DOUBLE WHAMMY LTTP THREAD. There will also be STORY SPOILERS so beware.
I'm not very experienced with Castlevania. It flew under my radar as a youngster and I've only played a handful of the portable Igavanias (Circle, Harmony, and Dawn). I think I maybe played the OG Castlevania a long time ago at a friend's house, but I don't even remember. Recently I bought Castlevania Lords of Shadow on Steam during the summer sale. I have heard some mixed things about it, but I decided to bite (VAMPIRE JOKE) anyways. Well since I bought one Castlevania game on the cheap, I might as well get one I've always wanted to play: Super Castlevania IV for the SNES (which was more expensive than LoS, the fuck Nintendo). Allow me to compare and contrast these two games that are kind of related but no really.
CASTLEVANIA LORDS OF SHADOW
The developer for this title is MercurySteam, perhaps best known for... Castlevania Lords of Shadow. This game was originally supposed to be a new IP, but Kojima got his hands on it and decided it should be a Castlevania game. Thanks, Kojima.
You play as Gabriel Belmont, a small-headed hunk who wears some sort of rubber coat? Is it cloth or metal? I can't even tell. Also this thing has a damn skull in the middle of it. You are a member of the BROTHERHOOD OF LIGHT who is trying to revive your wife who died a few days ago via some sort of power or artifact. Let's go back to the skull thing. Why would a Christian group dedicated to fighting evil have a SKULL on their outfits? Anyways you gotta defeat the LORDS OF SHADOW, who are blocking the connection between heaven and earth. Ok, BIG STORY SPOILER FOR ABOUT FOUR HOURS IN: turns out the Lords of Shadow are the "dark side" of the original founders of the Brotherhood of Light. That's right, these guys are Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts. Someone played Kingdom Hearts and thought, "You know what... they're on to something. There are some auxiliary characters that pop up, including a Patrick Steward-voiced BoL member named Zobek. I didn't finish the game, but I'm gonna guess this guy is secretly a demon or something. Zobek is the most demonic name I've ever heard. Pan from Pan's Labyrinth is in this game too, I shit you not.
Ok onto the gameplay. Did you ever play God of War? This game is that but not as fun. Gone are the RPG aspects of the more recent Castlevania games, this is a straight up linear action game. You still gain experience points for defeating enemies, but these are only used to unlock new moves. Your weapon of choice is the COMBAT CROSS (they couldn't think of a better name for this? Like Holy Thrasher?), a whip that can double as a dagger. You have a light attack and an area attack. This thing basically functions exactly as Kratos' blades, it doesn't feel like a whip at all. Combat consists of hitting the light or area attack button to do combos. You'll have to remember these if you want to survive, since enemies take an absurd amount of hits to go down. Half the time it felt like I was doing no damage. Enemies don't really seem to be phased or stunned by your attacks, some will just keep on attacking as if you were doing nothing to them.
You also have secondary items, like throwable daggers and a crystal that summons Anima from FFX. You also have light magic and dark magic. These give your characters a certain buff: light magic heals as you attack enemies and dark magic does more damage. There are also special moves you can use when in these modes. This thing is sapped pretty quick so you probably won't get to use many.
This leads into one of the more annoying aspects of the game: the orbs. As you defeat enemies, they will sometimes drop orbs. If you hold down the left stick button, it will refill your light magic bar. If you hold down the right stick button, it will fill up your dark magic bar. I can understand that they want you to focus on whichever you prefer, but acquiring these orbs is annoying and brings combat down to a halt. You cannot just walk over to collect them, you gotta stop and hold down the damn stick, leaving you open for attack. It's not like you can collect them after battle either since they disappear quickly. Some might say this mechanic forces you to make tough decisions between wanting to fill up your magic (and thus the chance to heal) or continuing to attack, but I say it kills the flow of battle and handicaps your character. You are almost never at full health because the only way to heal is to use the orbs to fill up your light magic bar, then activate it, then attack enemies. Just give me a potion I can use. Or hell, have different kinds of orbs. Green for health, blue for light magic, and red for dark magic. These orbs can be fairly rare too. If you attack long enough without taking damage, you fill up a bar that lets you draw more orbs from enemies. If you get hit, it resets. Considering you fight a dozen folks at a time, you will almost certainly get hit. Frankly I found the combat slow and frustrating. You never feel like a badass like you do in God of War, as your attacks don't do enough damage and balancing magic and health is more annoying than exciting.
