Topic: Castlevania The Adventure ReBirth discussion

[uzo]

A completely new Classic CV game, on an actual TV console no less. I never thought I'd see this day come.

Fantastic level design. This one aspect almost clears away all the game's flaws. Multiple routes and bosses makes the game even more appealing.

The game looks pretty good. Use of blending effects were well placed. The new backgrounds looked really nice most of the time. However, sprite reuse of GAMEBOY ADVANCE SPRITES. What? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? It's one thing to reuse sprites, but at least keep it in the same style and scale as the other ones. Even the new sprites had odd black borders and weird scales. I especially don't like bordered sprites in Castlevania, sans NES. They also reused Soma's bat transform and recolored it. There are some certain sprites you should and should not reuse for certain applications. I certainly would be just as irked if Alucard's bat form became an enemy graphic. While we're on this one, how about that BACKGROUND TILE REUSE. Again, sprites are one thing, but reusing whole location tile sets for another game just feels REALLY CHEAP. I know it's a budget title, but come on. They did some stages, why not all of them?

Good to see Devil's Requiem, and Load BGM make it in this sound track. Most tracks were well placed. The music would have benefited from a better sample set. SNES like samples would have been my choice. It would have allowed for a better diversity of sound rather than the 'banging on a metal drum' sound all Genesis music has.

Death was awesome. Felt classic with a nice spin on it. This lead me to have high hopes for Dracula, however Dracula was pretty lame and unexpectedly easy. Using Riddle for form 3 was also unfitting. I was disappointed with the last battle.

One tidbit I didn't realize at first was that each stage has a specific candle look for power-ups as opposed to just hearts and money. This made it easier to keep your weapon. This leads to something I did not like though. Rondo revolutionized the subweapon acquirement system, allowing you to swap back if you didn't like the new one you got. This is something they should have kept. As well as in classic mode, they should have based jumping off of rondo's to be a tad more flexible. I really did like normal mode with CV4's style though.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I beat normal mode, 1CC (lol but with 9 lives).
Guys, DO widen the screen in the screen options.  It totally makes the game look cooler (In my opinion).

"Aquarius" rocks!

[Gecko]

Does anyone know what's up with the weird glowing post things by the doors and such? What are they? What do they mean? Is there significance to glowing red as opposed to blue?

[UnManuel]

Does anyone know what's up with the weird glowing post things by the doors and such? What are they? What do they mean? Is there significance to glowing red as opposed to blue?

I wanna know this too! I'm now at Stage 5 AKA the weird Clock Tower. Those goddamned Medusa Heads..

[Gecko]

HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!

I made it to Dracula. On normal mode. I fought him God-only-knows how many times and came really close to beating him several times. I paused the game, and trying to unpause, accidentally hit the "return to menu" option.
 

Maybe tomorrow I'll give it another go, but for now... I'm just done.


ALSO: How is Dracula dissappointing?! He's tough as hell! I mean he may not be as tough as in 1 or 3. but COME ON!! He definitely proved to ME that he deserves to rule over the other bosses in the game. I just can't beat his third form because his second really weakens me, and I haven't had a chance to figure out form 3, mode 2 yet. I die too soon there.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I beat it with Classic Controls today on Normal (still with 9 lives though).

SAVE YOUR HEARTS!  You will need them and the Cross Boomerang for the third form.

First form for Frackula:
Step two to three tiles away from the teleport pillar, jump+whip, duck+whip (to hit the bottom fireball and have the other two sail over you).  As soon as they sail over you, jump & whip to get him a 2nd time (even though you're hitting the pillar of light, it still counts as a hit).
Repeat until Form 2.

Form 2 (I like to call this form "Phil"):
Phil has two attack,s a flamethrower that hits the area in front of him, and Dominus, the air/comets.
Step away four files away from his new form, when the flamethrower comes at you, jump over it, whip.

He will always do Dominus three times.  On the first two, you can stay away and wait 'em out (they comet in your general direction but never more than five tiles, and you 'could' stand between the green balls as they fall, most of the time).  On the third time you have to walk under him and stay under where the peak of his jump will be.  He will always jump over you on the third jump, and the Dominus will always fall to the sides of the apex of his jump, so that's a safe spot for you.  When he lands from Dominus Jump, you can whip him once (you can sneak in a 2nd whip if you jump again), but make sure you stay away so you can jump over his Flamethrower.

