After playing through Aria of Sorrow last month and dipping my toes into Metroidvanias, I have completed SOTN as a newcomer to the series!
Overall, I recognize that SOTN is a very good game - but I think it has some flaws and overall, I enjoyed Aria quite a bit more. I had two main problems with Symphony - the difficulty curve fluctuates a lot and feels a bit wonky, and I felt like I got lost more than in Aria
Initially, I found the game extremely hard but by the latter half, I felt like the game was giving me health upgrades way too frequently. It felt like almost every sword I picked up was worse than what I had and I don't think you can remove sell stuff from your inventory, so things really pile up lol. Plus, because I got lost so often, I ended up unintentionally grinding a lot and I think overleveled, because a few late game bosses were pretty easy
I'm also not a huge fan of how sub weapons work - where you can carry one at a time, and find them in set destroyables. I really liked the knife as a consistent cheap range ability, but I would sometimes pick up others without realizing and not be able to get my old one back
Despite my negativity, I did enjoy the game a lot - I'd like to give a special shoutout to how good everything looks. The spritework is really nice with some very fun touches of 3D scattered around the place. The sound track is consistently solid with some standout tracks and the voice acting is just.......it's absolutely delightfully dogshit, just peak PS1 "we're recording in a bathroom" vibes, I loved it
Overall, I recognize that SOTN is a very good game - but I think it has some flaws and overall, I enjoyed Aria quite a bit more. I had two main problems with Symphony - the difficulty curve fluctuates a lot and feels a bit wonky, and I felt like I got lost more than in Aria
Initially, I found the game extremely hard but by the latter half, I felt like the game was giving me health upgrades way too frequently. It felt like almost every sword I picked up was worse than what I had and I don't think you can remove sell stuff from your inventory, so things really pile up lol. Plus, because I got lost so often, I ended up unintentionally grinding a lot and I think overleveled, because a few late game bosses were pretty easy
I'm also not a huge fan of how sub weapons work - where you can carry one at a time, and find them in set destroyables. I really liked the knife as a consistent cheap range ability, but I would sometimes pick up others without realizing and not be able to get my old one back
Despite my negativity, I did enjoy the game a lot - I'd like to give a special shoutout to how good everything looks. The spritework is really nice with some very fun touches of 3D scattered around the place. The sound track is consistently solid with some standout tracks and the voice acting is just.......it's absolutely delightfully dogshit, just peak PS1 "we're recording in a bathroom" vibes, I loved it