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Castlevania: SotN -- a couple things

a couple of the sheild rod combos are even more cheese than that sword everyone is mentioning. Plus there's that red dagger I think that has the fireball motion special move that make you invunerable momentarially.
 
Castlevania: SotN is one of the best games ever. AoS is very close though. (I could make a case for CotM also)
 
I remember picking up SotN the day it came out. My brothers, both very much casual gamers, were like "dude, why you want that? Get Madden man!" A week later I had to kick 'em out of my room so I could go to bed at 1 in the morning.

Highest percentage I ever got on a turn was 199.7% if I recall. I hear you could get up to like, 200.1, never finished off that last half point. Spent hours tracking down rare item drops too. :(

Also, I once, entirely accidentally, put in a code that gave me a ton of potions. Like 26 full sets of them. Needless to say I never needed healing items again on that turn, but I was wondering if anyone knew what the code was? I did it accidentally while fighting that really big humanoid boss that takes up like two screens.
 
SantaCruZer said:
Castlevania: SotN is one of the best games ever. AoS is very close though. (I could make a case for CotM also)

I can agree on CotM. Very sharp looking, liked the Card system (Even if it pissed me off MUCH more than AoS's Soul System... Go farm the Venus soul for a half hour, then take a few hours in CotM to get some of those cards...), and a cool replay system.

Speaking of replay systems, I liked the SotN replay stuffies
X-X!V''Q anybody?
, and
Richter was hard as all Hell, especially in the Reverse Castle.
 
Drek said:
I remember picking up SotN the day it came out. My brothers, both very much casual gamers, were like "dude, why you want that? Get Madden man!" A week later I had to kick 'em out of my room so I could go to bed at 1 in the morning.

Highest percentage I ever got on a turn was 199.7% if I recall. I hear you could get up to like, 200.1, never finished off that last half point. Spent hours tracking down rare item drops too. :(

Also, I once, entirely accidentally, put in a code that gave me a ton of potions. Like 26 full sets of them. Needless to say I never needed healing items again on that turn, but I was wondering if anyone knew what the code was? I did it accidentally while fighting that really big humanoid boss that takes up like two screens.

Actually, 200.6% was the highest normal percentage you could get. You could go higher than that by exploiting a glitch in one area on the left-hand side of the map, morphing into the bat and flying "outside" the castle. My first playthrough percentage was pretty bad, something like 170-something. Then years later, I decided to go back and play again, and checked an FAQ for the extra rooms I missed. The game is still a blast to play all these years later.
 
Drek said:
Highest percentage I ever got on a turn was 199.7% if I recall. I hear you could get up to like, 200.1, never finished off that last half point. Spent hours tracking down rare item drops too. :(

Highest possible percentage is 200.6, iirc. This percent is based on Map Completion, so getting item drops from enemies doesn't help it (Although I'm unclear if Relics/static items reflect here). There's something like 5-6 squares that don't count toward the normal 200%, so getting them is how you get the 200.6. Personally, I've gotten 200.1, and I can never remember where the last squares are.

EDIT: Beaten by a minute *sigh*
 
You can use the special move of the Sword Familiar to make a glitch in the chapel towers. You can then fly out and around them, getting a few more 0.1% of map coverage.

I used to answer questions about SotN on a fan site, but I've forgotten some specific items and placements now. Still, I play through it on a yearly basis at least... it remains the best game ever created.
 
triste said:
You can glitch the castle and get like 390%+...

http://home.golden.net/~maggi/wbw/usvermap.html

More time and energy than I'd ever put into it, though... sword bros glitch, the wolf charge glitch, etc etc.

Also: iirc, Runesword was a drop from the Dodo Bird in the upside down castle, but I may be mistaken.

I was talking NON glitch percentage. I never bothered with the glitch stuff, too annoying.

And yes, Runesword is from Dodo Bird... that thing is a pain in the ass to get, even on a luck game. And I'll be damned if I can remember what it's called, but the floating knights in the clock tower drop their sword as a rare item, and it's similar in function to the Rune Sword, just goes straight out first, and spins back.
 
