A core thing I've grown to believe about Metroidvanias (and to be honest, many RPGs full stop) is that too much reliance on stats to balance difficulty winds up discouraging exploration, because it means that if you see everything, the endgame becomes a cakewalk. (Souls has long since solved this by making your equipment's strength top out pretty early in terms of damage to late game bosses, which with only a few exceptions means you do have to learn the boss' patterns to win). There are several pieces of equipment here that just absolutely trivialize the game by an absurd factor compared to more normal equipment, which you may wind up wanting to abuse once you start growing weary of backtracking and constantly respawning enemies. The other problem here is that you'll never use like 70% of your inventory. Has anyone really ever remembered to use the TNT?

Music, art direction, movement, pacing, variety, verticality, exploration are all otherwise still very nearly at Super Metroid's tier of vision and excellence.

What can I say that hasn't been said about this game like 100 times over already, it doesn't even matter what you think of this game, it's peak. This game has flaws yes, but they do very little to hamper my overall experience, the inverted castle is still the weirdest idea for padding out game time but you know what? I don't even care because the game is so fun to play anyways that I don't mind exploring it. And In all honesty, it's not as bad as everyone likes to say it is.

Symphony of the Night was their first attempt at a Metroidvania and by golly did they ever succeed in that. This is one of the most fun games i've ever played and while it isn't my number 1, it is still goddamn fun to replay over again.

This one is going to be complicated for me, but I'll try.
This game is often credited as "creating a genre" (which I'll address later) and being in general revolutionary. And after playing every previous game in the series (mainly in preperation for this one) I simply do not see that 10/10 perfect score.
Sure, it's a huge leap forward for the series: flawless animations, beautiful fully realized aesthetics and music, playtime of longer than 2 hours... But there's one issue here: Super Metroid came out 3 years earlier.
You see, there's a reason wht that game gets praised to bit: it reintrouces the rough formula from the first game, and pretty much perfects it. The game is long, but never fails to excite the player: even your average zoomie brain gets constant stimulation with new weapons, new movement tech, but counterbalances it with harder challenges which force you actually make use of those gadgets. The best part of it all, however, is the many uses the items have outside of opening color coded doors, as you generally get to use most of them anywhere: new beams hit harder, new movement items let you do more and move faster, new bombs can clear your screen etc. etc. and Samus at the start of the game is a completely different character from a demigod she eventually becomes at the end. And despite the long runtime, because of that, engagement never really drops, as new things get introduced at every turn, rewarding the player.
Now, here's SOTN whcih doesn't do that. Alucard, while a really cool character with a cool design, stays the fucking same throughout this long-ass dragged out adventure, and the only real movement upgrade he gets is a double jump. "B-but the bat and the wolf" -- nope, both are ass. The bat is a tool you get to fly places, but not a FUN form to interact it. Comparing with, say Space Jump from Metroid, which sometimes forces you to have proper timing, but most importnantly has no annoying animation to go though just to use, the bat form from SOTN is just a pain in the ass. AND you are forced to use it in the super secret "oh shit our game is too short let's pad out the runtime with more of the same but FLIPPED!!" segment just to navigate previously simple rooms. And the wolf? The form designed for speed? Yeah, this mutt can't jump. Should I even compare it to simply running as is to get speed in Metroid? And both forms get dropped when you get hurt too, because fuck fun I guess.
Due to the lack of real, tangible movement improvements, the game's exploration quickly becomes a chore. Underground caverns straight up have you travel to one side to unlock another boat spawn, to get to the other side to unlock water not hurting you. Both are useless outside of the caverns by the way, you just wasted your time as a part of the intended progression. And a lot of areas go like that: you MAY get a weapon/armor/item/familiar card, but most of the time you get a useless outside of a single room key item or some consumable. Oh yeah, consumables. This game has RPG elements, which means it must shower you in pointless junk you never use because that's what it means apparently...
The weapons you get are fun, but all essentially are used the same way. Some are slower, some are faster, some have special attributes, some have different hitboxes and all have different damage numbers. But they are always used the same way and hit in the same dirsction. For fucks's sake, none can be used vertically, they all work in the expected way. For the usual linear Castlevania game it would be fine, and even cool actually, but nah, we are wearing big boy shoes now, deal with that for 10+ hours. The rest of the "RPG" stuff in the game is just fluff, not really worth discussing. Items make number bigger, choose which number you want to get bigger now, not like it will change how your character plays. And using consumables has you scrolling trough menus to equip a shitstick which hits once for 30 damage and leaves you with an empty hand. Wow.
Now, why am I so angry at this game, which I didn't even really hate and in the end enjoyed it for what it was? Because I don't get it. Right under my review there are a dozen which call it a 10/10 "best in the series" masterpiece. I don't get what part of this game leaves them with such an impression. Is is this just the style alone? Am I just stupid? But oh wait, it created the word "Metroidvania", it makes this special? What even is this word?
Now, here's a spoiler, a redpill if you will: "metroidvania" is a meaningless buzzword created to classify other games with the names of the series it itself doesn't represent well: not all Metroid and Castlevania games are "metroidvania". And in fact, SOTN doesn't even exactly reinwent the formula, it attempts to replicate Metroid with it's own spin, which it does... Decently, actually. With how different the focus was, the game delivered well enough for the time, it successfully made it's series relevant again, and even gave it soft reboot if you will, despite being direct sequel to Rondo (which is a far better game don't @ me). But it's not some sort of grand revolution worth creating a genre over. Stop putting this game on such a pedestal, making people like me infinitely confused. And the thing is, I don't even think that Super Metroid is some flawless masterpiece. To make even more people mad, some future Metroid games are far better, I have zero nostalgia for either series. I just don't agree with this idea that SOTN is the game of similar quality which rivals it: it's a game focused on completely different thing, making it way worse in some of the most basic shit (like movement) and better in a lot more smaller details (the theme, style, animations, secrets, hotter protag etc.etc.)
Here's my rant. I don't know what I'm saying, I can't write. I just hope that it's not a peak of Castlevania games, because it's too damn fucking shallow to be one.

