Topic: Castlevania at the close of The Nineties: a discussion on the N64 entries

[Lumi Kløvstad]

By which I mostly mean Legacy of Darkness, and all its many successes and failures. Castlevania 64 is, in my opinion, the same but with less... everything. Less triumphs, less failures, less... game in general.

even a unorthodox game like Legacy of Darkness completely surpasses IGAvanias in lots of revolutionary ways

I've had cause to think about this a lot lately, and this comment just solidified the need to write in-depth about it.

I don't think I'd use the word "lots", though. That's too generous to what is a definitely and unavoidably a deeply flawed experience. However, credit where credit is due and not enough is doled out: Legacy of Darkness does surpass the Igavanias (especially the 3D Igavanias) in the ONE way that's actually the most crucial way imaginable: it's basically the only game that successfully delivered the look and feel of a 2D Sidescrolling Classicvania in 3D form to any degree whatsoever.

A poor camera system and several infuriatingly badly executed puzzles aside, no 3D game in the franchise done by Iga or MercurySteam even approached something that nabbed that intangible and poorly-defined but always omnipresent "Classicvania Feel". Castlevania 64 was too rough around the edges, but got close, and the lessons learned from that made Legacy of Darkness far better equipped to succeed where Castlevania 64 flubbed right before the finish line. There's a perfect intersection of dark gothic horror imagery interspersed with enough Nineties camp to firmly avoid the dreaded "takes itself too seriously" label as Lords of Shadow did. Attacking and movement feels, for better or worse, almost exactly like it did in the NES games, just played out in a 3D environment. There's good and bad with that, of course, but if you're after something like the original Castlevania, just in 3D, there is no other offering in the series that nails that specific mode of gameplay better than Legacy of Darkness, and for that it has my eternal admiration and respect.

Unfortunately, Legacy of Darkness also serves as EXHIBIT FREAKING A of why pursuing the Classicvania feel probably shouldn't be sought after in the 3D space. Legacy's gameplay, retro-awesome though it can be, comes across (especially in 2018) as stilted and unfinished, like the developers couldn't figure out how to progress the animations past "workable alpha" phase and threw up their hands in resignation and just slapped their test animations on the final product. Much of this is due to the constraints that came with making a game on the N64 in the 90's -- even games that were considerably more cutting edge in that era have decidedly (and sadly) not aged well. But Legacy of Darkness is also far from cutting edge, even by the standards of its time: in its best technical moments, it settles for "slightly above average". The story falls prey to this as well: Cornell's tale could have been emotionally charged and one of the more gripping tales in the Castlevania overmythos, but likewise falls prey to The Nineties in which it was penned. What could have been a great story examining family bonds and how they influence our behavior, both good and bad, becomes an excuse plot to keep the player moving. Reinhardt's story did not improve much from the anemic showing we got in Castlevania 64. It's passable, if utterly unremarkable fare. Carrie's likewise underwhelmed, but in my opinion is, if read between the lines the game offers, probably the most interesting narrative it presents. Henry Oldrey's entire game mode would be a $2 DLC were it released today: a riff on some existing systems and enough excuse plot to keep you playing for 1-3 hours more. The game was simply made too early to have felt modern, and too early to give it mechanics that would weather the ravages of time and game critic retrospectives. It brings a tear to my eye, but that's just the way these things have landed.

I do think Legacy remains worth playing. I do still consider the game "required reading" for fans of the saga. The Nintendo 64 games include a number of elements that foreshadowed some of the things Iga would devote more time and effort to examining. The villain Actrise, for instance, in many ways feels like a prototype for several of Iga's antagonists. This game was also a relatively early example of including a number of playable characters to increase replay value, something Iga's games frequently dabbled in (though never to the extent that Legacy did). The day and night cycle, while at once a wholesale mechanical reference to Simon's Quest, also feels at times eerily prescient to the Dual Castles of Harmony of Dissonance in many of its effects. Reinhardt Schneider and Carrie Fernandez, as branching descendants of the Belmont and Belnades families respectively, seems to lightly foreshadow parts of the later gameplay dynamic of Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin, though Reinhardt and Carrie's stories are far less intertwined than the latter's.

