It doesn't hurt that it's also one of the most easily playable entries today, with a myriad of re-releases. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night takes place in , a few years after Richter Belmont, a member of the monster-slaying Belmont clan , defeated the Lord of the Vampires. Now Richter himself has gone missing, with Dracula's castle, the titular Castlevania, mysteriously reappearing decades before it was expected to rise again.
Intent on solving the mystery of Castlevania's raising and destroying the castle once and for all is none other than Alucard, the half-human son of Dracula. Alucard's journey inside the house of Dracula sees him befriend Maria Renard, a former ally of Richter who is also searching for him. Inside, Alucard learns the truth about both Richter and his father, all the while having to traverse an inverted version of the castle in a bid to stop the ultimate evil. His not being a Belmont means that Alucard goes through the adventure without the iconic Vampire Killer whip.
This included a branching path to explore, giving the game tons of longevity and evolving it beyond a mere hack-and-slash sidescroller. You can play at your own pace. SotN switched up the established Castlevania structure of linear level progression by aping Super Metroid, presenting you with a gigantic, segmented world to explore with the help of a constantly updating map. It's a design that works just as beautifully for Alucard as it did for Samus, giving you a profound feeling of freedom to chart out new territory and deduce where you want to go next.
Getting lost in Dracula's castle is just an opportunity to explore avenues you might've missed, and the plentiful save rooms give you the flexibility to play for a few minutes or an hours-long marathon.
Each area is meticulously arranged so that it just works whether you're striding through it from the left or right, above or below, and new zones open up at whatever pace feels best for you.
Once you've gotten the lay of the land, you're free to speed-run to your destination or comb every inch of the castle's interior looking for secrets. It's the quintessential slice of the Castlevania universe. The Castlevania games always do a good job of using age-old mythologies and classic movie monsters for inspiration on enemy designs. SotN's wildly diverse bestiary has plenty of the series' staple enemies, like a wide variety of reanimated skeletons, leaping Flea Men and mermen, those pesky floating Medusa heads, and giant floating skulls.
But SotN also pushed the series toward a wide array of brilliantly unconventional designs. As you delve deeper into the castle, Alucard has to go up against creatures like deadly plants with nude maidens blooming out of them, a procession of featureless, drone-like humans amassing into a colossal orb called the Granfaloon later known as Legion , and Beezelbub, a gigantic, rotting corpse suspended in the air by meathooks that's the literal Lord of the Flies.
Instead of taking the traditional Castlevania approach of 'hit anything that moves until it bursts into flames', many enemies have hidden weaknesses to certain items more on those in a bit if you can suss them out.
Whether you're facing an intimidating boss or one of Dracula's rank-and-file lackeys, it's clear that each and every enemy was made with the utmost care. Same goes for the environments: though SotN primarily takes place within the castle walls, the various wings, dungeons, and towers you'll explore capture the key themes of gothic worlds nicely, feeling distinct yet cohesive and making it easy to mentally map out your progress.
The presentation is exquisite. The game wins points for its unique story featuring Soma Cruz, who is basically a teenage reincarnation of Dracula. Think about that. A Dracula with acne and probably a big authority problem. The game being set in the future also allowed for a cool mix of both vintage and futuristic looking weapons. This was the worthy spiritual successor to Symphony of the Night that fans had been waiting for.
What was it about the Super Nintendo that created so many epic games? Grappling and crouch walking provided additional ways to progress through the levels. Either way, Super Castlevania IV raised the bar for what fans have come to expect from the series. Symphony of the Night took all of the best parts from the most loved previous games in the series and put them all together for an absolute masterpiece.
The game features great controls and epic boss fights mixed with open-world exploration and RPG mechanics as well as the best platforming since C astlevania III. You would think that such a mash up would be hard to keep up with, but the result was groundbreaking. A great soundtrack, solid level design, and a great plot twist are just icing on the cake.
Symphony of the Night is now considered to be one of the the great cult classics in video game history, if not one of the best video games of all-time. Jason Gallagher is a freelance contributor. We didn't know it at the time, but Order of Ecclesia was Koji Igarashi's swan song in the official Castlevania franchise. With his final game, he revamped the art style, added an enormous difficulty spike over previous DS titles, and let the player explore far beyond the boundaries of Dracula's castle.
Akumajou Special, also known as "I'm Kid Dracula," is a colorful Konami spinoff title that features many of the Castlevania touchstones twisted into campy and cute parodies. It's also an intense action platformer that plays like it received a healthy infusion of Mega Man DNA. Vampire Killer is a forgotten offshoot of the Castlevania series, but it still had a powerful impact on several future titles. This MSX 2 game came out the same year as the original NES Castlevania, but it featured drastically different gameplay with open-ended, Metroid-style exploration.
It's a theme Castlevania would return to later in more successful iterations. Depending on how you look at, Lords of Shadow either saved or ruined the Castlevania franchise.
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