It's impressive how much the team got right on their first attempt, but there are still a few minor quirks and annoyances that make me prefer Aria to it. Mostly small things like how a lot of the platforms in the inverted castle are placed in such a way that they're barely out of reach of your double jump so you need to use the mist or bat forms to get past them, how the wolf form is kind of useless outside of running through the game's handful of straight enemy filled hallways faster, or how most of the bosses are complete pushovers when compared even to some of the tankier normal enemies. And even they were stupidly easy once I found out about the moon rod's special ability. I know that fully exploring the game didn't help this, but even then I only finished with a completion percentage of 192.6%, so there were probably a few things I missed.

Level design: 10\10;
Gráfico: 10\10;
Gameplay: 10\10;
Diversificação: 8\10;
Trilha: 10\10;
História: 10\10;
Fator replay: ?\10;
Motivo de não zerar: Perdi meu save quase no fim do jogo e dasanimei, mas irei zerar um dia.

A core thing I've grown to believe about Metroidvanias (and to be honest, many RPGs full stop) is that too much reliance on stats to balance difficulty winds up discouraging exploration, because it means that if you see everything, the endgame becomes a cakewalk. (Souls has long since solved this by making your equipment's strength top out pretty early in terms of damage to late game bosses, which with only a few exceptions means you do have to learn the boss' patterns to win). There are several pieces of equipment here that just absolutely trivialize the game by an absurd factor compared to more normal equipment, which you may wind up wanting to abuse once you start growing weary of backtracking and constantly respawning enemies. The other problem here is that you'll never use like 70% of your inventory. Has anyone really ever remembered to use the TNT?

Music, art direction, movement, pacing, variety, verticality, exploration are all otherwise still very nearly at Super Metroid's tier of vision and excellence.

What can I say that hasn't been said about this game like 100 times over already, it doesn't even matter what you think of this game, it's peak. This game has flaws yes, but they do very little to hamper my overall experience, the inverted castle is still the weirdest idea for padding out game time but you know what? I don't even care because the game is so fun to play anyways that I don't mind exploring it. And In all honesty, it's not as bad as everyone likes to say it is.

Symphony of the Night was their first attempt at a Metroidvania and by golly did they ever succeed in that. This is one of the most fun games i've ever played and while it isn't my number 1, it is still goddamn fun to replay over again.

I think the high esteem this game is held in, maybe raised my expectations a bit too much, but this is a fun time. Maybe if I'd played this before the advance games I'd have enjoyed it more? It does seem like a lot of this is recycled in those games. Not just the game play, but everything from the areas to the bosses were very similar if not the same.

I liked the music, some of it was really good, I could've just left that particular screen on and chilled out. The voice acting is pretty notorious I suppose. What is a man etc... Pretty standard for the time I suppose.

Certainly one of my favourite types of game to play through in recent years. Not sure why I've left this one so long though, considering I've had it for ages.

I've never been a big Castlevania fan. The series has never grabbed me like it does with other people. But I've heard, over and over, that if you play one Castlevania game, you must play Symphony of the Night. So I played it, and it was good, I guess. Not great, but decent. The game takes great advantage of the Playstation hardware, the environments are vibrant, and the characters are detailed (for pixels) and well-animated. Most of the enemies are interesting, although most don't present too much of a challenge that can't be overcome by spamming attacks at them. Having just finished Super Metroid, I must admit the level design really let me down. Although SotN is considered the reason "vanina" is in "Metroidvania," it's clear that Super Metroid is the attentive, doting mother, and SotN is the deadbeat father. There's almost no comparison. In Super Metroid, I rarely got lost to the point where I couldn't find my own way back to the critical path. SotN was the opposite. I grew tired of stumbling around whacking at walls, hoping for secret items that would allow me to progress, and eventually, I gave up and kept the walkthrough open on my phone. The upside-down 2nd half of the game (sorry for spoiling a 27-year-old game) was a neat idea, but inverting the map didn't improve its overall design. And the aforementioned walkthrough led me to acquire the Crissaegrim a lot earlier than was probably intended, making the latter half of the game mostly a joke. Imagine if Super Metroid gave you the Hyper Beam halfway through the game instead of right at the end. SotN has piqued my interest enough that I will try a few more entries from the Castlevania franchise, but it did not live up to the almost thirty years of hype I experienced before playing it.

Symphony Of The Night's reputation as an all timer is absolutely deserved. Playing this for the first time in 2024 was an incredible experience and although some of the modern gaming comforts we have become accustomed too may be missing SotN still stands tall and I was more than willing to forgive these minor frustrations.

The best time to play SotN was in 1997, the second best time is now.

As an aside, why on earth is this not on Switch. Seriously Konami, WTF.