Also, the bosses are awful, especially the TITANS.
These battles try to rip off Shadow of the Colossus, but instead of hectic intensity, you have plodding boredom. You gotta WAIT for them to do a certain attack, then you climb up on their arm or something via shimming up ledges until you get to a weakpoint. It tries to shake you off, but you just hold the right trigger to hold on. Thrilling. If you mess up and fall off the titan, you have to do it ALL AGAIN. I was at the last rune spot on the pictured boss, and a cutscene plays. A character throws me a crystal to stab it... but instead of it playing out as a cutscene, it's suddenly a QTE that I botch and then I gotta CLIMB ALL THE WAY BACK UP TO THE TOP. What the fuck, there hasn't been a cut scene that had a QTE in it all game and then they suddenly throw that at you? This game also has annoying QTE when finishing off certain enemies. Oh the joy of tapping A.
There is some platforming involved, but it is so braindead. You just climb up ledges, or do some automated swinging when you're at the right spot, or hop the world's easiest gaps. Levels are linear, but I do admit many of them look amazing. The game has a diverse number of setting and the scenery is fantastic. Levels are also filled with many secrets. Most of them consist of finding some dead corpse to loot, but they are rather hidden and require playing the level again to find them all.
I tried to push through the game to give a more thorough analysis, but I quit after the Crow Witch. The game was just too plodding, the combat was not fun and frustrating, and I am sick of SHIMMING SO MANY LEDGES BOOORING. Will the next Castlevania game make me warm up to the series? KIND OF.
SUPER CASTLEVANIA IV
Super Castlevania IV is the fourth entry in the Castlevania series... but it's actually an expanded remake of the first game. So it really shouldn't have IV in the title. And there weren't Super Castlevanias I-III. This title is so annoying.
Story: Dracula woke up you're Simon Belmont you fight him ok go
This is a fairly straight forward action platformer. You have a whip. You sometimes get secondary weapons. You can jump. That's it. No fancy leveling up system, or equipment, you just whip the shit outta things. The biggest change from the original game is the eight directional whip. You can now attack diagonally or spin it around like an idiot. I honestly felt like it was unresponsive at times. Maybe it was due to lag from the emulation (I played it on the VC and not the SNES), but I often found myself not going the direction I wanted to go or accidentally flailing it about instead of striking enemies.
The game is praised for its graphics, and even today it still looks good. I really like the sprite of Simon attacking diagonally while airborne. Especially for a 1991 SNES game. It famously utilized Mode 7, which gave the background a distorted, faux 3D look. There are a few notable areas where this is used, such as the rotating room and whatever is happening here:
You can even GO INTO THE BACKGROUND in the first level. That blew my mind way more than anything in LoS.
Movement in this game is a bit strange. Simon is a little stiff, but you can still maneuver a bit in the air. When you do a forward diagonal attack, you inch forward a bit, which can be annoying when you're on a ledge. Also, I will take a moment to talk about the worst enemy in the goddam game: THE STAIRS
First of all, you have to press up and the direction to climb up the stairs, otherwise you will just walk in the foreground. You also cannot jump off the stairs, but can some how jump THROUGH the stairs, most often to your death. If enemies knock you back to the stairs, you fall through them and die. WHOOPS. Fuck these stairs.
