Topic: Castlevania Confessions

[Claimh Solais]

Lords of Shadow is the best game in the series. By far. Even better than Symphony of the Night.

I actually liked Takeshi Obata's character designs.

I personally think Judgment was a great 3D brawler.

I think the voice acting from the original Symphony of the Night is like dubstep. An ear-bleeding travesty.

I think the DXC redub is much better. Yuri Lowenthal is a MUCH better Alucard.

I hate Dawn of Sorrow's story. It was shit. Absolute shit. The game itself, however, was very fun.

I have never completed Simon's Quest. Or any of Christopher's games.

I want MercurySteam to continue Castlevania.

[Zetheraxza]

Wow... I don't even know where to begin in this, to be honest...

Castlevania Symphony of the Night is overrated and every time it gets brought up, I sigh away... Sure AT THE TIME, when there was this radical change with Non-Linear gameplay, New art-style, New sound-direction, RPG and multiple endings. That was probably so amazing at the time, but that's about it. The game has BEEN SURPASSED, and many times too. SotN only stands for being the pioneer of the new gameplay and it still has the best graphics out of all metroidvanias, but AoS MASTERED the whole metroidvania in most aspects asides graphics and sound (They were still good) and thus was a better game than SotN in my opinion. The warp zone was better since in SotN, CotM and HoD only had press up 'til you warp to the preferred destination, but in AoS, you could just select where you wanted to travel and there were many other minor fixes that perfected the Metroidvania genre than it's predecessors. That annoying thing with your morphs as Wolf or Bat when in the air and then you turn back as Alucard and then you have no Air Control until you land back down and is very annoying especially in the huge pit in Underground Catacombs. I never enjoyed the "down, up, jump" for Gravity Jumps, "Up, L" in the later handheld games were ALOT better and if you were on the ground, "Up, L" THERE, alot better. I'll admit, I am bad at fighting games, so I hate button combinations. And in terms of Gameplay for SotN, it was a fun, good game with alot of content but I didn't enjoy backtracking in the game. I hated the Marble Gallery and you kind of have to go there 2-3 times, unless you plan to use "Wolf, downward kick" to propel yourself to Olrox's Quarters without the double jump, but screw that, I do it legit! So, overall, SotN is a nice game indeed, but I feel that fans should just enjoy it as a "Classic" (Not SCIV Classic) rather than saying that it is the best CV to date, because I think it was... But not anymore...

I hate the the love of Alucard in the Fandom. IT'S BELMONTS! Every NEW game, fans be sayin' "WHERE'S ALUCARD?  " "No Alucard, No buy  " and when Alucard does show up, everybody cums bricks "ERHMAHGERD ERLERKURD  " I think Alucard is overrated. I liked Alucard too but others just ruined it for me... So if the speculations do come true, i'd be angry because Trevor becomes Alucard. Not because Alucard is Trevor...

I think PoR was actually a nice game, because it had alot of Content and Replay value and surpassed SotN's Enemy counting except for Full Metal Alchemist Jonathan Morris and Animu Moments and the reduced platforming but, it was a nice touch. I never understood the criticisms about recycled spriting. Sure, having reused sprites can make you feel that the developers were lazy (They didn't have the budget) but c'mon, Rondo has the best Skeleton and Bat to date. Why change their sprites? Don't fix what's not broke. Nobody complains about Kirby's games for reusing the same sprite for Kirby since NiDL, so what's wrong with that? 

Gaming Chronologically-wise after AoS, I started to dislike IGA for having limited imagination for the series. He only seems to be inspired from Anime-style direction. "Japanizing" European culture is normally cool in an Anime media, but I don't like it in Castlevania. Emo Leon Kennedy, SH2 James hair and skinny Emo teenager body Leon Belmont was just... Ughhh... It's like, there was a pattern going on each time I heard about a new CV game. While excited, I knew I won't be expecting what I really wanted to see in a CV game, but they were still decent games later.

Judgement, I wont lie, I did enjoy the gameplay in that, but it's the "Novelty" of the game that doesn't last long enough for me to keep playing. After unlocking all the Characters, I tried the "Castle" mode where you can unlock Hats for each Character, played it twice and then I was done with the game as I felt there was not much to look forward to afterwards in it... It was repetitive indeed... I think IGA made a huge mistake to experiment rather than making Demon Castle Wars for the system. It's not like he gets huge budgets to make games, let alone for Consoles. While I did enjoy judgement, I didn't get the Satisfaction I wanted...

