Ranking Castlevanias. Extended discussion

[Matador]

I'm currently replaying Order of Ecclesia, and having a lot of fun. So I would like to know people's opinions about the franchise, and have a hub to discuss the franchise with other fans in the codex.

My rankings, only will post the games I played:

Classic Castlevania. (Action platformer, no RPG elements)

1. Castlevania - Rondo of Blood (PC Engine).

- Great Sprites and Beautiful backgrounds. The sprites reused in posterior games speak for the quality
- Insane bosses, and very high difficulty.
- Loyal to the classic formula with the Whip only hitting forward.
- Interesting and punishing level design, and overall progress with secret and obvious branching paths. You can complete the game using different routes with different bosses. I miss that confidence in the player missing content. Possibly the seed of the metroid level design in following games?
- That experimental aspect in the vein of Castlevania 3 can be seen also in some aspects like being able to unlock another character if you find the secrets.
- Best soundtrack in the whole franchise.

Overall it offers the more polished classic Castlevania formula game to date, and is able to experiment with some aspects with success. In my opinion a masterpiece.

2. Castlevania - Adventure rebirth (Wii).

Another very polished game and fun game, with good graphics, but without the inspiration of Rondo of Blood

3. Castlevania 3 (NES).

First game in the franchise experimenting with aspects like the switch to unconventional characters or branching paths, but not as polished or fun like Rondo of Blood, but a real landmark for its time.

4. Castlevania - Castlevania chronicles - SuperCastlevania?



I think I would chose Castlevania Chronicles, because is more fun and has better graphics being a remake.

Super Castlevania is great but the 8 direction Whip changes the formula almost completely. Before, you had to use smartly your special weapons to overcome the challenges, and that's key to the gameplay formula. Here the 8 dir. whip is very powerful in a lot of situations.

Haven't played Castlevania 2. Genesis Castlevania Bloodlines seemed fine to me but haven't played it a lot.


Metroidvanias (RPG elements like stats, level ups and gear,and level design inspired by metroid):

1. Order of Ecclesia: This game features both more linear levels and a non linear castle.

- Very hard. It's the hardest modern Castlevania, but it's manageable and is well designed. For old fans complaining about the easy metroidvania games this is the perfect game. The only thing I complain about it is the massive HP bloat for bosses. You can master the fights but they become too long. With less health they would be as punishing and less annoying

- Nice sprites and good soundtrack. Interesting Glyph mechanic, invoking the enemies weapons to use them. Although this great mechanic was introduced in Aria of sorrow.

- As bad aspects, there is level design rehashing and repetition, reusing previous areas with different colours. They should have eliminated this. It's lame and tarnish an otherwise Great game.

2. Aria of Sorrow.

I was very close to vote Symphony of the night, but overall I enjoy more this game.

- The best aspect is the ability to get the enemies abilities dropped from time to time. It's huge because they are very varied and creative, so you can have an arsenal of different unique skills with synergies ,and strengths and weakness against different enemies. For me this is the game changer aspect to vote it over SOTN.

- Interesting castle, but a little inferior to SOTN one.

- As usual in post Rondo 2D Castlevanias too much sprite recycle, but that's not a huge problem.

3. Symphony of The night.

The first Metroidvania, with a lot of sprite recycling form Rondo. But it's a compelling game, and very polished package.

- Great Soundtrack. Beautiful areas and sprites.

- More boring weapons and abilities than in Aria of sorrow. But it's natural being the first game implementing this formula.

- Better level design than in Aria of sorrow with very interesting paths...Until you get the inverted castle which I think is retarded. For me the game ends at that point. Also some boring hallways.

- One aspect better done than in Aria of sorrow, and in almost 2D game ever releasd is the sense of discovery through the level design. The secrets and mysteries are more compelling than in all the other Castlevanias, and for me that's one the key of its appeal and cult status. You don't longer get this attention to detail, love and care for the player wonder in modern games spelling absolutely everything you have to do.

It's an special game, and desserved classic status.

4. Dawn of sorrow

Good game with worse artwork adn music than the previous games. It's a good entry executing the formula well by I assume an experienced team, but without character. SOTN, Aria and Order of Ecclesia have each one their key strength making them special(Sense of wonder, mechanics, challenge), but Dawn of Sorrow lacks this.

