
it's funny how HoD, a game which in many aspects did everything in its power to be the contrary of what CotM was, ended up with the inverse issue of things being too tight (though it's nowhere near as big of an issue).

and then you have these rooms with basically unavoidable damage, which I also can't forgive.

[Anonymous No.9705698]

>>9705441
>make it feel more like a mix between SotN and classic Castlevania.
I feel like they were just basing Nathan's movement off of Richter mode, at a time when there wasn't really a standardized feel for a Metroidvania protagonist. I don't think they went out of their way to deliberately make Nathan clunkier.

[Anonymous No.9705801]

>>9705651
I think you are very much on the money. It got praised to the heavens but I think OoE is one of the worst post SotN Castlevanias. It's "hard" because enemies are damage sponges but there's no actual interesting or difficult platforming until the castle and bonus areas.

>>9705664
I do get what you're saying but I think looking at the run as a special ability instead of a default is the key. If you think of the old Castlevanias, they don't control like Mario. The platforming is far more restricted and deliberate which the game was based around. This tried to find a balance.

And yeah, perhaps the drop rate on cards is a little low, but I still think and as another anon pointed out well, that the game is designed with replay in mind. It's a little roguelikish in that sense, you're not supposed to find everything, just a few surprises to help you along.

[Anonymous No.9705805]

>>9705698
My point is that basing hos movement off Richter more than Alucard was the intention. They just didn't expect it would get as much backlash.

[Anonymous No.9705882]

>>9705620
>I'm going to say it and I know it's going to be unpopular. The reason so many people hate on CotM is because it's not a piss easy power-fest like SotN and feels far more like open world classic Castlevania similar to Simon's Quest. People hack it to make it easier because that's what they want. A nice easy side scrolling loot fest like SotN. Which hey, enjoy every other post SotN CV, but whining about CotM is kinda sad.
people dislike circle for two reasons.
1. it's most tantalizing systems require an absurd amount of tedious spam in order to engage with at any sort of satisfying level.
2. the basic castlevania gameplay removed from dss is not very good. Nathan's whip is slow, enemies are spongey, his non dashing jump and walk are mostly ill suited for the scale of levels and enemies.
the theoretical game you're talking about where you could develop a small core of non overpowered abilities and the staple jump n whip core felt great would not get near the hate circle does.

[Anonymous No.9706794]

>>9705882
>it's most tantalizing systems require an absurd amount of tedious spam in order to engage with at any sort of satisfying level.

Only on the first playthrough of a game clearly designed with multiple playthroughs in mind.


>the theoretical game you're talking about where you could develop a small core of non overpowered abilities and the staple jump n whip core felt great would not get near the hate circle does.

And I think that theoretical game does exist and is called Circle of the Moon and people dislike it anyways. But whatever, I like Simon's Quest as well which everyone still bitches about. I'm not saying everyone should like what it does, just that what it does isn't sloppy game design, it's deliberate game design you happen not to like.

[Anonymous No.9707550]

>>9706794
Your entire last paragraph is a golden rule that this fandom would do well to start following, and one of the keys to having a good discussion. I couldn't ever recommend The Adventure, but I'm rather fond of it nonetheless, and I think Simon's Quest could've been designed better but I like what we got and if I were to ever make a game, it would maybe even be an inspiration. I used to detest SoTN and AoS after I finally played them and couldn't understand initially why they're so beloved, but I knew they were loved, they were popular, so I at least tried to understand and even tried playing them from a different perspective, actually listened to what the fans had to say, and nowadays even though I still disagree with their design ethos and still pretty much hate their more obnoxious fans, I can at least understand the love for it. None of this is to say that there's no such thing as objective quality or qualities, just that we can love the games all the same and be honest about it.

The other key is realizing that some if not most people are disrespectful, not for ignorance or stubborness but seemingly some combination of sheer fanaticism and hatred. Look at these two chucklefucks >>9705801 >>9705651, especially this bit about
>it still has its fair share of confused fans
OoE came out to critical acclaim and from day one has been of the most popular metroidvanias in the series but you're going to word things like it's just some cult classic who's fans don't know any better, like you don't know better? And what's especially stupid and sad about it is that, really, their gripes are actually pretty understandable, I love OoE but I get why someone would dislike it with preferences like those, but turning their subjective tastes into an objective standard and declaring the game objectively bad because it doesn't meet such an arbitrary standard is a different thing, that is to say bullshit.

[Anonymous No.9707560]

>>9707550
>and one of the keys to having a good discussion
insulting people implying the only reason they don't like something is because it isn't an easy babby game is terrible for discussion.

[Anonymous No.9707583]

>>9706794
Apologies, ran out of room for this, but bringing it back to CoTM, I'm more or less fine with how it handles certain things, even if I have a preference for how games like OoE and PoR do them. I've always been under the impression that you're supposed to scrap by with what you get in your first playthrough of CoTM, and then you get a rebalanced mode where they hand you everything. As far as the double tap thing goes, people bring up how there's never a reason to walk, but I take two issues with that.

1. Having played PoR and AoS's Richter and Julius modes, I would have to say that having a slower movement option is actually pretty useful for when you need more methodical movement, like when you need to center/position yourself to properly set up your offense, or when just plain when going too fast makes it harder to not get hit.

2. It ties into CoTM's whole momentum thing, which I think is very baked into the game as a whole. Maybe it would make the game way easier, maybe even too easy, as much as one might not like it to hear that. It's only the second metroidvania game made at a time when Classicvania or something like it was still a thing, and the momentum system is meant to capture that. It's so you think on your feet and consider a given situation in regards to where you are, where you're going, spot out an opportunity to do damage and seize it when you can. The idea of taking on Dracula with just the leather whip was brought up, and it's really just the ultimate test of the lessons of good timing and patience that the whole game has been beating you over the head with. Shit, I've seen vids of people beating the Battle Arena without mind ups/DSS, subweapons, or getting hit, without getting hit, with far lower attack stats than when I managed to do it. CoTM is unironically one of those games that might not be for everyone, you don't even have to like its design, but saying it's badly designed is unfair.

[Anonymous No.9707602]

>>9707550
>turning their subjective tastes into an objective standard
Comedy gets lost in text. I was doing a big funny by saying confused. That being said, I genuinely do believe the critical acclaim OoE is given is muddled. Call them false flaggers if you will, but I believe too many fans are just blinded by the good graphics and Shanoa's sex appeal. Graphics don't make a game good, and I find Shanoa a horrible protag. Like whatever you want, but my finding OoE the worst of the Igavanias isn't fanaticism or blind hatred.

