Symphony of The Night is Castlevania's "Lightning in the Bottle", you can play it countless times and find something new or even play it in a new way and it has considerably aged very well. But, aside from the PSP remake, How could This gem be remastered when it's very good to begin with?
Good thing is, when searching for ways to improve personal projects, I cam across a few amazing things that could ultimately benefit a possible SOTN remaster.
16:9 Resolution, it's rather simple, just draw more on the screen and force center some of the smaller rooms, you could even go as far as utilizing more vertical space as scaling 2D elements aren't as restricting as they were in the past.
https://youtu.be/8-XrMA1ayf4Dynamic Lighting, with techniques as lightmapping, it can be utilized greatly with giving candles light sources, and other sources of dynamic light. The end result would leave a more stunning approach as background elements pop more giving the illusion of depth a greater effect.
Cleaning up that inventory, and Keybindings.
The Saturn SotN gave us one great thing, a devoted button just for usable items. With this you get a more flowing game in which you pop a potion whilst Shield dashing without the annoying menu transitions.
Speaking of those menus, the biggest thing SoTN has is it's massive inventory, Let's clean this up a bit and make things nicer to find, the Organize function is great, but you'll find yourself still going to the bottom because you switched equipment to use a potion.
3-frame input window and more simplified Spells.
How many times have you Dark Metamorphisis'd when trying to soul steal? How many times did you just not do the spell because you have to do inputs questionably as complex as a KOF MAX DM? That can be cleared up with simple solutions by tuning some inputs and making it slightly more lenient to perform.
Retuned Difficulty, This is a must because it addresses the major flaw in SoTN and all IGAvanias; The Difficulty Curve.
The game may start off rather difficult, then it feels "just right" but half way through the inverted castle nothing in the game could pose any sort of threat to you.
Why not just have enemies progress with the player; Let's say Skeleton is weak, but after hitting a certain level, Skeleton would now be at level 2, now being just as challenging as he was in the begging and maybe packing a few new tricks up his sleeves to keep the player surprised.
OPTIONAL; 32:32 tiles
a 2x redraw of the Entirety of SotN would be stunning, but It will be a great deal of work.
OPTIONAL; Foreground play
A great way to give depth in a 2D game is to use foreground textures occasionally, it would give the player a better sense of the scale of that room or hallway.
What do you guys think?