Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Review
Standing ovation.
Version tested: Xbox 360
Even in 1997 this was an anachronism. Videogames' bright new horizon was three-dimensional and Sony's first console wunderkind the only viewing tower worth climbing. The PlayStation future was all about Lara Croft's curvaceous polygons, Gran Turismo's reflective bonnets and screen-filling Tekken sucker-punches. It was the Chemical Brothers serenading Wipeout races and the Designer's Republic packaging. Aspirational pixels backed by aspirational music promoted by aspirational faces; not much room for two-dimensional gothic oddities in this too-cool-for-school marketing vision.
As such, Symphony of the Night, with its dank 2D walls, brooding orchestral soundtrack and Street Fighter-esque special moves stole across videogaming's busy vista mostly unnoticed the first time round. But not completely unnoticed. Those with eyes to see its exquisite design, extraordinary scope, aesthetic elegance and coherence were quick to evangelise. The game's underground following bustled and grew until copies of the game were changing hands on ebay for £60 and upwards. Symphony of the Night had made the celebrated canon and every discerning games player wanted a look.
And that, in short, is why Microsoft's been so keen to accommodate this, the Castlevania series' debated highpoint, tripling the 50MB size restriction of all its Xbox Live Arcade games specifically to allow it into its line-up of mixed importance. Symphony of the Night is to action-adventure fans what Mario 64 is to platform lovers, Monkey Island is to point and click autistics or Final Fantasy VII is to incurable geeks. It's important, beloved and, crucially, it expands XBLA's remit to include fan-favourite console titles as well as those arcade classics such as Pac-Man, Defender and, er, Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The 2D Castlevania series, for newcomers or those unfortunate enough to have only experienced Konami's awkward and comprehensively unsuccessful stabs at 3D-ing it, are straightforward side-scrolling, platform-jumping, puzzle-solving, monster-fighting, hack-and-slash, RPG affairs.
In other words it draws the best elements from each genre to Super Metroid effect, building a deep but understandable action adventure and setting it in a cold, 1700's Romanian castle. In this instance, you have a jump button, two attacks (one for the left hand and one for the right), a quick retreat, backwards slide and, at least to begin with, that's it. You move from room to cavernous room, uncovering the castle, filling in the blanks on a map, slowly upgrading your abilities and defeating ever more inventive bosses.

Alucard is Dracula spelt backwards. We predict this is news for 73 per cent of Eurogamer’s readers. Confess in the comments thread.
For players familiar with the GBA and DS outings there are many similarities but, where those games shoehorn increasingly camp Japanese teenage love dramas into their narratives, this game revels in gothic unease: more Bram Stoker than Wes Craven. This is helped both by Ayami Kojima's mature and stylized character designs (indeed Kojima and her style was dropped from the two recent DS games for fear it was alienating a younger audience) and by the scenario in which you play as one Adrian Fahrenheit (nicknamed Alucard), Dracula's own son. Your aim is to explore your estranged father's castle (which apparently appears only once a century) and find out why Richter Belmont, protagonist from the previous game in the series, has mysteriously vanished.
Those familiar with the earlier Castlevania games will be surprised to discover you don't carry a default whip for protection here. Instead, an RPG-lite framework is in place allowing for various types of weapon (either gathered from enemies or bought from the castle's friendly librarian (!) to be equipped. The RPG trappings don't end there. Defeating enemies will harvest experience and, when Alucard levels up, his various attributes upgrade, providing necessary incentive to finish off every enemy you encounter. Special moves can be triggered by using the kind of tortuous D-pad manipulations more commonly found in 2D fighters and you also discover relics around the castle which add new abilities (such as allowing you to see the names of enemies or, more significantly, adding a double jump function).
Of primary importance is your map (viewable on the 360 with the L-trigger). This opens up room by room as you work through the castle showing all the little openings you can only explore once you have the appropriate skills. Specifically, many areas can only be accessed once you've found the three souls (Wolf, Bat and Mist), which allow Alucard to change form. Famously, this castle, by fulfilling certain conditions, can be explored in a mirrored version of itself thus opening up the possible completion tally to the renowned but mathematically implausible, 200.6%. Uncovering the whole castle soon becomes an obsession of Pokémon-esque potency and, once the game has its claws into you, you won't find rest until the job's done.
