Topic: Y'know, for all its faults...

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Castlevania Legends was pretty okay, in hindsight.

I recently popped the game back into m GameBoy Color, and I came away with the following impressions.

1) I AM SERIOUSLY RUSTY AT IT.

2) It had a pretty okay soundtrack.
The way Bloody Tears was pulled off in particular impressed me on my first playthrough.

3) I KNOW this has been harped on to death, but it broke ground with a female Belmont (which still has yet to recur).

4) I thought it had better controls than the Adventure games (they were at least easier to figure out in terms of jump arcs, the sense of input-output timing, etc), and while it was kind of cheap, Burning Mode made it a little more accessible to less skilled players without being able to be used frequently enough to be a crutch.

But seriously. That story though.

I'm not sure which is worse: Lords of Shadow 2 or Legends.

I'm gonna give the worst writing title to LOS2, but it's by a factor of like... half a point.

The fanfictiony nature of Alucard's inclusion and the 1450 date definitely were sore points for most dedicated fans, and it ultimately damned the game for many. I didn't care at the time, because I was new to the series, but later I grew to appreciate the saving throw that IGA made by striking the game from canon. It doesn't have to be canon to be a mostly fun game.

I kind of wished Sonia Belmont had made some kind of appearance in the LOS saga, possibly either as a protagonist in her own right (which would have afforded the fans a Sonia Belmont unburdened by fanfiction plotlines), or in Victor's place in LOS2.

But alas. She'll always be the Scrappy Doo of the main series (though less so than Desmond), and I'll just have to live with that.

[Reinhart77]

Maybe Sonia will star in her own Pachislot game some day.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Maybe Sonia will star in her own Pachislot game some day.

SILENCE FOOL!
Speak not of this possibility!

KONAMI MIGHT BE LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION FOR MORE BAD GAMES!

Seriously, if this happens now, I know just who to blame.

[coinilius]

Having played it recently for the first time, I thought that the game itself was decent - my main problem with it was that the levels felt like they were too long and that they dragged a bit.  But then again, it was the first game in my Castlevania chronological order play through (I didn't have a PS2 or a copy of LoI until more recently, so I had to skip it) and I might have been approaching it a little more cautiously than I would if I played it again now. 

As for the story and the character of Sonia - I am relatively brand new to the Castlevania series, I owned and played Castlevania I, II and II and Super Castlevania IV but then that was it for me, I hadn't played a Castlevania game since then until recently.  I had read up on the timeline and some of the controversies and about how Legends had been wiped from the canon, and in all honesty that probably made me want to support the game and the character of Sonia Belmont even more.  The game turned out not to be terrible, IMO, which was good, but of the 3 Game Boy titles I would rank Belmont's Revenge as my favorite.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

I used to be the same way, Coin. I was one of the bitter ones about Sonia being fired from the DeCanon Cannon. I was up in arms, actually, and some of the guys who knew me on the Anti-Chapel forums might remember a little of that.

I think that the cancellation of Castlevania: Resurrection was a big blow to Sonia's characterization, and it would have been a second chance at life for her.

As it is, Legends takes place BEFORE Dracula's war on mankind in the 1470's, so by simple timeline logic, none of the game should have happened as Dracula was still happily married to Lisa during that time. It just doesn't make canon sense when you account for Castlevania 3's plot (fleshed out by SOTN and Curse of Darkness).

Had Legends remained in canon, it would have required massive retroactive alterations to several games in the series, and faced with the choice of retooling the series and saving the aggravation by striking Legends out, IGA chose to strike Legends out.

That being said, he could have handled it with much more grace and tact in interviews than he actually did around that time. I remember reading interviews where he mentioned that "gamers weren't yet ready for a strong female protaganist", and being kind of apalled, actually. Those throw away comments aside, he made the right call as a storyline manager. And his track record for strong female protaganists did improve greatly over time, even earning some respect from feminist bloggers.

All in all, I think things turned out okay, and if Konami ever decides to relaunch the Castlevania franchise as a serious effort, I hope Sonia will get her time in a competent story.

She had a good game, but deserves a better story.

[X]

Legends is a gem in its own right. But after seeing some of the translated japanese story (it makes more sense) I don't consider the US version legit anymore. For my personal headcanon--though I didn't mention this on that thread at the time--Legends for me takes place not in 1450, but in 1472. Ten years after Vlad became Dracula according to the Bram Stoker's Dracula film (1462). This leaves 20 years in between Legends and CV III for which Trevor is born and raised, and becomes then next Vampier hunter of legend.

[Reinhart77]

it was a nice little game.  wish it had a little more replayability and didn't have serious respawning issues.  sonia definitely needs to come back somehow.  she will not be forgotten.

