Topic: Do the Metroidvania's Get Any Better?

[Raxivace]

Hi I'm new to the forum. I started playing this series about a year ago, and have been enjoying the Classicvania's immensely. Then I played Symphony of the Night. Honestly, I don't get it. I don't understand why people love this game, or love this exploration playstyle. I beat the game, and I just don't see it. The music was nice, the voice acting was epically cheesy, but the gameplay just didn't do anything for me at all.

I thouht the story did some interesting things in the first half, with Richter apparently snapping and wanting to revive Dracula, and I thought this was an interesting spin on the story seen in Simon's Quest. But then there was Shaft coming back (Again. Honestly what's keeping this guy's ghost coming from back a third time?) and yeah...can't say I cared for that twist in the plot. Or the entire Inverted Castle segment really.

I've tried Circle of the Moon a little bit too, and I like how it's a little harder than SotN at least, but I'm still not enjoying all this exploring. I find myself just wishing this was a Classicvania insead. Thankfully I'm also playing through Castlevania Chronices right now, and am really, REALLY liking that.

Anyways I know this isn't exactly a franchise known for it's plot, but do the Metroidvania's get any better? Or rather, do you think they have decent enough stories to interest someone who doesn't really care for the strong exploration aspect?

[TheouAegis]

Well not a Metroidvania per se, but Order Of Ecclesia gives a little variety and you don't have to go from level A through level B just to get to level C and then back through level B to get to level A (yes, there is some backtracking, but only as side quests). That and you get to fight The Undertaker.

That said, all metroidvanias do is advance the overall storyline (even to the point where Dracula no longer exists). They introduce a couple new gameplay mechanics from installment to installment, but really they don't feel like Castlevanias anymore. Hell, no one even fights with whips anymore. There's nothing special about the Vampire Killer in the Metroidvanias, since just about any type of weapon can kill Dracula and his demon horde now. But that's just geek QQ-ing.

[Raxivace]

...Really? They do away with whips? That's like, one of the ICONIC things about Castlevania.

I guess I'll give Order of Ecclesia a chance though.

[Arma]

I'm not a big fan of Metroidvanias either, the exploration part is 0k but I don’t like how some of the classic elements of the series are progressively put aside in favor of more standard RPG gameplay. I don't care about having an arsenal of weapons because usually on RPGs by the time you get stronger equipment they're not really that useful anymore upgrading your stats in no more than 1 o 2 points making the progress barely noticeable and the really strong weapons you can buy are too expensive.
The same happens in Sotn plus with Alucard's leveling up after a while the game is no longer challenging at all and you don't need good skills to defeat a boss, only to have the right weapon and you can beat them quite easily. Like it happens with Death for example, he can be pretty hard but if you use the Holy Sword -I think it was it's name- you can beat the crap out of him.

I like it simpler like having one or two weapons that can be upgraded and don't lose usefulness throughout the game, rather you need to use them for specific actions and to defeat certain enemies the other is weak against and to defeat the bosses is necessary a certain action or tactic rather than just certain item.

Too bad the series seemed to take a different path after Sotn, it would've been cool if they used and improved Super Castlevania's IV gameplay as well.

In answer to your question, I say no, they don't.

[Sumac]

No.

Though OOE made few steps into right direction. Sadly it was too late.
The best "metroidvanias" are:
SOTN - for the overall quality, not actual gameplay (that becomes VERY boring in the second castle - thanks to major disbalance) and story;
Circle of the Moon - combining elements of the SOTN with old school difficulty. And also this is probably the only "metroidvania" in which you MUST LEVEL UP, to complete the game and that's the only "metroidvania" where subsystem was very useful, save AOS;
Aria of Sorrow - much better practically in everything than SOTN, aside from being only on the GBA. Though story as is non-Castlevaniash as possible.
OOE - very good atmospere, finally decent soundtrack in the DS'vanias. Presence of difficulty and interesting quests.

[crisis]

There's nothing special about the Vampire Killer in the Metroidvanias,

In the Classicvanias, the whip had no background whatsoever, it didn't even have an official name. It was just a "mystic whip" and you didn't even know why they used it.

