Was the inverted castle really necessary?

Was the inverted castle really necessary?

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Yes. It's ingenuous game design, the devs effectively more than doubled the use of the map.

no but ditching the linear gameplay for the boring ass "where the fuck do i go" kinda game was.

>double the size of a map with minimal effort
i don't know about 'necessary' but it was pretty neat when i first saw it

No, but they did it anyway.

My biggest gripe with games like this are ones that go beyond 100% completion records.

Sure whatever 200% is acceptable because tee hee inverted map but this 200.5% and 210% shit needs to stop.

Maybe not, but it was cool as fuck.

Inverted castle had way worse music and for some reason was reused in most areas. Sinking Ole Sanctuary is the best song in there.

No, it still remains the biggest pace killer in video game history. Also posting superior box art.

Does it matter if it's necessary?
It's optional.

Absolutely, the game would have been pretty short otherwise, there is almost no reason the explore the bottom half of the castle otherwise.

>It's optional.
did you even play the game?

Biggest gripe is that they never fucking added the Saturn exclusive content on any of the million of ports they did for this game and MM8.

They're both p good imo. The American art is simplistic sure but the way it shops one of the irl castles that inspired Castlevania in games prior is still cool.

I wouldn't call it ingenuous by design at all. It's an ingenuous use of memory they weren't aware the system had at the beginning, maybe.

The reveal was awesome but the entire second half of the game was just a tedious snoozefest.

As soon as you got the Crissagrem there was no inverted castle.

Probably not, but they noticed platforming became more "complex" if you were to invert the castle (i.e. most single jumps now became double jump gaps, and you couldn't just dash across places such as the long hall in the marble gallery, especially with the inclusion of those invincible skull things). I'd say it was more of a happy accident how they came up with it.

>get ultra lucky and end up with two crissaegrims in one playthrough
>equip both and alternate buttons
>attack rate increases and Alucard is even more of an untouchable exp blender

>Only ever gotten it once
At least it lived up to the legend.

the inverted castle sucked balls

...

This desu. It's like Konami execs came in and said, "Your game is way too short" and team IGA went "oh shit" and flipped the castle upside down to pad out the length. SotN is still good but AoS and PoR are way better. SotN does have way more cool and obscure stuff tucked away than any of the other games did, though.

Maybe not but its cool

But don't ingenous live in a lamp?

I keep hearing people bring up PoR alongside SotN and AoS, guess I gotta play that soon.

It was cool, the "you thought you've finished the game with 100% but there's literally an extra 100% to do" kind of cool, but actually going through it wasn't that fun

It doesn't have anywhere near the amount of content as the first castle. You've gotten every ingame ability for exploring in the first castle. The second castle is a "get the real ending" gimmick with padding for autists who need to fill out the map like myself.

PoR is a strong contender for the best CV game, period. As much as the paintings seem like a gimmick for being on a portable system, they give the game a sense of level design no other IGAvania does and rings strongly reminiscent of older CV games with enemy placement and traps for throwing off players. But instead of killing you outright with things like pit deaths, you'll end up down-jumping through a floor back to an earlier room and having to backtrack because you didn't look before you leapt. The game's main mechanic is built off CV3's partner system only there are also assists and team attacks. There's even some other references to punchman games, like picking up the first punching weapon in the game and scrolling the screen 2cm over to fight this dude for the first time. (sorry for bad pic, GIS didn't come up with anything better)

It's SO good.

Most of the game wasn't necessary.

>stretch game out twice its length with shitty map inversion
>all those spells you never fucking need
>90% of items you never fucking need
>2/3 of bosses are so easy there's no fucking point
>probably 1/5 of rooms could have been removed because they were just repetitions
>too many hidden items some literally shoved up the librarian's asshole

I liked the game but it's one of the best examples of quantity over quality.

>but it's one of the best examples of quantity over quality.
If they put quantity over quality, they wouldn't have had items and rooms to "copypaste" in the first place. The game had both quality and quantity.

No this is one the of the most overrated game ever made.
Thank God the DS era saved this series in terms of quality

Goddamn, 2x Crissagrem/Valmanway's in Castlevania HD was OP in online as Soma.

There's some quality but not that much. The game is a cakewalk to begin with. I blame the leveling system personally, that shit almost always ruins games outside of WRPGs

>DS era saved this series in terms of quality
Aria was on the GBA.

It's also a healthy challenge. You'll die because there were things you should have done differently in previous attempts, and some of the exploration will even bait you into sticky situations for trying to hunt after a particular skill. Again, SO fucking good.

>DS era
I think you mean the GBA era. The DS era has one good game. DoS was so overrated for being an early DS game in a high profile series, it's not even funny. Everything about it is worse than AoS except for there being more souls for pokemon kids and Julius mode. Ecclesia butchers the format and all the challenge comes from trying to navigate the shoulder button skills that you need for playing the game the regular way without getting carpal tunnel.

>Thank God the DS era saved this series in terms of quality
agreed

The handheld games were all wannabe SOTNs that just continued the shitty leveling system trend and made it worse. Nice bait though.

