Run Ningaf Terthe Deevul
Apr. 12th, 2011 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidn
Even though I was a child of the Playstation era due to coming to the console world about five years later than most people my age, I had had a notable gap in the games that I'd played for a long time. It wasn't exactly difficult to get hold of, being one of the four or five Playstation classics that were actually released in Europe, but somehow it had completely passed me by and I'd never even seen it at all, let alone played it. When looking through the Playstation Store one night, we saw Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was available, and decided that it was time to give it a try.Hideo Kojima's invasion of the Castlevania series was going to happen much later on, but you're treated to a dose of exactly his kind of madness right from the beginning as it starts you confidently off in the wrong game. You're presented with the title "Final Stage Bloodlines", and are then led through what I was later to find out was an enhanced remake of the finale of one of the previous titles in the series. It confused me hugely when it came up, and even after going back to it after finishing the game, this time understanding what was going on, it still felt uncomfortably like something out of a dream where you turn on the television and things aren't acting as they're supposed to, and the ten o'clock news is being presented by the Clangers and they've asked them to make sure to tie every story in with the name of a kind of cheese because they've got a new sponsor but they refuse to do it because they can only speak in that slide-whistle voice and... but still, getting back to the topic at hand, you're introduced to the backstory through this positively ham-tastic demonstration of how to create an instant classic of a cutscene, then invited to take a few whacks at Dracula, being awarded invincibility if you can't do it, before you get to start the actual game.
Here, you're instead put in control of Alucard, a complete ponce with hair to rival a power metal drummer and a collar with its own postcode, who has decided that the best way to distance himself from the name of his cursed bloodline is just to spell it backwards rather than changing it to Rodge and going to live in the country. Your task is to venture into a castle full of creatures of the night who can't act, chopping them up with a selection of gradually more effective equipment while they respond by making a set of unearthly squealing noises unmatched by anything but most episodes of Sex and the City, and gather up the cash that they keep in their bat/crow/skeleton pockets. But the introduction to the main game is quite wonderful - after stalking through a darkened corridor, the lights suddenly come up, the Dracula's Castle theme starts playing, and you just know from that point on that you're in for something very special.
My first thought on getting into the proper game was much like my first thought towards many classics that I didn't grow up with - namely, "Cripes, this is bloody hard". And you're not granted any forgiveness with continue points like in today's games - if you die, it's right back to the last save point for you. So it took me a while to get reaccustomed to taking every opportunity to save, even if I didn't think that I'd really done an awful lot since starting the game. The difficulty was made clear to me when after finding the first real "level", the Alchemy Laboratory, I was completely flattened against the first boss, a deadly combination of a flying fire-spitting blue gargoyle and a sort of flamingo with a spear. I actually retraced my steps at that point, wondering if I'd wandered into a place where I wasn't meant to be yet, but the backtracking let me level up a couple of times, and once I mastered Alucard's sort of Michael Jackson sliding backwards dodge, I got past them after a mighty struggle. This pattern was to be repeated many times throughout the game.It gets easier as you go on, though, because there are so many different paths to take and upgrades to find at any one point - eventually you even break free of your confinement to the ground, with the abilities to transform into a bat, a nondescript cloud of mist, or the world's most effeminate-looking canine*. What most impressed me about the game was just how much of it there was - it's all rendered in beautiful sprite work, and the castle is so large that it's very easy to get completely lost. This problem was alleviated somewhat when I realized that there was a map (after only about five hours), which helped a rather extraordinary amount, but it still takes a while for locations to become familiar. One other thing hampering navigation is that a couple of areas also seem to be fond of repeating rooms and enemy patterns more often than you'd think was necessary - for example, there's a bit where you have to run along a flat area with some pillars in the background and hit a scorpion-lady-for-a-tail a bit until it catches fire, then you run past it and exactly the same thing happens again, twice. Then you encounter Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, uproot it, and then exactly the same thing happens again a screen further along. Obviously, Dracula owns one of those castles from Scooby Doo where every single corridor has a grandfather clock, bookcase and doorway that just whizz past in endless rotation as you run along them.
