Castlevania General

[finalark]

So I made a general Castlevania discussion thread a while back but it seems to have faded to the sands of time. I was going to bump it for the sake of the two new Castlevania titles announced at E3 2012. However, since I could not find it I made this thread /dealwithit

Anyway, it seems that Konami is actually determined to stick with the CV reboot started in Lords of Shadow. Two new titles were announced and the trailers for both can be found below:

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2LaMwCCJ0E

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmt0aGWywqw

I hope that the inclusion of Lords of Shadow in both the new titles is there just to establish that Konami intends to stick with the reboot and won't be on all new Castlevania games from here on out.

 

[Wizzrobe]

I'm kind of a new fan to the series starting with castlevania 1.

I'm pretty interested in Castlevania Mirror of Fate though.

 

[finalark]

I'm kind of a new fan to the series starting with castlevania 1.

I'm pretty interested in Castlevania Mirror of Fate though.

I'd honestly suggest you skip the NES games. IMO they haven't really aged well.

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

I'd honestly suggest you skip the NES games. IMO they haven't really aged well.

I kind of disagree.

Just skip castlevania 2

 

[finalark]

I kind of disagree.

Just skip castlevania 2

I disagree with your disagreement.

Those jumping physics were clearly made for an arcade game that exists to eat your quarters.

 

[Master Xanthan]

I disagree with your disagreement.

Those jumping physics were clearly made for an arcade game that exists to eat your quarters.

You have no idea how many times I died in the first castlevania on that moving boat because of those awful physics.

 

[O D I N]

I'd honestly suggest you skip the NES games. IMO they haven't really aged well.

O__o

I wouldn't SKIP them. But they aren't necessary to play to really enjoy the other games, that's for sure.

Especially with the Lords of Shadow games. They're a new series altogether that has little to do with Castlevania of old, anyway.

I kind of disagree.

Just skip castlevania 2

Psycho knows what's up.

Symphony of the Night for Castlevania of the Century.

 

[Vermanubis]

Ark, you like Lords of Shadow, and think that the NES Castlevanias haven't aged well.

This is the start of a very bad relationship.

Seriously though, as someone who's played and beaten every CV in the series, I can name something from each one that could've been better. LoS, however, is the only Castlevania game I can say I truly disliked. They slaughtered the mythos and turned it into a hackneyed Lord of the Rings/Bram Stoker's Dracula tribute. It's just so blatantly a ham-fisted shot at marketing towards a western audience. I could go on for ages, but I'd rather praise CV than hate on it. I will say that I still have a hard time even acknowledging LoS as Castlevania game, since if it wasn't titled so, I'd never guess it was a Castlevanie game.

The original three have aged extremely well (though II is arguable), primarily because they were, contrary to most modern games, well-designed. They were difficult as hell, but what makes me appreciate them is that every time I die in one of them, I can't help but laugh at the ingenious avenues they took to subvert the player--I know that when I die, it was because I messed up and fell into a deliberate trap.

The hallmark of the entire series has been its aggregation as what Richard Wagner called the "gesamtkunstwerk," or "complete art work." The music, the design, the story, which despite being convoluted to the point of not making any sense, was just plain ****ing cool and imaginative; everything. Obviously though, when Michiru Yamane came on board, the baroque stylism of the series was really illustrated along with Ayami Kojima's stuff.

I'll stop there, but yeah, I'm a pretty big CV fanboy. I can't help it though, with how terrific a series it is from just about every angle. In closing, my favorites are probably Dracula's Curse, IV, Rondo, SotN and CoD, each for similar as well as different reasons.

 

[O D I N]

Ark, you like Lords of Shadow, and think that the NES Castlevanias haven't aged well.

This is the start of a very bad relationship.

Seriously though, as someone who's played and beaten every CV in the series, I can name something from each one that could've been better. LoS, however, is the only Castlevania game I can say I truly disliked. They slaughtered the mythos and turned it into a hackneyed Lord of the Rings/Bram Stoker's Dracula tribute. It's just so blatantly a ham-fisted shot at marketing towards a western audience. I could go on for ages, but I'd rather praise CV than hate on it. I will say that I still have a hard time even acknowledging LoS as Castlevania game, since if it wasn't titled so, I'd never guess it was a Castlevanie game.