Form #3 (The MSX-like mask) is the hardest only 'cuz I haven't figured out all the patterns, but when it comes out, hit the jaw with whip+jumps.  If you see a row of orbs on top, there's only ONE you can stand under, that's the only safe spot.  The same if the orbs materialize on the floor (though I think those explode, so I play it safe and do a jump/whipjump anyway.

Hitting the eyes is the only way to cause this guy some damage.  Hitting him in a non-weak point, though, will raise his arms from the floor, which you can use as platforms.  Stand on the 2nd one and go wild with the CrossBoomerang to quickly take out most of MSXMask's HP.

Use Christophers Backwhip Ability (the ability to hit objects behind him by timing his whip to hit them right before they deal him damage from behind) to score the two necessary hits on the Lightning Orbs he shoots.  They are the most dangerous since they track you.  I don't worry too much about the rolling eyeballs, since they're somewhat predictable and you've been dealing with rolling eyeballs throughout the entire game until now.

The waterdrop tears can be taken care of, with backwhipping, and just concentrate on hitting those eyes of his.  You're going to take some hits, but it's not too tough.

I haven't tried these techniques in Hard Mode, but in Normal Mode and Normal+Classic mode, they still work.

Happy Vampire Hunting!

[uzo]

ALSO: How is Dracula dissappointing?! He's tough as hell!

While OoE advances and enhances Dracula's typical form 1, Rebirth retards it all the way back to a SINGLE attack. There's not even a pattern variation to it. I could win this fight in my sleep.

Form 2 is just as bad. Easy to dodge projectiles with a single predictable pattern. No variation what so ever.

Form 3 has some merit. It was pretty neat. The mask thing was kinda weird though. Not overly tough, as long as you brought a cross along with you.

Side Note: Death had A LOT of new and cool attacks and pattern variations. After that battle Dracula just seemed like a ball of stagnate disappointment.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I do agree that the Death battle was awesomesauce, probably more so than the Dracula one.  The Dracula one seems to be mostly a throwback to the classic games (with classic attacks), with the third form being the curveball thrown at the end.

Probably done for nostalgia.

[Gecko]

Well I'm still not disappointed with Dracula, but I do agree that Death was INSANELY awesome. Easy to figure out after a few fights, but the scraping scythe thing especially was amazing.

Well, time to give this another try.



Also, I think I figured out the light posts. Red means there is a doorway you can't enter, and blue means you can enter. Makes sense now.

[e105beta]

Then how do you get the red posts to become blue?

[Abnormal Freak]

You pee on them by pressing up, minus, A, 1, and 2 at the same time.

[Gecko]

Then how do you get the red posts to become blue?

You don't because if it's a red post, you either came from there, or could have come from there had you discovered the alternative route. Blue means you can enter that way. They don't change. Although one has apparently been smashed in the room before you fight Dracula. Drac probably was sick of that DAMN BLUE FLASHING LIGHT BY THE DOOR, and decided to smash it before it drove him insane.


So anyway, I FINALLY beat the game litterally by a hair. I killed Dracula, he said his thing(couldn't quite pay attention to it though), but an attack was still going on and it killed me. The game over screen came up, and RIGHT BEHIND IT was the "All Clear" sign.  I was pretty disgusted. But when I hit continue, it just let me see the ending and credits anyway, and the game over screen disappeared, so fortunately, the game is nicer than I thought it would be. I DID kill Dracula after all(finally). 

But yeah, this is a REALLY fun game, and it actually stands up extremely with the other classic-style titles in my opinion. I'll probably play it again later today.

[JR]

I had fun with this game. It was nice to play a linear Castlevania again, especially one with a little bit of challenge to it.

Dracula's third form threw me off, since his whole face flashes whenever you hit him, but he only takes damage when you hit his eyes. I fought him for about 30 minutes before I realized this.  So I switched to the axe, which meant that I could get a few hits on his eyes with each throw while I waited for his hands to come back up.

[uzo]

Dracula's third form threw me off, since his whole face flashes whenever you hit him, but he only takes damage when you hit his eyes.

Oh hell, I never noticed this. You mean he gets easier?

[Aridale]

anyone run this on dolphin? Ive got 4774 build and the emulation is perfect with ogl but it crashes as soon as I start the game for some reason (contra too) but it plays fine with dx9 but has all kinda graphic glitches