After briefly acknowledging this title here and there in related Castlevania articles, now is the time to replay and review it one more time. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is regarded by many as the best in the whole giant series.
It effectively changed 2D action platforming forever, for it borrowed the exploration aspect from Super Metroid in manners such as a detailed map system and a concept of defeating bosses in order to get the next obligated item in order to proceed.
Often nicknamed as belonging to the Metroidvania genre by people, combining Castlevania and Metroid gameplay together, or as I prefer to call similar games, Castleroid, it is definitely worth experiencing and it may easily become your favorite instead.
Just when you think that the castle has been fully explored, your antihero Alucard is dragged into the so called inverted castle, where the whole map design is reversed and stronger enemies as well as stronger equipment await.
I have never really liked Symphony of the Night's overall soundtrack, which is ironic considering it's subtitle, but what has always disappointed me the most of this video game is that the challenge is almost entirely absent.
Once you have traversed far enough in the castles, have found yourself a holy book as a subweapon and have found the right gear, then you will be able to breeze through the rest of the adventure in a very comfortable way.
There are no true challenges to be found. There are however plenty of enemy designs to be found, and I am sure that all of the sprites have been copied over to the GBA or DS games at one point or another.
As I have said before, because my first Castlevania was SCIV, and afterwards I started playing through the GBA and DS adventures, this is the main reason why I might never prefer Symphony of the Night over any of them, not even Harmony of Dissonance or Portrait of Ruin.
It's because I simply did not grow up with the PlayStation/Saturn game until later. Still, I guess that my expectations towards Symphony of the Night were either too high, or I had played too many similar entries afterwards already.
By all means a classic, just not my favorite one.
Rating: 7.6
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