5. Circle of moon.

Haven't played a lot of it, but it seemed good, but inferior to the formers.

Haven't played Portrait of Ruin. I hope your comments.


3D Castlevanias:

I have only played Lords of Shadow 1 and 2.

LOS1 is better but with some huge problems in the combat system design. It controls well, but the retarded decision of not being able to interrupt almost any enemy attack makes it a frustrating experience from the Action perspective. It's responsive and with good animations, but the system design is very bad. A shame.

Has great atmosphere and art, some good levels, some good bosses, decent story, but fails terribly if you know the genre and love games like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry.

It's like al lthe team was very competent with the exception of the mechanics designers. Overall a good game, worth a try.

LOS2 is the opposite. The combat is better (not perfect) but everything else is half shit. They tried to make a 3D metroidvania instead of different levels and failed misserably. It had a troubled development with tensions and drama inside the team, and it shows:

- Some beautiful areas mixed with ugly unpolished ones.
- Some good story bits with a mayority of retarded dialogues and plot points.
- Good action mechanics with bad decisions like limiting your ability to vary the use of different weapons
- Good action sequences mixed with frustrating unorganic, lame and bad designed STEALTH segments.

Probably a lot of skillfull guys, and some retarded managers if you ask me.

Well that's it.

 

[Somberlain]

Not an attempt at an objective list, just based on what I'm most likely to pick when replaying the series. I'll probably post extended thoughts later

Classicvania:

1. Rondo of Blood
2. Castlevania 3
3. Castlevania 1
4. Castlevania Chronicles
5. Dracula X
6. Castlevania 2
7. Bloodlines
8. Super Castlevania 4


Igavania:

1. Order of Ecclesia
2. Symphony of the Night (with a difficulty mod)
3. Portrait of Ruin
4. Aria of Sorrow
5. Dawn of Sorrow
6. Harmony of Dissonance
7. Circle of Moon

 

[Hobo Elf]

Rondo is indeed the pinnacle of the classic formula. Bloodlines is a close second for me with ReBirth coming in 3rd. Super Castlevania doesn't really have much going on for it once you get rid of the nostalgia. Dracula X gets a bad rep for being a poor man's Bloodlines but that never made any sense to me. It's an entirely different game that just reused a lot of the Rondo assets. It's worth a play until you get to Dracula, during which you can safely turn the game off because that boss fight is such utter bullshit.

Unfortunately that's where my interest in the series ended. I was not amused by any of the Metroidvanias.

 

[Matador]

You should try Order of Ecclesia if you haven't Hobo Elf . You are gonna get the challenge lacking in other Igavanias with some more linear stages.

 

[RoSoDude]

I think Portrait of Ruin is the best of the Igavanias by a good margin. Ranking in reverse order with some discussion and justification (as a disclaimer, I haven't played the GBA games except for a good chunk of Circle of the Moon. I intend to get to these early next year):