What a fantastic game! Everything about this game was amazing (except maybe the voice acting, which was a little rough but nothing major). The level design, the OST, and the bosses were amazing. It wasn't as hard as the older ones I've played, but that didn't take away from the overall experience.

So if you haven't played Castlevania before, then, for sure, try this one.

5/5 stars.

I think the high esteem this game is held in, maybe raised my expectations a bit too much, but this is a fun time. Maybe if I'd played this before the advance games I'd have enjoyed it more? It does seem like a lot of this is recycled in those games. Not just the game play, but everything from the areas to the bosses were very similar if not the same.

I liked the music, some of it was really good, I could've just left that particular screen on and chilled out. The voice acting is pretty notorious I suppose. What is a man etc... Pretty standard for the time I suppose.

Certainly one of my favourite types of game to play through in recent years. Not sure why I've left this one so long though, considering I've had it for ages.

I've never been a big Castlevania fan. The series has never grabbed me like it does with other people. But I've heard, over and over, that if you play one Castlevania game, you must play Symphony of the Night. So I played it, and it was good, I guess. Not great, but decent. The game takes great advantage of the Playstation hardware, the environments are vibrant, and the characters are detailed (for pixels) and well-animated. Most of the enemies are interesting, although most don't present too much of a challenge that can't be overcome by spamming attacks at them. Having just finished Super Metroid, I must admit the level design really let me down. Although SotN is considered the reason "vanina" is in "Metroidvania," it's clear that Super Metroid is the attentive, doting mother, and SotN is the deadbeat father. There's almost no comparison. In Super Metroid, I rarely got lost to the point where I couldn't find my own way back to the critical path. SotN was the opposite. I grew tired of stumbling around whacking at walls, hoping for secret items that would allow me to progress, and eventually, I gave up and kept the walkthrough open on my phone. The upside-down 2nd half of the game (sorry for spoiling a 27-year-old game) was a neat idea, but inverting the map didn't improve its overall design. And the aforementioned walkthrough led me to acquire the Crissaegrim a lot earlier than was probably intended, making the latter half of the game mostly a joke. Imagine if Super Metroid gave you the Hyper Beam halfway through the game instead of right at the end. SotN has piqued my interest enough that I will try a few more entries from the Castlevania franchise, but it did not live up to the almost thirty years of hype I experienced before playing it.

Symphony Of The Night's reputation as an all timer is absolutely deserved. Playing this for the first time in 2024 was an incredible experience and although some of the modern gaming comforts we have become accustomed too may be missing SotN still stands tall and I was more than willing to forgive these minor frustrations.

The best time to play SotN was in 1997, the second best time is now.

As an aside, why on earth is this not on Switch. Seriously Konami, WTF.

Overrated I’m not a fan of Metroid or Zelda type games I just find them kinda boring with not a lot of stimulating content and backtracking is generally a pain
Fortunately sotn has fast travel which hurts less but kinda loses me when it comes down to its challenge since it’s pretty easy to abuse spells and gets tiring of killing the same enemies with the same attacks down the same hallways
It’s more fun to move around and play it casually admiring its art and music than take it seriously as a game that actually tests you like the previous Castlevania games before it so if you’re not gonna give me a challenge or opportunity for self improvement then you may as well let me play around with its various mechanics and see what kind of cool things I can do so it’s enjoyable for that reason but does eventually get boring