Rei_Toei said:
Damn, I still have to find the Runesword and Sword of Dawn..

I loved the Sword of Dawn. Undead army-summoning abilities should be mandatory in every action game.

Is someone going to say what the Cube of Zoe does, or what?
 
One cool thing I always remember from SotN was that one of the rods had a special ability that shot the Gradius shield in fron of you (forgot if it stayed in one place or flew across the screen tho).

Any other cool easter eggs like that?
 
:lol @ 50 people vying for "first dibs" on the Cube of Zoe explanation.

Anywho, yes the voice acting kicks ass...precisely BECAUSE it's bad. It's b-movie bad, like the first Resident Evil's voice acting. It's cheesy and campy. "You steal men's souls!" "What is a man? *glass shatters on ground* A miserable pile of secrets!", etc.
 
DaddyZ said:
Yea, I bought the soundtrack...amazing..

Awakened Soul is the best song in the entire game.

I don't remember that track (and I'm not about to dust off my PS and hook it up :P), but I do recall that "Lost Painting" was one of my favorite tracks in the game. Another one of my faves played during that reddish/brown underground cave area, iirc. Another was the track that played in that open area right above/to the left of the library, where you could practice that super-jump technique. I need to play that game again one of these years...


I used to love using that sword that created a skeleton army for you-- I'd sit there and create a vast skeleton army in the hopes of slowing the game down due to the number of sprites. :D
 
marble gallery/tower of mist melody is my favorite
but it's basically all good

just wish there was better music variety in upside down castle
 
Requiem of the Gods is my absolute fave! So elegant and seductive and trancy and moody. I definitely love Marble Gallery too

Ash Housewares said:
just wish there was better music variety in upside down castle

Agreed.
 
All this talk about SotN has got me hard for it, time to start playing it again, only this time I'll only use nunchucks and brass knuckles.
 
Yea, I bought the soundtrack...amazing..

Awakened Soul is the best song in the entire game.

No, that would be Wandering Ghosts.

Oh, and if you want to make the game ridiculously hard, there's this one sword, I believe it's called Red Rust or something, that's actually worse than using your fists. Using this sword is like picking Dan in SF, it means you're God.
 
You get Sword of Dawn in the inverted castle, in the very beginning. It's below (on top of, in the regular castle) the place where you find the double jump originally, in a breakable wall.

I played through the game using only knuckles. There's a good one that you can get early by going to the room in the hanging tower (59,24 on that map), breaking the wall and then crouching inside the hole for quite some time. You'll sink down to the lower room where you can get the knuckles.

It's not that hard, if you use your supporting weapons correctly. Fireball teleport, mist form and daggers are very useful. Watch the boss movies, they always play with 75 HP.
 
Loki said:
I don't remember that track (and I'm not about to dust off my PS and hook it up :P), but I do recall that "Lost Painting" was one of my favorite tracks in the game. Another one of my faves played during that reddish/brown underground cave area, iirc. Another was the track that played in that open area right above/to the left of the library, where you could practice that super-jump technique. I need to play that game again one of these years...


I used to love using that sword that created a skeleton army for you-- I'd sit there and create a vast skeleton army in the hopes of slowing the game down due to the number of sprites. :D

Awakened soul is the song in the area where you fight ricter and the 2 other guys in that ring...
 
robot said:
Any other cool easter eggs like that?
In the background in the coloseum, you can see the remains of the giant goat that chases Richter at the beginning of Rondo of Blood. Always liked that detail.
 
you know, i think i'm due for a replay. it's been years. i've never actually finished the domestic version -- i get scared off by the voices every time -- so i don't have a clear idea of the plot. plus i never got that "sword of dawn" thing (or at least never summoned any skeletons with it), which in itself sounds like sufficient reason to replay it.
 
For first-timers, I recommend the Osafune Katana as a weapon of choice in the inverted castle. You can pretty much make yourself invincible with it, which makes some of the tougher areas easier to handle, but your timing has to be good for that to work - so no game breaker.

You pick it up by
the waterfall in the inverted castle. The one that flows up.
:)
 
i was just playing sotn and i got stoned, but my stone form was a huge ass gargoyle. when i broke out i returned back to the normal sprite. anyone know what that was?
 