Legacy's ultimate value, I think, is as a perfect snapshot of Castlevania with one foot still in the Classic Era but beginning to stride into what it would later become. Legacy represents a bridge between two great eras of Castlevania. It's not quite Classicvania (though it sure feels like one on a much grander scale), and not quite an Igavania, though some of Iga's favorite elements begin to take more shape here.

It's Castlevania at the precise moment it began to grow up and adapt for the New Millennium. Even though the plot is not part of the Official Timeline, the game itself remains an indelible part of the Castlevania Story, and one that no fan should skip over: they'd be missing something beautiful in the way that a half-finished and damaged renaissance sculpture is beautiful: it won't ever rise to its full potential, and what was completed is now diminished by time and the elements, but there's still something well worth taking the time and effort to appreciate.

[X]

It took me a long time to warm up to CV64/LoD as SotN was still the hot sauce of the day. But after multiple play-throughs I could and still can see the potential this game had to offer. One of the aspect of CV64/LoD that grabbed me was the music. It was like when I first discovered SCV4. Both have music that is more atmospheric then other titles; that lends itself to the environments which the stages of the game take place. And other segments of the music can be downright creepy with just the simplistic single instrumentation during the cut-scenes. It isn't any form of Jpop or Jrock but the musical score works with what the game represents itself to be. The graphics while very dated now still hold that unmistakable feeling of a classicvania which -again- the music compliments.

The camera is very clunky and almost impossible to control, and there are times where it will cost you your life in the most heinous of situations. However after multiple play-throughs one can learn to work around it. The grabbing and holding onto ledges is also a bit clunky. You're not sure when or where it's going to happen, but there are times when the character just seems to fall off unexpectedly, or that you quickly want to grab hold of a ledge from across a pit but fail to grab hold. There was also the inclusion of vampirism which added a whole other dimension to the game. If you were bitten you became a vampire and if you didn't heal up with a purity orb then you died. But not right away which was interesting as you could play through the game as a vampire for a time. But no one was ever sure as to how much time they had before they succumbed completely. The game is most definitely not without its flaws, but they can be worked around given enough time, practice, and patience. And a little help form your friendly neighbourhood gameshark if one feels so inclined

While some would say the story isn't all that dramatic I felt there were times when I teared up a bit. For instance in the ending cut-scene with Carry walking up to her stepmother's grave to honour her memory and love. Having read the backstory of Carry's youth and what had happened to her stepmother really added a whole lot of weight to the final scene. It was simplistic but it worked and worked well. Another segment was between Reinhardt and Rosa. When she sacrificed herself to prevent Death from killing Reinhardt. The scene in which she was honoured by Reinhardt before she vanished into the void was also very moving. And it only got more powerful when Reinhardt stood up and challenged Death right to his skull.

I did find however that one of the final segments of Charley Vincent was left incomplete. I never did get the bad ending of the game where you fight him. However in the good ending he simply exposes the child as being Dracula and you never see or hear from him again. So what happened to him? I'd like to know as he was hellbent on fighting Dracula despite being a non-Belmont and thus inadequate to actually kill the Vampire King. We just don't see the character at all after Dracula was defeated.

All in all, CV64/LoD isn't a bad game. It just has a lot of glaring flaws that, with a little more work, could have been ironed out. I personally would love to see a re-release of this title with a better engine and a far superior camera control system. The graphics could also be updated but preserve the look and feel that they were imparting to the player.

[Abnormal Freak]

I've always been bothered by some missing content in Legacy of Darkness that was in the original N64 game. Carrie and Reinhardt's story openings no longer contain voiceover narration. The original special costumes are gone (referencing Simon and Rondo Maria). Your first meeting with Dracula in Carrie/Reinhardt's quest doesn't have voicework anymore. I don't know if these were left out due to space limitations or simply neglect, but it's always bugged me.

There's also the original forest level, which in numerous ways I like the first game's layout more. It's too bad KCE Kobe didn't attempt to expand the layout rather than replace it, but maybe Legacy's forest design works better, I dunno, I just have nostalgia for the way it used to be.

Oh, and Carrie's pantsu are woefully absent.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Yeah, I think most of that was left out because N64 Cartridges didn't exactly have a bevy of space to work with, but that's just my theory.

I would still love a modern remake of the two halves, Castlevania 64 and Legacy of Darkness, that more fully and completely integrated the two and updated the camera, combat, and puzzles to modern standards. I think the games have enough good bone structure underneath in terms of level design (still the best of any 3D Castlevania, IMO), characters (if handled with love and skill) and thematic potential to make a great modern action platformer, particularly one which clearly takes a ton of inspiration to the stories that came before, but doesn't chain itself to them and leaves itself free to experiment and do its own thing.

