You like Castlevania, don't you? (more metroidvania reviews later)
A few weeks ago, I finished my first Castlevania game, Dawn of Sorrow. It was great, ah loved it. So I decided to try to finish the first Castlevania game I ever played as a kid.
Circle of the Moon is obnoxiously difficult, but I did it. Lemme tell you a bit about how haaaaaaard it is:
For starters, Dracula(surprise final boss!), who hits hard to begin with, spams an attack that will take over half your health in 1 hit in the last stage of his 2nd form. 500+ damage. You'll have less than 1000 max health when you're fighting him. What does that mean? I'll tell you what it means like this: healing items in this game are SUCH rare drops, that it's not uncommon for a person to get less than 10 potions in their entire game if they're not farming. How much does a potion heal you? 20HP. How much damage do all enemies do to you in late-game? More than 20. Okay, so what else is there? You can find MEAT which restores 50HP. Rarer than potions, by far. Without farming, maybe you'll find 1 or 2. How much damage do enemies do to you in late-game? Very often, more than 50. There's stronger potions, but many of them require going into an optional arena with the strongest enemies in the game just for the chance of finding them. You *are* able to obtain a high potion that heals 250 health: less than half of the attack which Dracula spams on you. All you have to do to get that potion is kill the Devil, and he'll drop it. Rarely. How rare? 2%. You have a 2% chance, after killing the Devil, of getting a potion that won't heal 1/2 of the damage you'll take from one of Dracula's final attacks. Good luck.
All of this is to say that the game is very stingy with healing items. But it's not really that difficult to survive from one save room to the next throughout the entire game. And most of the bosses aren't THAT hard, but to really give yourself a better chance, you need cards that give you magic abilities. With the "DSS" system, you can combine 2 different cards(a Greek god and a mythological creature) to give yourself neato stuff like an elemental shield or special attacks or summons. Do you think these cards are less or more rare than the fucking potions? Exactly. Still, they make a lot of the game trivial.
I was getting tired of it by the end, but the game actually holds up pretty well. You really can just breeze through most of it. Exceptthedragonzombies. It also has one of the best title screen tracks ever. Christian hymns, in MY vampire game?
Yes, Castlevania is a Christian series. But that's not what this post is about. Is it? No, I'm just gonna ramble a little about the games.
Last night, I also beat DEATH in Aria of Sorrow. Death being a servant of Dracula is a fun tradition. In 2024 where nothing makes sense, it's not that whacky, but decades ago, the idea that Dracula is such an asshole that death itself is his subject was pretty fresh.
Wait, don't let me start talking about Aria of Sorrow. DAWN of Sorrow is the game I finished, let's talk about that first(even though it's the sequel to Aria). I loved it, I loved everything about it.
The protagonist's an emo prettyboy named Soma Cruz who's trying to protect his gf who he denies is his gf, and coping with the fact that he's Dracula's reincarnation and he's trying to not become the new DARK LORD. It's just-- good. There's some cult that's trying to create a new Dark Lord, because they believe the fallacy that the Devi-- excuse me, the DARK LORD, is just God's equal and opposite. God, being ultimate Good, requires some ultimate Evil. That's a common enough misunderstanding, but what makes the cult goofy is that they're doing it because they believe it in some way helps God. This is never explained, but it doesn't have to be. It's a simple enough premise. There's a few candidates to become the Dark Lord including Soma, so they're like "lool Soma become the Dark Lord" and he's like "No i dont wanna". What more should there be? What, do I want my character to be flirting with the idea of becoming the scourge of humanity with some boring "OoOooo but i could be poooowerful and and maybe I'd be a goOoOood ruler of the world" crap? No. Soma doesn't wanna be evil, he's only worried that it's inevitable. And it's not, so everything works out.
The art style is pretty standard anime, which is completely different from earlier games including Aria, but it's nice. (The next game is less-nice anime, but still good enough, THEN it returns to the same style as Aria. It's called Castlevania, not Consistencyvania)
What separates Dawn of Sorrow(and all of the GBA/DS games)from Circle of the Moon is that once the game kicks off, you can ACTUALLY BUY SUPPLIES. You can always return to the beginning village and forge powerful special weapons with Yoko, a magician working for the Church(das rite, Church GOOD) and purchase healing items and basic weapons from Hammer, an ex-soldier who didn't feel like dying in the last game. It's a nice little comfort, and these kinds of safe/preparation areas are always one of my favorite parts of "Metroidvania" games.
You also get waaaay moar abilities much more quickly, so they're just easier games in general. Not so much easier, but you never have to be 2-hit by Dracula and do nothing but seethe because you have nothing to heal yourself with.
At the end of Dawn of Sorrow, you decide to uh, NOT become the new Dark Lord because lol you never really wanted to be or had to be. Because there is no Dark Lord at the end of the game, the cult's assertion that it's necessary is never confirmed, which is a nice touch. You reunite with your not-gf, the agents of the Church say "good job lol" and Hammer survives once again. All is well.
Circle of the Moon's story is even smoller (get separated from your vampire hunting master and go find him) but it's nice and neat.
The simplicity of Castlevania is nice. The entire game is just "Explore castle, kill vampire" and that's perfect. Castles should be explored and vampires should be killed. Except Alucard, I guess.
I really should play Symphony of the Night when I can.
Anyway that's it. Castlevania's preddy fun. These games are super-repetitive, but the music is really good(With the exception of Harmony of Dissonance, which has infamously bad music), the gameplay is tiiiight, and they're challenging but usually not too hard. It's not Ender Lilies, but we might not have Ender Lilies without it.