4. Dawn of Sorrow. This is the first Castlevania I played, and while I think it was a great introduction to the series it had some major flaws that held it back. Greatest and most difficult to articulate of my criticisms is that the exploration in the castle can feel rather mundane. There are some good areas, but much of the castle fails to be memorable for me, for various reasons. The Demon Guest House takes up so much of the castle with repeated rooms, Garden of Madness lives up the its name with the amount of Une-clearing you'll be doing, and I can barely recall much of the lower castle (Subterranean Hell, Silenced Ruins, the lower part of The Dark Chapel). The upper castle is where it's at -- Cursed Clock Tower meets the series' standards of a challenging spike-infested gauntlet with Medusa Heads abound, the Pinnacle is a grand ascent to the throne room, and Condemned Tower is one of my favorite levels in any CV with tough enemies in a vertical environment, no save room until the top, and the epic Gergoth fight changing the level permanently, forcing you to go all the way back up to save. For what it's worth, the gameplay formula is still very solid, and I like the progression of abilities, the enemy and encounter designs, and most of the bosses are great, if marred by the awful touch-screen quick time event required to finish them. One thing it has over the rest of the series is that there's some actual commitment to a "build" in the form of the weapon enchantment system, which requires you to give up enemy souls to level up various weapons. But as great as this concept is, it also contributes to the terrible endgame. Three of the 9 weapon types have killer final upgrades (Claimh Solais, Death's Scythe, and Muramasa), while the others are weird sidegrades or screw you for choosing to invest in ultimately inferior weapon types -- Valmanway (SotN's Crissaegrim) is an insult to players who actually liked the short sword's moveset, the whip sword Nebula suffers from low damage so as to make rapier investment pointless, Mjollnjr and Gugner do specialized lightning damage and require the player to confirm multiple ticks of damage per hit to surpass their preceding upgrades, and Cinquedia does too low damage to justify its short range (EDIT: and I forgot about fists. I always forget about fists). Add on the fact that Mine of Judgment and The Abyss are boring, uninspired levels and the final boss is garbage and the game leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth on replay. One final criticism is that the game doesn't feature a real Hard Mode to alleviate the game's low difficulty. In my mind, there are two proper designs for Hard Mode in CV: either NG+ and Max Level 1 so you have to optimize your setup, or uncapped Hard Mode with no item transfer. Dawn of Sorrow features neither, with an uncapped Hard Mode only accessible from the NG+ Clear menu. My recommendation is to throw away all of your souls, weapons, and gold and then start Hard Mode for a proper challenging experience -- I just did this last month and the overall design and difficulty curve is fantastic, despite my preceding gripes. I was actually experimenting with a variety of soul and weapon combos and perfecting animation cancels to survive. Also nice is the Julius Mode, which offers some additional Classicvania-style replayability in a more condensed, challenging experience.

3. Symphony of the Night. This will sound blasphemous, but I don't think this is the best of Igarashi's work. The game is definitely impressive, and deserving of being enshrined in history as foundational to a genre, but boy is it far from perfect. While the level design is mostly fantastic (I think the Inverted Castle holds up too), enemies are well designed, the ability progression is legendary, and the game is chock full of interesting systems and hidden secrets, its kitchen sink design ends up springing a few leaks. While I applaud that there are six different methods of attack (weapon, subweapon, one-time use equippables, spells, familiars, and transformations), none of them are fleshed out as they could have been, and were in subsequent entries. Most of the weapons use the same movesets with clearly superior choices, often making the items found in exploration disappointing. Konami was right to change the subweapon system in later entries IMO, because accidentally dropping that timestop or holy water for a ricochet rock is endlessly frustrating, and experimentation often feels discouraged. I like the spells, but find the fighting-game combos a bit obtuse. The equippable attacks are mostly shit except for the pentagram, which still can't escape feeling like a waste whenever it's used. Familiars are interesting, but it's a bit hard to know which one to invest in because they do almost nothing without a few level ups. The transformations are a ton of fun to use, but also led to me wolf sprinting, bat flying, and mist floating past most enemies when I was trying to fill out the Inverted Castle. There are some mechanics that I miss in the newer games, like how healing items have to be used in real game time rather than from the pause menu, but overall I think the series has improved mechanically since. However, if I were to criticize anything in the game, it's the boss design. I'm sorry, but the majority of bosses in this game are terrible. Slogra and Gaibon are a good introduction, but it's mostly downhill from there. Most bosses can be totally cheesed, to the point that I never once saw Malphas' moveset -- the instant I walked into the room, I stunlocked him into the upper left hand corner with my sword. I threw 100 knives at Scylla for a 20 second kill. Galamoth virtually requires you to find the ring that heals you from lightning. I don't even remember fighting Death, Medusa, Succubus, the Hippogryph, The Creature, Olrox, Mummy, Cerberus, or the Lesser Demon. The best bosses are Legion, Richter, Beelzebub, Doppelganger, and Fake Trevor/Grant/Sypha, but even these don't measure up to the bosses of later games. Most of the rest are just a DPS race that rarely offers any real challenge and can be over in seconds. Despite all of this, SotN still comes out as much greater than the sum of its parts. It's a joy to sit back with some smooth jazz and explore the castle, fight enemies, explore weapon and equipment combos, get a New York style pizza from a frog, and conquer your daddy issues in this glorious gothic retelling of Oedipus through stat-driven combat and platforming. Definitely a classic.

