Topic: Castlevania!

I'm new to the forums, so I'm gonna start off by making my first post about some games I like. Castlevania!

It's one of my all-time favourites. When I was little...my first Castlevania game was Circle of the Moon on the GBA. I loved the RPG-action hybrid gameplay, I loved the mythological setting, I loved the magic spell system... it was a pretty great game. Much later, Dawn of Sorrow was my second one, and that one turned me into a Castlevania fanatic. Later on now, I've turned into a huge retrogamer and now retroactively own all of the past Nintendo systems. I've gotten myself the original cartridges of the Castlevanias, and I'm loving them. Also got a PS2, and have managed to get the Symphony of the Night and Castlevania Chronicles discs... and they're both shining examples of the Metroidvania and Classicvania sub-series, respectively.

My personal favourite Castlevania of all is Dawn of Sorrow, with Ecclesia and Aria being close seconds.
My favourite of the "Classicvania" games are Chronicles, Adventure ReBirth and Dracula's Curse. I can't order these three over each other, I love them all!

Least favourites are obviously going to be Castlevania the Adventure, Legends, Judgment, and Castlevania 64. I haven't yet tried the PS2 ones (Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness), so I can't say about them. And when I say "Castlevania 64", I'm referring to the first one. Legacy of Darkness is brilliant! Also, Order of Shadows doesn't even count as a CV game. I'm not counting that one (but it's pretty terrible).

Any Castlevania fans round here?

I'm not a Castlevania fan....because I have never played any of them....I've only heard about them, and good things at that (except for a few bad things about simon's quest...but whatever) When I first saw Castlevania Rebirth on the VC, and saw a gameplay video it seemed inviting and I wanted to give it a shot....perhaps when I have the patience, because I hear they are tough games, I will give the first game in the series a chance.

Your enthusiasm and praise make me want to try it even more =]

Chronicles, Adventure ReBirth, and Dracula's Curse over Super Castlevania 4, Bloodlines, and Rondo of Blood for best "Classicvania"?!?!?! Say what? Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness are decent games. Not overly good but still FAR better than both the Nintendo 64 3D games. Curse of Darkness probably has the best or second best soundtrack of the entire series and Lament's soundtrack is also good. Other games you didn't mention that are also good are Harmony of Dissonance, Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge, and Portrait of Ruin (although different due to the 2 character mechanic). Avoid Dracula X, which is the pitiful port of Rondo of Blood (infinitely better).

I love Castlevania. I got into it in 2005 with Dawn of Sorrow. I didn't get any others until I got a Wii. I currently have SCIV, Castlevania III, and Rondo of Blood downloaded. SCIV might be my favorite. I plan on getting Aria of Sorrow, SotN, and the other two DS games eventually.

One my favorite things about the series is the music. I could listen to any version of Bloody Tears loop all day.

The Angry Video Game Nerd also did an excellent Castlevania retrospective on Gametrailers.com. He talked about his experiences with the series from Castlevania to SotN. It actually made me appreciate the series even more.

To be honest, I preferred Vampire's Kiss (Dracula X in America) over Super Castlevania IV. Now, you're all gonna call me crazy, I know it. But I don't know... I've played through Vampire's Kiss several times over, enjoying the game along the way. Trying for different routes, trying to rescue the girls, going for no-damage runs against the bosses... all that stuff. I love how it's got a short-and-sweet sort of deal with it, similar to the original NES Castlevania. The only complaint I have is that Richter walks too slow here compared to his jump. So you're jumping around all the time.

I don't know what was up with Super CV IV, but I personally don't like it as much as other ones. Now, don't get me wrong, it's still Castlevania excellence. But it felt kind of like it dragged on a bit. And the one-hit-kill traps were too plentiful.
I feel like I can just pop in Vampire's Kiss and have a marathon session straight to the finish much more easily than I could with Super CV IV. Draccy's final form on the pillars ain't too bad once you have a strategy.

Also Bloodlines ("The New Generation" in this country, but Bloodlines sounds better) was indeed excellence, but the one thing that killed its playability for me was the limited continues. I was never at ease at where I was, there was always the fear I'd run out and have to be forced to enter the password in another time instead of just hitting Continue. This also meant you were forced to write down the password for each stage, just in case you lost all your lives. You couldn't just have a big non-stop playthrough.

Now, Rondo is sheer excellence. I cannot disagree. I'd rank it my fourth favourite, just under Chronicles, Adventure ReBirth and Dracula's Curse.

Of course I also love Simon's Quest, Harmony of Dissonance, Belmont's Revenge and Portrait of Ruin. I just didn't think I needed to mention EVERY SINGLE game that exists. Heh. =)

I started with Portrait of Ruin. Twas enough of a hook, it's usually not ranked as highly as the others usually because it doesn't do too much thoroughly original, however it does do more than any of the other games, and it's also consistently better.

Dawn of Sorrow would be my next favourite metroidvania, the first playthrough wasn't a fulfilling one at all. I was mostly just going through it not worrying about completion. Most of the way it was simply inferior to the other DS games. I did a completion playthrough a few months later and loved it though.
Aria is much the same as Dawn, I prefer Dawn a bit more as it subtly improves on most things Aria did without sacrificing anything.

Ecclesia is next, the first playthrough was phenomenal, but afterwards it's not much fun to repeat. Tons of annoying weapon switching, since enemies usually resisted stuff for negligible damage. Great presentation and difficulty!