AKA what Lords of Shadow promised us it would be and then gave up trying to be two thirds of the way into the first game.

In that respect, 64 and Legacy are kind of the "Greatest Hits" record of Castlevania up to the point of reinvention by Symphony, in a way. I'd love more games like that.

[Abnormal Freak]

It's something that'll never happen I'm sure, but Nightdive Studios did a great remaster of Forsaken which uses the original PC version as its base but also includes revamped versions of the N64 stages, marrying all content from the different versions into one definitive package with new/modern graphical effects. Something like that for the N64 Castlevanias is something I can only dream of, but it'd be really great to see.

Porting the game(s) to a different engine could allow for better camera control and game mechanics. The core design of the N64 games is sound, there just need to be tweaks or overhauls made to the framework. I always assumed Castlevania: Resurrection would have been the successor to Legacy of Darkness with properly realized controls, it's a shame we never got that.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Porting the game(s) to a different engine could allow for better camera control and game mechanics. The core design of the N64 games is sound, there just need to be tweaks or overhauls made to the framework. I always assumed Castlevania: Resurrection would have been the successor to Legacy of Darkness with properly realized controls, it's a shame we never got that.

Resurrection probably would not have been as good as we like to imagine it, but I'll always wish to high heaven that it had been released so we could have known for sure. And Castlevania is one of those pretty notable series where even the worst games in it are still enjoyable in a "bad movies and popcorn" kind of way. So I'd rather live in a world where Resurrection was released and bad than this one where it wasn't released at all.

Do we know of who was involved in Resurrection's development at all? I don't recall that KCEK was handling it. If they were, there definitely might have been some production staff overlap. I know they were definitely hoping to improve on Legacy's mechanics, hence the decision to go with the Dreamcast instead of doing a Take 3 on the N64. The Dreamcast just had the oomph they needed to make a more complex game. In any case, they couldn't have possibly decided to do something worse than what came before, and there was real potential there.

[BLOOD MONKEY]

they're not very good and Reinhardt is a pitiful excuse for the descendant of richter

[X]

Do we know of who was involved in Resurrection's development at all? I don't recall that KCEK was handling it.

I've read that it was being developed entirely at Konami of America.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

they're not very good and Reinhardt is a pitiful excuse for the descendant of richter

Oh hey look at me calculating bloodlines again.

If there's one thing we pretty much know for certain about Reinhardt's parentage, he's definitely not a descendant of Richter. His family name is Schneider ("Person Who Cuts", a colloquial for "Tailor", more on that later), which would suggest that whatever Belmont ancestry he has that enables him to use the whip, it's not direct line to the current head of the family, which in 1797 would have been Richter. While we don't know who WAS the head of the family in the 1800's, and specifically around Reinhardt's period of activity as a vampire hunter. In light of this, let's be cheeky and meta and call him Victor Belmont for the sake of argument.

Given that Reinhardt exists concurrently with this hypothetical Victor Belmont and doesn't share a surname, we can reasonably surmise that he's probably not a brother, cousin, or nephew to the current generation of Belmonts.  So whatever connection he has to the Belmonts had to have happened at least two generations prior. If he were a direct line descendant of Richter, or of our hypothetical Victor's father, he would have shared the Belmont surname. So, the earliest we could probably start digging around is Juste's time period (mid 18th century), and probably at some unnamed relative of Juste's; likely a sister or cousin who would have been married off without being able to bring their surname with them after marriage. If the Schneiders were indeed tailors as the name suggests, they must have been relatively well to do for tailors of the period (possible if they had a number of wealthy clients), or possibly maintained the Belmont family as clients (Juste's snappy dress sense, finally explained?) and thus would have been known to be reliable and trustworthy.

That would explain how Reinhardt is "Belmont enough" to use the whip, but like the Morris family, doesn't keep the Belmont name.

Thanks for the inspiration, Bloo.

I've read that it was being developed entirely at Konami of America.

That's interesting. I think the only project Castlevania related that they completed and brought to market was Order of Shadows. I don't wanna be a Johnny Raincloud, but it really sounds like Resurrection would have been a fresh take on terrible if quality can be inferred from that.

