Topic: New Collectionon: Castlevania Dominus Collection

[Eric Roman]

Haunted Castle Revisited is technically our newest CastleVania game. 

[PFG9000]

Another potential problem I see is that you can't adjust the speed of the pointer.  I'm afraid that during the boss seal events I won't be able to write the glyph fast enough in the heat of battle.  I haven't tried that, so maybe it's not an issue, but I might end up having to switch to my Switch screen when fighting bosses. 

I'm playing it on Switch.  You can adjust the pointer speed by clicking the right thumbstick.

[zangetsu468]

LRG Physical copies incoming

https://www.instagram.com/p/C_N1fT-Nmvl/?igsh=dDAxY3ZlbTF5d2Vn

[The Puritan]

HCR aside, what else do we have in the way of new never-seen-before content? I remember the Anniversary Collection had a lot of it (Peter Dante, Bolt Ericson and ninja Yoko, potential modern setting for SCIV, etc.)

[Reinhart77]

I'm playing it on Switch.  You can adjust the pointer speed by clicking the right thumbstick.

oh sweet thanks. also, watched a video that said they were changed to quick time events when you don't have the option to use a touch screen.  gonna try my first DS boss as soon as I'm done with dinner (i've been sampling all the games, haven't gotten very far into any of them).

[EstebanT]

I haven't seen anyone point this out. But I HATE the way projectiles work in Haunted Castle Revisited. Axe knights will throw axes at you and you can't destroy them. Same thing for the ladder snakes and harpies. I don't understand why they did that.

[Reinhart77]

Ugh that's too bad.  I found myself swinging at a lot of air when attacking evil tree branches and zombies before they were fully risen in the first stage - guess I have more things to not hit in later stages. 

As for the axe knights themselves, I guess they're just being true to the source material?  The axes were on chains I think that couldn't be knocked off back then.  But it must be frustrating.

which order are people tackling the DS games?  it seems as though the devs wanted us to play it in chronological order - though maybe they just put latest on top for some reason. i'm just playing a little bit of each at a time and then switching to the next one.  had to try to get all the controls synchronized as best i could so i didn't get them all mixed up in my head.

also, actually got to see what Hammer might look like in action in the credits.  too bad we still can't play as him. 

[EstebanT]

The trees have no hit box. Zombies have no hit box when they rise. Mermen have no hit box when they attack.

Axe knights throw indestructible axes like I already said. But at least you can duck to avoid the top axe. In practice you should be able to jump the bottom axe. But good luck doing that.

The ladder snakes shoot indestructible fireballs that track your position so they're even more annoying.

The bone snake boss and harpies are the worst at this. Because they shoot multiple projectiles in a cone shape and you have no choice but to take damage.

I understand they probably wanted to make the game a little more difficult but that's not the way to do it. I would gladly take back death pits and fixed jump arcs if they would fix the projectiles

[BLOOD MONKEY]

New haunted castle is a fun romp. feels good to play and retains more of its identity as haunted castle than i would've expected.
I've seen a good few fan projects from this forum that blow it out of the water.
I don't like being a hater but my standards for a 2d castlevania are a little higher than what this offered. it's been 15 years and we get a game that's essentially equal in quality to the adventure rebirth, which i already thought was a little subpar. a real noticeable lack of effort into the pixel art and animation shows, from the cutscenes and bosses down to the walk cycle of the main character. really wishing the music had stuck with the genesis inspired sound of rebirth, or at least something with some synths in it, sampled guitar and violin really isn't my favorite.
i hope this means that konami is actively allocating funds towards castlevania development again. despite what i have to say about it i'm still in disbelief that this is a new official castlevania.

[United_VirusX]

I'm excited to see if there's any unused content kind of like how Rebirth had unused music tracks and level layout in Haunted Castle Revisited, I've also been enjoying the DS games but I do hope they make it so you can full screen the main game but I doubt that will happen since it looks like they're doing exactly what capcom did for the Megaman ZX games in that zero collection that came out a few years back.

[LuxKiller65]

i hope this means that konami is actively allocating funds towards castlevania development again

hahaha hohohooo haahhahaa

[whipsmemory]

The trees have no hit box. Zombies have no hit box when they rise. Mermen have no hit box when they attack.