Portrait of Ruin is heavy on the "whip mythos," Juste can use no other weapon BUT the whip in Harmony, Hugh's jealousy of Nathan being the whip's successor is what caused his downfall, and Julius goes as far as to seal it in the castle itself in 1999. Vampire Killer even has it's own data entry in the encyclopedia in a couple Metroidvanias. So..

The only Metroidvania that doesn't have a whip is Ecclesia, and there's a reason for that.

[Ahasverus]

Sorry for being predictable but... try Lords of Shadow? It's a ClassicVania on steroids, it's got whips, levels, platfforming and it needs no backstory

[Puwexil]

It sounds like you don't particularly care for one of the central tenets of this style of Castlevania design, so that certainly limits the potential enjoyment. If you still feel like trudging onward, you could try the games with less wandering about a mazelike map. Such games with more compact layouts and direct pacing would be Aria of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia. Fortunately, they're among the best.

It feels like the games following in Symphony's footsteps have always suffered from a reactionary, damage control-esque design philosophy, which alleviated a problem or two but in the process introduced several new ones. It's kind of a monstrous cycle they can't break away from, and Symphony itself casts a long shadow. To illustrate (imminent facetiousness):

• Praise is cast upon nearly every facet in Symphony of the Night. Low difficulty level is the only widely criticized aspect.
• Circle of the Moon attempts to fix Symphony's lack of challenge, but goes about it by mindlessly boosting enemy endurance and supplying awkward controls. The result is artificial anti-fun. Also the game is dark and you can't see a thing.
• Harmony of Dissonance backpedals on the difficulty and ends up as the most toothless Castlevania in existence. In addition, to counteract the original Game Boy Advance's non-lit screen, the game utilizes garish neon backdrops and outlines in order to be seen on the system's display. Hardly anyone likes the experimental, low sample quality soundtrack, allegedly the byproduct of having too little space left on the cartridge after placing emphasis on the lavish visuals.
• More than ever, Aria of Sorrow seems fixated on righting its predecessor's wrongs: the enemies are a threat again, especially the bosses, who actually do something now. The visuals utilize a lot of diluted pastel tones, resulting in something that can be clearly distinguished yet does not explode pupils. The music is more conventional in composition and instrumentation. The feeling of being constantly lost is reduced by design that is infinitely more direct in comparison to the previous efforts. And so it goes. Along with Symphony, this is the game you hear the least griping about.
• How to follow a game that nearly got it all? The saddeningly common answer: you do it again, only worse. That is at the heart of Dawn of Sorrow. The only uncontested improvement here are the boss battles, an area where its predecessor was not a particular slouch at to begin with. A very pointless endeavor, in the end, and also the point where the art asset recycling first took real hold as a fatal flaw in the series.
• Portrait of Ruin is Dawn of Sorrow, only it has more everything. More terrible level design, more copypasted layouts, the absolute zenith of recycled enemies, more crap to collect, more maps to fill, more quests to obsessively complete, more characters to play as, more bonus modes, more unlockables, more grinding for power-ups, more anime hijinxes, etc. The only thing it has less of is mandatory touch screen functions, which were apparently the chief offence to be found in Dawn. This is an incredibly sloppy, bloated mess of a game.
• Order of Ecclesia is the most restrained, tightly-focused game of its ilk. It does away with the fit-to-bursting inventory of pointless contraptions its predecessors so loved, and delivers a set of tools meant for surviving white-knuckle combat situations, not filling out lists of collectable trinkets for the sake of it. Action setpieces are the focus here, not exploration, which is embodied in the more thoughtful enemy placement and level layouts, as well as the largely linear structure of whisking the player from one obstacle course to the next. Recycling assets is still a factor (and thus, a problem), but it is much reduced from its embarrassing apex seen in Portrait of Ruin. The bargain bin anime character art of two games past is also replaced with something a touch more nuanced and, well, actually good.