There are eleven levels in this game, and they are certainly distinctive with their own unique enemies and gameplay gimmicks. I especially liked the gold-filled level toward the end. Each area has a specific atmosphere that keeps you invested in playing. The game is great about keeping you on your toes. It throws new enemies at you the entire game and you have to figure out how to battle them. The enemy variety was much more interesting than the trillion werewolves I had to fight in LoS. I was constantly thinking, "What the hell is THIS?" as I bumped into bizarre creatures. The platforming challenges definitely ramp up towards the end. Instead of just falling blocks, you traverse swinging chandeliers, giant gears, flying platforms while dodging spikes etc. It'll make your heart skip a beat for sure. I hear a lot of people say that the secondary weapons are useless, but I enjoyed using them and found them to be worthwhile against certain enemies. I'm not sure I would have beaten Dracula without cross spam.
It is said that this is one of the easier Classicvanias, but this game completely kicked my ass. Unholy words were said. I only beat it due to massive restore point abuse during the final boss gauntlet (that fucking bird boss was driving me NUTS who the fuck programs something like that and thinks it's fun). There are definitely a lot of, "how was I supposed to know THAT?" moments. I wouldn't say many of the hazards are completely out of nowhere, but they are definitely designed to kill you if you are not completely aware of your surroundings and know what to do. Like falling blocks obscured behind a waterfall. I mean, you can certainly see it, but most would not look closely. Or a bat quietly nesting in a busy background, waiting to swoop in as you fight other enemies. It can be frustrating when you ace a level, but get to one segment that zaps all your lives and then you're kicked back to the beginning. It does feel satisfying when you blaze through a room you initially had difficulty with. THOSE MERMEN CAN GO TO HELL.
The music is often lauded, and what stuck out was how unconventional it was. I expected a lot of faux operatic music and slow, spooky themes, but instead the sound track is quite varied. I especially loved the theme when fighting Dracula. Then YOUR theme kicks in during the final stage of the battle. Awesome. Best song.
I enjoyed this game, but I don't feel like it's one of the best action or platformer games of all time. I would still recommend it.
So that's my Castlevania adventure. Are there any other Classicvania games worth checking out? I heard Rondo of Blood is good, how is that different from Dracula X on SNES. And if I found SCIV to be hard, would the NES Castlevania games completely destroy my soul?
Share your thoughts on these two games, Castlevania, or just about skeletons that explode.
I'm not very experienced with Castlevania. It flew under my radar as a youngster and I've only played a handful of the portable Igavanias (Circle, Harmony, and Dawn). I think I maybe played the OG Castlevania a long time ago at a friend's house, but I don't even remember. Recently I bought Castlevania Lords of Shadow on Steam during the summer sale. I have heard some mixed things about it, but I decided to bite (VAMPIRE JOKE) anyways. Well since I bought one Castlevania game on the cheap, I might as well get one I've always wanted to play: Super Castlevania IV for the SNES (which was more expensive than LoS, the fuck Nintendo). Allow me to compare and contrast these two games that are kind of related but no really.
CASTLEVANIA LORDS OF SHADOW
The developer for this title is MercurySteam, perhaps best known for... Castlevania Lords of Shadow. This game was originally supposed to be a new IP, but Kojima got his hands on it and decided it should be a Castlevania game. Thanks, Kojima.
You play as Gabriel Belmont, a small-headed hunk who wears some sort of rubber coat? Is it cloth or metal? I can't even tell. Also this thing has a damn skull in the middle of it. You are a member of the BROTHERHOOD OF LIGHT who is trying to revive your wife who died a few days ago via some sort of power or artifact. Let's go back to the skull thing. Why would a Christian group dedicated to fighting evil have a SKULL on their outfits? Anyways you gotta defeat the LORDS OF SHADOW, who are blocking the connection between heaven and earth. Ok, BIG STORY SPOILER FOR ABOUT FOUR HOURS IN: turns out the Lords of Shadow are the "dark side" of the original founders of the Brotherhood of Light. That's right, these guys are Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts. Someone played Kingdom Hearts and thought, "You know what... they're on to something. There are some auxiliary characters that pop up, including a Patrick Steward-voiced BoL member named Zobek. I didn't finish the game, but I'm gonna guess this guy is secretly a demon or something. Zobek is the most demonic name I've ever heard. Pan from Pan's Labyrinth is in this game too, I shit you not.
