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).

It's cool that everything explodes when you kill it. The boss fights are hit & miss, with all of them having very nice art. Sadly the level design is agonizing and largely consists of long corridors full of the same enemies. The second half of the game's map is even worse; you are constantly required to switch to and from a very slow flying state to access new areas, as it was obviously not designed to be traversed normally.

Fucking around in the inventory menu gets increasingly tedious because they couldn't have a sane item system. Most items just serve to clutter your inventory. This game suffers greatly from completely pointless RPG mechanics that detract from the entertaining parts of the game. You are drip-fed small servings of fun between long stretches of boring nothing, well hidden by satisfying bells and whistles that make you feel like something is happening when it's not.

It is hard to shake the feeling that the developers wanted to stretch out the play time as long as possible, but they didn't want to bother actually making it worth playing for that long. It's a waste of time.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is what happens when you decide to add everything to a game. It's worth playing for the presentation alone, but one shouldn't be ashamed if they've had enough before it's over.

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.

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.

Com certeza um dos meus jogos favoritos até hoje. SOTN não só foi um dos pioneiros do gênero Metroidvania, como também é um dos melhores do gênero. A gameplay é fluída e ampla, com uma possibilidade de replay muito ampla. A música é definitivamente uma das melhores coisas desse jogo, além de funcionar muito bem com cada área do castelo, ela contribuí para a ambientação e sentimento de cada área.
A exploração é algo fantástico. Explorar Castlevania é fascinante e intrigante, cada canto do castelo guarda algo a ser descoberto.

This definitely deserves its spot as one of the best castlevania games. I'd even argue the one of the best in the metroidvania genre considering it was one of the games that inspired a shitton of games in said genre. The music is phenomenal, the story while simple, is really enjoyable even if its not a story focused game and holy fuck the gameplay is pure kino to the highest order. Some of the bosses can kick your ass a shit ton early on but once you push through that the game is a massive wild ride from beginning to end. Truly one of the best games on the Playstation 1.

It's impressive how much the team got right on their first attempt, but there are still a few minor quirks and annoyances that make me prefer Aria to it. Mostly small things like how a lot of the platforms in the inverted castle are placed in such a way that they're barely out of reach of your double jump so you need to use the mist or bat forms to get past them, how the wolf form is kind of useless outside of running through the game's handful of straight enemy filled hallways faster, or how most of the bosses are complete pushovers when compared even to some of the tankier normal enemies. And even they were stupidly easy once I found out about the moon rod's special ability. I know that fully exploring the game didn't help this, but even then I only finished with a completion percentage of 192.6%, so there were probably a few things I missed.