Cyan said:
The double jump turns you into a gargoyle for a split second (maybe two or three frames of animation). If you get stoned at that exact moment, you're a giant stone gargoyle.
Are you sure that's what causes it? I've been turned into a stone gargoyle once in all the dozen or so times I've played through the game. It's not a sprite that you ever get when you're using the double jump.
 
i was double jumping for a while and i think i can see it. the wing is really easy to see but the body not so much. don't know why. but i do believe it is the double jump.


hot shit this game is awesome by the way. this is my first play through.
 
Crystalkoen said:
Highest possible percentage is 200.6, iirc. This percent is based on Map Completion, so getting item drops from enemies doesn't help it (Although I'm unclear if Relics/static items reflect here). There's something like 5-6 squares that don't count toward the normal 200%, so getting them is how you get the 200.6. Personally, I've gotten 200.1, and I can never remember where the last squares are.

EDIT: Beaten by a minute *sigh*

Actually i remember having 200.1 like you but i continued the game and got pretty much all the items from ennemies and everything. My final score was 200.3
I sure the items does count somewhere because i didn't discover any new rooms after my 200.1
 
I never got that. Why is Drac's "true form" him sitting in a chair with huge arm/wing things sticking out of the chair? It looks so lame.
 
I don't know, but I'll take his word for it. We're supposed to behold it and despair, but it doesn't really do it for me.

I like his regular form better, like the one he uses when you fight him with Richter at the beginning of the game.
 
I have the Japanese version of this game (it came with a bonus soundtrack CD with the NES music on it). So I will never know how bad the voice acting is, and even the names of the items. I just picked up each item and figured things out. I didn't even know that you could change forms and stuff for a good while.

Yet I still loved it to death.
 
I found the Dawn of Death tonight by a total fluke. The Sword Familiar was doing its thing when I heard that wonderful crumbling sound. I went over to where it had been and started hacking the wall, finding the DoD. It's awesome. I hadn't gotten when I beat the game before (got ~200%, too).

I also got the Cris. :\ I didn't want to, really. It's ridiculously powerful. I'm not sure what compelled Konami to put it in, especially so early.
 
Is it true that you can't make the Ring of Varda appear on the first playthrough? Maybe they should've done that for Crissaegrim also...
 
triste said:
Is it true that you can't make the Ring of Varda appear on the first playthrough? Maybe they should've done that for Crissaegrim also...

Yeah the Ring of Varda doesn't appear until after you have a "clear" save on your memory card. Oh and I alsos loved the Lord of the Rings reference on it.
 
One of the simple things that amused me was the... I think they were called the One-Inch Boots or something. Literally raised Alucard a pixel up. If you equipped then de-equipped them, he'd fall down from it. (Can't remember what they were for, specifically, did they keep you out of certain damaging floor substances or something?)
 
I think they were just to boost his self-confidence with the ladies.

One of many small examples of SOTN's total ownage.
 
I always used the Yatsusuna (don't know the American name) instead as my weapon.

The first time getting into that spiked room, I did it a different way (didn't have the Spike Breaker Armor); I died from the spikes and had one of the fairy familiars, and she used a revive peach thing, and I just walked into the door while being invincible. :lol

I have the Saturn version too, and made the 9 new songs in mp3's. The best ones IMO were the remake of Vampire Killer (Maria's entrance theme) and one of the Bloody Tears redo's for one of the 2 new areas in the game. One was a garden (under the entrance to the castle) and another was a Mausoleum-type place between two early areas. Neither were spectacular , nor large, but they were cool anyway.
 
Were you guys using the magic spells from the shields? I was amazed when i discovered that. Another detail that makes this game great!
 
The Japanese version really does have great voice acting. I was shocked when I found out the entire opening story is voiced (It's text-only in the US version).
 
I've covered pretty much everything now and....

Good GOD why did none of you fuckers remind me about the Super Jump! Can't imagine how much time I've wasted using my bat all this time.... :\

How is the Spear Kick done?
 
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