I was not too excited about the Alucard Trailer for PS3/XBOX360 because I knew it was going to based off Nocturne of Recollection. Typical animu genericness in it's storyline... By this time, Igarashi to me was nothing but a one hit wonder...

LoS before it was announced as CV LoS, was no surprise. The Armor, whip... In flames and KONAMI was a dead give away, and when that did happen and showed the trailer in E3, I was excited. It seemed promising. OPEN WORLD was an Awesome feature in LoS with it's luscious environment. Did I mention the Boss rush, and Unlocking new characters after beating the game was such a treat? With the sarcasm aside, I was disappointed that they announced it linear later on. But whatever, it was still promising and then I bought the Limited edition of the Game when it came out. This game is a bloody masterpiece. Yes, the game play could've been better such as the camera and the invisible walls (Ughhhh... I hate those) but most of all, they could have added more CV to it- NO. There were plenty of CV moments in the game enough to make it a CV game, look hard for it. Igarashi used the same monotone atmosphere in all the games that some players just couldn't get adjusted to the "new" direction in the game IMHO. I think LoS was a blessing in Castlevania Series. Even if some think Cox and Mercurysteam are just ignorant about the franchise and are nothing but money grubbing gremlins, this game has got increased budget for the franchise in the future after they are done with this Saga. I liked the honest criticisms fans gave to the game for improvements or why they did not like the game. To me, LoS was a double edged blade, some had good viewpoints on why it was a good CV game or a bad CV game. It's one of those things in which both have good standpoints but you can't decide who is correct or who is wrong. I do favor this saga, but i'm open minded to the nay-sayers of the game as well. I hated the "LoS is not Castlevania!" "Bring back IGA" "Bring back Yamane and Kojima" "LoS sux" comments and they were pretty immature, but the developers had so much of it, that they somewhat forced the older atmosphere to the game. While this is respected by many fans, I do too but... It doesn't really fit here. After seeing realistic fantasy depictions of the European Cultures with it's art and environments, MoF doesn't do that. Why is Trevor wearing an 1800's victorian jacket during 1100's? And Simon does look something inspired from the older artstyle, not because of the red hair by Ayami's renditions, but the whole fur on his fur gives that... Soma feel to it. What barbarian-like warrior was wearing that during 1100's? I wanted to see how these guys will end the franchise in their original style, honestly. I think the whole apparel design is something they've forced to put in the game so fans can feel that this is more CV. Why couldn't the ruins of an ancient civilzations or Lush enchanted forests could be Castlevania? I wanted to see if for the next game, they could make their own style of art and design that would compliment the Castlevania Atmosphere instead of bringing the old inspirations for art just to satisfy the fans...

Being that I was introduced to Castlevania through MetroidVania, AoS being my first. LoS made me love the Classic games even more... Otherwise I didn't care much about them before.

Lords of Shadows had great music. It could've been better for a Castlevania game however, but it wasn't "Generic Hollywood Music" to me. Since I bought the LE of the game, I listened to the CD after beating the game. It has depth in it's music and suits LoS and it had great ambient tracks that for I don't know why, but didn't make it to the CD. They're available on YouTube and they have 60-70 tracks. Oscar's Ambient tracks had the Melody and Harmony in them, but the game had a lot of Combat, so it played more formidable bombarding orchestra than it played beautiful, peaceful, nice, relaxing ambient music which of course wouldn't and isn't supposed to be melodic to begin with, and some of those tracks were good though. Satan, fighting Vampires and Carmilla and Pan's tracks were actually pretty good.

I love Michiru Yamane, so I wish her the best and she can do whatever she feels. Her music in Castlevania is nice, but I love her music outside Castlevania alot better. She's coming to her age and I like that she decided to become more as a freelancer since that would be easier for her. I love smooth jazz. And she always wanted to be a jazz musician. Bought Skullgirls and the Soundtrack, good game, good music. I hope she fulfils her dream to be a Jazz Artist someday and I hope she becomes a mainstream contemporary-jazz musician outside Japan. She has a very open mind in music and personality and she is also very free spirited and she is my inspiration, I am always willing to support her and her music. 

