Design Review Requests

With the exception of what I have just quoted, I have submitted everything from this point up. crocodile I see you aren't really using the lists button to make your lists. Why not? If you write them in preview mode instead of BBCode mode it is much easier.

...It all started back in 2003 with Aria of Sorrow…

This masterpiece abandoned traditional Subweapons in favor of the Tactical Soul System. Subweapon ammo was no longer needed, so hearts became magic points to fuel Bullet, Ability, and Guardian Souls. This transition from subweapons to magic systems had a lasting impact on the series —including a few unintended consequences…

Without subweapons to drop, candles lost their strategic value. And even when subweapons returned for Portrait of Ruin and Harmony of Despair, they returned as collectible equipment instead of tradable powerups. But I digress, that’s a separate complaint…

Without subweapons, the only candle drops left were the small hearts, large hearts, and various amounts of money. Since the Tactical Soul System was a magic system, it was only natural to make heart drops a higher priority than money drops. But instead of each candle dropping a consistent predetermined reward, all candles were rigged to drop small hearts until max out. Then (once the magic meter was full) candles would begin dropping random amounts of money. And therein lies the problem.

In order to collect money from candles, players are forced to STOP using their magic and grind. Do you remember what it was like saving up for that Soul Eater Ring? Yessir, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. No fun with magic. No extra experience points. And no rare drops. Just the most mundane routine —slash candles, collect money, exit room, slash candles, collect money, exit room, lather, rinse, repeat….

This issue had an impact on shop economics as well.

But why bother having a shop if you’re only getting enough money to buy a few potions between boss battles? Why bother having a shop that’s over-stocked with C List equipment you can find elsewhere in the Castle? If I have to grind like hell to get money, the shop should be offering a lot more exclusive must-have items, weapons, armor, accessories, and relics.

But then again, more exclusives would require more money and more grinding…

So let’s get back to the candle drop system. Igarashi has said that Bloodstained will have candle-slashing gameplay, but we don’t know about the drops yet. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume the candles continue dropping hearts and money. Nothing is finalized, but Igarashi currently favors magic over subweapons, so hearts would continue fueling the magic meter.

In my opinion, we should return to the classic system, where each candle drops a consistent predetermined reward. These drops should offer a healthy balance of hearts and money throughout the entire game. But why stop there when we can have the best of both worlds? Why not create special accessories to manipulate the system?

Very good point. I had felt myself in playing the Igavania games (and including SotN) that candles had lost their importance. In some of the games, you could even just outright do without them.

Symphony had subweapons, yes, and they affected your gameplay...but only very early on. Beyond the first few areas of the game, you're likely just letting your hearts sit at max and using your much stronger main weapons, weapon-specific special attacks or spells, all of which used MP, independent in that game of the heart counter. Mid to late game especially, we all found ourselves running around with maxed heart meters. There were even heart max up powerups, heart refresh, an accessory to strengthen a subweapon (the cross, which still wasn't really worth it)...

So, I think the candle problem goes back farther than Aria. Hearts being magic points -is- a good choice, in lieu of there being meaningful subweapons. When your MP meter is maxed, though, I don't think it should affect candle drops, they should indeed be set.

To add further use and strengthen candles once again to something close to the level of classicvania, I'm thinking there could be spell augments/power ups or alchemic components that would in some way give a passive boost to elemental damage types, alter the level of the curse either way to increase/decrease stats, etc. I'm also a fan of the rosary, I have a necklace that looks just like the NES one.

Candles being strong would be good for multiple reasons, not the least of which being how Iga can show he's not just piecing together familiar mechanics for nostalgic effect.

I imagine the throne will be a supplemental or occasional type thing, some kind of limited use special move and maybe not the primary means of restoring mana/MP.

I think it's safe to assume that candles will at least be a source of money drops...probably one or more other categories of items. Maybe sometimes materials that the sconces themselves are made of to use in transmutation recipes?

