This review contains spoilers
Like Zero Mission was to Metroid, Symphony of the Night is the only Castlevania game I had played before this big experiment. While I still appreciated it then, in retrospect I think a lot of what makes this one special was lost on me. Ayami Kojima’s art totally reinvents the look of Castlevania, and obviously it’s a massive structural departure from everything that came before. The story is so much more investable to me now actually knowing who Alucard, Maria and Richter are, and my increased awareness of series iconography makes seeing how it’s remixed really rewarding. Those aren’t just any ol’ bosses, that’s Gaibon and Slogra! That kinda thing. It’s cool!
Of course the big contextual shakeup here is that the game is a metroidvania now! Or I guess a search action game, if you’re one of the 0 people who calls it that. After weeks of playing so many Castlevania and Metroid games back to back, it’s pretty surreal to have a Castlevania that plays like a Metroid. It’s a change I really like though! It’s a genre I’m obviously very fond of and it brings a pronounced sense of placeness to Dracula’s castle that I really haven’t felt since the first game. I’ve come to really love the classicvanias, but I get why this was the direction the series would move in going forward. It’s a formula that practically begs for iteration, whereas the classic style had been pretty thoroughly explored by this point.
I think the most striking thing about Symphony of the Night is that there’s just so damn MUCH of it. Dracula’s Castle is huge, with such an intense volume of secrets and branching paths that even a thorough player is likely to end up missing a lot. There’s so many unique areas and backgrounds, each one meticulously rendered and instantly memorable. The soundtrack is as large as it is impressively varied, every area home to its own specific sound. The enemy count is likewise staggering, with a seemingly endless supply of new weird freaks and entire optional bosses hiding around each corner. You might even argue that there’s too much stuff here, and I don’t think you’d be wrong. There’s a shit ton of equippable items, so much so that the majority are outclassed by whatever you already have by the time you find them. The large map is as impressive as it is unwieldy, with loads of aimless backtracking not helped by a pretty clunky fast travel system. Alucard has 3 different forms he can turn into, but all of them move way slower than your default pace, which was already pretty slow to begin with.
In most other games these kinds of things would be dealbreakers, but I have a hard time holding it against Symphony of the Night. Yeah, most of the armors and weapons are useless, but every sword and cape comes with its own unique sprite change. Sure Alucard’s movement speed sucks, but his walk cycle is so weird and ethereal and he makes Megaman X4 afterimages as he moves. The map may be bloated, but you can sit down in all the chairs and look out of all the telescopes. You can strike a pose by holding up and find boots that make you one pixel taller and make the loading screen swirl around by fucking about with the D-pad. There’s such a volume of weird and mostly pointless details that any of the systemic jank just ends up feeling like part of the charm. The game is a mess, but of course it’s a mess. It’s a monument to throwing absolutely everything at the wall, an achievement of pure excess over sensible design. It’s why I think the goofball voice acting is so integral to the vibe—whether or not the performances are good is missing the point, it’s the fact that they voice acted every single line of dialogue even when nobody was asking them to.
The inverted castle is really the epitome of why this game rocks for me. It’s one of the most singularly insane design decisions in Castlevania history, maybe in any game! Provided you collected a series of obscure items before fighting Richter, you unlock an entire second castle to explore, the same as the one you just played, but flipped upside down. This means that the entire map, every room and every path, had to be designed to be playable both right-side-up or reversed! This inverted castle isn’t a small addition either, it’s like a third of the game. There’s unique enemies and items and bosses only found here, it’s how you get the true ending and everything. And the only way you would know that it’s even there is by finding and solving a series of increasingly obtuse puzzles that most players wouldn’t even know to look for! It’s not even a particularly fun section of the game either, honestly it’s kind of a slog, but the simple fact it exists is awe-inspiring to me. This team could have likely made a much smaller, less dense game and it probably would have been easier to make and more fun to play. But they didn’t. Instead they crammed anything and everything they could into one project, regardless of whether or not it was intuitive or worth the effort or if every player would even see it. It’s almost a more powerful artistic statement that so much of Symphony of the Night does kind of suck. I’ve played plenty of games I enjoyed more, but so few that are as enthusiastic as this one. It’s sheer ambition is as mesmerizing as it is borderline self-destructive. It’s a brilliant mishmash of a game, a miserable little pile of indulgence. It’s the messiest masterpiece I’ve ever played. Really, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Of course the big contextual shakeup here is that the game is a metroidvania now! Or I guess a search action game, if you’re one of the 0 people who calls it that. After weeks of playing so many Castlevania and Metroid games back to back, it’s pretty surreal to have a Castlevania that plays like a Metroid. It’s a change I really like though! It’s a genre I’m obviously very fond of and it brings a pronounced sense of placeness to Dracula’s castle that I really haven’t felt since the first game. I’ve come to really love the classicvanias, but I get why this was the direction the series would move in going forward. It’s a formula that practically begs for iteration, whereas the classic style had been pretty thoroughly explored by this point.