So as to this conversion? The import into HD sadly hasn't seen each sprite redrawn - instead the kind of waxing effect recognizable to those used to playing with emulators is (optionally) employed to smooth over the graphics. The screen defaults to a 4:3 aspect ratio with big artwork borders but, mercifully, the dimensions can be comfortably stretched to fit a widescreen TV and, once done, the game looks pretty enough.

The achievements range from straightforward (kill 10 enemies without getting hit) to obsessive (complete the game to 200.6% for 35 gamer points. Oh! And do the whole thing again playing as Richter for another 45!).
Simmering the game down to sub-100MB has been tough and people who probably need to get more sunlight will notice slight downgrades such as dropped sound effects and clipping on the voice acting from the nuclear-powered compression the game's clearly been subjected to. On the whole, the changes are near imperceptible and do nothing to lessen the experience. Sadly (or happily depending on your stance) nothing has been done to replace Symphony of the Night's so-bad-it's-almost good voice acting employed for the localisation. Indeed, while enjoying a fantastic story, the text was clearly translated by someone for whom English is a second language and some of the phrasing is unintentionally very funny in that endearing-but-ultimately-irritating Japlish way.
So what makes Symphony of the Night so much more lauded than the more recent iterations? Cynics might argue it's because it was the first to arrive and that nostalgia has clouded the issue. But playing through the game afresh on 360 and that's just not the case. Partly it's the ambiance - the unquantifiable atmosphere generated by the inspired sprite work, the hammy acting, the crushing orchestral soundtrack and inventive designs. Partly it's because of the higher resolution of the PS1 compared to the handhelds - the fact that, in relation to your character's size, much more of the castle can be displayed on any one screen - lending the scenery a grandness since unmatched. But mainly it's the precise feel of controlling Alucard, the brilliantly pitched learning curve and the way new abilities unfurl themselves to expand your tool kit with expert pitch and composition.
Despite all of this, in 2007 this is still an anachronism. Videogames' bright new horizon is three-dimensional and Microsoft's second console wunderkind the only viewing tower worth climbing (until Friday at least). The 360 future is all about Marcus Fenix's curvaceous polygons, Forza Motorsport's reflective bonnets and screen-filling Virtua Fighter 5 suckerpunches. Aspirational pixels backed by aspirational music promoted by aspirational faces: not much room for two-dimensional gothic oddities in this too-cool-for-school marketing vision. But nevertheless, as those with eyes to see will be quick to evangelise, Symphony of the Night presents exquisite design, extraordinary scope, aesthetic coherence and transcendent elegance mostly unmatched elsewhere on Xbox Live Arcade, or anywhere else for that matter.
9 / 10
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Comments (69) Latest comment 5 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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But a 9/10 will have to do.
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BTW I confess!
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Which is slightly sad.
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end.
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Surely there can't be anyone who didn't realise that? Surely. :-D
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It's true!
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You was waiting for a review?
BLASPHEMY!!!
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BLASPHEMY!!! "
Yeah I agree.. having been a gamer since the 80s I always seemed to have missed the Castlevania series. Don't know why... it is a mystery to me as well.
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Holy shit i didnt know that
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Do you feel a bit greedy Lumines Live? you should
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Never played a Castlevania game before for some reason but if its close to super metroid then this has to be played.
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How does the save system work? (that is a deal breaker for me with all the new games waiting to be played at the moment).
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I remember it from an 80s kids film called the monster squad. i think Dracula left a message for one of the kids under the name Alucard.
great to be playing this again though! im convinced the bloke who does richters voice did chris redfields voice in RE1
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I'm happy to be part of that 27% wot already knew - having come across this before in the Hellsing anime, and possibly something else before that.
Though technically SOTN predates that so...... ummm.........
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EDIT: Yeah, I knew from Hellsing too toy_brain
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Started playing it a little while ago on the PSP and i can confirm, its as good as the review says it is. Damn you shitty 80's cartoon for putting me off castlevania for so long!
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looks like Son of Dracula from 1943: http://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Drac...
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Nothing is close to Super Metroid I am afraid!