The only way in which I felt the game showed its age was in the interface, which has a rather messy mid-90s look to it (not helped by being able to see all of its naked pixels on a modern television) and was extremely clumsy at times. I finished the game with an absolute banquet stuffed into Alucard's overcoat because the food healing items and potions are so awkward to use - you have to go into the menu, unequip your weapons, equip what you want to use, go back to the game, use the items (making him toss them disgustedly a bit in front of him), pick them up to actually get the health benefit, then go back into the menu and find the weapons that you had equipped again. It really doesn't feel worth it when you lose the amount of health you gained back so quickly anyway. And of course, there's always the atrocious acting, common to so many games of the time - but this one does it so badly that it somehow becomes part of its charm. There's a beardy man in the castle's library who you can buy things from, but "Vocal coaching" is not among them, sadly for both him and you.It took much longer than I ever expected at the outset, but after going around gathering up abilities for ages, we finally flew over to the tower at the top of the map, battered the final boss in the same place as we had begun in the fake introduction, and finished the game. No, in fact we didn't - just as you think you're at the end, you're transported into the sky and invited to go through an entire inverted copy of the castle with an entire new repertoire of enemies and bosses. I had thought that the game was big before that happened, and that the extra section really would be just a little bit extra, but you really can go anywhere - including up to the lowest level of the catacombs, which features the scariest music I have ever heard - knocking the crown away from previous record-holder Ecco the Dolphin - and which allows you to get to an absolutely ludicrous boss which is over a screen high and takes about ten minutes of hacking to defeat even when you're using a rather cheaty item that causes most of his attacks to heal you.
I'm not sure how I managed to avoid hearing about this twist for the last fourteen years - perhaps the black hole of popular culture that I occupy works to my advantage sometimes. (I had the same reaction at the start of Terminator 2, and I first saw that in 2001.) It's amazing that this amount of care went into content that was so... optional, even if it was intended to be the true route through the game - it takes a lot to get there. In fact, I only discovered it by mistake because my problem was that I assumed that I needed to get everything before completing the game, and thought after one disastrous fight with the apparent end boss that I was meant to do that much, much later. So I put off going back there until I had got everything in the castle, whereupon the game moved its goalposts.But I'm glad that I got the full experience. It's very rare to be able to play a game without any idea what's going to happen in it at all like that - now you can just go on the Internet and be fed absolutely everything about releases before you've even played them.
* Apart from
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kjorteo
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DOG METAMORSOFIS
Date: 2011-04-13 02:38 am (UTC)I dunno, I think I almost prefer it as the kind of secret that you have to have spoiled by a friend -- that was one of the things I loved about Cave Story, back in the days before it was well-known enough to have FAQs... but I agree, not knowing that it's going to happen beforehand sounds like it would have been awfully exciting. (Alas, I had been reading FAQs about it for days before I finally decided I had to try this game...) I can't decide whether I love or hate the fact that they've completely disguised 50% of the content of the game, though. You can beat the game, get the credits, and have nearly "100%" completion, and have no idea that there's more than just chasing stupid heart containers left. If you don't have a friend to spoil it for you, you can miss out on awesome exploration and boss fighting because you weren't anal enough in your completionism -- which is a valid thing to enjoy in games, but a separate interest from what it would take to enjoy the inverted castle, really... it doesn't make sense to reward only the completionists with content that could be enjoyed by anyone! If it were a grindy dungeon of palette swaps, that would be one thing...
Is that what you picture Alucard's wolf form looking like, by the way? I always thought he looked like a robot dog, or at least an "animate suit of armor" dog...
Oh shoot, which reminds me :D Did you even find out about Richter Mode?
BTW, apparently they re-recorded the dialogue (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnPhL-XyC3U) for the PSP port... Personally, I'd rather hear people totally own the hammy delivery than try to make a game like this actually seem like it could be done seriously. (And they ditch the André Malraux quote!) I feel like the voice acting was perfect - it's not like we're talking about Doctor Wawwy (http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/megaman8/), they just read their cheesy lines cheesily, and I think capped off the game's atmosphere perfectly. :)
What exactly is your subject line quote mangling, anyway?