[Anonymous No.9707603]

>>9707560
Except that's not what I said, in fact the real implication if I haven't said anything explicit is that OoE leans harder on the vania than the metroid in metroidvania, and frankly, as far as easy babby goes, that's actually totally fine, too. No, it's perfectly legitimate to dislike OoE if you don't like it's difficulty, I once talked to someone about this in comparison to AoS and they remarked that they just like being able to run through killing everything with just one weapon instead of having to care about the whole weakness/resistance thing, and it's like, you know, regardless of how I might think that's "objectively lesser" design, I can actually understand and empathize if not sympathize with it. Those anons like what they like, and even if I want to call it trash taste, fuck me, I have my own shitty things I like.

Here's an insult for you, you probably didn't even fully read what I posted, nevermind comprehend it.

[Anonymous No.9707635]

>>9705694
>and then you have these rooms with basically unavoidable damage, which I also can't forgive
If you're talking about your pic, then you might like to know that you can get through unscathed by, iirc, jump up to that first demon lord and crouch while whipping away at him, don't move save for jumping over the flames the next one over to the left and keep at it until the first one is dead. I think you then either kill the one on the left in a similar fashion, or maybe it was you get the bottom one to turn around so you can get behind it and whale on it while still dodging in relative safety. Finally kill the upper left demon lord and then there's maybe a fourth bottom left one? The Alura Unes the easiest to deal with once the demon lords are all dealt with.

[Anonymous No.9707667]

>>9707583
>you're supposed to scrap by with what you get in your first playthrough of CoTM, and then you get a rebalanced mode where they hand you everything
this is sloppy. it's two extremes of having a couple incoherent novelties and then the game giving you everything invalidating the drop system and any sort of intended ability synergy. I don't think it's a clever enough progression to justify multiple playthroughs when circle is a decently long multi-hour game.

[Anonymous No.9707750]

>>9707583
>>9707667
That's not what the game does, though. It gives you FOUR additional rebalanced modes that let you explore the game in different ways. One where you start with every spell in the game but have awful defenses, one where you get buffed stats but no spells at all, one where your subweapons get buffed and you get an additional exclusive one but your regular attack sucks, and one where all your stats are awful but the drop rate is massively increased.

THAT's the true beauty of CotM, and it sucks later games didn't do stuff like this.

[Anonymous No.9707753]

>>9696670
it's just a game where the difficulty is primarily grinding based. Are you faced with an enemy that has difficult patterns out of balance with the 10 hits required to kill it with your whip? you just need to sit down and grind. you have to accept it was designed to be played on an original gba with a wormlight attachment to kill time on the car drive home.

[Anonymous No.9707757]

>>9707750
>it sucks later games didn't do stuff like this
While I significantly prefer additional characters like Richter mode or Julius mode, I agree. LV 1 hard mode is boring in comparison.

[Anonymous No.9707913]

>>9707602
>Comedy gets lost in text. I was doing a big funny by saying confused
Even if it was a joke, it's a mean-spirited and heartless one, and I'd say you're basically doubling down on it with your muddle talk.
>I believe too many fans are just blinded by the good graphics and Shanoa's sex appeal
Why? Not to say the game and its main protagonist aren't pretty, but not only is it more of a bonus, having good aesthetics is just more of CV thing in general. In fact, the groups I usually see that like to bring up how pretty such and such game looks are fans of SoTN, RoB, AoS, and IV, and they occasionally will demean other games for it. I don't know who you've seen or who you talked to, but I and every instance I've seen someone heaping praise on the game talk at length about its game design and gameplay rather than it's graphics, and the people who I do see bring up aesthetics usually do so to point out slightly less anime and more gritty tone in comparison to what we were getting for awhile before it, especially after DoS and PoR.

Shoot, you want to talk about sex appeal, just about every other metroidvania besides maybe CoTM and HoD is worse with a sizable portion of their enemy bestiary basically built for sex, with the aforementioned two games before OoE having out and out succubus-on-girl action.
>Graphics don't make a game good, and I find Shanoa a horrible protag
I'm inclined to agree with the former and think you're barking up the wrong fandom's tree about it. I adore Shanoa as a protag because of her tendency to do good and clean up after the messes of her two organization members despite her Dominus-induced autism, but I can see why someone wouldn't since doing good is typical CV protag behavior and she quite literally does not have a personality or rather a functionally subdued one given actual practice but yeah, so there.

[Anonymous No.9707925]

>>9707750
Gonna level with you, anon, I usually stop after Magician mode. The warrior or whatever mode is kind of neat for tanking Dracula's attacks, but DSS is my fucking bread and butter and I'd trade the other modes for a Hugh mode.
>>9707757
>LV 1 hard mode is boring in comparison
Aw, I fucking love the Lv 1 Hard Modes. <: c

[Anonymous No.9707962]

>>9707925
Magician and Thief are the only really good ones because they let you play around with shit you probably didn't get to play around with in your other playthroughs due to the low default drop rate. Fighter and Shooter are just "normal mode but Nathan is gimped" challenge modes that feel more tedious than anything.

[Anonymous No.9707976]

>>9707962
I've yet to do Thief mode because I just can't get to doing Shooter mode. I wouldn't call Fighter gimped, just not as interesting as Magician because you get a massive attack and defense boost countered by not having the fun cards to fuck about with. Granted, you just had a whole mode to fuck about with the cards, but killing stuff with your whip far faster with your whip than usual is a novelty that wears out rather quickly for me. Shooter is just bleh, especially since the subs in CoTM tend to be unfun and unwieldly like the knife and axe to really situational like the holy water to just plain damn better if not outright game-breaking like the cross. Kinda just what's the point for me, you know?

[Anonymous No.9707989]

>>9707976
Yeah, Shooter sucks. The new subweapon isn't even very good and it mostly just plays like normal mode with worse stats.