The original three have aged extremely well (though II is arguable), primarily because they were, contrary to most modern games, well-designed. They were difficult as hell, but what makes me appreciate them is that every time I die in one of them, I can't help but laugh at the ingenious avenues they took to subvert the player--I know that when I die, it was because I messed up and fell into a deliberate trap.

The hallmark of the entire series has been its aggregation as what Richard Wagner called the "gesamtkunstwerk," or "complete art work." The music, the design, the story, which despite being convoluted to the point of not making any sense, was just plain ****ing cool and imaginative; everything. Obviously though, when Michiru Yamane came on board, the baroque stylism of the series was really illustrated along with Ayami Kojima's stuff.

I'll stop there, but yeah, I'm a pretty big CV fanboy. I can't help it though, with how terrific a series it is from just about every angle. In closing, my favorites are probably Dracula's Curse, IV, Rondo, SotN and CoD, each for similar as well as different reasons.

Actually, Lord of Shadows WASN'T going to be a CV game.

It was originally going to be made as nothing but a tribute to the CV series, but Konami bought the studio making it (Mercury) and slapped Castlevania on it, changed some stuff around to make it more Castlevania, and made it a separate universe to the already established canon of the series.

Think of it like an alternate universe/timeline. Since that's exactly what it is.

I enjoyed it for what it was. It wasn't the best game ever, but it was enjoyable, given the context that it was in. But comparing it to other CV games is hard to do. Because they're in separate genres. Sorta.

 

[Master Xanthan]

the main thing I disliked about LoS was all the puzzles. Idk why but a lot of them stumped me. Idk, maybe I'm dumb. The story was pretty cool though.

 

[Wizzrobe]

I'd honestly suggest you skip the NES games. IMO they haven't really aged well.

Are they that bad? lol

I loved castlevania 1 and considering 2 and 3 have very similiar gameplay mechanics, I bet I would probably enjoy them.

 

[Vermanubis]

Actually, Lord of Shadows WASN'T going to be a CV game.

It was originally going to be made as nothing but a tribute to the CV series, but Konami bought the studio making it (Mercury) and slapped Castlevania on it, changed some stuff around to make it more Castlevania, and made it a separate universe to the already established canon of the series.

Think of it like an alternate universe/timeline. Since that's exactly what it is.

I enjoyed it for what it was. It wasn't the best game ever, but it was enjoyable, given the context that it was in. But comparing it to other CV games is hard to do. Because they're in separate genres. Sorta.

Yeah, it was originally going to be <just> Lords of Shadow, which is why I further still can't bring myself to accept it as a CV game. As for imagining it as a separate universe, that I can do, but by that rationale, I could also envision a square as a circle, but with vertices.

It had nothing of what made Castlevania what it was to me. I agree it wasn't by any means a bad game, but more aggravating than anything else is how disingenuous it was of Konami to sell fans a "phony," I guess you could say.

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

Are they that bad? lol

I loved castlevania 1 and considering 2 and 3 have very similiar gameplay mechanics, I bet I would probably enjoy them.

2 adds a currency system where you have to buy items, which means you spend most of the game going back and forth between the same screen grinding.

It also adds a day and night cycle which stops the game for a while to TELL you it's turning day or night when the NES was perfect able to have a fast transitioning day/ night system

 

[finalark]

Ark, you like Lords of Shadow, and think that the NES Castlevanias haven't aged well.

Actually I don't like Lords. It felt like a very general sort of rental-at-best beat 'em up that completely butchered VC lore (like how Gabriel just became Dracula and yet Alucard is in LoS2) and honestly felt like a mash of pretty much every beat 'em up that's come out in the past five years with a few referances to CV thrown in. However, the direction their going with the series and no amount of fan *****ing will change.

This is the start of a very bad relationship.

Seriously though, as someone who's played and beaten every CV in the series, I can name something from each one that could've been better. LoS, however, is the only Castlevania game I can say I truly disliked. They slaughtered the mythos and turned it into a hackneyed Lord of the Rings/Bram Stoker's Dracula tribute. It's just so blatantly a ham-fisted shot at marketing towards a western audience. I could go on for ages, but I'd rather praise CV than hate on it. I will say that I still have a hard time even acknowledging LoS as Castlevania game, since if it wasn't titled so, I'd never guess it was a Castlevanie game.

No, I think we'll get along just fine if you think that about LoS.

