@“Paul-Stalter-Pace”#p45010 Maybe there's some cognitive bias going on here, but I found Rondo of Blood a bit less cruel. It was definitely still difficult though.
I recently finished my first-ever Castlevania game (Bloodlines) and was on stage 5 of Rondo of Blood before I got me wires crossed on the save states in my emulator and lost all my progress. Pretty crushing because it's hard as fuck. Normally I would just abandon the game but I think I will actually restart because the music and graphics are that good. The epigraphs at the beginning of each stage go so hard and just really get me. “God, Grant Me Strength,” “Atop Countless Terrors” … so fuckin badass dude
@“tapevulture”#p58270 oof, i hear you re: Rondo…I played a significant portion on the MiSTer, but restarted it on the PCE Mini mostly because of the convenience of save states. I got pretty far, but still haven't finished it…I might wait until spooky Halloween season to pick it up again
@“kory”#p58271 definitely using save states this time. sometimes i take the “play the games on the terms defined by the devs” tack too far and i forget to have fun. God, Grant Me Strength……
@“Syzygy”#p88631 I just finished the fan translated Japanese version of this game at 200.3%, now I’m wading through many redundant videos to find secrets I may have missed and cool trivia I overlooked to avoid spoilers over the years. So thanks for the video link.
Since the game is so beautiful and romantic I always held back from going much further than the initial castle inversion until I could play the game my way on a crt… glad I did.
I don’t really need to say much since it’s probably already been said a million times over… it’s a romantic experience.
I may try the Saturn fan translation next to see bonus content but for now, I’m messing around with the extra Richter mode…. I think I’d rather play a real whippums game though. Definitely going back to vampire killer and akumajou Densetsu next. Might try and find any hacks that make alucard look like his sotn form, haha.
I forgot there was a castlevania thread, well I sure did beat like 5 or 6 of them so far this month
Pretty thorough explanation of an amusing and useful exploit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd18YNZB0D4
Ahh, the castled Vania . . .
I feel like my relationship with this series is . . . Weird?
I love it, it's one of my very favorite series! But I just have zero interest in the portable igavanias for whatever reason, and I feel like these days, most folks I see talking about Castlevania are talking about those entries almost exclusively. More power to em! I'm glad they dig those! I'm really not sure what my deal is, I adore Symphony of the Night and that formula seems perfect for a handheld.
Anyway, as much as I love the pre-SotN 2D games (many of which are some of my all time favorite games, period), I have a huge soft spot for the first few 3D games as well. CV64, Legacy of Darkness, Lament of Innocence, and Curse of Darkness.
There's been a small wave of cultural re-appraisal surrounding the N64 games, but the thing that got me into it was [John Linneman's brief video commentary on the intro section](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o44eGybawOo). This led to me getting a copy of Legacy of Darkness and falling in love with the atmosphere and vibe of that game. It's an exceptionally cozy little dungeon adventure, and it feels much better in the hands than I'd ever have expected.
Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness are kind of inseparably linked, I feel. I initially picked up Curse of Darkness some years ago because despite the broader reputation of 3D Castlevania games, the idea of playing a Castlevania game on the original Xbox was a novelty I couldn't pass up. And of course now the PS2 port is getting mad pricey, so it will forever be an Xbox game to me, I suppose. On the rare occasion I see people talking about either of these games, there seems to be a split between the two regarding preference. Some people seem to think Curse of Darkness made too many changes away from what worked in Lament of Innocence, whereas I've seen other people espouse the opinion that too many of the weird quality-of-life quirks in Lament amounted to an overall dealbreaker for them. I think I'm inclined to prefer Curse, myself. Part of that is my love of the original xbox, part of it is the structure of the game itself, and part of it is that I think [the soundtrack is arguably Michiru Yamane's magnum opus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DIJQlolVSE&t=7823s). Not sure if she'd agree, but given [her apparent worldview](https://www.thegamer.com/castlevania-michiru-yamane-donald-trump/), I don't really care for her opinion on anything anymore lol.