[Anonymous No.9708034]

>>9707913
>it's a mean-spirited
It wasn't meant to be, but I'll say this anyway: grow up.
>Why do I say they're blinded?
First, like you said CV is almost always good alooking franchise, so constantly making a big show about OoE seems pointless. Second, I know other games have sex appeal, that was never my point. Fuck, I like sex appeal. Third, unlike you every person I ask about OoE's quality never talks about anything other then graphics, bosses, and shanoa's back pics. Graphics are largely irrelevant, bosses I agree.
This thread is having a real talk about CotM, not Carmilla's huge tits. The succubus isn't brought up every 3 seconds in a SotN thread. Every OoE discussion is filled to the brim with that crap compared to any other cv thread.
Fuck, I even have a normie friend who's fucking obsessed with OoE compared to all other CVs, and even he parrots bosses, graphics, shanoa's hot.
Anon, if you are true and honest about your love for OoE then good for you. But my personal experience have let me to honestly believe its fandom has a significant amount of false flaggers compared to the rest.

[Anonymous No.9708072]

>>9707989
>it mostly just plays like normal mode with worse stats
vampirekiller is OP.

does anyone else like doing the underground warehouse after the underground waterway?

[Anonymous No.9708079]

>>9708034
>It wasn't meant to be, but I'll say this anyway: grow up
If that's your response instead of just manning up and apologizing, then frankly, anon, you probably really did mean it that way. You grow up.
>like you said CV is almost always good alooking franchise, so constantly making a big show about OoE seems pointless
And I'm asking who's actually doing that? Because that sounds like more definitive behavior of the other groups I've mentioned than OoE's fans, myself included.
>This thread is having a real talk about CotM, not Carmilla's huge tits
Which is great and all, but you were first/second one to bring up Shanoa's looks. Second, because the first would arguably be myself >>9698823 because of webm's joke title, and I didn't even explicitly mention bosses or graphics. The one other anon >>9698046 didn't make explicit mention those things, either and in fact recommends Albus over Shanoa.
>The succubus isn't brought up every 3 seconds in a SotN thread. Every OoE discussion is filled to the brim with that crap compared to any other cv thread.
Fucking where in e v e r y o t h e r CV thread? OoE rarely gets a mention and even here itt things didn't devolve into that. Not to say that it never ever happens, but by this point, you sound more obsessed than anyone else here or there.
>Fuck, I even have a normie friend who's fucking obsessed with OoE compared to all other CVs, and even he parrots bosses, graphics, shanoa's hot
What exactly is a normie in this case and why would he be parroting that? Sounds like someone you made up for the sake of your argument.
>false flaggers
I might as well ask by this point, but define "false flaggers" in this context because I'm not entirely sure what to derive from it.

[Anonymous No.9708092]

>>9708072
I've made a habit of going through CoTM's last four areas after Andramelech in different ways once I realized you could do that. Your post does get me to wondering, though. Putting aside that it's a video game, why do the bad guys leave the purifying amulet where you could potentially get it? Why doesn't Death just throw it out of the building? Actually, why leave any of the powerups where Nathan can get them? Yes, yes, the bosses guard them and you have to fight them for it, but you'd think one of them would do it out of spite at least, especially Hugh. Random thought, really.

[Anonymous No.9708097]

>>9708072
>vampirekiller is OP.
no he isn't at all. you have to do a ton of grinding to get close to the point where the game becomes a cakewalk.

[Anonymous No.9708108]

>>9708092
I'm tired of pretending that replaying circle of the moon multiple times should be tolerated as non objectionable live let live behavior, it's fucking disgusting.

[:) No.9708120]

>>9708079
>where & who
What do you want me to say? Its Anons, here and on other websites, and the people in my real life who I've asked. I have asked people who like PoR the most why, I usually get story or mass amount of content. In my experience, I do no get those answers about OoE. This is a great thread, and not one that supports my believe. I'm not expecting to convince anyone, nor could I even hope to prove it short of spending days in archive which I ain't doing.
>What exactly is a normie in this case
Not a huge gamer, only played any cv games because I lent them to him. Hates 4chan, and has actually had a fair amount of sex. I've asked him why is OoE your favorite. Any I hear the same stuff I hear from anyone I have personally asked: best bosses, best graphics, best waifu.
>false flaggers
This one I'll be completely open and say I'm not sure this is the correct term. If I've been using an inappropriate term, oops. All I can say is, I personally believe OoE's fanbase has a mix of real and hollow fans. Like a fan of a movie because the story was really good, with excellent pacing, and top notch cinematography, vs a fan who likes the actress' tits and all the CG because CG is " cooler then practical". They feel superficial to me. I'm done talking about this however. I really just don't know what else to say? I dislike OoE itself because of my dislike of Shanoa, the game's linearity, me not liking its SQ+SotN vibes, and having less content then what came before. Please stop confusing my distrust of the OoE fanbase for in your words fanaticism or being a chucklefuck

[Anonymous No.9708220]

HoD has a lot of long dead ends, it's getting pretty obnoxious

[Anonymous No.9708227]

>>9708220
it's easily the worst of the modern castlevanias.

[Anonymous No.9708231]

>>9707550
It's funny how you both seem to agree with me then call me a chucklefuck in the same post. I don't think OoE is terrible by any means, I think all these games are pretty decent (excluding the hot trash that is Mirror of Fate, but I don't think it counts) and enjoyed them all. But I do think Ecclesia got a lot more praise than it deserved. A big part of what I like in these games is exploring a big connected world and not only does it chop everything up into a bunch of small disjointed levels, most of them are boring. I don't think it's objectively bad though, it's more that the reaction was like it was finally an incredible new Castlevania and I found it kinda dull.

[Anonymous No.9708268]

>>9708227
And now this just happened, it's so dumb. There's all these gates that need you to go to the other castle, and like 5 flavors of locked door. Glorified keys are the worst kind of items, at least the Crushing Stone can give you a charge attack if you're dumb enough to main it.

[Anonymous No.9708287]

>>9708268
There's also a ton of space filling rooms with nothing in them.

[Anonymous No.9708294]

>game is hard
>say game is bad
Go back to /v/

[Anonymous No.9708297]

>>9708287
Not nearly as many as in CotM, and at least the tight level design makes it more fun to navigate while navigation is a chore in CotM. Although as I said it's amazing how HoD did everything it could to be the exact opposite of CotM to the point it has the inverse issues, see this room is your webm and how the protag can barely jump before hitting a ceiling.

I imagine the dev meeting went something like this
>CotM scale was too big...
>>I know let's make things too tight!
>Brilliant.