2. Order of Ecclesia. This game may be the most of a mixed bag of any Castlevania I've played, but its challenge really holds it up. Enemies kick your ass, healing items are rare, and the bosses are the best CV bosses by a mile. Nothing matches the satisfaction of learning and moving in tune with a boss' attack patterns to fell the giant beast. Anyone who has played this game will likely have extremely fond memories of finally crushing that goddamn crab boss with a freaking elevator. Nearly every boss matches this high standard of tense challenge without ever veering into a DPS race with undodgeable attacks, and the result is always rewarding. Over several playthroughs I've managed to attain the boss medal for most bosses (requires taking no damage), which is not a consequence of any sort of achievement-whoring tendency I don't have, but rather a testament to the boss design and how it encourages you to step up your game or be brushed aside. The game still has its fair share of problems, though. The level design before the reveal of Dracula's Castle is mostly trash, with repetitive linear levels that seem to be attempting to ape Classicvanias but to rather banal effect. The opening bits of the Castle are a welcome change in pace, with some really wacky and tough intro areas that earlier games could never pull off due to the requirement that the Castle entrance serve as a tutorial, but this inspired design starts to wane and many of the final areas of the castle are totally forgettable, with little of the ability-based progression that helps make the genre so compelling. The combat system is also much shallower than previous entries, despite what it may seem. There's rarely a good reason to equip a different glyph in each hand, and there are a few obvious best choices with only minor differences in attack animations. While the swift attacks and stamina system make OoE a very competent action game, its RPG side takes a big hit. Spells disappear in midair when you switch loadouts, so you can't easily chain them with melee attacks, and the spells themselves are slow and inconsistent with long post-cast internal cooldowns. The glyph union system sounds cool at first, but since save rooms do not replenish hearts as they did mana in other games, they're always best saved for spamming the boss. Another annoyance is the tedious villager quests, which require you to do kill X monsters or find some random ingredient so you can finally buy potions. The game's bonus content is also mediocre, with a decent platforming gauntlet in the form of Training Hall, a slapped together Classicvania-styled Albus mode (featuring machine gun pistoling and weird hitboxes), and a truly awful combat-oriented bonus level, Large Cavern, which exists only to see how long you're willing to wait for Refectio to slowly heal you between bullshit rooms that make up what I guess is the CV equivalent to bullet hell. I can certainly see why OoE is the favorite of many -- it has the most hardcore challenge, excellent platforming and action mechanics, and a fresh art style to offset the anime look of the prior DS titles. The Hard Mode steps it up yet another notch. But to me, too much was sliced away to create what is admittedly a tighter game.