Ok onto the gameplay. Did you ever play God of War? This game is that but not as fun. Gone are the RPG aspects of the more recent Castlevania games, this is a straight up linear action game. You still gain experience points for defeating enemies, but these are only used to unlock new moves. Your weapon of choice is the COMBAT CROSS (they couldn't think of a better name for this? Like Holy Thrasher?), a whip that can double as a dagger. You have a light attack and an area attack. This thing basically functions exactly as Kratos' blades, it doesn't feel like a whip at all. Combat consists of hitting the light or area attack button to do combos. You'll have to remember these if you want to survive, since enemies take an absurd amount of hits to go down. Half the time it felt like I was doing no damage. Enemies don't really seem to be phased or stunned by your attacks, some will just keep on attacking as if you were doing nothing to them.
You also have secondary items, like throwable daggers and a crystal that summons Anima from FFX. You also have light magic and dark magic. These give your characters a certain buff: light magic heals as you attack enemies and dark magic does more damage. There are also special moves you can use when in these modes. This thing is sapped pretty quick so you probably won't get to use many.
This leads into one of the more annoying aspects of the game: the orbs. As you defeat enemies, they will sometimes drop orbs. If you hold down the left stick button, it will refill your light magic bar. If you hold down the right stick button, it will fill up your dark magic bar. I can understand that they want you to focus on whichever you prefer, but acquiring these orbs is annoying and brings combat down to a halt. You cannot just walk over to collect them, you gotta stop and hold down the damn stick, leaving you open for attack. It's not like you can collect them after battle either since they disappear quickly. Some might say this mechanic forces you to make tough decisions between wanting to fill up your magic (and thus the chance to heal) or continuing to attack, but I say it kills the flow of battle and handicaps your character. You are almost never at full health because the only way to heal is to use the orbs to fill up your light magic bar, then activate it, then attack enemies. Just give me a potion I can use. Or hell, have different kinds of orbs. Green for health, blue for light magic, and red for dark magic. These orbs can be fairly rare too. If you attack long enough without taking damage, you fill up a bar that lets you draw more orbs from enemies. If you get hit, it resets. Considering you fight a dozen folks at a time, you will almost certainly get hit. Frankly I found the combat slow and frustrating. You never feel like a badass like you do in God of War, as your attacks don't do enough damage and balancing magic and health is more annoying than exciting.
Also, the bosses are awful, especially the TITANS.
These battles try to rip off Shadow of the Colossus, but instead of hectic intensity, you have plodding boredom. You gotta WAIT for them to do a certain attack, then you climb up on their arm or something via shimming up ledges until you get to a weakpoint. It tries to shake you off, but you just hold the right trigger to hold on. Thrilling. If you mess up and fall off the titan, you have to do it ALL AGAIN. I was at the last rune spot on the pictured boss, and a cutscene plays. A character throws me a crystal to stab it... but instead of it playing out as a cutscene, it's suddenly a QTE that I botch and then I gotta CLIMB ALL THE WAY BACK UP TO THE TOP. What the fuck, there hasn't been a cut scene that had a QTE in it all game and then they suddenly throw that at you? This game also has annoying QTE when finishing off certain enemies. Oh the joy of tapping A.
There is some platforming involved, but it is so braindead. You just climb up ledges, or do some automated swinging when you're at the right spot, or hop the world's easiest gaps. Levels are linear, but I do admit many of them look amazing. The game has a diverse number of setting and the scenery is fantastic. Levels are also filled with many secrets. Most of them consist of finding some dead corpse to loot, but they are rather hidden and require playing the level again to find them all.
I tried to push through the game to give a more thorough analysis, but I quit after the Crow Witch. The game was just too plodding, the combat was not fun and frustrating, and I am sick of SHIMMING SO MANY LEDGES BOOORING. Will the next Castlevania game make me warm up to the series? KIND OF.