Now that the candle drop discussion has died down, it's time to talk about my Kryptonite.

I know some fans will disagree, but I HATE using curative items in real time.
In my opinion, this is the single biggest flaw in Symphony of the Night.

Let's suppose you're losing a boss battle, you don't have the Magic Points for Soul Steal, and you desperately need to recover your Hit Points before you die... A minimum of 8 button clicks are required to go into the menu, equip an item, exit the menu, and use the potion in real time. And if you survive the 2 precious seconds it takes Alucard to recover those Hit Points, you still need to go back into the menu and re-equip your weapon before taking damage --7 more button clicks (presuming you re-equip the same weapon you started with). That's a minimum total of 15 button clicks to use a potion with a 2 second response time and a significant risk of death.

Thank God for Circle of the Moon!  I LOVE using potions from the safety of my menu screen!

But then we have Lament's Real Time Window system...  Good God, what terrible terrible idea...

Am I alone in my disgust for real time item management?  Let's talk it over...

The food items were more of a novelty and collectible than something necessary for gameplay. If you had to use a significant amount of food for HP in SotN, man...the issue is probably more you're not fighting whatever you're up against very well at all. If you didn't have MP for Soul Steal, that must mean you already did it once/multiple times because there's not much else worthwhile to use MP on during a boss fight, so...

Yeah, I liked how the food and whatnot was, but mostly because yeah, it wasn't something I actually needed for gameplay. In the later DS games, I did use food for HP a lot more often because I needed to.

edit: This goes back to a core aspect of SotN. Objectively, immediate HP recovery in a game would be ideal...but if you're rarely in danger and have multiple other ways to heal yourself (including save points), then the mechanics of that one health recovery category can be whatever.

A lot of things are relative to SotN's difficulty, like familiar usefulness. Some of them are decent, and can do things at least, but they're also entirely unnecessary. It's not that they should be stronger, per se. It's just the nature of the game, a lot of cool/neat extras are just kinda there.

cecil-kain once mentioned how reducing the maximum curative items from 99 to something like 9 or 10 would be good. I completely agree with this, as I think it would help the game designers better know what to expect from a player's inventory as they are going through an area or fighting a boss. Difficulty could be more predictable that way. Any curative items over the max limit when found would automatically heal you.

When it comes to food animations, I agree their variation and visual aesthetics add to the experience. Having to access them in an inefficient way through menus and equipping them to your hands only to have to re-equip your weapons is pretty pace breaking though. Surely there is a better way to get the benefit of curative item animations with a more accessible setup.

What does everyone think about limiting the item max for curative items?

The thing is, unless you force healing items on the player, the game designer can't assume the player has any. You have to choose to buy potions and you have to choose to pick up wall meat or enemy drops that heal. So in any encounter or scenario, you could have anywhere from the max # of healing items to absolutely zero. If you're going to let the number of healing items influence design, the only sensible thing is to design as if the player has no healing items and just let said items be a way for the player to make the game easier for themselves if they wish or need to. As you've pointed out, the bosses are already designed that way - I'd assume the rest of the game to follow.

On another note, what would it even mean for the sake of difficulty scaling if the game assumed you always had 10 but no more than 10 potions? Enemies hit less hard/are dumber than they would be if you could have 99 potions? Also do we mean "10 item limit" to mean you could have 10 potions, 10 mid potions, 10 hyper potions, etc. or just 10 "potions" of any type? There's also the fact that if you've got a large stockpile of healing items I would assume that is because A) you're buying so many because you need them and a low limit is only a time waster (multiple trips back to the shop or repeated farming even if its not super long each time) or B) you're so good or the game so easy you never need to use them. Either way, I'm not seeing how a low limit encourages better game design in a way a high/no limit wouldn't. Even with a lower limit, its not a variable you can control for.

What about animations?

Or weapon discussion?

( tooting my horn on the first one) realize there wasn't many opinions in that first topic but animations were a huge part on what made SOTN so special