1. Portrait of Ruin. This, to me, is the peak Castlevania experience. Exploration in a sprawling castle gated through player abilities, challenging and varied enemy and boss encounters, kitchen sink approach to combat design, and an upbeat gothic style. Here it's just refined to a gold standard. Swapping between the two characters gives you totally different flavors of combat, allowing you to play as the swiss army knife of vampire hunters in Jonathan or as a fully realized spellcaster, a wellspring of untapped potential since Dracula's Curse, in Charlotte. Jonathan's moveset is the most expansive of any Castlevania, with whips, knives, short swords, great swords, axes, spears, and fists competently represented alongside the full set of (finally) equippable subweapons. Though it involves a good bit of spell swapping in the pause menu, spellcasting is a very fun way to engage enemies, requiring you to stand uninterrupted in place long enough to deliver a specialized type of damage in a unique package, whether it be a quick burst of fire, cutting winds with a slightly homing arc, a beam of light, shards of ice, chain lightning, a burst of poison bubbles, and many others. You're also encouraged to use both characters together, supplementing your current avatar's moveset with the other's spells or subweapons, or employ a combined Dual Crush attack (more on that later). Exploration in the castle is supplemented with cursed paintings, which are huge levels in and of themselves and allow the game to explore unique locales with appropriately chosen monsters to fill out a fever dream of a Victorian city, a buried Egyptian pyramid, an academy for witchcraft, and a gravity-defying madhouse warped over on itself. Remixed version of these levels serve as this game's "Inverted Castle", which keeps the main Castle elegant and precise. After the first few areas, the Castle opens up to nonlinear progression in the sprawling Great Stairway level reminiscent of SotN's Marble Gallery, with a great sense of freedom and discovery as you find items and abilities needed to make your way further up the castle into perhaps the most challenging iteration of a Clock Tower yet. This leads us to the bosses, since PoR features my favorite Death fight in any CV game. Many bosses encourage experimentation with the two-character system without feeling contrived. They're open to a wide variety of approaches without being exploitable like SotN's, and they're challenging without requiring OoE's almost rhythm game-like precision. While not every boss is as memorable as some in the series' past, there are some excellent fights here, especially against classic horror staples (The Werewolf, The Mummy, the Creature of Frankensteinian origins, and Medusa) and against the game's main villains - Death, the vampire painter Brauner, and tag team battles against Stella + Loretta and Dracula + Death make for very satisfying fights. Completing various quests through exploration will net you new weapons and abilities, and unlock the fantastic bonus area, Nest of Evil. While it's the same fundamental idea as OoE's dreadful Large Cavern, here it's actually a ton of fun, with tough yet fair sequences of enemy encounters culminating in some fun reprisals of bosses from prior games (five Dawn of Sorrow bosses, Doppelganger, and Fake Trevor/Grant/Sypha all make a return here), all with reasonable checkpoints. The rest of the game's bonus content is great too, with the ability to replay the game as Stella + Loretta, Richter + Maria, or even an Old Axe Armor for some reason. The Hard Mode is also expertly designed here, requiring mastery of the mechanics and their interactions, and since Dual Crush damage scales with level, that newb crutch is useless at Max Level 1. I honestly find it hard to come up with significant criticisms for this game -- there's plenty to nitpick about any game as complex as these, but I truly think Portrait of Ruin is the best CV package, with wonderful depth and almost no clutter. It's goddamn fantastic.

I just hope Bloodstained can measure up.

 

[Siveon]

I think Portrait of Ruin is the best of the Igavanias by a good margin. Ranking in reverse order with some discussion and justification (as a disclaimer, I haven't played the GBA games except for a good chunk of Circle of the Moon. I intend to get to these early next year):

Holy TL;DR Batman!

In all seriousness, weird that you started with the sequel to Aria rather than just Aria. I'm guessing it was just financial/"I just happened to have a non-GBA DS as well as this game"?

 

[RoSoDude]

Holy TL;DR Batman!

In all seriousness, weird that you started with the sequel to Aria rather than just Aria. I'm guessing it was just financial/"I just happened to have a non-GBA DS as well as this game"?

I don't know what to tell you, I have a lot to say about Castlevania (just replayed two of the games and am making my way through Dark Souls, as it happens), and this is my first real outlet for it. Sorry you all have to suffer my wall of text -- consider replaying Portrait of Ruin instead!

And eh, I was young and didn't know much about the series. Was purely coincidental -- I did have both a GBA and a DS and I also bought a few GBA games after its lifecycle, but I never got around to Aria for whatever reason. Definitely on my list.

EDIT: as a consolation prize for making it this far down the thread, here's my favorite Castlevania track ever.

 

[spekkio]

No love for Circle Of The Moon? Bunch of casuals ITT...



Cuntpasted from "wasted" thread". Chronomagical order, cuz' rankings suxx:

Order of Ecclesia
Portrait Of Ruin
Dawn of Sorrow
Aria of Sorrow
Harmony of Dissonance :shit:
Circle of the Moon
Symphony of the Night :meh:
Rondo of Blood
SC IV :itwas5yearsago:

Tried Bloodlines as well, but it's not my cup of tea ("scrolling" platformer, where you race against time). Gameplay is solid, though

 

[Ash]

Symphony of the Night

Order of Ecclesia

Portrait Of Ruin
Circle of the Moon
Dawn of Sorrow
Aria of Sorrow
Super castlevania IV
Rondo of Blood

 

[Machocruz]

Yeah, Portrait was my favorite of the DS crop. Just lively and fun. I thought the layout and flow of the game was very good. Keeps getting better and better as it progresses, as a game should do. Egypt is memorable to me. Plus whips. And the Dracula + Death battle was just, as the kids say, epic from a conceptual standpoint. And the portrait hopping and range of environs made it feel like quite the adventure.

