Who played Castlevania: SotN...

While not one of my favorites and DEFNITELY overhyped, IGA considers Symphony of the Night to be his best work, and it is a very good title. Not that it beats Aria or Dawn, for me. :p


JeffCross , you really are just a grown up child, aren't you, ahahaha

:]

One thing that I really enjoyed about SotN was the Familiar system. They weren't just a spell that you cast, each one did different things, and had different personalities. I personally enjoyed the company of the Devil Familiar the most. Another piece that I really enjoyed was the mobility. It felt really fluid moving Alucard around, and I'm GLAD that a lot of the mobility power-ups didn't come until later in the game. Mobility plays a HUGE part in how much you can accomplish without X items.


Some other things I liked included:

• Lots of weapons, primarily swords,
• Lots of interesting and tactic necessary bosses,
• Brilliant artwork and animation.

Truly, a well created game. :)

I didn't get around to SOTN until after I'd played all the GBA, DS and PS2 games. I didnt want to risk buying a used copy of the PS1 original on Amazon, and at the time I did not have an XBL account (I don't think it was on XBL at the time even if I did have one). I didn't get to play SOTN until I got a PSP, which meant I got to enjoy Maria

I think its a fantastic game. Wonderful art, stellar music, crisp animations, just a wonderful game. Its aged fantastically (granted almost all of IGA's games have, a real testament to the man's skill).

Granted I think the fanbase is a bit zealous in defending it from any and all criticism. There are some real anachronistic issues at times. Was I really expected to bait a gorilla into following me to a different screen and throw his barrel at the floor to blow it up? Enemies don't follow you between rooms in any of the other games, there's nothing that would lead the player to come to that solution. Things like that just make the progression feel a little clunkier than in some of his later games.

That being said, I will agree SOTN is absolutely one of the best 2D games ever made, even if, personally, I think Aria of Sorrow is the real pinnacle of IGA's work on the series (and since some might claim I'm just playing favorites, I can distinguish between "best" and "favorite". Order of Ecclesia is my favorite of IGA's games, though can divorce myself from my opinions to agree its probably not *as* solid in all aspects like SOTN and Aria are.)

Honestly the main issue I have with SOTN are the more casual fans I get deluged by every time Castlevania comes up somewhere other than this specific forum. There's only so many times I can get beaten over the head with the game's pure amazingness and how I'm just an idiot for daring to say its not my favorite game in the series before said fans retroactively embitter me on the game itself. (This is a more roundabout way for me to say I appreciate this forum because I can talk to people about games like Portrait, Ecclesia and Harmony and actually get to talk about them without someone derailing the discussion back to SOTN every bloody time).

SOTN is definitely one of my favorite games, if not my favorite of all. I got to play the actual game on PS1 several years ago. Music would be my favorite part of it (I really enjoyed dumping the CD in a CD player and actually getting to hear a really cool track introduced by Alucard), along with the variety of weapons/fighting styles and spells. My biggest complaints about this game would be the lack of cheesiness in the English voice acting (just kidding) and more seriously the fact that they trashed a whole lot of content when porting the game from Saturn to PS1.

I got it cause the reviews said it was good. I didn't get into it and had to force myself to play it. Then when I got to the 2nd castle I got interested again. Mostly cause it had all the classic enemies again, in interesting next gen ways. Akmodan spit out dust. Creature had a interesting redesign and did the cool sprite rotation thing. Medusa had a sword and talked. At the time I liked the 2nd castle alot more than the first. I wound up getting hooked on the game. Glad I stuck with it.

I'm glad this thread got revived.

I learned about CSOTN when a past friend of me showed me the game.
Castlevania with RPG elements? A whole slew of weapons, armor, accessories? A map? I was instantly charmed by the game.
The game being extremely fluid as well and being able to progress further at defined points also played their roles.

Needless to say that when I heard it also was present in the Dracula X Chronicles as unlockable made me buy the latter, fast.

I am hopeful for Bloodstained. Not worried, not desperate, I just will enjoy it fully when it gets available, or when a beta/2nd demo is out.
I sadly missed the E3 one since I am just a slacker backer (I didn't wish to deal in e-commerce before).

The rest shall unfold in time. Let's see what the future got in store for us.

This is the US guy that made it to top 8 at Evo in Street Fighter 5 last year, btw