Symphony of the Night is, quite simply, an exemplary search action game.

The game is beautifully sprited and animated, the environments are intricate and impressive, the soundtrack is stellar, and Alucard has a robust and varied set of moves and items at his disposal. The overall progression is pretty straightforward for those looking to just make it to the end, but there are tons of secrets and hidden discoveries for curious or repeat players. And anyone who might struggle with the game can seek out better equipment or even level grind a bit to give themselves an advantage, making the game more accessible than most of the classicvanias.

Also, while I don't hate the PSP redub, the PS1 dub is better, in my opinion. I think it gives the memorable story cutscenes an appropriate level of gravitas (and ham).

Ironically, I find that Symphony of the Night has aged worse than the original Castlevania despite releasing a full 11 years later. Whereas the original is a tightly-focused, weighty platformer, this game is stuffed with several half-baked systems (familiars, clunky inventory management, fighting game inputs for spell-casting) in an experience that is far too easy and straightforward to warrant giving the player such a wide assortment of tools. Additionally, the infamous Reverse Castle, though initially captivating, pads the game out for longer than it should, requiring the player to effectively retrace their path through all of the (nearly 1000) rooms they've already explored. All that being said, Symphony of the Night is still quite a good game: the exploration in the normal castle is incredible, the music and pixel art are top-notch, and the hilariously stilted vocal performances are perhaps only matched in video games by the original Resident Evil. It's clear how and why this game continues to inspire so many others to this day, even though I think it does not completely nail down its own formula.

I don't usually understand why certain games are so highly rated here on backloggd. BOTW, Celeste, Sonic 3 etc, so I wasn't expecting to love this. I mean, I hate backtracking, so why would I like something that basically revolves around it?

After about 2 hours of playing, I put down my controller, looked into the sky and said "I get it".

Yeah this game fucking fucks. Slashing through everything in sight, finding new relics to find new areas to find new items is so much fun. At a point, your inventory does become cluttered with useless shit, and some of the stuff you have to do to progress can be cryptic (waiting in a room for a minute) but those are really my only critiques.

The inverted castle is pretty infamous, but I don't think its AS bad as people make it out to be, especially if you get the Crissaegrim early into it (like I did).

Man, I have to start playing more Metroidvanias. I better go check out Super Metroid, since everyone loves that one.