Some of that is attempted impartialness on my part, some of it is not. It's just a quality of these games that strikes me as odd and frustrating to witness, since for all their existence they've treated Symphony with reverence, and because of that affection, are seemingly unable to break away from it, not to mention surpass it. Consideration is given to the minutiae instead of the overreaching design. In this sense, and to long-windedly circle back to the idea of this topic: yes, Symphony of the Night is pretty much as good as these games get.

[Successor The Cruel]

I personally think they get better in some ways. Though widely praised, Symphony of the Night is a game with many faults. This doesn't mean that I think it doesn't deserve the praise, but in the flood of accolades, people often skim over parts where I think it should be heavily criticized. The thing is, what Symphony does well, it does so well that it's easy to shrug off the bad points. At least it is for many people.

Lack of difficulty.
A story that doesn't make sense, or at least leaves way too many crucial things unexplained.
A tacked on, directionless, and in many ways uninspired second half of the game.
Recycled area themes galore.
I could really go on.

I would recommend giving Aria of Sorrow a try. Of the Metroidvania games, I think it's the most... um, practical of the lot. The others aren't as easily appreciated based on practicality and basic standards, like cool bosses, approachable music, tight levels, cool stories, and all that. The actual really good ones appeal to me on a bit of a higher plane than that, mostly due to moods, feelings, and atmospheres that the game worlds emit, but I wouldn't expect everyone to appreciate something so vague, at least not in the same way I do.

[Opium]

If you don't enjoy exploring then I would give up on playing any more metroidvanias.  Sounds like you just prefer linear action.  I like both, thankfully.

[Charlotte-nyo:3]

The only MVs to compete with SotN on plot are AoS and OoE (if OoE can even be called a MV). OoE is closer to a classicvania in gameplay style than any of the others so you might as well try that one if anything.

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

The only MVs to compete with SotN on plot are AoS and OoE (if OoE can even be called a MV). OoE is closer to a classicvania in gameplay style than any of the others so you might as well try that one if anything.

Actually Order of Ecclessia's exploration is more akin to Simon's Quest during the beginning parts (before you get to the castle).

But once you get to the Castle its strictly Metroidvania all the way.

So in a way, its more of a combination of Simon's quest and the Metroidvania formula.

[Raxivace]

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

In the Classicvanias, the whip had no background whatsoever, it didn't even have an official name. It was just a "mystic whip" and you didn't even know why they used it.

Portrait of Ruin is heavy on the "whip mythos," Juste can use no other weapon BUT the whip in Harmony, Hugh's jealousy of Nathan being the whip's successor is what caused his downfall, and Julius goes as far as to seal it in the castle itself in 1999. Vampire Killer even has it's own data entry in the encyclopedia in a couple Metroidvanias. So..

The only Metroidvania that doesn't have a whip is Ecclesia, and there's a reason for that.

It was still a cool and unique weapon though. Even now it seems like you don't see whips too often in games.

Idk, it's just to me Castlevania without whips is sort of like Mario without jumping on enemies.

Sorry for being predictable but... try Lords of Shadow? It's a ClassicVania on steroids, it's got whips, levels, platfforming and it needs no backstory

I do plan on playing that, but it's the Metroidvania's in particular I've been unsure about. I keep hearing how SotN was the best one, and if that game didn't do much for me...then I gotta wonder if the rest of them is worth the time investment.

It sounds like you don't particularly care for one of the central tenets of this style of Castlevania design, so that certainly limits the potential enjoyment. If you still feel like trudging onward, you could try the games with less wandering about a mazelike map. Such games with more compact layouts and direct pacing would be Aria of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia. Fortunately, they're among the best.

It feels like the games following in Symphony's footsteps have always suffered from a reactionary, damage control-esque design philosophy, which alleviated a problem or two but in the process introduced several new ones. It's kind of a monstrous cycle they can't break away from, and Symphony itself casts a long shadow. To illustrate (imminent facetiousness):

Sounds similar to the issue Square-Enix has had with FFXII and FFXIII. Trying to fix criticism from one game by taking it WAAAAAAY to the other end of the extreme, ending up with a game just as flawed (Maybe even more) than before.

