Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
This took me way too long, you’d better read all of it.
Despite the amount of games I’ve been playing recently, I didn’t have much to say about a whole lot of them (aside from the obvious guild games). But then I played SotN for the first time and uh… it’s certainly one of the games of all time.
So to preface this, I enjoyed the game. Its certainly my favorite Castlevania game, at least out of the 4 that I’ve played. It’s far and away better than Castlevania 1 and Rondo of Blood, and while I thought that Super Castlevania IV was fun overall it also had its fair share of that patented Castlevania bull****. My point is that even disregarding the genre shift, SotN is a generally more enjoyable experience most of the time. That being said…
If I had to describe this game in one word, it would be “unfocused.” This is a vastly different game from every single one of its predecessors in nearly every way. I think the excuse is that since you’re playing as Alucard, not a Belmont, the game should be completely different. The problem is that even the game itself doesn’t seem to know
how it should be different. Yes there’s the obvious Metroidvania aspect, but they also cram in a stat and leveling system, a familiar system, equipment, transformations, spells, a shop, etc. and none of it is as fleshed out as it reasonably should be.
Let me start with the obvious. This is generally considered to be one of the defining Metroidvanias of the entire genre, taking obvious inspiration from Super Metroid in particular from the map designs to even some of the abilities. However I’d argue that this is a Metroidvania with the largest of asterisks. The amount of items that are either required for progression or can directly effect progression are no more than 13. 2 of these items are both required for the same check and nothing else so that effectively brings it down to 12. Another 5 of these checks do the same thing as the last 2, but worse because they don’t require any sort of real exploration and instead rely on you retreading in a “bizarro/dark world” castle to fight bosses that you already have access to (more on that later) so that brings it down to 8. Then of those 8, 4 of them (including the ones I condensed from earlier) unlock exactly 1 thing so they might as well not exist at that point. That leaves exactly 4 items that do anything noteworthy, being the double jump, mist, bat transformation, and the “Jewel of Open” which is just a magic rock that opens exactly 2 doors in the game. Let’s compare that to the items in Super Metroid that actually open stuff up in a non-randomized game. We have
- Morph ball
- Morph ball bombs
- Your first Power Bomb upgrade
- Your first missile upgrade
- Your first super missile upgrade
- Ice beam
- Wave beam
- Charge beam
- Plasma beam
- Grapple beam
- High jump boots
- Speed booster
- Space jump
- Screw attack
- Varia Suit
- Gravity Suit
That’s 16 items, most of which not only are required to unlock certain areas of the game to the average player, but could also be easily avoided through player knowledge. Thats not even accounting for the items that would absolutely be required on a first time play through like the x-ray scope or ammunition. Remember, SotN has 4.
The entire point of a Metroidvania is to reward players for their game knowledge by letting them figure out how to navigate around the map however they want in spite of restrictions that the game presents itself as having. Metroidvanias (and games with an item based system of progression in general like pre-BotW Zelda) are restrictive by nature, thats the point. The fun doesn’t stem from being open, or non-linear, or any other buzzword that people use to describe why they only want Zelda to be discount Elder Scrolls and nothing else, the fun stems from figuring out how to circumvent those restrictions. By this perspective, the Temple of the Ocean King from Phantom Hourglass alone is a better metroidvania than SotN. Yes, there are certainly other items that unlock stuff, but they only lead to optional, dime-a-dozen pieces of equipment, consumables, or worthless relics, which leads me into my next point:
There are too many unimportant items. Some of them are major items like “Faerie Scroll”, which tells you the name of the enemy that you’re attacking. Wee. Or the all-powerful “Spirit Orb” which tells you the enemies damage (no, not how much health they have left, that would’ve actually been useful. It just tells you how much damage you just did to them). 5 of them summon different familiars. All of them but the fairy effectively do exactly one thing, and that is hover around you and maybe attack something for 12 damage every once in a while if you’re lucky. They can also level up to do more damage with different attacks, but with how little they help why bother? They also dedicate an entire page of the menu screen to them. Oh and who could forget the merman statue? It summons the boat man in one specific place, allowing you to go through a 2 minute boat ride to get to one extra item, being the holy symbol. The holy symbol simply makes you immune to the damage you take from being in the water, even though water is rarely ever in any hazardous position.
Some of the items are consumables, like food, potions and projectiles. A lot of these just feel like they were filling out the list of items because they just feel redundant. Every food item does the exact same thing, but there are hundreds of them because of… reasons. On top of that, there are healing potions that just heal you just like food, only in a slightly different way. Every consumable seems to have this problem to the point where the only ones that I ever used were the potions.