Axe knights throw indestructible axes like I already said. But at least you can duck to avoid the top axe. In practice you should be able to jump the bottom axe. But good luck doing that.

The ladder snakes shoot indestructible fireballs that track your position so they're even more annoying.

The bone snake boss and harpies are the worst at this. Because they shoot multiple projectiles in a cone shape and you have no choice but to take damage.

I understand they probably wanted to make the game a little more difficult but that's not the way to do it. I would gladly take back death pits and fixed jump arcs if they would fix the projectiles

Mermen can definitely be hit while they're shooting, i don't know how you assumed otherwise. As for the Snake Ladders fireball, it's not tracking, and the three way projectiles are as usual meant to be dodged from a distance, of course standing too close will result in a hit. About the lower axe, why you don't consider jumping an option or difficult to pull off? That's literally what you are meant to do and you can even change direction mid-air. I don't get your complains at all, you genuinely got me confused

[VladOfWallachia]

I don't get your complains at all, you genuinely got me confused

I think he definitely has a point in regard to the spawning monsters. I've seen several different people play this and the various enemies throughout the game with no-hit box startup/spawn animation slows the game down. I see players attacking the monster and hitting nothing constantly. You have to wait for them to finish that spawn animation before you can do anything, and the player is often already within range to attack when the spawn animations start. Just off the top of my head, the zombies, sand people, and mummies all do this. It would have been more effective if they introduce the monster with the startup animation, but then have the rest of that type of enemy fully spawned.

[knightmere]

HCR aside, what else do we have in the way of new never-seen-before content? I remember the Anniversary Collection had a lot of it (Peter Dante, Bolt Ericson and ninja Yoko, potential modern setting for SCIV, etc.)

There is a bunch of new concept art for all three games that I've neve seen before.

[whipsmemory]

I think he definitely has a point in regard to the spawning monsters. I've seen several different people play this and the various enemies throughout the game with no-hit box startup/spawn animation slows the game down. I see players attacking the monster and hitting nothing constantly. You have to wait for them to finish that spawn animation before you can do anything, and the player is often already within range to attack when the spawn animations start. Just off the top of my head, the zombies, sand people, and mummies all do this. It would have been more effective if they introduce the monster with the startup animation, but then have the rest of that type of enemy fully spawned.

I still don't agree, this is not about what people do, it's about what they should be doing instead. Take for example the Souls game which in my opinion have a very similar philosophy to older Castlevania games, it's all about timing your attack considering animation windup, distance, and so on. I could go play that and claim the hitboxes are broken (they are but for different reasons lol) because when fighting NPC summons for example i cant hit them during the summon animation, or during the healing one, or again when a grab animation is in the works on bosses, but that's not how its supposed to work. I don't want a game where i walk around and everything i touch explode the moment i touch it and i can just whip around like a madman. To go back to your examples specifically, the zombies start being hittable the moment they're halfway through the ground, to have them get the hit the moment their heads  stick out of the floor would effectively make them completely useless, what's the point of having an enemy around if it can't pose any sort of threat? in regards to the Sandmen, it's also very readable when is it that you can actually land an hit on them and it's specifically from the moment they become solid, you can see them gathering sand from the floor and having some transparency quality to them until they are fully made and start walking at you, again, it's about timing the attack at the right moment to avoid risk of being offguard and catching a hit, that's EXTREMELY important in a Classicvania game in my opinion. Same goes with the mummies, they aren't hitable until they are on the foreground, that can be read easily by their arms being fully pointed at you. I think people like who you watched play in the videos are not reading what's happening on screen and that's their fault, not the developers. Only thing i could agree with is the axe from Axearmors being indestructible, it made sense in the original as they were chained to the enemies and that would make you understand they would go back to them after being thrown, here's something is missing and they could have fixed it by sticking to that design idea.

On another note,another thing I noticed lacking after replaying the HCR again and again, does anyone else feel like a scoreboard is needed? I can't keep track of my scores and that's a huge missed opportuinity to even add an online leaderboard. Again, together with the full screen option for the DS titles, hope this gets patched in eventually