My least favourite metroidvania I've played is Harmony of Dissonance, didn't look nice, didn't sound great, and didn't play so great either.

As for platformers I'd call the original my favourite by time spent with it. The whole time Castlevania is just awesome, the difficulty, the music, the crude but fantastic graphics just make for an amazing experience. Although the difficulty is also a bit of a turn off, since I don't want to play unless I'm feeling particularily determined, because of this I'll sooner revisit Super Castlevania IV or Rondo of Blood, both are incredibly fun, both have incredible music, both are difficult but managable enough to play more regularily. The original is still the best though, nothing is out of place, the atmosphere is unreal for an NES game.

Castlevania III is next, it's cool, but balls to the wall tough, I can't make it through, and it's hard enough that I tire of replaying the levels dozens of times.

2nd last is Simon's Quest, the music is awesome (Bloody Tears origin!!), but the progression is stupid so a guide is practically essential to play the game. It has some high points but some crippling faults too.

Last is Castlevania The Adventure: ReBirth. First off the music which is absolute garbage as far as the series is concerned. The gameplay is below par, and the graphics have the same unattractive quality as the Harmony of Dissonance ones.

ah castlevania. heres my experience with the game:

1. downloaded Castlevania 3 on the virtual console. played through the first level, then got to the second level. died. i tried again. died. tried again. won! got to level 3. died. got bored. went to get a coke. started playing Okami instead. and i barely play it nowadays

Aww, the difficulty of the Classicvania games is what makes you hooked to them! Well, I do have to admit, when I played Casltevania 3 for the first time, I had a similar experience. It was only later, after having played other Castlevania games where I decided to pick it up again. After actually getting somewhere, I began to truly appreciate what it was, and quickly it became my favourite.

Castlevania 3 still kicks my too much for it to be higher. The other ones seem to be better for the most part anyways though.

Love this series. My top 5 would definitely have to be:

5. Harmony of Dissonance
4. Circle of the Moon
3. Rondo of Blood
2. Castlevania
1. Symphony of the Night

Definitely a great series, albeit a very frustrating one.

For me, the difficulty in Castlevania games always lied in the difficulty of controlling the character, as opposed to the actual difficulty of the platforming or combat.
And for this, I tend to just stay away.

I never have any trouble with the controls, yet it still kicks my butt most of the time.

My first time playing III: "Cool, this is like a better version of the first one. Oh hey, multiple paths and characters! Not even IV had those!"

Then I realized the game was hard as balls.

Oh yeah, I've also played Circle of the Moon and Bloodlines on emulators. CoM is alright but I wouldn't actually buy it. I hate that you don't get healed after boss battles. Makes for exciting trips to the save room though!

Bloodlines is pretty cool, classic Castlevania gameplay. I'd get it on VC if it gets released.

I love the series too, and I think it's a lot of fun, mostly because it's like a big monster party in one vampire's creepy castle. And I always thought it was funny how you use whips to kill Dracula...imagine if they'd have your hero wield stakes instead! They wouldn't have very good range, that's for sure.

I do like some of the aspects of Metroidvania titles, but I'd like a new game done in the classic style that they used from CV1 until Rondo of Blood. I miss the classic platforming...the RPG-lite formula kinda wears on you after a while. I find it funny how Koji Igarashi also places so much emphasis on the story and timeline, but who plays the games for those?

The first one I've played in the Castlevania series was the critically acclaimed Dawn of Sorrow for Nintendo DS, which is one of the finest games I've played on the system. It got really tough eventually, so I didn't play through it completely.

I found the Castlevania Double Pack for a great price yesterday. (It has Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow in case you didn't know) I decided to go through HoD first. I'm enjoying it, more fun than Circle of the Moon so far. I actually dig the sound, it has a nice Game Boy Color quality to it. Yeah I know, the GBA can do better but whatever.

I had been wanting to play AoS for a long time now so I can't wait to start that.

Beware, there's something up with the Double Pak - It's deleted my data. Twice.

I don't know, but I had a Double Pak, and was playing just fine. 100%ed Harmony. 100%ed Aria. Everything was great. But suddenly, DATA DELETED. What? Why? I don't know. For a while, it would accept new save games, but after a while it became clear that the battery had died. So, I got a new double pak.

New cartrdige, alright... I play through Harmony, have fun, play through Aria, have fun, but then suddenly DATA DELETED. Bizarrely, it was just the Harmony side which was deleted - the Aria saves were still intact. This means it obviously isn't to do with the save battery after all, the previous cartridge just had odd timing with when the battery decided to die. After a couple days, Aria got wiped too.

So I went on eBay and bought the two games in their separate cartridge forms. I suppose there's a stupid glitch in the Double Pak version.
I don't know what exactly caused the glitch, but I SUSPECT it might have something to do with Aria's game suspend feature. Don't use it, just to be safe. That means you'll always have to find a save room when you want to stop, which is annoying, though.
Do what you like with your game, but I'm just giving my anecdotes.

Interesting. A while ago, I was looking for the DP online, and I found it for a very cheap price. However, the seller said that the game doesn't save. I hope that's not a common thing. I searched Google and didn't find anyone talking about save problems so maybe it's not.

I'm fine with not using Aria's suspend feature. I did hit HoD's quick save out of curiosity though...

Metroidvania > Castlevania

(IMO)