GATHERBROTHERSOULBLADE
Date: 2011-04-13 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 02:47 am (UTC)And that reverse catacombs music - I don't need to click the link, I remember it - has me hearing cries of "Hyah! Hyah! AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
Re: GATHERBROTHERSOULBLADE
Date: 2011-04-13 02:51 am (UTC)Re: GATHERBROTHERSOULBLADE
Date: 2011-04-13 03:17 am (UTC)TIME'S OVER! LAND SPEED, HOOOOOO!
Date: 2011-04-13 06:53 am (UTC)(All Heavenly songs are roughly translated from segments of gibberish.)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 07:06 am (UTC)Furthermore, I'm going to have to disagree with you regarding the creepy music, though--not that the score doesn't have its creepy moments (far from it!) but that the one you selected is far from the most unnerving example to me. I always had the biggest problem with Abandoned Pit, myself. Also, in a series that's specifically built around including every gothic or monster movie type horror thing they can possibly find in any medium ever, SotN is impressive for having both of the only two occasions I've actually been legitimately creeped out by the design of a boss. (On the other hand, it also had all three of the top three occasions in which I thought a boss was cute.)
Re: DOG METAMORSOFIS
Date: 2011-04-13 07:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 07:31 am (UTC)Re: GATHERBROTHERSOULBLADE
Date: 2011-04-13 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 12:35 pm (UTC)Re: TIME'S OVER! LAND SPEED, HOOOOOO!
Date: 2011-04-13 12:37 pm (UTC)I still think of that as Heavenly's high point - I just love the... Castlevanianess of the sound, as I will now unavoidably think of it.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 12:42 pm (UTC)Also: how did I never hear the evil dolphins in Abandoned Pit. :X
And (if I could take a wild guess on his behalf) I think what's lovingly made about the Inverted Castle is even the completely unnecessary second quest has a completely original set of bosses! And the bosses in this game are kind of a big deal :X
Re: GATHERBROTHERSOULBLADE
Date: 2011-04-13 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 12:45 pm (UTC)Abandoned Pit does have a... dark and lonely atmosphere to it (but they all do!)
Some of the bosses really did look as if they'd come out of Silent Hill - and just as 2D artwork doesn't age as badly as 3D, having the lovingly detailed sprites made the images all the more uncomfortable to me. Were the frightening ones... falling-to-pieces corpse Beezelbub, and the huge ball of bodies in the room full of skulls?
As for the other side, let me take some stabs... huge furry Galamoth, the second form of Osbit or Olrok or somebody who I can't remember that clearly, and the blue half of the first boss team?
no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 12:47 pm (UTC)Abandoned Pit does have a... dark and lonely atmosphere to it (but they all do!) The other song that really made me uncomfortable and want to leave was the... "music" that plays in the very centre of the castle, which is more like a series of snatches of madness. I don't really know how to find it online quickly, though, not knowing the name of the area or the music itself.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 12:48 pm (UTC)Re: GATHERBROTHERSOULBLADE
Date: 2011-04-13 12:52 pm (UTC)And, you know I was impressed with how much there was in the game before - it seems that there's yet more of it that I didn't even discover!
no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 12:53 pm (UTC)Re: GATHERBROTHERSOULBLADE
Date: 2011-04-13 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 12:59 pm (UTC)and they are in love (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3869865/). <3Also, how could you forget Karasuman. :D (And his atypically pathetic habit of getting trapped in a corner (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9kqmPY8eP4)...)
Re: DOG METAMORSOFIS
Date: 2011-04-13 12:59 pm (UTC)The best part was at the very end, where Dracula suddenly gives his "Matthew 16:26, I believe" recital. By sheer coincidence, we beat that just after watching this... thing that should not have been allowed to happen, making it seem like the perfect pinnacle of silliness to finish the game's story.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 01:04 pm (UTC)I forgot about Karasuman precisely for that reason - that I had just wandered into the room and hit it against a wall until it exploded, making it a complete non-event boss! In fact, I ended up that to a few of the bosses - including Slogra and Gaibon - as it was the easiest way to beat them towards the beginning of the game, even though I simultaneously felt very guilty that somebody's carefully written AI routines were going to waste.