The original three have aged extremely well (though II is arguable), primarily because they were, contrary to most modern games, well-designed. They were difficult as hell, but what makes me appreciate them is that every time I die in one of them, I can't help but laugh at the ingenious avenues they took to subvert the player--I know that when I die, it was because I messed up and fell into a deliberate trap.

I disagree. Sure, you can watch Egoraptor's video on it and agree but your first time through those games it won't be like how egoraptor described at all. You'll find yourself constantly dying to ****ty jump physics straight out of the arcade.

I'll stop there, but yeah, I'm a pretty big CV fanboy. I can't help it though, with how terrific a series it is from just about every angle. In closing, my favorites are probably Dracula's Curse, IV, Rondo, SotN and CoD, each for similar as well as different reasons.

I happen to be a pretty big fan myself, my favorite games are Rondo, Symphony, Portrait and Aria of Sorrow.

 

[Vermanubis]

I'm sure you know, but I was just playing about the bad relationship thing.

But yeah, it pains me so close to the heart to see CV go where it's going. No Iga, no Michiru, no Ayami--they, in my opinion, were <the> quintessential CV team, and they've all gone off in different directions. Seriously, without Gabriel's last name being Belmont, I'd have pegged it as something out of Santa Monica studios. They put Kojima on the team, but the wrong one lol.

As for Egoraptor's video, I haven't seen it, but if it's anything like his MMX video, then I absolutely agree. Teleology--functionality, or a purpose, I guess I could say, loosely--is what makes a good game to me. I and III were well-designed in that which everything, even peculiar jumping physics, was deliberate. If you look at the infrastructure of the game, you can tell that the jumping wasn't an oversight, rather, a facet of the game which necessitated memorization of the stage so you couldn't get away with whiffed jumps or speediness. Were the jumping any less unforgiving, the demands for timing and spatial negotiation would be pretty much shot.

In other parts, the game was just completely functional. There weren't any extraneous (useless) items, abilities, etc. The game was challenging enough that you had to effectively use everything that came your way, as opposed to games in recent times that've become so pitifully easy that 90% of the game is lost because the only incentive or challenge is self-imposed, i.e. novelties.

So, those're my thoughts on the originals, and most of the series. Something like Hagane's jumping, where conflicting timings dictate the height of your jump when your standard jump can cover 100% of the game is an example of poor design. In other words, it was poorly designed because a pointless ability affected your ability to be precise and wasn't at all directly related to the intended challenge of the game, whereas the jumping in the NES CVs was.

 

[finalark]

I'm sure you know, but I was just playing about the bad relationship thing.

But yeah, it pains me so close to the heart to see CV go where it's going. No Iga, no Michiru, no Ayami--they, in my opinion, were <the> quintessential CV team, and they've all gone off in different directions. Seriously, without Gabriel's last name being Belmont, I'd have pegged it as something out of Santa Monica studios. They put Kojima on the team, but the wrong one lol.

Yeah, I can understand wanting a more story driving franchise but if they really wanted that why not just remake some of the key games in the franchise but with more dialog?

As for Egoraptor's video, I haven't seen it, but if it's anything like his MMX video, then I absolutely agree. Teleology--functionality, or a purpose, I guess I could say, loosely--is what makes a good game to me. I and III were well-designed in that which everything, even peculiar jumping physics, was deliberate. If you look at the infrastructure of the game, you can tell that the jumping wasn't an oversight, rather, a facet of the game which necessitated memorization of the stage so you couldn't get away with whiffed jumps or speediness. Were the jumping any less unforgiving, the demands for timing and spatial negotiation would be pretty much shot.

Ironically, the above is why I love Rondo so much. I suppose I just found the jump mechanics.... not fun.

In other parts, the game was just completely functional. There weren't any extraneous (useless) items, abilities, etc. The game was challenging enough that you had to effectively use everything that came your way, as opposed to games in recent times that've become so pitifully easy that 90% of the game is lost because the only incentive or challenge is self-imposed, i.e. novelties.

Well speaking on the behalf of modern games I can understand why most games you can blow through in a weekend on normal difficulties. Its because games are primarily aimed at an audience between the ages of 17-30ish. People in that age group don't tend to have a lot of time on their hands to constantly replay games until you have everything memorized like when you were a kid. At least most games have the modesty to include higher difficulties for people who do want a challenge.