SUPER CASTLEVANIA IV
Super Castlevania IV is the fourth entry in the Castlevania series... but it's actually an expanded remake of the first game. So it really shouldn't have IV in the title. And there weren't Super Castlevanias I-III. This title is so annoying.
Story: Dracula woke up you're Simon Belmont you fight him ok go
This is a fairly straight forward action platformer. You have a whip. You sometimes get secondary weapons. You can jump. That's it. No fancy leveling up system, or equipment, you just whip the shit outta things. The biggest change from the original game is the eight directional whip. You can now attack diagonally or spin it around like an idiot. I honestly felt like it was unresponsive at times. Maybe it was due to lag from the emulation (I played it on the VC and not the SNES), but I often found myself not going the direction I wanted to go or accidentally flailing it about instead of striking enemies.
The game is praised for its graphics, and even today it still looks good. I really like the sprite of Simon attacking diagonally while airborne. Especially for a 1991 SNES game. It famously utilized Mode 7, which gave the background a distorted, faux 3D look. There are a few notable areas where this is used, such as the rotating room and whatever is happening here:
You can even GO INTO THE BACKGROUND in the first level. That blew my mind way more than anything in LoS.
Movement in this game is a bit strange. Simon is a little stiff, but you can still maneuver a bit in the air. When you do a forward diagonal attack, you inch forward a bit, which can be annoying when you're on a ledge. Also, I will take a moment to talk about the worst enemy in the goddam game: THE STAIRS
First of all, you have to press up and the direction to climb up the stairs, otherwise you will just walk in the foreground. You also cannot jump off the stairs, but can some how jump THROUGH the stairs, most often to your death. If enemies knock you back to the stairs, you fall through them and die. WHOOPS. Fuck these stairs.
There are eleven levels in this game, and they are certainly distinctive with their own unique enemies and gameplay gimmicks. I especially liked the gold-filled level toward the end. Each area has a specific atmosphere that keeps you invested in playing. The game is great about keeping you on your toes. It throws new enemies at you the entire game and you have to figure out how to battle them. The enemy variety was much more interesting than the trillion werewolves I had to fight in LoS. I was constantly thinking, "What the hell is THIS?" as I bumped into bizarre creatures. The platforming challenges definitely ramp up towards the end. Instead of just falling blocks, you traverse swinging chandeliers, giant gears, flying platforms while dodging spikes etc. It'll make your heart skip a beat for sure. I hear a lot of people say that the secondary weapons are useless, but I enjoyed using them and found them to be worthwhile against certain enemies. I'm not sure I would have beaten Dracula without cross spam.
It is said that this is one of the easier Classicvanias, but this game completely kicked my ass. Unholy words were said. I only beat it due to massive restore point abuse during the final boss gauntlet (that fucking bird boss was driving me NUTS who the fuck programs something like that and thinks it's fun). There are definitely a lot of, "how was I supposed to know THAT?" moments. I wouldn't say many of the hazards are completely out of nowhere, but they are definitely designed to kill you if you are not completely aware of your surroundings and know what to do. Like falling blocks obscured behind a waterfall. I mean, you can certainly see it, but most would not look closely. Or a bat quietly nesting in a busy background, waiting to swoop in as you fight other enemies. It can be frustrating when you ace a level, but get to one segment that zaps all your lives and then you're kicked back to the beginning. It does feel satisfying when you blaze through a room you initially had difficulty with. THOSE MERMEN CAN GO TO HELL.
The music is often lauded, and what stuck out was how unconventional it was. I expected a lot of faux operatic music and slow, spooky themes, but instead the sound track is quite varied. I especially loved the theme when fighting Dracula. Then YOUR theme kicks in during the final stage of the battle. Awesome. Best song.
I enjoyed this game, but I don't feel like it's one of the best action or platformer games of all time. I would still recommend it.
So that's my Castlevania adventure. Are there any other Classicvania games worth checking out? I heard Rondo of Blood is good, how is that different from Dracula X on SNES. And if I found SCIV to be hard, would the NES Castlevania games completely destroy my soul?
Share your thoughts on these two games, Castlevania, or just about skeletons that explode.