[Anonymous No.9708313]

>>9708297
At least Juste is fast, but fuck, navigation's a headache because there simply aren't many warps to speak of. Look at the pic i posted just above that post, the very bottom left of the map ends in a dead end. But just below that dead end is the double jump. You go through that long ass area just to have to leave, and then later have to go all the way through it yet again. It's so annoying, especially when every other path is just "hurhurr locked door!" like i'm in a fuckin bank vault.

[Anonymous No.9708318]

>>9708297
every single hall way leads to at least an HP or MP up, some rare weapon, or another point of interest.
enemies populate almost every room save for a few small transition rooms.
CotM had good castle design.

[Anonymous No.9708323]

>>9708318
CotM just had long hallways and overly long vertical shafts. HoD has shorter vertical shafts and long hallways but loves to make you zigzag up and down constantly so pick your poison.

[Anonymous No.9708324]

>>9708287
the parallax background looks like shit.
wait until you see how much area is wasted on the stupid fucking ball maze

[Anonymous No.9708329]

>>9708324
oh i already know about that, that room's stupid as well. One castle's is just slidespam until you get to the end and the other just puts spikes and bone pillars in the way.

[Anonymous No.9708342]

[Anonymous No.9708346]

>>9708342
heh

[Anonymous No.9708356]

>>9708342
CotM is like old metroid. there's a danger of a medusa head or bloody sword knocking you back and falling a long way, which is a fair punishment. it feels like a mix between classic vanias and modern ones to me.

[Anonymous No.9708357]

>>9708346
i'm too lazy to make one for Aria but i remember that one being a lot saner. The worst it ever got was dead ends where you needed the "walk on water" or "dont swim" souls.

>>9708356
You can at least leap down the vertical shafts, meanwhile you're zigzagging no matter what in HoD.

[Anonymous No.9708363]

>>9708231
>It's funny how you both seem to agree with me then call me a chucklefuck in the same post
Well how about yourself, anon? Do (You) think I have a point, and if so, why do you think OoE's objectively bad and that the only reason it got praise for being new and different? I loved it since day one and still do, and I had gotten into the series starting with and loving PoR, for being another step in the same direction as that game, funnily enough.
>A big part of what I like in these games is exploring a big connected world
And as I've said before in this very thread, I can see how Ecclesia would annoy you if that's your preference, but it didn't annoy me, in fact I love OoE's design, I love the bite-sized levels that work somewhat like a metroidvania version of a classicvania level, I love how the enemies aren't pushovers and actually have the offense, defense, and the AI to actually be a threat, I like how even in a literally flat stage like Ruvas Forest, the enemy types chosen and where they're placed, how it gives you more than one way to make your way through and doesn't let up either way, whether you try to run past them or fight them by alternating between glyph types because the RPG mechanics matter. I like when the level structure either gives me an advantage to attack or dodge from or when it's used to make me confront an enemy on its terms, not totally unlike the older games, but with the controls of a newer one.
>I don't think it's objectively bad though
>most of them are boring
>I found it kinda dull
Not that I'm never guilty of this sort of thing myself, but at least I can catch myself, anon.

[Anonymous No.9708369]

>>9708297
CotM and HoD were two different dev teams that may've not checked each other's work.

CotM was from the Castlevania 64 devs (and why it reuses a bunch of music from it).
HoD was from the SotN devs which is why the game feels so much like store brand SotN.

[Anonymous No.9708372]

and then i go back to that long ass dead end now that i can break the wall and i get met with this. What the fuck, man?

[Anonymous No.9708382]

>>9708372
HoD is the perfect example of poorly tought layouts and mechanics, they should just allow you to get trough this stupid portals once you got the skull key.

[Anonymous No.9708384]

>>9708342
Too true, HoD was far too many dead ends because you lack some sort of key. Seldom ever an ability, just a key. Sometimes an outright dead end because you're supposed to do that way in the opposite castle.

I can't defend the map design in HoD at all
CotM has a few shortcomings, being a bit long at times, but it's full of actual platforming challenges that'll send you back if you mess up. You can't really say that about AoS, most of which is combat and exploration focused.

[Anonymous No.9708387]

>>9708342
>Aria is just right but with leds crammed and less copy pasta.

[Anonymous No.9708390]

>>9708363
>why do you think OoE's objectively bad

I literally say in my post that I don't think it's objectively bad. I think they're all at least pretty good, it just doesn't deserve the reputation for being much better than the others.

[Anonymous No.9708391]

>>9708382
It gets to the point where there's so many dead ends on the map that it's hard to tell where you've been and where you can even go. I feel like i'm a 7 year old being taken to the mall by a mom that has to check every store several times before actually going where we were supposed to go.

[Anonymous No.9708396]

>>9708372
It's also shit like shop keeper rooms where they only show up when you meet some sort of condition hinted at in the corner. Usually having a certain level number or a certain number of hearts.
That shit's unnecessary, just have the shop keeper always available. The level condition is particularly bad due to the game's janky experience point system.

[Anonymous No.9708424]

>>9708323
The latter has everythinh crammed in due to the bigger sprites and most areas jist being hallways, plus ugly blocky tilesets, Shrine of the apostates just feels like a CotM level area shrinked down by half.

[Anonymous No.9708434]

>>9708287
Post a Cotm webm for comparison please!

[Anonymous No.9708437]

>>9708434
I'm not playing CotM currently so i dont have a savefile ongoing for it, sorry.

>>9708396
There's barely even anything in the shops worth buying. I wish you could sell worthless armor but since this game is trying so hard to be SotN you can only sell gemstones that never appear. So i still gotta scroll past shitty cloth and leather armor to equip the stuff i want to equip.

[Anonymous No.9708445]

it never fucking ends with this game man, i've spent the past hour wondering where to go because it just slams doors in your face constantly.

[Anonymous No.9708446]

>>9708120
Fuck me, I had a repsonse typed up but then accidentally deleted it.

