As a lover of Metroidvania games, it should not have taken me this long to get to one of the reasons for the genre's name. Growing up with Nintendo platforms, this game stood as the shining achivement from the other side of the street. Now, I can happily report my joy from finally finishing the legendary Symphony of the Night.
On first impressions, SOTN delivers. Starting in the ultimate power move, thrusting you into the end of the previous game, defeating Dracula in its opening minutes by showcasing glorius pixel art and a smooth, unnerving score and soundscape, balancing the thin line between jazzy action hero and creepy ominous castle. Its entire presentation, from enemy design, to its hilariously campy dialogue sets the stage for the cold-blooded hero Alucard.
Much of the game's core is foundational Metroidvania. Exploring an open world castle bit by bit, unlocking new areas and secrets as new abilities are obtained. Some of the areas here are well hidden and require some fun trains of thought to access, which was great. The game doubles in size later on, and asks you to repeat the castle, but upside down. The inverted castle is an interesting challenge, but unfortunately becomes cumbersome in many areas due to jumps being scaled for its classic iteration, leading you to use the very slow bat movement upgrade. It's a less ideal version in the back half when most other games that succeeded it allow you to really soar with movement.
It's the limitations of the time and technology that hinders other elements of the gameplay as well. Spells and input commands use fighting-game like command inputs which felt nearly impossible to pull off flawlessly on a PS4. Menus are ok, but there is no option to sort items in your master list, pushing you to scroll through dozens of random pickups to get what you need. There is only one store in the entire game, and getting to it from a warp point takes about 5 minutes round trip, which just adds onto the sluggish pace. Speaking of warps, there are a few points on the map that could have really used some, especially the endgame areas.
This may sound negative, but it in fact shows how far this game's contemporaries have come since, and how engaging the template was to continue. Combat is fun and slashing through hundreds of foes never got old. I used a sword/dagger combo my entire run, but experimenting with weapons and spells is a fun treat, allowing players to pick how they choose to tackle the massive fortress. This all comes to a head with excellent boss design, a series trademark. While some enemies are tankish damage sponges, many are interesting combinations of projectile dodging, finding weaknesses, and landing solid clean hits to just edge out the titans. Special shout out to the corpse ball.
Symphony of the Night is great, that's not a surprise. If you like Metroid or other games within this genre, play it. While its age certainly shows in ways you probably expect, SOTN still stands as an exemplary killer in the roster of action platformers.
On first impressions, SOTN delivers. Starting in the ultimate power move, thrusting you into the end of the previous game, defeating Dracula in its opening minutes by showcasing glorius pixel art and a smooth, unnerving score and soundscape, balancing the thin line between jazzy action hero and creepy ominous castle. Its entire presentation, from enemy design, to its hilariously campy dialogue sets the stage for the cold-blooded hero Alucard.
Much of the game's core is foundational Metroidvania. Exploring an open world castle bit by bit, unlocking new areas and secrets as new abilities are obtained. Some of the areas here are well hidden and require some fun trains of thought to access, which was great. The game doubles in size later on, and asks you to repeat the castle, but upside down. The inverted castle is an interesting challenge, but unfortunately becomes cumbersome in many areas due to jumps being scaled for its classic iteration, leading you to use the very slow bat movement upgrade. It's a less ideal version in the back half when most other games that succeeded it allow you to really soar with movement.
It's the limitations of the time and technology that hinders other elements of the gameplay as well. Spells and input commands use fighting-game like command inputs which felt nearly impossible to pull off flawlessly on a PS4. Menus are ok, but there is no option to sort items in your master list, pushing you to scroll through dozens of random pickups to get what you need. There is only one store in the entire game, and getting to it from a warp point takes about 5 minutes round trip, which just adds onto the sluggish pace. Speaking of warps, there are a few points on the map that could have really used some, especially the endgame areas.
This may sound negative, but it in fact shows how far this game's contemporaries have come since, and how engaging the template was to continue. Combat is fun and slashing through hundreds of foes never got old. I used a sword/dagger combo my entire run, but experimenting with weapons and spells is a fun treat, allowing players to pick how they choose to tackle the massive fortress. This all comes to a head with excellent boss design, a series trademark. While some enemies are tankish damage sponges, many are interesting combinations of projectile dodging, finding weaknesses, and landing solid clean hits to just edge out the titans. Special shout out to the corpse ball.
Symphony of the Night is great, that's not a surprise. If you like Metroid or other games within this genre, play it. While its age certainly shows in ways you probably expect, SOTN still stands as an exemplary killer in the roster of action platformers.