I still wish we could play it though.


Side note: the fact that Reinhardt is wielding the Vampire Killer whip in the 1800's indicates that whatever caused them to be unable to use the whip for nearly 200 years in the main timeline may well have happened in this one as well. From this, we can surmise that Richter and the events of Symphony of the Night is canon to the Legacy Timeline -- this means that most of the other "main Belmonts" --Trevor, Christopher, and Simon-- are likely canon as well to that history, in some form at least.

Other side note: his name during Castlevania 64's production was actually going to be Schneider Belmont, which could have pegged him as Richter's son or grandson (Richter being the first and so far only Belmont with a German given name) had that remained the case.

[Abnormal Freak]

Yo, Reinhardt Schneider is a cool name so that's all the reason I need to believe he's canonically part Belmont.

[BLOOD MONKEY]

he's definitely not a descendant of Richter.

okay good thank you

[GuyStarwind]

The 64 games had some cool ideas I wish would've came back. Lots of vampires and having them have the option to bite you and turn you into a vampire (aka game over). I feel they also were closer to old school CV games too. No level up, gear, or special abilities as you go. The 64 games felt pretty basic.

[AlexCalvo]

From this, we can surmise that Richter and the events of Symphony of the Night is canon to the Legacy Timeline

Nope, Dracula claims to have been dead for 100 years in 64, so in those games DX and SoTN never happened.  Jump to 9:37 in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwAdEvLAAjQ

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Nope, Dracula claims to have been dead for 100 years in 64, so in those games DX and SoTN never happened.  Jump to 9:37 in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwAdEvLAAjQ

I was actually discussing this very thing with someone else today.

You'll notice that 100 years before 1852 (CV64) is 1752. Meaning that the CLOSEST he could have been revived is in Harmony of Dissonance (1450). So, if he was revived only 100 years prior to 1852, then Rondo or SotN never happened, or at least Rondo DID happen, but not as we know it in that Richter actually averted completely the revival of Dracula, and thus he himself doesn't consider that a resurrection (because it truly did never happen).

It's also possible that the events of Rondo occurred as you described (with Richter arriving in time to stop the resurrection from being completed) and SOTN took place after, but it was the worst possible ending where Alucard doesn't discover the possession and is forced to kill Richter. The parts of Symphony that were involved in the whip becoming semi-useless still happen without Dracula needing to be revived, preserving the quote's accuracy. As an offshoot timeline, I find that a pretty plausible explanation.

For an offshoot timeline, I think it does work. But we have to assume that their Rondo is not "main-timeline" Rondo. If that's what we're talking about, it works since we can pretty much imagine whatever we want to have happened.
...
At any rate, dude... There is an actual battle from 100 years prior to CV64 that we do not know about And people tell me there is no room for more Castlevania, PAH!

Given that it clearly isn't the main timeline, I think we can allow for some discrepancies. Just like how Soma Cruz doesn't become the next Dracula in the main timeline, but there are at least two where he does that we've seen bits of in bad endings and such. It's not unfeasible to assume that versions of the main timeline's key events remain the same enough to be recognizable but different enough to significantly alter the flow of history, including their specific placement in history.

But you're also right: it doesn't HAVE to be Richter Belmont as-named.
It just was someone who was a Belmont and fell prey to the path of Darkness.

Or maybe there aren't any full-blooded Belmonts anymore (which I've suggested in prior threads is a distinct possibility for this timeline) and Reinhardt inherited it because there's no one else readily available to pick up the slack.

In the end, we can only speculate, really.

As the quote says: there is always room for more Castlevania (at least if you're willing to leave the Iga timeline behind -- that one's getting pretty cramped).

[Nagumo]

There's official material from around the time of CV64's release which lists Reinhardt's ancestors as Ralph, Simon, and Richter (not Christopher interestingly enough). So I think it's safe to say the events of the NES trilogy and Rondo happend in that particular timeline. However, as mentioned above, there's the discrepancy of Dracula having been revived after 100 years despite Rondo only taking place only about 60 years earlier. However, when you think about it, the only game that is causing that issue is SotN which marks the the first time explicit dates were assigned to each game. So if you ignore the events of SotN, everything works out. Of course, that would make the CV64 timeline less an offshoot timeline and more like a parallel universe with some overlapping games.