The short of it is, while I do think you might have been using "false flagger" in a different way than I understand what you mean now, and I even sympathize. I've had situations like that where I would ask people what their opinions on things and would sound superficial, as you would put it, maybe even vapid.
> I dislike OoE itself because of my dislike of Shanoa, the game's linearity, me not liking its SQ+SotN vibes, and having less content then what came before
Even if I have a different take on OoE, I do understand where you're coming from.
>Please stop confusing my distrust of the OoE fanbase for in your words fanaticism or being a chucklefuck
Call it prejudice but that's pretty much been my own experience, but I do think that my prejudice is coloring my interactions with others too much, particularly now. In retrospect, I realize now that perhaps what you actually meant by "confused fans" is different from what I took from it and I unnecessarily snapped at you, and I apologize for that. I would point out again, though, that I and one other guy had posted opinions on OoE almost completely different from what seems to be your typical experience, and you could've prodded us about it before you posted. At worst, someone might get surly with you, but i can tell you from my own experience that doesn't have to be the end of it

[Anonymous No.9708464]

>>9708297
I don't know about that, not only does CoTM like giving you at least something like >>9708318 points out, I think CoTM actually does a real good job at how it organizes the outer areas with the Abyss Stairway as a hub. You enter a given area one way, deal with the main obstacle within the path to the area boss, get new ability, and then there's an exit placed nearby that takes you close to that one save point in the AS that you're likely using as a hub, sometimes with that exit being the same way you came in with the level design facilitating a real easy way of getting there. Take the chapel bell tower with Andramelech, for example, climbing up with small, flighty enemies getting in the way along with drops here and there that falling down means redoing a given section, but once you're done, those same drops make getting back to the entrance you came in from really quick and easy.

[Anonymous No.9708468]

>>9708445
The recolor hack looks nice at the very least.

[Anonymous No.9708471]

oh yes of course how could i be so foolish it's not like doors like this don't usually open with a fucking Relic or something, no just equip a retarded bracelet.

[Anonymous No.9708482]

>>9708471
Every Igavania has this thing where if you forget to equip a certain item or combination of equipment when going into a critical room or battle, you get the bad or false ending and likely miss out on a large portion of the game.

This is no less true of HoD.

[Anonymous No.9708490]

>>9708482
Every other game has it during a fight. Besides, by the time you get the bracelet, you have a billion dead ends to check and only after opening this door do you get any kind of warp.

[Anonymous No.9708492]

>>9708482
But none of the others have it so badly done in HoD when in order to even get those fake endings you need those things.

[Anonymous No.9708498]

>>9708446
The other anon here who doesn't love OoE, I think it's partly that the game has a lot of promise but most of it isn't realized well. It feels like making it a "challenge" just equated to enemies being damage sponges and to make that work the levels are mostly fairly simple so you can wail on them.

For my money, the best part and what exemplifies the glory of Castlevania is the various clock towers. It's tricky platforming on moving gears that fuck with you and then on top there's usually dudes with spears or axes and constant Medusa heads. It's that mix of jumping, whipping that makes the series. OoE does some of tha but it takes forever to get there. Mostly it's little platforming and enemies you end up attacking a lot to get through which slows everything down. Unless of course you stop to grind, but that's even more boring.

Again, not bad for sure. But wow it could have been better, yet so many praise it to the heavens.

[Anonymous No.9708526]

>>9708492
Yeah, HoD is just design flaw after design flaw, with a lot of half-baked ideas.
Like, what on earth compels Juste to decorate a room in Dracula's castle? He knows what's going to happen when he defeats Dracula, right?

[Anonymous No.9708545]

I started up Portrait of Ruin but turned it off 15 minutes in. Feels so off for a castlevania game and having gimmicks just turned me off. Maybe I'm just not used to more modern graphics for a Castlevania game, I dunno.

[Anonymous No.9708585]

>>9708498
>I think it's partly that the game has a lot of promise but most of it isn't realized well
Personally I prefer how OoE handles things vis a vis the other metroidvanias besides maybe PoR, probably even thought it was nigh fucking perfect despite initially being turned off when it was announced, but there are things that, maybe in sequel, they could improve on. More glyph unions would've been nice, for one. I'm actually fine with the palette swap levels because for me, they're functionally different enough from their forebears with a shifted structure and different, stronger enemies, but I would've appreciated more locales.
>It's that mix of jumping, whipping
You know what I've always wanted since day 1? An ultimate Simon Belmont mode where you get Simon with every ability and item that he's had in his prior appearances and maybe then some. OoE felt like the NES games mixed with IV to me, so it only felt appropriate.
OoE does some of tha but it takes forever to get there
>It feels like making it a "challenge" just equated to enemies being damage sponges and to make that work the levels are mostly fairly simple so you can wail on them
I disagree, I find that OoE's level design is less flat than is typical for a metroidvania and, much like a classicvania, has good synergy with the more resilient and aggressive enemy design that's also a step up compared to the usual. Sometimes it can feel a little like an action puzzle, you step into a room and the game throws a scenario your way that you have to figure out how to get through with what you have, both your character and the environment.
>Mostly it's little platforming and enemies you end up attacking a lot to get through which slows everything down
Is this all that dissimilar to the older games? Even Castlevania 1 will plop a bone pillar or axe armor to block you until you kill them, or the hunchbacks flying in on eagles distract and whittle you down. That's more or less the point of the game.

[Anonymous No.9708595]

>>9708545
You don't have to use Charlotte much at all. She's pretty much only there for Owl/Toad Morph and like one other spell for a single fight.

[Anonymous No.9708612]

>>9708545
As far as metroidvanias go, PoR is actually one of the few I really appreciate from a classicvania fan perspective. Not saying it's 1 to 1 or anything, but the way the game's levels are structured and arranges its enemies is, at least the way I see it, more in line with the older games than a lot of the metroidvanias before it, if that's what bugs you.
>gimmicks
You mean the dual character thing? Would you like it more if I told you that you can abuse the switching mechanic for character-cancelling attacks and movements? I do think PoR underutilizes it for the things it explicitly uses it for, but I nonetheless love it.

>>9708492
HoD is basically one big mystery game with AluSonic the Vampire Hunter, and his and Maxim's brolationship playing a part in progressing in the game and what ending you get is something I myself really enjoy.

[Anonymous No.9708618]

>>9708342
>locked door lmao
Thanks for reminding me, dickhead.

[Anonymous No.9708635]

>>9708595
I used to think that myself and would only play as Jonathan as a result, which made Hard Mode even harder than it probably needed to be. Then one day I decided to do a fresh Lv 1 run with the stipulation of no holy weaponry, and decided to start using Charlotte because some enemies would be stupidly hard to kill without elemental attacks.

Turns out, even in Lv 1 Hard Mode, Charlotte can blow up enemies with a good chunk of her spells, even if they're resistant.