[Abnormal Freak]

I liked it when it came out, being my first Game Boy Castlevania and having just gotten a GB Color with a very small handful of games. Plus it was either a Christmas or birthday gift from my mom and brother, bought from the awesome long gone EBX in the Mall of America, so it holds a lot of meaning.

I still find the rendition of "Bloody Tears" pretty awesome. Haven't played through the game probably since I was 12 so I don't know if it holds up any. At the time I thought Sonia being the first Belmont warrior and mother of Trevor by borking Alucard was pretty cool, but now it certainly does seem fanfictiony and primo lame-o. Never thought of how having Sonia be canon would alter the timeline any because honestly, the CV timeline doesn't make any sense to me anymore anyway.

I still would love to play CV: Resurrection since I highly anticipated it and would have gotten a Dreamcast for that alone back in the day. There were pantsu shots in the published images and that got my horned-up mind's gears grinding.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

I'd heard that Sonia's half of Resurrection was functionally done before the game got killed, and the team/part of the team responsible for Victor's half were dragging along with what they were supposed to do and by the time they'd figured it out, Konami had already decided to ax the game.

Whether that was true or not, Sonia Belmont's half is the only one for which much gameplay footage exists, at any rate.

I would have loved to play a Castlevania game co-starring a 1990's Tim Curry, but alas, some things are just doomed.

[RichterB]

About two years back, I replayed and beat all three Castlevania games for Gameboy. For the first time, I did it in the order of their release, and defeated all of the bosses of Legends on Standard *without* use of Sonia's Burning Mode ability. (Ridding myself of the thought that Burning Mode was simply a crutch to hide poor boss programming patterns).

With all this in mind, I had a new evaluation of Legends. Some people have said that Legends was a huge downgrade from Belmont's Revenge and wondered what the designers were thinking. Having played all three games in a row, I kept that thought in mind, and came up with an answer.

Subjectively, I still feel it was a downgrade, but not to the extent I once believed. Objectively speaking, Legends had different design parameters. Belmont's Revenge, like The Adventure before it, was essentially a re-imagining of the NES trilogy of games. It took the core gameplay, and remixed it with eccentricities all its own.

So why was Legends so different? I strongly believe it was looking at different core gameplay, namely Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. Think about it. It focused in on the castle, like in Symphony, and brought Alucard to the fore as a major story element. Then, its level design attempts to add exploration and multiple paths with dead ends and traps like in Rondo, and it even has one level with an alternate exit and entry point. Instead of rescuing maidens to get the best ending, you're going out of your way to find the sub-weapon relics--and have to use an alternate hidden stage to get that last one. The thing is, for whatever reason, all of these elements are done as half-measures, which results in meandering levels. I think they were trying to figure out how to fit in and condense the various elements, and they ended up conflicting with one another and ballooning the design.

Still, the game wants to be special with its female lead, excellent booklet artwork, a branching stage, Burning Mode, trap candles, some fancy-looking bosses, etc. Really, this game basically suffered from execution more than anything. Ideas like the trap candles or magic system lack polish, coming off as more frustrating than interesting like they should be. The creative, one-of-a-kind Bloody Tears remix that appears only in this game in stage 1 is truly a highlight, though.

Legends was one of the games that helped renew my interest in the series, though, and it was one of the first games in the series that I owned for myself.

In the end, I don't hate it, and it's not as bad as some make it out to be; but the end result, while intriguing, is somewhat forgettable.

[Super Waffle]

Castlevania 64 is more of the "Obscure CV game everyone always bashes but is actually pretty good" for me.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

I honestly preferred Legacy of Darkness, but yeah, I get what you mean. The N64 games were actually pretty good... until you have to carry the nitro.

How many TV screens were thrown away with controllers firmly embedded because of that sequence?

[Reinhart77]

I honestly preferred Legacy of Darkness, but yeah, I get what you mean. The N64 games were actually pretty good... until you have to carry the nitro.

How many TV screens were thrown away with controllers firmly embedded because of that sequence?

thanks for bringing up the Nitro.  i've replayed the game several times up until that point, and then just find something else to do.  i beat it once before per character, and it was too much to ask me to do it again.  now that they've got N64 games on the Wii U virtual console, if these games ever make it over to Wii U, I'll be happy to use the save state cheats to get past that point.

[Abnormal Freak]

I played both N64 games several times over and have done the nitro stage more times than I can remember. It got to the point where I'd even play a game of how many times I can hit the jump button while going through the door-opening-and-closing animation, lolz. Shit was risky and I died numerous times BUT I STILL KEPT DOING IT.

[Super Waffle]

until you have to carry the nitro.

Okay yeah point taken. There was no excuse for that shit.