In retrospect, I'd have to put Circle of the Moon up there among the best of the Metroidvanias. This game is specifically for those who dreamt of classic vania challenge merged with SotNesque level design. Low on frills, but the very definition of solid. I remember the castle feeling huge on this, but I don't know if it was bigger than Symphony or, later, Aria. Several musical callbacks to Bloodlines, which had a majestic OST.

I mean all the DS games were fucking great. I'm already a Castlevania mark and that may have something to do with it, but this was the last time that video games were just sublime fun for me. Masterful game design imo. Anything else I've played since that has been as satisfying are mostly rogueliikes, Mount and Blade WB, and Terraria. And old classics like JA2, but that goes without saying.

 

[Great Deceiver]

NES CV 3 is probably my favourite classic Vania. It's also one of the hardest, but it was so ahead of it's time in everything - the soundtrack (especially the JP version) is amazing and there are a ton of levels. Don't see it mentioned enough. Rondo is amazing of course and it's amusing because it went for a lighter atmosphere/OST compared to the contemporary super CV4, which was more grimdark in all respects. Gameplay wise, I think CV4 is one of the weakest in the series.

I'm personally not a fan of the metroid style the series adopted later, though I like Symphony of the Night a lot. OoE is the best of these modern games.

 

[Jason Liang]

I finished three of the Metroidvania's years ago (iirc Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow and Harmony of Dissonance), but none of them were especially memorable for me. I just remember a lot of backtracking, etc... and one of them had horrible controls (this should be Harmony of Dissonance). The best of the three was the inverted castle (Symphony of the Night I guess) and the one where you collect enemy attacks (Aria of Sorrow?) was a bit of a chore.

Of the classic Castlevanias, I think it's hard to judge both Castlevania 1 and 2. Cv1 is incredibly well designed, arguably one of the best designed 2D platform games ever. Even if it doesn't have Cv3's bells and whistles, comparing the two Cv3 feels bloated, with some cool bosses and levels but also some lame bosses and levels. Cv2 seems terrible now, but when it was released it was brutal and had this incredible atmosphere and mystique. That Day/ Night mechanic, where enemies suddenly became nightmarish when night fell, was well done and I'm surprised Konami never used it again, and the idea that Simon was cursed and doomed also added a lot to the original experience of the game.

1. Castlevania
2. Castlevania 3
3. Castlevania: Bloodlines
4. Castlevania 2
5. Super Castlevania

Now I'm sad that I've never had a chance to play Rondo of Blood.

 

[Tehdagah]

Classic:

1. Super Castlevania IV
2. Castlevania Bloodlines
3. Castlevania Dracula X
4. Castlevania Chronicles
5. Castlevania Rondo of Blood
6. Castlevania III
7. Castlevania
8. Castlevania Legends
9. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
10. Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge (gameboy)
11. Castlevania Adventure

Metroidvania:

1. Aria of Sorrow
2. Circles of the Moon
3. Mirror of Fate
4. Dawn of Sorrow
5. Symphony of the Night
6. Harmony of Despair

3D:

1. Castlevania Legacy of Darkness
2. Castlevania 64
3. Castlevania Lords of Shadow
4. Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2
5. Castlevania Curse of Darkness
6. Castlevania Lamment of Innocence

Never played Order of Ecclesia. I played but still have to finish the others (including Vampire Killer and Haunted Castle)

 

[LeStryfe79]

These are the Castlevanias I played til the end.

Castlevania
Castlevania 2
Super Castlevania 4
SotN
Circle of the Moon
Aria of Sorrow
Curse of Darkness
Lords of Shadow

The only two I remember actively disliking are Harmony of Dissonance and Lament of Innocence. I never tried the N64 games.

 

[Matador]

RoSoDude thanks for your extended post. You got me hyped for portrait of ruin.

 

[Matador]

Now I'm sad that I've never had a chance to play Rondo of Blood.

Ootake emulator.

 

[DragoFireheart]

All I know is that the 3D Castlevanias are pure shit.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Great Deceiver]

The most Castlevania of 3D Vanias is, surprisingly, the N64 one - it's not a great game, but at least it has many elements in common with the older games. If you play it, play the Legacy of Darkness re-release and not the original Castlevania 64.