[Anonymous No.9708683]

I just finished the GBA trilogy and I loved all three of them. How does the DS trilogy compare? yes this was thread, but it got deleted. I assume it was too many CV threads

[Anonymous No.9708690]

>>9708342
Yeah, the locked door thing was lazy. It wouldn't have been as bad if the rooms actually fucking connected to each other so you wouldn't need to backtrack for 30 minutes just to get to another part of the castle.

[Anonymous No.9708697]

>>9708690
The game really needed more of those doors or stupid fucking Griffon Wing walls you need to jump to simply be switch doors. You know, where the switch to open them is on the other side.

[Anonymous No.9708707]

>>9708683
AoS is the game that consolidates what the other three metroidvanias before it were doing into one package, and then the DS games use it as a base. You'll probably find some similarities to it because of that, but also each with their own spin with differing priorities. Might help to refer to this post further up in the thread. >>9698026

[Anonymous No.9708738]

>>9699496
I agree with a lot of your criticisms, but I did not have a problem with Drac's eye form. He charges three times and then you have an opening, so I'd super jump three times then use the Uranus + Thunderbird attack. Rinse and repeat.

[Anonymous No.9708780]

>>9708738
Since it's a CoTM thread, might as well ask by this point.

Fav DSS combo, everybody? I'm really fond of the applicability of Jupiter + Salamander. It's somewhat a shield even if it's not all that suited for it and is outclassed as fuck by the other shields for that function, but for an early game option, it's great catching breakable walls, floors and ceilings, and it's equal in attack power to the whip while having a faster hit rate without getting stuck in attack animations, and has such a low MP cost per second that maybe halfway through the game, I'm not sure it even costs MP anymore.

[Anonymous No.9708789]

>>9708738
I didn't have any special cards, so I was stuck with using an enhanced weapon only. It gets very annoying fast when you do a round of eyeball attacks then have to go back to jumping 4 times. I once counted 30 attacks for the eye and he still didn't die, you get 3 hits per round if you're lucky so you have to deal with the jumping round more than 10-15 times.

>>9708683
If you want to emulate them, you have to play on a split-screen and have to use the stylus for some parts. There's probably mods that fix those but playing on a small screen was kind of a deal breaker for me.

[Anonymous No.9708801]

>>9708780
For me it's the Thunderbird summon, shit hard carried me against Dracula.
Since it's semi related, Bolt Book+Bible has helped me out a ton in HoD. Creates Gradius shields in front of you that deal high damage, letting me slide through a ton of enemies while i'm trying to find out where the hell to go.

[Anonymous No.9708807]

>>9708471
>The piece of stone behind the door
Fucking kek, who designed this shit

[Anonymous No.9708808]

>>9708789
I think I've said something about this earlier in the thread, but if you don't already have cards like Golem, Leviathan or Jupiter, consider going back and getting them. Mercury + Golem gives you a really long whip, and since Nathan can change the direction of his attack just by changing direction in midair, you can easily move away from Dracula if you need to and quickly turn in his direction to clip him. I'd imagine shields would help you get close without getting hit yourself, particularly Leviathan and Manticore.
Golem -> Electric Skeleton
Leviathan -> Earth Demon, don't ask me why
Jupiter -> Heat Shade
Manticore -> Electric/Thunder Demon, yes really

[Anonymous No.9708809]

>>9708780
>>9708738
Does Card Hack even count at this point in the thread?

[Anonymous No.9708816]

>>9708807
Seriously, and you already have the fucking item that lets you break them at this point. The game feels like a hack of itself.

[Anonymous No.9708829]

>>9708808
I already finished it. Dracula has 1100 hp for his first form and 3000 for his second. I don't remember how much damage each hit was for me, I think 40, so I had to hit him 75 times for his second form only to kill him. You can see how miserable of a fight it is without cards.

[Anonymous No.9708831]

>>9708801
>Spell Fusion
Sure, why not.

I have a preference for cross spells in general, but Wind + Cross is a big one for me. It's kind of like Bolt Bible, but all around you unless you do a button combo to shift the circle to your left and right and I like the detail in how the crosses break apart as they collide with objects and enemies. Can be convenient for clearing a room.

[Anonymous No.9708840]

>>9708809
You mean does anyone appreciate it? This guy >>9708829 probably would've appreciated it.

>>9708829
Congratulations, by the way, you fought hard and won the day.

[Anonymous No.9709281]

I agree that the seals in DoS are completely unnecessary, but why do they inspire such intense hatred that some people consider them game ruining? Did you guys actually manage to fail them more than the once or twice it might have taken to figure out how they work? This shit is round-peg-in-round-hole levels of easy:
> bring bosses HP to zero
> seal shows up on screen
> taking your sweet time, pull stylus out of DS. Hold DS in left hand, hold stylus with right
> again, no rush, use right hand to touch stylus to the bottom screen, while still holding DS with left
> trace the basic elementary-school shape shown on screen. If you somehow have such poor motor skills that this is in any way difficult, fear not, the "timer" is /extremely/ generous, so again, take your time if needed
> sheathe your stylus back into the DS while boss dies
Wow so hard. You totally need 3 hands for this guys.

[Anonymous No.9709337]

>>9709281
I never failed them, but it's such a pointless thing to add to the game and it's very obvious it's only there because it was an early DS game. It's a lot like wiimote waggle in that sense.

[Anonymous No.9709341]

>>9708789
>If you want to emulate them, you have to play on a split-screen and have to use the stylus for some parts.
I have a modded 3DS that I load DS roms onto. I've found that DS emulation is pretty shit, and it's difficult to use the bottom screen separately from a controller. I plan on loading all three DS Castlevanias onto it and playing them that way.

[Anonymous No.9709343]

>>9696670
Some of the navigation stuff you mention was annoying but I really didn't find the game to be to difficult. I think you're not very good at games.

[Anonymous No.9709346]

>>9709341
MelonDS is better than Desmume. With patches for Dawn, about all you need the touchscreen for is Sisters mode in PoR. Teleporting in Albus Mode in OoE is the only practical thing you miss out on, and I'd definitely recommend playing on ds/3ds for that specifically.