I personally think they get better in some ways. Though widely praised, Symphony of the Night is a game with many faults. This doesn't mean that I think it doesn't deserve the praise, but in the flood of accolades, people often skim over parts where I think it should be heavily criticized. The thing is, what Symphony does well, it does so well that it's easy to shrug off the bad points. At least it is for many people.

Lack of difficulty.
A story that doesn't make sense, or at least leaves way too many crucial things unexplained.
A tacked on, directionless, and in many ways uninspired second half of the game.
Recycled area themes galore.
I could really go on.

I would recommend giving Aria of Sorrow a try. Of the Metroidvania games, I think it's the most... um, practical of the lot. The others aren't as easily appreciated based on practicality and basic standards, like cool bosses, approachable music, tight levels, cool stories, and all that. The actual really good ones appeal to me on a bit of a higher plane than that, mostly due to moods, feelings, and atmospheres that the game worlds emit, but I wouldn't expect everyone to appreciate something so vague, at least not in the same way I do.

What parts of SotN's plot did you think not make sense?

I gave my opinions of SotN's plot (As well as some other issues I had with it) in the first post, in case you didn't see.

Actually Order of Ecclessia's exploration is more akin to Simon's Quest during the beginning parts (before you get to the castle).

But once you get to the Castle its strictly Metroidvania all the way.

So in a way, its more of a combination of Simon's quest and the Metroidvania formula.

So pretty much I should expect a polished version of Simon's Quest for the first part of the game?

[Successor The Cruel]

What parts of SotN's plot did you think not made sense?

Off the top of my head, it doesn't explain where the Inverted Castle came from or why it came.

We can make assumptions, but it doesn't explain exactly why Alucard woke up from his slumber. I don't think there is any official media that states it is because a Belmont turned evil and became Lord of the Castle, though I could be wrong. In any case, that is never made clear in game if it is mentioned somewhere.

Why did Shaft come back? It's true he returned in Rondo of Blood as a ghost, but his ghost was vanquished. It just seems cheap to me that this guy can apparently return an indefinite amount of times. I suppose we can explain this away with some kind of black magic, but again, more assumptions on our part if we do.

The game doesn't explain why Dracula came back. We can assume it is because Alucard gathered his remains, but the game doesn't say anything about it. He's just there.

Why did the castle come back to begin with? It broke apart and dispersed when Richter destroyed Dracula. Does Richter Belmont have the power to raise Castlevania? We can make guesses I guess, but again, they'd just be guesses.

There's a lot of stuff, man.

[Raxivace]

Off the top of my head, it doesn't explain where the Inverted Castle came from or why it came.

I think they wanted the "The castle is a creature of chaos" line to be the answer to that. Though that only makes if the Inverted Castle is merely the top half and not a whole separate castle.

We can make assumptions, but it doesn't explain exactly why Alucard woke up from his slumber. I don't think there is any official media that states it is because a Belmont turned evil and became Lord of the Castle, though I could be wrong. In any case, that is never made clear in game if it is mentioned somewhere.

The manual just says that he's "now awake and aware of the evil once again at work in his homeland".

Why did Shaft come back? It's true he returned in Rondo of Blood as a ghost, but his ghost was vanquished. It just seems cheap to me that this guy can apparently return an indefinite amount of times. I suppose we can explain this away with some kind of black magic, but again, more assumptions on our part if we do.

This was a big issue for me to, ESPECIALLY because I thought what the game wanted you to think happened to Richter was infinitely more interesting before Shaft shafted his way back into the plot.

The game doesn't explain why Dracula came back. We can assume it is because Alucard gathered his remains, but the game doesn't say anything about it. He's just there.

Yeah, if this is the case...then why didn't Death just gather all the remains himself? He already had one of them even. Shaft!Richter could have done it too.

Why did the castle come back to begin with? It broke apart and dispersed when Richter destroyed Dracula. Does Richter Belmont have the power to raise Castlevania? We can make guesses I guess, but again, they'd just be guesses.

I'd like to think just gathering Drac's remains together would summon Castlevania, but you're right. That's a guess/theory.