Not even the GBA Metroids, though they are good!
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aww.. Super Metroid is my favourite game of all time!
Would ppl still recommend Castlevania to a huge fan of the (2d) metroid games?
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Motorstorm, VF5, Resistance, VT3, etc.
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Good point, but after I fork over 600 €, I won't buy anything more for a month
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You can't even buy the console over here in the UK for that.
Unless you count ebay
Thanks Steroyd, i'll give it a look then
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No.
What I mean is: these are good games, but after I pay 600€ for the console, I won't be buying ANYTHING for a month. Like, food?
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And some would argue that you can grill steak's in a PS3... ;P
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Your friend is a cabbage.
Not only is that fight easy since you can't lose the game hadn't even started yet. It would be like being fed up of FFVII because the intro was too long to sit through.
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The wolf dash (double-tap and hold in the direction you want to travel) is the fastest way to get through long horizontal corridors. You also get a wolf-only special move that isn't documented if I remember correctly.
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The game is incredible. The soundtrack alone is worth the money (which is easy for me to say as I already have nearly every Castlevania soundtrack released until now; I'm really into it) but not only that; The game itself is great too. The only thing that comes first is my still sealed copy of Portait of Ruin which will find it's way into my DS after I finish Phoenix Wright: Justice for all. After that it's a definite buy. A bit more time though would help. Metal Slug Anthology for the Wii is out, I still have to finish SSX and Guitar Hero 2 will ship in two weeks too. And I still haven't finished Rainbow 6 Vegas and not even started F.E.A.R. Which is a shame seeing that Command and Conquer 3 is coming this month too - right next to Theme Park DS and The Settlers DS.
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Used to have it for the PS, special edtition with music cd and art book.
And I traded it in for Duke Nukem!?
Yup, I truly am a moron.
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/Hopes it's similar to & as good as Super Castlevania IV
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Nicely written review too.
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(that person doesn't deserve the satisfaction)
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At least I'm owning up to it.
/still hangs head in shame
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HOLY SHIT!!
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I'm having second thoughts about leaving this now. Haven't even bothered downloading the trial version, as I bought the one on the Wii purely from the hype and fanboy-gushing about it, and hated it. I thought my lesson was learnt.
Going to give this a try then now, not convinced I'll 'get' it though.
Oh, about the Alucard thing. Wasn't there some film from the 80's or something where this kid and his mates hunted a bunch of B-movie monsters? As I recall it had Dracula going under the alias of Alucard. Or was it just a dream I had and I'm actually going insane?
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But goddamn games used to be hard. You need to concentrate on this!
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Actually, i'm struggling to see where that last point went to... is it just because this is a re-release, with no added features?
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Super Metroid blew my mind in a similar way, and I would argue that it is probably slightly more tightly designed than SOTH, but it's like comparing 'amazing' with also 'amazing'... you just end up with 'lots of amazingnessness'! If you've played neither, get them both - NOW!!!
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cheers,
Alex
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Noob.
You do know SoTN runs in almost EXACTLY the same resolution as a DS screen?
This just shows assumptions have been made and not checked.
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As far as I understand it the PS1 version of SOTN runs in the lowest possible PSOne resolution which is 256 x 224 (it might even be marginally more than that). The DS screen has a resolution of 256 x 192 and the GBA has a native resolution of 240x160. Hardly "EXACTLY" the same.
As I was writing this review I thought that, as the DS is a handheld and so the screens are that much smaller, perhaps Konami might have scaled up the lead character in the DS titles slightly (thus decreasing the visible surroundings even more, in order to make it easier to see what is going on). I checked with a friend of mine who is currently working as a coder with Konami (and a huge Castlevania fan) if this was the case and he told me he was pretty sure it was.
Even if both he and I are wrong the screen resolutions of the GBA and DS consoles are still empirically smaller and so, what was only a minor point anyway, stands.
See you!
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@nekotcha
"Giving away the big 'twist' in the review?...
Seems a shame to spoil it for people.
Unlocking the flipped castle is listed as one of the achievements so it's not really spoiling anything to mention it here, although Konami could've made it a secret achievement. In which case this would be spoiling something.
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+1kajillion
ps. i confess, too...