Most of the worthless items, however, are simply equipment. Alucard has 2 weapons slots (one for each hand), a cloak clot, a headgear slot, an armor slot, 2 jewelry slots, and I think in future releases a third hand specifically used for healing items. There are hundreds of swords, armors, rings, pendants etc. Sometimes they give you an ability thats actually rather helpful, like slowly healing you as you walk or giving you some new attack patterns, but most of them just give you better stats.
Stats. In a Metroidvania. Why?
And I don’t mean a basic “attack” and “health” stat that are increased exclusively through permanent upgrades, that’s understandable as it can make tough encounters easier through exploration rather than just grinding for an hour. I mean a full stat system complete with a ton of different stats that seem completely meaningless until you look them up. These stats are increased by both equipping items and a level-up system. Why is this necessary? What is the purpose of introducing an experience based level system in a metroidvania? The entire point is to reward exploration with progression, so forcing players to kill enemies to grind for experience isn’t going to do anything but pad out the game. As soon as you introduce a level up system that increases 6 different stats, then I have to really question your motives. An intelligence stat is never necessary in a genre thats progression is almost completely tied to item gating. Same with the Constitution stat. And the luck stat. And the strength stat. By adding a level system all you’ve done is made things more confusing than it needs to be.
On the topic of mechanics that are traditionally found in an RPG, theres also an MP meter. This is used to cast spells, use transformations, and use abilities tied to said transformations. Mist is pretty useful for dodging attacks if you can get the timing right (and theres an upgrade later that lets you hold it for longer), and the bat transformation lets you fly which is always helpful, but all of its upgrades are kinda worthless. There is exactly one spell that’s even remotely useful, and no newcomer will ever use it because, surprise surprise, its tied to
a damn fighting game input and not a button like any normal game would have it. The wolf transformation is the 2nd most pointless wolf transformation I’ve ever experienced in a video game (hey at least you can do a jump-dash thingie with it, Wolf Link can’t do that). This is all just to say that the magic meter is pretty lacking in a purpose unless you heavily rely on using the mist and bat abilities, and it really shouldn’t have been that hard to add something else.
For instance, sub weapons return, but they feel less like a well thought out mechanic and more like an obligation. All of the mainstays return, the Axe, Cross, stopwatch, holy water, etc. They all do the same thing as before, except for the cross oddly enough, which is replaced by the item crash variant from Rondo of Blood. One would think that these sub weapons would have to be assigned to one of Alucards hand slots, and you would be wrong. They instead have their own separate slot. Why even bother having 2 separate hand slots if you’re just going to add another attack option that uses a hand? This is also a pain because SotN makes you use the same input as Castlevania 1 to use the sub weapons, being up on the D-pad and whatever your attack button is. There’s a reason why Super Castlevania IV got rid of this and tied it to the shoulder button instead. I accidentally threw my sub weapon far too many times to count just because I was accidentally holding up while attacking, which became a huge problem when I had the cross equipped. They also use their own separate heart meter as opposed to using the stamina for whatever reason. Why? Why have another resource for an ability that could’ve been tied to MP just fine? Its another mechanic in a game that already has so many that just don’t mesh together at all. Its because of this and the awful spell system that I rarely ever increased my INT, the stat that determines the damage of Magic, sub-weapons, and familiars.
Not that you’d ever know that without searching on google because Symphony of the Night refuses to ever explain any of its mechanics. The INT, for example, has no description anywhere outside of the manual, and even inside of the manual it just says “this affects your magic power.” It never even mentions that its tied to sub weapons or familiars. Or how about the fact that theres a day/night system in the game? I bet that a good 90% of the people who’ve actually finished SotN don’t even know that there is one.
Apparently there are exactly 2 items that are even affected by it, one increases your stats during the day, the other at night. Neither item actually tells you that theres a timer, and the lighting and backgrounds never change to match the time either. That would be like if Ocarina of Time had an optional item with the description of “protects you from cowboys” only for there to be exactly one cowboy in the game that never is even referred to as one. Hey remember those fighting game inputs from earlier? Well
apparently a good number of equipment and relics have their own special abilities that use them. Only there isn’t a single item (that I found) that actually tells you what the required inputs are or even if they have an ability. I got one relic, the gravity boots, and expected them to just increase my jump hight like the high jump boots in Super Metroid, only to find that they didn’t do a damn thing.
Apparently you have to press down, up, and then jump to get them to work.
Apparently the bat form has a dash attack that requires you to figure out that you need to do a near 3/4 circle turn on the dpad while holding jump.
Apparently the weapon that I beat the game with had two, one of which I actually managed to figure out myself because its just the hadoken, but the other one would just randomly activate while I’m trying to move around, and it causes Alucard to freeze in air for 3 seconds leaving him wide open to attack. I thought the peanut item was just a joke item because the description for it was simply “difficult to eat” and using it just caused Alucard to toss it upwards.
