Topic: Magic Systems

[Gimph]

There have been a lot of different systems for magic usage in Castlevania games, as well as sub weapons. What do you think about them?

I love Aria of Sorrow's soul system, and even though I didn't like Dawn of Sorrow, they did a good job with that too, with the addition of Yoko's weapon upgrades.

I thought Harmony of Dissonance's magic tomes was pretty good too, and I liked it a lot, especially considering, with all the different sub weapons, there were tons of different combinations. I liked Bolt and cross, ice and bible, cross and summoning, and dagger and summoning. I think Konami did a great job with that.

What I DIDN'T like was Circle of the Moon's DSS Card system. I think it got annoying collecting cards and switching combinations. Some of the spells were useless and they only really helped in magician mode, unless you, by some miracle, collected all of them.

[corneliab]

See, I actually loved CotM's magic system. The only thing that I disliked was how specific the card drops were.

Now let me think for a second....

The tomes were an interesting concept, though the system was a bit limited and it got kind of old quick.

Aria and Dawn's soul systems were cool, though farming isn't necessarily fun.

I actually really liked PoR's subweapon/magic system. Finding new ways to optimize Charlotte's spells in combination with Jonathan's attacks is always fun. It was also good to get away from souls as far as subweapons are concerned, and upgrading them was less tedious, due to the elimination of the luck factor.

Additionally, the subweapons, while harkening back to the classic titles somewhat, felt like what the expendable items in SotN should have been. They were pretty much useless prior to getting the Duplicator, and by then, they were but a novelty.

[Marty Belmont]

In Reply To #1

the spell fusion in HoD gave it sort of a "Super Ghouls and Ghosts" Feel while still managing to stray away from the campy fairy tale feel of said game, it was an interesting combo.

I think AoS in General had better souls to collect than DoS did.

the CotM DSS system is probably my least favorite, but as for the grind of collecting them, theif mode puts a stop to that.

PoR's Magic system was good as well, I recently did a playthrough of the game with Charlotte only, only using jonathon to level up the javalen, and it was fund experamenting with differant spells to see which was the most effective in certain areas.

[Gimph]

Thief mode? How many are there?! I'm still working on fighter mode!

Anyway, I actually really liked Portrait of Ruin's magic system with Charlotte was pretty good, though one of the few things I liked about that game. I can't wait to play Order of Ecclesia and use the glyph system. It looks promising.

[A n t r a x x]

All you need is Sypha, amirite?

[Gimph]

In Reply To #5

Amirit?

[corneliab]

In Reply To #5

I don't know, whenever I play Castlevania 3, the only character I ever want to play as is Trevor. Occasionally Alucard, to fly across some areas.

[A n t r a x x]

Carrie's homing spheres were pretty sweet too. Just not too useful if not powered up though.

[erimocard]

Soul system was the best. You could fight quickly and effectively by using R and up+attack (and Doppelg

[Gimph]

In Reply To #8

I agree, but even if they WERE fully charged up, they didn't do nearly as much damage as Cornell and Reinhart did.

[A n t r a x x]

In Reply To #8

I agree, but even if they WERE fully charged up, they didn't do nearly as much damage as Cornell and Reinhart did.

That's cuz of their homing abilities. You could just run by and kill things way outta radius of the other two characters. You could also time the release of the spheres to make a sort of combo as you closed in with her rings (and I usually did so by sliding first).

[Gimph]

Yeah, the homing ability was helpful, but in Legacy of Darkness, they limited it, so you had to have a target on your enemy to home in on it. It annoys me.

[A n t r a x x]

Yeah, the homing ability was helpful, but in Legacy of Darkness, they limited it, so you had to have a target on your enemy to home in on it. It annoys me.

One of the reasons I think CV64 plays better

[Kale]

In Reply To #4

There's Fighter, Magician, Thief and Luck iirc. (Luck and Thief might be the same one though)

I like them all, but I also didn't like parts of all of them.

Innocent Devil was a cool Idea, but those innocent devils could kill Isaac and the main char 20 times over take a piss and kill them 20 more times again. I mean, my ID could literally kill Dracula with a fart. Its cool taht its powerful but its just not right, and the Ai sucked.

Cards were cool, a pain in the butt to find though. Half of the spells were kind of useless too.

AoS, I liked but you're limited, and that kind of sucked, though you'd be overpowering if you could freely use all of them in quick order.

My favorite though, is SotN. You have all the spells, you just have to know how to do it. I use majority of the spells, however, the spells are rather .... pathetic with the exception of Soul Steal and Tetra Spirit.
It wouldve been nice if you could level up the spells, too.

[Gimph]

In Reply To #4
AoS, I liked but you're limited, and that kind of sucked, though you'd be overpowering if you could freely use all of them in quick order.

Though the game was generally pretty easy, so it's not like you needed spells to survive or anything. Although Balore was a pain...