I will say, the one thing that keeps me from playing either of the "PS2 era" Castlevanias to completion is the camera. Not for normal 2000s 3D platforming reasons, either. It's the FOV. It's easier to see in motion, but both of those games share one camera quirk that is a gigantic mental barrier for me. It's as if the camera is positioned half a mile away, but locked onto the character with a large telephoto lens zoomed way in, until the character is taking up as much screen space as they would be with a normal third person camera's distance and focal length. If you've ever shot with a telephoto lens, you know the way it compresses depth in an image, the way that it forces perspective and relative size of objects at different distances. The result in these games is a viewing area that is very small--much too small for the broader scale action combat happening in these larger rooms and outdoor arenas--which restricts your vision to the degree that enemies and attacks coming from off screen are just going to be a constant fact of life. You will be attacked by things you can't see and can't prepare for or often even react to on the regular. And because the scale of depth are so compressed, it's exceptionally difficult to judge distance when jumping gaps or doing any kind of platforming. Maybe it's something you can get used to after a while but I've always had a lot of trouble with it. On the whole I have a lot of fondness for both of these games, but that camera thing really kills it for me entirely. I'm not sure why they did this. It could have been a design choice. Maybe it was done to keep rendering time to a minimum to retain 60fps for the PS2's field rendering mode? I have no idea. This is one case where I'm hoping that some kind of ROM-hack style implementation could be done in PCSX2 or XEMU or something, by someone much smarter than me, to adjust this and make them playable for me, but I suspect that's not actually possible given the way game cameras interact with environmental geometry, etc.
it got pooped on a lot at time it came out (and maybe still does) but i think the soundtrack to harmony of dissonance is EXCEPTIONAL. i get that it‘s not super melody-forward pseudo-j-rock stuff so it’s not for everyone, but the way it uses the game boy color sound channels in addition to the gba sound chip is such a unique weird mix, and the titular dissonance in all the music reaaalllly does it for me. like, the 6/8 rhythm of this track and the way it all kind of tonally decays within itself and just how heavy it is in general is so so good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK6llm1hbrA
@“phylaxis”#p97781 I agree that this soundtrack is highly underrated, many bangers and nostalgia pieces.
I got this idea in my head that I wanted to play through all the games in the IGAvania timeline in order, starting with Lament of Innocence and ending with Dawn of Sorrow. There‘s quite a few notable franchise entries I’ve never actually beaten and I thought this would be a fun way to do that in a way where I get a lot of variety from game to game so I don't get too burned out.
**Lament of Innocence** is pretty good. If you make an effort to find a lot of the secrets it manages to scratch that meditative, grindy itch of the GBA or DS entries even though the rewards themselves usually aren't that interesting. I like the minimalism of having literally one of each kind of stat-boosting item (besides armor, which there's only three or four kinds of) in the whole game, though that's probably due to them wanting to downplay the rpg stuff in this one and focus on action. As an action game it's okay. I think perfect guards could have been really cool if guarding was a little more instantaneous, it feels like something you have to plan to do rather than something you can just do in response to an attack. also wished it wasn't a fixed camera. I found myself opening the map every single time I entered a room just to remind myself where the nearest off-camera door was so I could go ahead and beeline for it. Also found that during some boss fights (particularly Walter) the camera didn't quite know where to position itself to keep my opponent in view.
I've always been tickled that Dracula's official origin in the IGAvanias is literally just [the flashback scene from the beginning of Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq3XWcGdhcY) but with a bunch of extra steps, but somehow I don't think I ever knew that his dead wife is even named Elisabetha! Maybe I'll rewatch Bram Stoker's Dracula before I play Bloodlines
I'm embarrassed to say **Castlevania III** is one of the games I'd never beaten before! Played the fan translation of Akumajou Densetsu on my MiSTer. Even playing the slightly easier Japanese release I needed to really abuse save states to finish, but I think I'm pretty close to being able to plow straight through it like I can with Castlevania 1. I can reliably make it all the way to the castle without dying (Sypha path) but after that is where it gets dicey. My general strategy is get Sypha's homing shot thing as soon as i can and hold onto it, mostly play as Trevor but switch to Sypha when I need to be able to take out some vertical jerks like crows, guys waiting to nail me at the foot of some stairs or right on the edge of ledges, etc. Once I can reliably beat the game with Sypha I'd like to try and perfect the Alucard path too, but I don't feel compelled to bother with Grant too much. I've used him before and he's cool but I hate the return trip down the Clocktower so much that I just never want to get him!
I’m nearing completion of my first ever playthrough of SOTN (occasionally streamed for all to enjoy on the official unofficial IC discord server as part of my series MiSTer could pass) and I wanted to show off my custom IC-themed cloak I spent $30k of hard-earned in-game cash on. Many candelabras died to bring you this:
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/8UJi2aQ.jpeg]
@“kory”#p105296 You now have the privilege of being in the ideal mental state to appreciate this.
@“andrewelmore”#p97754
Castlevania 64 was my first Castlevania and I still love it. It struck me so powerfully when I was however old I was. Spent many sleepovers playing through it, trying to get the different endings.
This was my first Castlevania
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/UrXLpdz.jpeg]