[Anonymous No.9709360]

>>9708471
>tfw you didn't realize you needed the bracelet equipped to open the door so you back-track throughout the castle for an hour only to meet "the door is locked" at every turn, only to find out that you needed the bracelet equipped to open the locked door you were at much earlier, so you backtrack to the door again which takes 30 more minutes because there aren't enough shortcuts.
>tfw you realize the bracelet even when equipped only opens like one door and for the rest of the doors-- some of them open with a separate "skull key" and the rest of them need to be opened by a tucked away "lure key". Of course, you don't know what door is opened by what until you get to it.
Yeah, this game has some serious fucking back-tracking problems. If the first time you reached a locked door it became marked on your map or if the game simply had more shortcuts around the castle it wouldn't nearly be as much of a problem.

[Anonymous No.9709370]

>>9709360
This game really needs some kind of hack that either changes some of the locked doors to gates (like the ones in Dawn or even SotN) or does what you suggested. Hell, just some kind of mod that changed the map to cut down on the stupid fucking zigzag design would be incredible.

[Anonymous No.9709375]

>>9709346
I dropped DS emulation a while back after being stuck with Desmeme for so long. I wasn't aware of this other emulator. I will have to check it out at some point. Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.9709379]

>>9709375
Desmume sucks dick because the dev refused to implement fixes due to the fact that said fixes would make Pokemon games run better. Seriously. Even Drastic runs better, and that's on phones.
MelonDS is the way to go, stuff runs better all around there.

[Anonymous No.9709394]

>>9709360
You get told that the bracelet opens the door when you get it though.

[Anonymous No.9709403]

>>9709370
Wenlive in a world were there's already an Aria redesigned map hack, 2 of em but only one that is good if a biy crammed in a la CotM in visual look (yet flows rather well) but not for HoD or CotM even.

[Anonymous No.9709509]

I have a question, is it possible to make the maps of the gba trilogy bigger, i know that Aria Alter turned the "load screen roms" into regular map rooms and The chaos realm was turned into a different area and integrated into the main map but no extra rooms outside of the main room counts of the game.

[Anonymous No.9709542]

>>9708342
>>9708445
I just finished HoD and these two posts sent my sides into orbit, thanks anons

[Anonymous No.9709549]

>>9709542
i'm both of those posts. i wasted an hour of my life trying to find the way forward only to realize that Dead End #28 was the one i had to go into.
but seriously fuck this game's layout.

[Anonymous No.9709661]

>>9708342
Painfully accurate. HoD is without exaggerating one of the worst games in the entire franchise.

[Anonymous No.9709665]

>>9708369
>CotM and HoD were two different dev teams that may've not checked each other's work.

and I think it's really obvious HoD did everything it could to be the opposite of CotM

>CotM: moveset and controls remind of classic Belmont
>HoD: moveset and controls remind of SotN Alucard

>CotM: huge scale on level design
>HoD: tight scale on level design

>CotM: enemies can shoot you from offscreen, some enemies and especially bossfights span several screen
>HoD: enemies can't shoot from offscreen and everything always take place on the one screen, even huge ass bosses

>CotM: everything revolves on item drops
>HoD: item drops are meaningless and outside of one exception, are always worse than what you simply find on the field or buy with ease

>CotM: no shop
>HoD: shop

>CotM: one castle
>HoD: two castle

>CotM: dark hard to see colours
>HoD: bright eye raping colours

>CotM: one ending
>HoD: multiple endings

I know the list goes on too. For instance the exp / lvl system in CotM allows you to grind much more easily, whereas in HoD past a point it's impossible to lvl up unless you spend 10 hours at it.
The two games are at opposite side of the same spectrum, even just the glow around the character in HoD feels like it was designed specifically to remedy people's complains about not being to see shit in CotM (something easy to forget these days when playing emulated).

So I find it unlikely "the HoD team may not have played CotM", in fact I think they fucking played it, dissectated, looked at people's and reviewers complains, and did everything they could to be the exact opposite.

[Anonymous No.9709672]

>>9709665
>dissectated

dissected it*

[Anonymous No.9709679]

>>9709665
>in HoD past a point it's impossible to lvl up unless you spend 10 hours at it.
I know these games aren't difficult enough to need grinding but i hate scaling exp gains no matter what. At least let my blind running around trying to find the right way to go be a bit rewarding exp-wise.

[Anonymous No.9709682]

>>9708807
>>9708471
>>9708816
Pretty sure that's intentional just to signal to the player

>This is an important area ahead!!!

Just in case the player doesn't know what the set of stairs like that means

[Anonymous No.9709728]

>>9709665
>CotM: dark hard to see colours

On GBA model 1, definitively, that game uses colors comparable to an snes game just a tad bit brighter, on emulators lools fine, in fact on RA mgba i adjust its colors to be sloghtly darker.

[Anonymous No.9710342]

>>9708780
Diana + Griffin is really good. That wind wave is ridiculously strong.

[Anonymous No.9710346]

>>9708372
this needs to be edited into a repeating gif

[Anonymous No.9710373]

>>9696750
adventure is fine, just rigid. whoever worked on konami gb games loved making the last level/boss into a massive difficulty spike, probably so you didn't feel ripped off beating an easy game. But still, adventure is fine.

[Anonymous No.9710450]

>>9710373
The problem isn't that it's rigid, the problem is that it's slow.

[Anonymous No.9710462]

>>9710450
The problem isn't that it's slow, the problem is that it's a barely functional piece of shit that looks like it's gonna break at any moment.

[Anonymous No.9710537]

>>9708372
How could IGA who made SotN made such a shameless piece of trash that was HoD, Juste is just a shameless alucard clone and due to the shitty non animations, he isnt fun to move, let alone the bad jumpin physics, anyone who says its like alicard jump doesnt know what he is talking about, Soma moves more alike in Aria and Dawn.

[Anonymous No.9710557]

>>9710537
He's fast but the lack of a mid-height jump is really dumb, especially when so many jumps make you clear the platform by a ton and make you slowly fall back down instead of just letting you cut your own jump short to save time.

[Anonymous No.9710616]

>>9710450
The Konami GB Collection port fixes some of the slowdown and makes Christopher's movement actually tolerable, at least.

[Anonymous No.9710932]

lol

[Anonymous No.9710963]

alright this is the last webm I'll post of this game.