Castlevania itself as a series is one messed up title that magically has survied... I don't know how? The series to me has such a strange convoluted identity and developers just can't do much to change that because even if they do, now you have an army of irrational uptight fans. 'CASTLE-Vania" as a title is so strange. I mean if there is a gamer who gets off his cliche CoD and decides, "Hey, you know what? I will try something new today." And goes to Gamestop or EB games and walks upon a title called "Castlevania". Well, are castles really your favourite type of architecture and feel that you want to buy this game which you have probably have never heard of before and since there are castles in the background on the front cover, they believe that the entire game takes place in the Castle. So, do they want to buy this game?... Probably not. What do they know about the huge history of games since the NES days? All they see is that they've never heard of this game before, therefore it must not be popular and just because of that, this game must be shit. PASS. "Castlevania" has a nice feel to it's name and sounds very nice indeed, but it can also give off meanings that may turn people off. The title itself gives off it's limits that the entire game will take place in one boring Castle with around 10-20 enemies to kill with probably around 2-3 hours of gameplay. Sometimes I feel that they should change the title of the series...  (DID HE JUST SAY THAT???)

The identity of Castlevania is a huge mess, not to mention the essence of it. So they made a game that starred a Barbarian looking character that fights classic horror monsters and bosses with their leader Dracula on top... with a whip (The whip is the reason there wont be a Castlevania movie... HOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT?). That alone sounds to me like a huge WTF. Original kick ass game Idea, Oh yes. But to use this concept as a series... Not too much. The villain is based off another villain in a horror novel and then adding originality to the character by adding alternate retelling, various designs for him, giving him an origin story and turning him from a small time serial killer to a global terrorist. Konami probably never intended Castlevania to become a chronological series. And they later on tried to make Castlevania as original as possible. Iga did this by not making Dracula being Vlad III Tepes but an original character named Mathias Cronqvist, which now makes the Dracula of Castlevania a bit more original, but he still was Vlad III Tepes at one point and he was still Count Dracula in the Bram Stoker novel but in the end, he was once an original character. Which is what LoS is trying to do. They want Castlevania to be something very original. The villain is based of an original character by Mercurysteam and has no relation with Bram Stoker in it's character's design as well. They even call him Dracul now and that's just for the sake of fans. Castlevania has a huge variation in different styles of Art, Music and Gameplay that gives it that convoluted Identity. Most games keep their games with one perticular style throughout the series, but Castlevania always seems to be in this "experimental" stage trying to find one perticular style that would give them great success as well as keeping the fans happy. I don't know if that day will ever come though. I think Castlevania has so much potential and I don't want it to be a niche franchise forever... I want castlevania to be a blockbuster someday.

I think the fans can make a better CV game than the developers... Just give us the money and see the magic...

[Ahasverus]

Man (gurl?) marry me 

Great post 

t Castlevania always seems to be in this "experimental" stage trying to find one perticular style that would give them great success as well as keeping the fans happy

So true it hurts

[X]

There's really nothing I can confess to here that hasn't already been said by somebody or myself before.

[Munchy]

When doing a no-armor run of SotN recently, I died far too many times for someone who's replayed it for as long as it's existed. Same with Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow.

As much as I bitch about wall shimmying in LoS, I now consider it a new form of inching retardedly slowly up stairs (or in the GB games' cases, a rope). Here's hoping you can jump on/off them more easily in LoS2.

I've actually grown to like parts of Agharta. Provided Claudia is nowhere in sight.

I bought the Xbox version of LoS mostly for the novelty of having the first multi-disk game in the series. (Yes, I had forgotten about X68k, and yes, it was not a great decision.)

Many folks (including me) have knocked LoS for taking more from Lord of the Rings than Dracula, but having thought about it, there's a lot more similarity between those books than people realize. (I'm toying with writing an essay comparing the two sometime.)

I've thought way too much about how Bram Stoker's book could be adapted into a game, given a liberal amount of creative liberties.

Though I'm not crazy about the large amount of high-fantasy enemies in LoS, I like the trolls. They're weirdly adorable, especially in the scenes where they're spying on Gabriel.

I've planned out a potential ending for Motorcycle Skeleton were he somehow patched into Judgment.