Apparently you’re supposed to hold up on the dpad for him to catch it in his mouth, and it’s actually one of the best food items in the entire game.
Apparently there’s an elemental damage system, where some enemies are weak to certain attacks. The only reason I knew this was because there are consumables that give you a resistance to certain elements, but it never tells what attacks are tied to which elements, neither for you or the enemy. That would’ve been nice to know. These are just a few of the many examples that I found where the game just refuses to tell me what I’m supposed to do on a basic level. People complain all the time about handholding in games, particularly ones that came out in the PS1/N64 generation onwards, but its better than this alternative by a country mile. It’s ok to forget to explain a few minor things here and there, hell I still don’t know how to do a crystal flash in Super Metroid (and I’m willing to bet that a good chunk of you didn’t even know that was a thing) yet its still one of my favorite games of all time. The difference is that while Super Metroid’s explanation shortcomings ends with at least attempting to explain most of the more complex mechanics in some way, SotN just expects you to know core aspects of the game right off the bat. Out of everything that I complained about with this game, this is by far the worst offender, with a close second going to the padding.
This game makes Skyward Sword look like its pressed for time and has a flight in an hour so it doesn’t want to be stuck with you too long. The sheer amount of filler in SotN is painful. For one thing, every hallway is about 5 times as long as it needs to be, which gets to be a problem in a game that supposedly revolves around exploring every nook and cranny for secrets because you’ll end up going a good 5-10 minutes before you find anything even remotely interesting. Then we get to the “bad ending.” Where unless you got 2 very specific items from polar opposite sides of the castle and wore them in a very specific room, you kill Richter and get the bad ending. Once again the game never tells you this and just expects you to know.
Once you do this though and beat the thing controlling richter, a cutscene showing an upside down duplicate of the castle appearing. You now have to explore the same exact castle, but now its upside down and has some new enemies.
Listen, I’m not gonna say that it isn’t a cool cutscene, and the concept of exploring an upside down variant of the map you just explored is awesome, but my God the castle was not made with upside down traversal in mind at all. Every single ledge was too high for Alucard’s base jump, and since the game never told me how to use the high jump boots, Every single jump forced me to use the bat transformation, and while that didn’t take nearly enough MP for that to be an issue, it does take a whole second to actually transform and another to transform back, which adds up throughout the entire castle. Of course this is also when the game decides to start throwing a ton of enemies at you with nearly unavoidable attack patterns, particularly in the reverse caverns and the anti chapel, so on top of being forced to use a slow moving bat, I’m now constantly taking deaths every few minutes. Of course this is also where the lack of a true metroidvania progression is at its fullest. The only things blocking you from the final boss are 5 more relics, being dracula’s remains from Castlevania 2. These are literally just obtained by going to the same boss rooms as before and killing a new boss. Nothing is blocking said bosses since the map is the exact same, all that you do is make a single loop around the castle and go back to the center room. The entirety of the second castle is completely and utterly pointless, and the game would’ve been significantly better without it.
I swear I wasn’t lying when I said I liked this game.
As much crap as I gave the games stat system and lack of tutorial, the games combat is really fun once you get the hang of it. The variety of weapon types at your disposal is pretty amazing, even if I wish they could actually unlock stuff as opposed to being used exclusively as alternate attack patterns. Personally I liked attacking with the fist-based weapons for their speed, but if I ever play this game again then I can see myself actively wanting to learn how to properly use other weapons and attacks, as well as wanting to really get good at fighting various enemies. The enemies (including bosses) ranged from complete bull**** to decent challenge to “holy crap its super easy to cheese this,” so basically what I’ve come to expect from Castlevania. If I ever replay this game, it will exclusively be because of the combat.
Another positive aspect of this game, albeit one thats talked over to death, is the pixel artstyle. I mean, yeah everyone is right, it looks amazing. It makes me wish that we had a few more sprite based console games in the 5th generation, because these are great. The music is, great, but I honestly think that it’s weaker than the other Castlevania games that I’ve played. Also what the hell is that end credits song?
Wait I’m supposed to be talking about the things that I like.
The castle itself is really fun to explore. Each area truly stood out from the rest, at least in the normal castle. Nearly every room remains memorable, even now as a write this I can still picture them in my mind. In this instance, I actually think I’d give the edge to SotN over Super Metroid. Good on ya SotN.
And that’s about it. I know that it seems like I was overly harsh on this game, but I did enjoy it. If it’s any consolation, SotN has convinced me to eventually check out the GBA titles in the future. Still, it is a
rough game to play at times, and even the good parts are filled with some rather frustrating design. I liked it, but it absolutely pales in comparison to what the best of Metroid has to offer.
7/10, but like, a really deflated 7/10