>The game is a cakewalk to begin with
The low difficulty doesn't erase the quality spritework, quality music and smooth gameplay.

>But don't ingenous live in a lamp?

FUCK sorry! I get confused

Whole game suffers from it being too easy though. How am I supposed to enjoy the beautiful spritework when I take down a boss in 15-20 seconds? I'm not impressed, I'm left disappointed. And it is still filled to the brim with useless shit.

CotM, AoS and PoR all do unique things with the format that give them their own merits over SotN. They're all arguably better.

>didn't get a Crissaegrim during my short-lived journey through the Forbidden Library but got a Fist of Tulkas
>now have the ability to fire Homing Hadoukens and perform JoJoke Punches

SotN is basically a collectathon except what you collect is cool shit you can do in the game. It's sad that hardly any of it is really necessary, but, it's one of its strengths for how wide of a variety there is.

Yeah, the music was nice and peaceful for such a weird place.

>Whole game suffers from being too easy though
Luck mode, Richter mode. You can also avoid using the stronger weapons. Not saying the low difficulty isn't a problem, but it's not a deal breaker at all since you can play around it just fine.
>And it is still filled to the brim with useless shit.
How is lots of content a bad thing?

don't be so igneous

>handheld games
>better than a console game with a good art style
Impossible, and they're all inferior to the pre-SOTN games.

Simon's Quest is objectively bad.

No
Some of the inverted rooms made no fucking sense (like the long hallway in the upside down Marble Gallery that is full of fucking unes instead of strong monsters)

That collar.

I don't disagree.

>Luck mode
should be how everyone plays the main game

>Richter mode
vastly underrated. who cares if I can't use swords like nigga I'M BREAKDANCING THROUGH EVERY ROOM

You realize most of SotN's sprite work is lifted right from Dracula X. If you like Alucard's run cycle so much, just play Julius mode.

>Complete castle
>Get bad ending with Richter.
>Play a few months later.
>Realise there's another ending.
>Fight Richter and save him
>You're welcomed with Final Toccata, as the whole inverted castle seems to maniacally laugh at you.
YES.
youtube.com/watch?v=J89D8y3NSOw

Why does this matter?

>art style

There's not really a whole lot that's still impressive about it in SotN. The DS was capable of a lot of what that game did. If you said sound design, I wouldn't be able to argue with you.

If I can play something nice looking on a big screen I have no interest in playing something nice looking on a tiny one. And as far as I'm concerned, the handheld games don't really play any better. In fact, CotM and HoD play far worse.

Can you do this in SotN?

SotN plays like a dream but the tight and thoughtful design that characterizes other Castlevania games is nowhere to be seen. CotM and PoR fix this a lot and AoS is basically a better SotN without all the fluff. Just play on emulator my nigga.

>Just play on emulator my nigga.
I played them all when they released on their own hardware. CotM was incredibly sluggish and ugly and sometimes grindy, a bad Castlevania game in my opinion. Was never a fan of AoS's style and especially not Dawn's and I just don't like the leveling systems. Don't remember PoR much but at that point I was definitely exhausted of the series.

Oh come on. I prefer aos to sotn but you have to admit sotn is fucking beautiful, no other game in the series compares.
And yes, the visuals do improve the game overall.

isnt that just glitching into unreachable rooms and not really intended?

>Creaking Skull will never appear in anything again

Who fucking cares if the game is short? It's better than having 20 hrs of filler like some RPG shit.

I don't think any glitching is involved, it really does end at a goofy number like 200.5%

your loss

DoS does way fancier things with 2D spritework in a 3D engine even if it's a way worse game. Like SotN is still great, don't get me wrong, but it's vastly overrated in the scope of all the sequels it got. AoS and PoR are both way better. CotM is like a Metroid format retrofit to a more standard CV rather than being rebuilt around it like the other games.

fixed

sorry but DoS is straight up ugly my man

>PoR is a strong contender for the best CV game, period
Nah.

Aria, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia are definitely the best ones. The RNG drop shit is completely unnecessary though, and I think it detracts from all of them. I get that they were trying to do a pokemon trading type thing, but it was a terrible idea. And the movement in Circle of the Moon is just fundamentally bad, so don't worry about that one.

Perfect.

>your loss
lol what? How exactly, considering I already played them?

It absolutely is. It's the closest thing to a perfect overlap between Metroidvania with classic CV that the series will ever have, and it's really fucking good.

PoR is way less skill grind-y than the souls games and a lot of them are even hidden on the map itself so grinding is never really necessary at all.

You said you played them on original hardware and your main complaint was having to play them on a tiny screen. So...play them on emulator. They're good games. If you're not willing to fix your own problem with them, then yeah, your loss.

I don't replay games, that's a fate worse than tiny screens. And blowing them up all pixelated like on an emulator is not going to solve anything really.

okay so don't give good games a fair shake. your loss

wait

>I don't replay games
then how do you even like SotN

They aren't very good though. They contain the casualizing trends SOTN started.

I like some things in SOTN but like I said earlier on, it's inferior to the Castlevania games before it.

The level design is fairly dull most of the time, though I don't mind it being compartmentalized through the paintings.