The greatest Castlevania ever

The greatest Castlevania ever.

Symphony of the night starts at castlevania

AoS is better in every way other than hardware and resolution

wow i was just playing aria of sorrow two minutes ago. hoped there'd be a castlevania thread up and holy shit there actually is.

I gotta say, as someone with no nostalgia attatchments because i only just played SOTN last halloween and am loving every minute of AoS right now, you're wrong.
and why would you ever factor out resolution and hardware? thats a whole lot to disregard when comparing games. SotN is beautiful. AoS is pretty at best. Impressive as fuck for a gameboy advance, but at the end of the day its the less engaging game visually. the visuals help to set the mood and make each part of the castle unique and memorable which is important in a game like this. SotN soundtrack blows it out of the water.

great fucking games in their own regard. its not always a competition. Whats are the mustplay castlevanias besides these two?

>and why would you ever factor out resolution and hardware?
Do you not know what the word "other" means?
And even then, the resolution and presence of fancy 3D effects doesn't affect gameplay so it's only relevant in certain contexts.

AoS has a lot more weapon variety, bullet souls is a far better system for a free roaming game than classicvania-style subweapon changeouts on set points on the map, and backdash attack canceling makes for faster gameplay with more "combos" you can pull off and lets enemies/bosses be faster and more engaging to fight without being unfair.

AoS is just a better game. SotN is dated and lacked a lot of significant refinements the other games brought.

The Inverted Castle was a cool concept, but to me that was not as fun to explore.

I suppose the soul switching stuff is pretty cool. and I can see how combat is a bit snappier. but the flip side of that is your playthroughs rely on luck or farming to get certain souls which isn't fast at all. The general pacing and size of SotN makes it very "epic" feeling and the music and intricately detailed environments and vivid colors made it more rewarding to explore. I feel like there were more interesting moments and secrets but I could be misremembering and I am only 85% done with AoS. they did the best they could with the advance's hardware and made a lot of smart design choices to account for it so I really appreciate both. AoS is easier to pick up and knock out. Its weird, if we were talking metroid I go zero mission > Super because of the refinements and speed of gameplay but SotN is just too damn charming.

anyway, what are the other castlevanias that are worth playing? any to avoid?

anyway to play this on pc? will it run on a shit top

My favourite is Portrait of Ruin, but there is really no reason to argue over which Igavania is the best, they are all fucking great with the exception that Harmony of Dissonance is just okay.

JOHNATHAN

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Reminder that the best vampire hunter is a twelve year old girl!

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Way overrated.
DS Castlevanias improved massively upon everything SOTN did.
>muh alucard
The level design is poor, weapons are shit, retarded secret command inputs, game is too easy, bosses suck, shield is useless, enemies are boring and repetitive, some good music but not enough, infuriating pushback after being hit everytime etc.

it'll run on any netbook in the last 3 years

Curse of Darkness > Lament of Innocence > Legacy of Darkness = 64 > Lords of Shadow > Lords of Shadow 2

Konpeto is a gem of the world

Feels like this is traced from something

Oh boy here we ho.

I would say Lament is tied with Curse, it may be unpolished, but it didn't had as many bullshit.

What's the least headache-inducing Classicvania?
t. casul scum

Curse of Darkness, its the easiest one.

Any Castlevania game where you aren't forced to use a whip all the time and don't have as much jump limitations so Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow, Order of Ecclesia, and Portrait of Ruin

Whoops, misread that he meant classicvania. I guess Bloodlines?

probably IV or maybe Rondo. I like all the classicvanias though

I made the same fuckupas well.
castlevania 4, you can whip at many places, making it easier.

Super Castlevania iv is best

Also OoT is the greatest game ever made.
Speed-running is the highest form of sport.
Finaly fantesy starts at 7.

Comfiest(at night) castlevania coming through.

Can you beat it in one night this Halloween?

rondo of blood > 3 > circle of the moon = 1 > symphony of the night

I love how Nathan Graves doesn't even have anything to do with the Belmonts. he's not from an offshoot family branch like Jonathan, or one closely tied to them like the Belnades.

Doesn't even get the Vampire killer and the Belmonts aren't so much as mentioned, compared to say, Order of Ecclesia which is another game involving a non-belmont organization but Belmonts technically were involved in the end-game.

Completing the DSS Cards is a pain though.
Otherwise, I love how I'm wrecking Dracula in the end using no item + item crash combo.

