GAF picks the best (metroid) Castlevania.

Harmony of Despair isn't a Metroid-Vania. There's very very little exploring.

It's a Time-Attack Item/Level Grind game, based on the controls (and more) of Metroid-Vania, and it's damn good.
 
Symphony of the Night

Best OST, best main character, best power ups, best level design, and pretty much, best everything out of the Castlevania games.
 
"I'm interested in this."

Symphony of the Night for sure! I own and played the 3 GBA titles but it was all on my tiny GBA Micro screen. Symphony wins because of the large screen TV factor.
 
I'm going to go ahead and give Portrait of Ruin some love. It got my wife to love Castlevania games, and we played a ton of multiplayer.
 
I've only played 3 of them, so here they are in order: SoTN>AoS>CotM

SoTN's atmosphere, animation, music, and visuals destroy the other two, and I think it has the best overall map design as well. The only gripe with SoTN is that the game becomes incredibly easy the more you play, especially from equipment you get during the reversed castle. It's still one of my favorite games.
 
I like most of them (and wish we'd get another one), but Symphony of the Night is still my favourite. Some of its mechanics are broken, particularly with regards to difficulty, but the castle design, including the literal "twist", was great and very memorable.
 
Aria perfected the Castleroid gameplay. Dawn of Sorrow looked nice but felt kind of lazy. Corridor of Ruin had cool ideas but ultimately felt kind of dull. Had fantastic variety though.

Order of Ecclesia succeeded the best in changing things up. Therefore Aria of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia share the 1st spot for me.

They're all great games though.
 
Super Metroid is easily the best one.

No, wait. Out of these games, I would pick Order of Ecclesia. Symphony of the Night a close second. SOtN is so vast, but I didn't find it as challenging as OOE. Plus, Shanoa is awesome.
 
Symphony, followed by aria, followed by dawn.

Edit: this reminds me, where the fuck are new metroidvania's???
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Lords of Shadow is it as far as Castlevania is concerned going forward. It sucks.
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Creaking said:
Slow walking speed? But one of the first artifacts you get is the dash boots, which let you run by tapping forward twice, allowing you to move faster than most of the other MetroidVania titles (at least, without magic-draining abilities, like Alucard's Wolf transformation or Soma's Black Panther soul)

Circle of the Moon is a great title though; too often overlooked.

I love hearing this as soon as Dracula appears.
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True, but having to double-tap every time you wanted to run was quite an annoyance, and running all of the time wasn't practical anyways because the high running speed made you more susceptible to being hit, meaning you still had to put up with the slow walking speed a lot of the time.

That said, it's still my favorite Metroidvania game, so obviously the issue wasn't a huge deal for me. It was just something I had to get used to.
 
Order of Ecclesia. It just clicked for me. Gameplay, artstyle, music, bossfights, glyphs, even grinding to level 255, it had insane replay value and I still play it sometimes on and off. Just wish they didn't include the underwater levels.
 
Symphony of the Night.

I 've recently replayed a bunch of them. SotN edges out Aria for me. Best music, and the most beautiful, most interesting castle. Tons of neat weapons and Easter eggs to find too. Aria comes close, it's the good Sorrow game, and the castle layout and soul system are a bit better than what SotN's got in those respects, but it's GBA-ness hurts it just enough.
 
It's super close, but I'd have to go with SOTN.

For all the shit that gets annualized, I would play a new metroidvania every year, or at least every two years. I would even buy a 3DS for a new one. PLEASE GET ON IT.

Also noticed not many mentioned Portrait of Ruin, which I thought was also very good. What's generally less liked about that one?
 
Ozzykamikaze said:
Also noticed not many mentioned Portrait of Ruin, which I thought was also very good. What's generally less liked about that one?
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I liked it (I liked all of them) but I'm going to take a guess here. The continued use of cheap anime-art style and story design, the childish main characters, the large amount of reused assets from Dawn of Sorrow (almost all of Jonathan's non-whip weapons and plenty of the enemies), and some people just find the two-person team gameplay to be overly gimmicky. Plus, subweapons were a big grind.

I did think that making the enemy resistances to certain types of attacks actually matter was a very good move. And that the color they flashed when hit changed depending on whether what you were doing was working or not was smart as well.
 
Bedlam said:
Luckily, LoS was the best title in the franchise since SotN. And it was definitely much better than anything Iga was up to lately (HD on XBLA, Judgement on Wii).
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Luckily, in this world, you have the freedom and right to be wrong. Also, Mirror of Fate.

If you're looking for Metroidvania action, you won't find it at Konami's door.
 
Creaking said:
I liked it (I liked all of them) but I'm going to take a guess here. The continued use of cheap anime-art style and story design, the childish main characters, the large amount of reused assets from Dawn of Sorrow (almost all of Jonathan's non-whip weapons and plenty of the enemies), and some people just find the two-person team gameplay to be overly gimmicky. Plus, subweapons were a big grind.

I did think that making the enemy resistances to certain types of attacks actually matter was a very good move. And that the color they flashed when hit changed depending on whether what you were doing was working or not was smart as well.
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I thought the anime style was a neat departure, especially if only for one game. They all tend to reuse a lot of weapons, I kind of expect it at this point.

I think you're right though. Even still, I love all those games as well. I just appreciated that it had a different feel. Also, the painting worlds were kinda cool.
 
The top 3 are far ahead of the rest:

1. SotN
2. Order of Ecclesia
3. Aria of Sorrow

SotN wins for the controls. Super jump, swim, bat, wolf, mist, spells, familiar, special move, sub weapons... you can have all of them going at once without needing to pause or equip. It makes it the most immersive and fun to control of the series. Also, the best castle design and music in the series.

Ecclesia and Aria are very close. If Ecclesia had a slightly better story or level design, to go with already having the best bosses and a versatile control scheme, it would be the top. If Aria had a slightly better challenge level (really not any harder than SotN, if even that hard) that would move it to the top.


Ozzykamikaze said:
Also noticed not many mentioned Portrait of Ruin, which I thought was also very good. What's generally less liked about that one?
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The castle design felt very lazy. Some levels you could literally draw a line through the middle and it would be a mirror image. Having to pause and equip frequently to get past barriers was annoying. Art, characters, story, all felt pretty lazy too.

It's still my 4th favorite though, the challenge level was pretty good and it is a lot of fun. And "lazy" is not the same as "bad." When you have a good formula, a very lazy game can still be good.
 
Ozzykamikaze said:
I thought the anime style was a neat departure, especially if only for one game. They all tend to reuse a lot of weapons, I kind of expect it at this point.

I think you're right though. Even still, I love all those games as well. I just appreciated that it had a different feel. Also, the painting worlds were kinda cool.
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Well the Anime style lasted two games, if you recall, first Dawn of Sorrow and then Portrait of Ruin. And I would have to disagree on all the games reusing a lot of weapons. Enemies, yes, but the weapons remain fairly exclusive. Even between Aria and Dawn of Sorrow, the many weapons that returned were given redesigned sprites. Portrait cribbed both weapons and their animations directly from it's predecessor, made obvious by the fact that it released a year after Dawn.

But again, I like Portrait of Ruin. It's not at all a bad title.
 
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