The PS2 Lament of Innocence is really bland, has a lot of samey corridors and the combat system is like a poor man's Devil May Cry. Forgettable in every respect. Lords of Shadow is a God of War clone with some hammed in Castlevania trappings, but it's not a CV game by a long shot. Haven't played the 2nd one but I suspect it's much the same thing.

 

[Somberlain]

Poor man's DMC is a good way to describe Lament of Innocence. Curse of Darkness is better and it clearly tries to be like a 3D version of the 2D Igavanias but it falls a little flat. All the mechanics are perfectly fine for metroidvania (not great but totally serviceable) but the game unfortunately has very bland level design compared to the 2D games. Iga said in a 2008 OoE related interview that they didn't have enough time and budget when making Curse of Darkness, so they haven't yet been able to make a proper 3D Castlevania.

CoD was a step in the right direction after LoI but it was not enough, so it's a shame we never got a third one. I always imagined it would have been like Dark Souls 1 as far as the level design goes.


And of course, Curse of Darkness soundtrack is pure Michiru Yamane greatness, as you might expect.

 

[SCO]

Order of Ecclesia might be challenging if you want to be challenged, but they really should have had set a saner upper limit to the effect of training weapon affinities. I'm not even complaining much about how the green beam attack pulverizes everything ahead of you (it's late-ish game) but making it so that it's *expected* to get one hit kills with a series of weapons classes will just make you find the one you like and progress fast to that one hit kill. I dunno, it's not like the game doesn't have sadistic bosses latter (especially the secret area), but i find it slightly disappointing that changing weapons becomes less necessary, not more, as you go on.

Glyph Union also becomes slightly disappointing when you realize the combinations are fewer than possible (all of them are mediated by weapon affinity and there aren't unique ones iirc).

I also despise how the main character gets 'defrosted' into a emotional maiden by the story as per japanese convention of ridiculously weak females (even if she so happens to be a monster genocide machine). Japan has issues man, muh societal sexism.

 

[Tehdagah]

I also despise how the main character gets 'defrosted' into a emotional maiden by the story as per japanese convention of ridiculously weak females (even if she so happens to be a monster genocide machine). Japan has issues man, muh societal sexism.

 

[jungl]

3D ones weren't awful. castlevania n64 had that immersion running from the frankenstein monster in the garden maze and fun platforming. I felt Lament of Innocence had a better story then curse of darkness. Some of the handheld castlevanias are a waste of time where there story sucks and the gameplay too easy. Castlevania game need to be gamey enough where they not broken by rpg bullshit and have a decent story. I think it was either Order of Ecclessia or potrait of ruin you can kill dracula by openning the menu and spamming a spell 2-3 times.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Yo fuckin scumbags respect SCIV right now

My favourites are

Classic ones:

1- Super Castlevania IV
2- Castlevania: Rondo of blood
3- Castlevania

Metroidvanias:

- Symphony of the night
- Order of ecclesia

3D Castlevanias:

- Lords of shadow

LOS2 is the opposite. The combat is better (not perfect) but everything else is half shit. They tried to make a 3D metroidvania instead of different levels and failed misserably. It had a troubled development with tensions and drama inside the team, and it shows:

- Some beautiful areas mixed with ugly unpolished ones.
- Some good story bits with a mayority of retarded dialogues and plot points.
- Good action mechanics with bad decisions like limiting your ability to vary the use of different weapons
- Good action sequences mixed with frustrating unorganic, lame and bad designed STEALTH segments.

Probably a lot of skillfull guys, and some retarded managers if you ask me.

Those guys are the same who created Blade: The age of darkness/ Severance: Blade of Darkness. And yes, they are lead by a retarded person: Enric álvarez. As spaniard I can confirm. When LoS2 was released they were a lot of controversy because a lot of supposed development members of Mercury steam were registering in famous spanish videogames forums and talking shit about how the develpment of the game was a fucking nightmare and was fucked by Álvarez.

They did a great job with Metroid: Samus returns. And guess what? It wasn't directed by Eric.

 

[sullynathan]

Lords of The Shadows is such a mediocre game that somehow has great voice acting, good art style/direction and very good graphics.

When I played it, I played a lot of God of War clones back to back and none of them have particularly great and none of them play as well as god of war did. sigh

 

[Deflowerer]

God of War never played well either.