What makes a great castle? And what's your favorite?

What makes a great castle? Stuff in the walls

No, seriously, that might be the most important thing to me lol. 

I love throw backs like that. Earlier in the thread people were hating on that giant pit in SotN but I actually love it for being a CV1 throwback as well.

IGA has stated though that mobility plays a huge role in navigation of the castle, though. It's highly unlikely that he'll stray away from this though, since his previous work did this very little.

Let's face it, Dracula's Castle in Order of Ecclesia was the most boring repetitive castle in the series. Sure it might be different since it requires a parameter to be met before even having access to it, but that isn't grounds for how underwhelming it was.

I think a great castle should be balanced with how to traverse it. My one complain from the SoTN castle is that it maybe has way to many long hallways without much else going for them. We also see the extreme opposite with HoD, where the 2 castles are a single mess to traverse, with cramped spaces and plataforming everywhere. CoTM and Aria seems to find a balance between not just getting empty hallways but not making a plataforming mess out of every single room.

The backgrounds also play a huge roll on the castle. Dawn and Aria seem so much more light hearted castles that CoTM or SoTN, with more contrast and light colors used. Areas like the study in Aria seem so lively where in CoTM the death mansion looks gloomy and dreadful. This isn't necessarily bad, but it affects the castle atmosphere heavily.

Interestingly enough the size of the character in relation to the background makes a huge difference. Nathan's sprite looks tiny for the rest of the castle, which somehow made the castle look even bigger than what really is.

Here is what I think makes a great castle:

(1) The size.
There is a trend in IGAvania games where the castles seem to be getting smaller. Or at least it feels smaller (see individual maps for locales in OoE). This could be due to the game map being a summation of smaller maps. When I open up the map on Bloodstained for the first time, I want there to be a tiny indicator for where I am way down at the bottom--indicating that the game map will eventually take up the entire screen. I'm not a fan of the inverted castle, reused portrait maps, castle A, B, A+B, etc. SOTN is my favorite game of all time, so I forgive a lot of things that others complain about. That being said, the inverted castle was difficult to traverse due to the need to use an ability in order to make most jumps. (My double-jump would miss most ledges by a hair which caused me to have to change into a bat/mist or use my moon jump. That gets old real fast.) The fact that Bloodstained will be IGA's biggest castle ever couldn't make me happier. To me, that means that there won't be an inverted castle or the like.

(2) Background touches.
I really like it when the backgrounds have cool things going on as you traverse an area. It could be anything from the floating eyeball outside the window, the waves crashing on the galleon Minerva, birds/bats flying by, lightning, lava flares, water fountains (blood fountains), to interactive elements like the confessional in SOTN or the telescope that you can use to look out at the ferryman. In particular, I like weather effects to be going on where appropriate--snow, rain, lightning, heat, aurora borealis, meteor shower, etc. I particularly like the water dripping in the caves in SCIV.

(3) Locales.
The more locales the castle has, the better. If this is a castle, then I expect: forest surrounding the castle complete with moat and drawbridge (galleon Minerva could crash onto land at the edge of a forest), castle exterior wall, courtyard, castle proper/entrance, greenhouse, maze garden, castle center, east wing, west wing, dungeon, catacombs, four towers, mess hall/dining hall, ball room, bell tower, master's chambers, science/alchemy laboratory, etc, etc. The list goes on. More locales means more awesome backgrounds as well as eliminating the problem of rooms seeming repetitive. I agree with what was said of SOTN. The areas seemed to change frequently enough to prevent that repetitive feel.

My favorite castle map is "Portrait of Ruin", because it noticed that the room map is matched the exterior appearance of the castle image. Here is the room map.

And the image.


From this map, you can obviously find several towers gradually extending to the throne just as the image showed.
Also, in other protrait map it can be found the room set really matches with a circus for "Nation of fools", pyramids for "Forgotten city", haunted mansion for "Forest of Doom", and Victorian buildings for "13th street".
That would impress players that "I'm indeed in this labyrinth, not just mosaic pathway."

By the way, because the castle was set in 1944, Lord Dracula resurrected in a form of early-20th Dracula movie, not as handsome as before XD.
So, for the story of Bloodstained was set in 17th England, some devils or bosses can come out in more 17th-style.
Urgh... Renaissance or Baroque style ?

I adore Portrait to little pieces. It was a great way to give us settings both fitting (like the Victorian cityscapes and dark forest ruins) and unexpected (carnivals and Egypt levels). It really makes the game a standout because it wasnt JUST a nice big castle to explore. Although the re-use of the 4 areas (albeit re-arranged) after the Brauner fight to pad out the length grates on me the same way the Inverted Castle from SOTN and the A/B dimension hopping from HoD do. I understand the budget and time restrictions IGA had placed on him by Konami, but I cant help but think of how the game could have been even BETTER if he'd had the time he needed to give us even more unique Portrait environments as opposed to needing to heavily juggle assets.

All that being said, Portrait will always have a soft spot in my heart, even if Ecclesia is my favorite. It was my first IGAvania, and I will always love it.

Yeah same here. Really cool, yet oddly enough, not something I want re-incorporated into Bloodstained. :p