It's so bizarre, once you actually get the keys for all those doors there's no reason to even use them because there's almost nothing left. You run to kill Death to get the Griffon Wing and only then do you get the keys. But at that point all there is left to do is grab the Crush Boots why the fuck aren't these a relic, grab Dracula's Rib, and then run to where the final fight is. Never found the fire book or the supposed monster summoning book but from what I can tell none of that stuff would be as useful as this Gradius shield.
Dracula's second phase is lame as fuck, it's just some dumbass brain with arms. I'm pretty sure they borrowed that from Gradius as well.

[Anonymous No.9710984]

Aria made up for HoD being a complete waste of everyone's time. thank camilla they pretty much got every thing right for that game

[Anonymous No.9710990]

>>9710984
The only real issues I have with Aria are the fact you don't keep the Black Panther soul in NG+, as well as Soma being a bit on the slow side. Everything else is a huge step up.

[Anonymous No.9711097]

>>9710963
Ok, now those colors look too dark now ironically enough.

[Anonymous No.9711103]

>>9710963
>>9710932
many subweapon books are broken as fuck, I avoid using most of them on my replays

[Anonymous No.9711116]

>>9696670
It definitely didn’t age as well as the other two GBA CastlevaniaS

[Anonymous No.9711127]

yeah. and something most people refuse to acknowledge is that the best music of the game was actually taken from the castlevania megadrive game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhAhH6m5JdQ

[Anonymous No.9711165]

>>9709394
iirc Maxim says that it opens the "Lord's Chamber" whatever the fuck that is.

[Anonymous No.9711256]

>>9711165
I dunno, When I got the bracelet I knew right away where to use it so it must've not been cryptic like that anon was stating.

[Anonymous No.9711270]

>>9708471
I replayed HoD just a few months ago and funnily enough I don't remember this at all.
I guess I just backtracked like mad like >>9709360
At least Juste is fast as hell so I didn't really mind.

[Anonymous No.9711557]

>>9709509
I recently played a ROM hack called Castlevania Akatsuki no rhapsody-ikusatatsu's castle.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3696/

It is a complete mess of a hack that does whatever the fuck it feels like because it can, with disregard for system performance or sensible game design.

You wanna fight two Chaos at the same time? A great big room with like 4 Balore or Legion in there? The game pulls that shit repeatedly.
The map is designed to be a long-winded as possible and is a slog to navigate, even if it's a mostly linear affair.

[Anonymous No.9711589]

>>9711127
>refuse to acknowledge
Refuse to acknowledge or just plain don't know?

>>9710462
Pretty much this. I'm really fond of Adventure, but at least playing it on an SP, there's been times where it seems to eat my inputs. I think even putting that aside, though, I wouldn't call Adventure's design all that great, mainly because of stuff like losing whip power when you're hit, which can open you up to practically unavoidable damage in certain parts, the second half relies hard on trial & error where you get fucked because you didn't have foreknowledge, no subs kind of sucks precisely because of Christopher's limp dick whip mechanics. Granted, maybe that's all the point, but I can't really recommend it.

I do love its level and boss design, though. The levels still manage to be tense for me to this day, and I just find the bosses really engaging.
>>9710557
You could dive kick to cut that time and dash cancel out of it, that's what I do, and in fact I like to challenge myself in sections like that to see how fast I can clear a room, but it is silly, even if the idea is that oh, you're a Belmont, Belmonts control like an approximation of how it was in the old days.

[Anonymous No.9711895]

>>9711557
Sweet jesus!

Is the level design at least good (cant read your post atm) or is it jist bloat Kaizo like?..

>read one paragraph

Oh, its not, sounds like the new Parallel Worlds to me, but at least i can see you technically make the map bigger.

[Anonymous No.9711958]

>>9710462
and that it's slow. I can respect the slower pacing of an entry like cv1 with a reasonable walkspeed, but in adventure(and belmont's revenge as well) where the main friction of the game isn't the enemies or hazards but feeling like you can just barely get past jumps by the skin of your balls because of the slow walk it's a problem.

[Anonymous No.9712125]

>>9698985
>Not using a core part of the game play
lol

[Anonymous No.9712196]

>>9711557
Ill came up with an hypothethical Aria map redesign.

[Anonymous No.9712423]

>>9696696
Would you suggest any romhacks? I got bored during the melee only run and mever made it to thief

[Anonymous No.9712721]

Skill issue

[Anonymous No.9713591]

>>9711895
Yeah, Aria of Sorrow Alter is an example of a competent AoS hack that has a larger map than vanilla, as you already brought up.

The fact that it has a functional CotM style arena is also cool, and I really like what it did with the Clock Tower.

[Anonymous No.9713669]

>>9696670
I dropped it a bit after that goat demon boss with the bubbles
It just wasn’t interesting and the controls sucks. The damage could be better too, since cards were pure rng.
I’ll stick with classicvania.

[Anonymous No.9713986]

>>9713669
>damage
This was a big problem for me too until I learned where the first Boomerang is and just held onto it for the rest of the game. CotM without the Boomerang is awful because of how shitty your default damage is.

[Anonymous No.9715452]

>>9713669
>controls sucks
How?

[Anonymous No.9715629]

>>9705694
>This is like people complaining about drawing in Final Fantasy 8
>>waaaah I have to draw every magic for hours
>when the game is never balanced around having to do that and you play the game like a sane person everything is fine.

[Anonymous No.9715757]

>>9696670
This game fuckin rules
Its like 60% SotN, 20% Classicvania and like 20% some sick Genesis action game. Shinobii III or something.

[Anonymous No.9715772]

>>9715629
>just grind more I guess lol
>hope you know the only two locations with crosses in the game
>grind for potions also lmao
fuck off

[Anonymous No.9715801]

>>9715452
walk is too slow for the scale of the game, whip speed is awkwardly situated between having active frames long enough to catch things during a jump and being too slow to deal with most spongey common enemies. jump has horrible horizontal range unless you're dashing.

[Anonymous No.9716003]

>>9696670
Finally beat it for the first time, thank fuck the earth card dropped on my way to Dracula, let me breeze through the comets with Neptune. I didn’t get the summoning card so I was just stuck using the ice shield while throwing the axe at his eye phase, doing like 23 damage each. This is the first castlevania I’ve beat, was pretty fun though you can feel the limitations of the GBA controls, having to double tap to sprint and those awkward button combos to activate those DSS weapons. Also took me until 1-2 hours from the end to realize secret rooms entrances could be on the floor. I’ve played a bit of HoD and the dashing immediately makes the game feel a lot more dynamic.