Harmony of Despair

>any to avoid?
Fucking mirror of fate 3ds. It's not a Castlevania game. More like God of war bullshit ass piece of shit game I fucking hate it

Yeah, it had its moments though. Cool bosses and all. I hoped for different layouts but I guess they had time limitations etc

I've never played a Castlevania game in my life. What are the best games that I could emulate on a toaster?

ya but how do i play it though

All gba games, snes and nes.
Just go to romsmania.

all those good ones honestly

gba, ds, ps1, nes

Jesus no way ppl this retarded...
Mother fuck Google exists. Emulate psx

Soma looks like a fag tho.

just making sure thats the preferred way

I can't get Into SotN even though I love the ds games. I also love the classics 1 through 4. I don't know. Is something wrong with me? I think it's the map? Too little guided progression maybe. It really does play like an older metroid where as the ds ones play closer to a fusion or zero mission.

do the thingy where you keep your alucard weapons at the beginning of the game

game mite be funner then since the enemies will die faster like in the old games.

Not as much of a fag as Al. He's literally wearing a skirt.

>last 3 years
I've been emulating PS1 for like 15 years now, and it was already in a shitty laptop back then

Cool. Thanks.

Who is Al?

Al Pacino

Real talk, Aria of Sorrow has one of the dullest castles in the series aesthetic-wise. It's all blue and/or grey 80% of the time.
It's really impressive for a GBA game and it brought the Soul system which every game imitated since then (even Bloodstained does) but naturally all games that followed it did it better/had more sub-weapon variety.

Has any one tried the insane difficulty or hard bosses patches for sotn? Are they worth it?

Nah, they are the typical stat change with removing broken items, made the game slower, not harder.

I liked the Hanging Gardens in Aria, I hadn't seen anything much like them in a CV game before.

That said, in reference to Bloodstained, someone on the forums say they've started doing the English voice acting. At least it seems like they're making progress on the game of some sort...

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download PPSSPP and get Dracula X Chronicles. DO NOT play the main game! Download a 100% safe file from the internet and click 'original game'. You can play Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood, which are the best IGA-vania and classic-vania titled there are. Then depending on which one you like you can delve deeper.

>Real talk, Aria of Sorrow has one of the dullest castles in the series aesthetic-wise
This desu, pretty much why I can't deal with the game. It doesn't help that for me the GBA coloring just doesn't lend itself well to the whole gothic aesthetic.

As far as Metroidvanias go, avoid CotM, contrarians will act like its the best GBA Castlevania, but its not, its easily the worst, and legitimately a badly designed game.
I played it until I got 91.2% before dropping it and honestly I wish I had stopped earlier, the game literally starts out alright and get worse and worse as you progress, with no bumps in that road, its just a steady and straight decline from the beginning as enemies and bosses have more and more unreasonably hard to dodge attacks, for Christ's sake one of the normal enemies even has a screen nuke that will hit you no matter how far away you run from him, and it will effectively take out 40% of your health AT LEAST.

Dawn of Sorrow (actually great if you ignore the art style and touch screen drawing shit)
Portrait of Ruin
Order of Ecclesia

>not posting the literal Dio boss from Dawn of Sorrow

It was okay. It got ridiculously easy WAY too quick and it failed to catch my interest enough to make me want to do the NG+ or try for any of the alternate endings.

Sounds more like you're just bad at the game.

Nah, the game is just badly designed, its actually harder than classicvanias because of its shit design.

I had an easier time with it than any of the classicvanias, though.

>its actually harder than classicvanias
It's really not. Knowing Circle of the Moon is great is also not a contrarian opinion, that would be saying shit like Harmony of Dissonance is the best

I don't see how, since in classicvanias the enemy attacks are designed to be dodgeable with your characters movement in mind, in CotM they have no regard to how slow Nathan is, and just made whatever for attacks, even going so far as to put in a fuck you screen nuke that can't be dodged on top of it FREEZING you, leaving you open to get hit by it AGAIN, AT 2-3 TIMES THE DAMAGE!
I'm playing HoD right now, while its certainly not the best, its a hell of a lot better than CotM, outside of it's ugly looks.

I don't really know how either. I've never beaten a classicvania because they piss me off some ways when I hit a skill wall and gameovers, whereas CotM didn't really piss me off. Maybe I just like the exploration gameplay more.

>castlevania
>great

>NG+
>Alternate endings

Did you just kill Richter and quit playing?

I'll be honest, I've never finished a classicvania, but I have played them, and whenever I died I never felt cheated, I always saw what I did wrong, but with CotM that has never been the case, save for any early game deaths, once I was 1/3 in, things started feeling cheaper and cheaper, as I could not even fathom how the devs expected me to dodge certain attacks, it got to the point for me where bosses felt like pure tank n spank tests, and then finally that fucking ice demon in the water area was the breaking point that made me just flat out hate the game and consider it to be one of the worst games I've ever played on the GBA, let alone Castlevanias, after reaching the top of the castle and losing to that jackass Hugh a couple times, I just said fuck it, and decided to never return to it.