I think the most striking thing about Symphony of the Night is that there’s just so damn MUCH of it. Dracula’s Castle is huge, with such an intense volume of secrets and branching paths that even a thorough player is likely to end up missing a lot. There’s so many unique areas and backgrounds, each one meticulously rendered and instantly memorable. The soundtrack is as large as it is impressively varied, every area home to its own specific sound. The enemy count is likewise staggering, with a seemingly endless supply of new weird freaks and entire optional bosses hiding around each corner. You might even argue that there’s too much stuff here, and I don’t think you’d be wrong. There’s a shit ton of equippable items, so much so that the majority are outclassed by whatever you already have by the time you find them. The large map is as impressive as it is unwieldy, with loads of aimless backtracking not helped by a pretty clunky fast travel system. Alucard has 3 different forms he can turn into, but all of them move way slower than your default pace, which was already pretty slow to begin with.
In most other games these kinds of things would be dealbreakers, but I have a hard time holding it against Symphony of the Night. Yeah, most of the armors and weapons are useless, but every sword and cape comes with its own unique sprite change. Sure Alucard’s movement speed sucks, but his walk cycle is so weird and ethereal and he makes Megaman X4 afterimages as he moves. The map may be bloated, but you can sit down in all the chairs and look out of all the telescopes. You can strike a pose by holding up and find boots that make you one pixel taller and make the loading screen swirl around by fucking about with the D-pad. There’s such a volume of weird and mostly pointless details that any of the systemic jank just ends up feeling like part of the charm. The game is a mess, but of course it’s a mess. It’s a monument to throwing absolutely everything at the wall, an achievement of pure excess over sensible design. It’s why I think the goofball voice acting is so integral to the vibe—whether or not the performances are good is missing the point, it’s the fact that they voice acted every single line of dialogue even when nobody was asking them to.
The inverted castle is really the epitome of why this game rocks for me. It’s one of the most singularly insane design decisions in Castlevania history, maybe in any game! Provided you collected a series of obscure items before fighting Richter, you unlock an entire second castle to explore, the same as the one you just played, but flipped upside down. This means that the entire map, every room and every path, had to be designed to be playable both right-side-up or reversed! This inverted castle isn’t a small addition either, it’s like a third of the game. There’s unique enemies and items and bosses only found here, it’s how you get the true ending and everything. And the only way you would know that it’s even there is by finding and solving a series of increasingly obtuse puzzles that most players wouldn’t even know to look for! It’s not even a particularly fun section of the game either, honestly it’s kind of a slog, but the simple fact it exists is awe-inspiring to me. This team could have likely made a much smaller, less dense game and it probably would have been easier to make and more fun to play. But they didn’t. Instead they crammed anything and everything they could into one project, regardless of whether or not it was intuitive or worth the effort or if every player would even see it. It’s almost a more powerful artistic statement that so much of Symphony of the Night does kind of suck. I’ve played plenty of games I enjoyed more, but so few that are as enthusiastic as this one. It’s sheer ambition is as mesmerizing as it is borderline self-destructive. It’s a brilliant mishmash of a game, a miserable little pile of indulgence. It’s the messiest masterpiece I’ve ever played. Really, I wouldn’t change a thing.