In spite of its legendary status, Rondo of Blood is... okay. It's fun to scope out the secrets, but it's too easy and there are too many flat walk-forward-and-attack areas like the DS games. More than anything, it needs a Hard Mode. (This is pretty much identical to my view on Symphony, but that game gets more of a pass due to pure oozing nostalgia.)

I'm severely disappointed that the credits in LoS didn't involve Gabeula doing a parody of the Thriller dance with the game's cast. I mean, he's wearing the red and everything!

[JR]

Although I like Bloodlines, it somehow annoys me how they tried to tie it in with the Stoker novel, and how the locales make it feel like Castlevania: Tour of Europe to me.

Being a diehard metal fan, I still have to cringe when I hear official tracks with electric guitars. Metal sounds too cheesy in Castlevania.

I don't think Max Slimer would've been as universally ridiculed if it didn't have such a shitty name. Still an uninspired design, but I digress.

I think Death should really be the main villain from a logical standpoint, although Dracula will always be the more compelling character.

The Owl Knight's reaction when you kill his owl never fails to make me laugh. Ever. Same with with the Vandal Sword, how he makes perverted old man noises when you hit him. I'm easily amused.

[VladCT]

I expected someone younger-sounding to voice Maxim in HoD...and I thought his jumping grunts sounded like he was suffering from constipation.
Also, I thought Simon's Chronicles design was...kinda metal. Maybe it's because my own misconceptions and the Whip Rush From Hell version of Vampire Killer messing with my head a little, but try imagining him with KISS makeup.

[PFG9000]

I wouldn't mind naming a kid Richter

Heh, I've been trying to get my wife to agree to that for years!  But I had to compromise...she hates the name, so the closest I've been able to get is in giving my dog the middle name of Richter.

[SiFi270]

Save for computer ports of the first game, there isn't a single Castlevania game I find unplayably awful.

[crisis]

Heh, I've been trying to get my wife to agree to that for years!  But I had to compromise...she hates the name, so the closest I've been able to get is in giving my dog the middle name of Richter.

LOL
"my wife hates the name, so i had to give it to my pet, but only as his middle name" xD


new confession:
even though his name is Jorge, i still have the habit of pronouncing it as "George" in my head

[knightmere]

I confess that I am not excited about MoF at all, and feel that it will be another disappointment like LoS.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I don't like this thread.
It is a bomb waiting to happen and the very premise of it in this forum bugs me.

KCEK is a terrible development group, at least for Castlevania, and as evidence is responsible for the N64 travesties as well as the shitty port of SotN for Satun if I am not mistaken. Their incompetence knows no limits. Circle of the Moon came out pretty good though, but you can still see traces of their usual retarded flair in there. Did they do Bloodlines too? Or perhaps the same people from Bloodlines worked on the others mentioned here? Because it feels really similar, especially in how awful it is.

You are mistaken.  The SotN port for Saturn was done by KCEN (Nagoya), the team that also made Castlevania Legends.

[GuyStarwind]

LOL
"my wife hates the name, so i had to give it to my pet, but only as his middle name" xD


new confession:
even though his name is Jorge, i still have the habit of pronouncing it as "George" in my head

Wheres the ho ho ho?

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

new confession:
even though his name is Jorge, i still have the habit of pronouncing it as "George" in my head

Most of my friends pronounce it "George", (since most of them are not hispanic and when people butcher my name's original pronunciation it makes me want to put babies on Spikes), so do not worry about pronouncing it like this in your head...

Just as long as you type it properly, 'cuz I don't think your fingers are retarded.

[Successor The Cruel]

Sometimes I'm not exactly sure of how I feel about Symphony of the Night. Sometimes I have great, great respect and admiration for it, and just thinking about it makes me want to play it. Yet, I just can't excuse certain things within it, and just thinking of those things makes me want to stop playing and never finish it... because... why? It honestly gets pretty darn boring to me after a point. The best thing I can liken the game to is a savant - a retarded person who is also a genius at the same time. The game, while incredibly brilliant, is also incredibly lazy and retarded to me.

I also have to admit that it's frustrating when some people just don't seem to realize or care about the huge shortcomings with the game, while also acting like it's head and shoulders above some of its predecessors. Stylistically, I can really understand that behavior, and I give a lot of importance to aesthetic style. However, as a well put together, continuously captivating and enthralling video game, I will turn to Aria of Sorrow (and even Harmony of Dissonance) every time.

All in all, I do like Symphony of the Night, though.