Not him, but I thought it was shit design that breaking the shaft orb ends the fight, i wanted fight him a little more.

I was worried that Richter might not be able to take a hit so I spent my time entirely focused on the orb. It made evading Richter really tough as a result. The dude just goes berserk with a ton of things on the screen at once.

It would be need if you could fight a doppelganger coping Richter's moves in the Inverted Castle. Would have been a nice way to have the best ending and a full Richter fight on the same run.

is this a better version of symphony of the night than the psx one?

>touch screen drawing shit
Just use the patch that auto drawns the seals and shit

You know what it would be rad, doppelgangers of Alucard as Richter.

I played the Rondo of Blood PSP remake. Damn is it hard to find all the girls. I've only unlocked pne of them, but at least I've unlocked almost all the stages.

Can anyone tell their stories? Any tips, things which might be gamebreaking?

>OP cursed doppelganger with red rust so he couldn’t fight back
k e k

Rondo of Blood followed by Super Castlevania IV. You can brute force most stages in Rondo because there's no much real platforming. You can't brute force Super IV.

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>The dude just goes berserk with a ton of things on the screen at once.
If you actually do fight him and weaken him to a certain point he goes way more nuts

Uneducated pleb detected.

>let's make a piss easy boss even easier

Appalling.

Thanks for starting a thread where we get to do something other than shitpost.

Can anyone help in Rondo of Blood? I can't find all the girls.

I think you should plaaaay...
Symfy of Night!
What do you think, tuba?

I played it last week using ePSXe. It runs flawlessly on a 9 years old pc.

The Adventure Rebirth needs to be up in the essential section. x68k is not newbie friendly.

HoD PC port/sequel when

Yeah, I kind of meant that phase too, though I don't recall if I ever hit him enough accidentally or to get space that he went phase two.

I imagine if someone gets through Castlevania 3 they're tough enough to play x68, I put it in essentials because I think it actually has amazing level design and is super underrated, better than IV and Bloodlines for sure and a tossup with Rondo for me but I know a lot of people would disagree

One of them is at the graveyard iirc (break some rocks by hitting the appropriately before the first door(?) I can't' remember what the stage is called, it has jumping coffins
The second should be at the stage that has the waterfall.. And Anette is in the stage before dracula

It's hard to explain these things since I do them by muscle memory at this point.

Super Castlevania IV is personal favorite. Easiest, but best.

I also really liked Lament of Innocence, it's got some problems though.

Was never huge on the Metroidvania style Castlevanias though. I played through SoTN years ago and enjoyed it, was never compelled to go back to it though.

The nun and doctor's daughter are on the B route stages. You might have already seen the stairway that takes you to the nun, but it looks like random wooden debris or a broken crate so it's a bit tough to recognize and the place you can actually walk down at is odd.

The nun is in the graveyard stage and the doctor's daughter is in the watery daylight stage.

Thanks I guess.

Castlevania 3 is tough for different reasons. Dealing with the stage 7, specifically 7-05 -7-07 will take most newbies hours as they pay their "git gud" tax. X68k gives you enemies that require large amounts of whips as well as sometimes cruel platforming requirements.

It's a good game, but I would recommend that game to be the absolute last somebody played before they started playing the metroidvanias. Oh Speaking of you should add Castlevania: The adventure, Castlevania II: Belmonts Revenge, and Castlevania Legends somewhere. or maybe not 100% should add Vampire Killer though

Also, I take it you've already found Maria? She's in stage two on the main/upper route.

Yeah I was wondering if I should put the GB games in the second section but I think a lot of people would get turned off by the basic controls and nonexistent colors after playing other games in the series since Castlevania is such a visually expressive series

Yes, she was by far the easiest. All the other girls I've found were actually succubus's or something. Keep in mind I am a scrub, and I haven't touched the game in months since it made me ragequit. At least I got the "fake" ending.

Dracula X/Vampire's Kiss should be added to the second tier. Also, The Adventure Rebirth might be good enough to add to the first tier on the list.

The climbing alone and lack of subweapons in The Adventure would turn anybody off. Seeing rope in a videogame gives me Castlevania: The Adventure flashbacks. The music in those games is absolutely bitchin though and listening to New Messiah is mandatory to appreciate the Adventure Rebirth.

>All the other girls I've found were actually succubus's or something.

Are you talking about the Camilla boss fight?