So, it finally happened, I finally got up to Symphony of the Night, the one that is hailed as the utter masterpiece of the series along with the game that truly defined metroidvanias as a whole, making this quite the impressive, exciting game from the get-go. This game all in all was such a hard left turn from the series up to this point on multiple levels, no longer being a linear platformer, incorporating a ton of RPG elements, changing the core movement and attack style, and just overall adding a ton of things that previous games just barely had. The additional narrative elements that the game added, such as many more instances of dialogue and cutscenes also helped in making this game feel like uncharted territory for the series, although with such novelty in the core of the game, there were also bound to be some flaws, which I’ll touch upon throughout.

From the very start of the game as the player reprises the final act of Rondo of Blood, it becomes immediately clear that this game’s going to be extremely different, with Richter being extremely fast and fluid to control, with a lack of committal jumps, along with a lot of additional moves, such as a high jumping uppercut and an extremely fast forward dash. This change is made even more noticeable with the precursor to the fight now involving dialogue, which adds a sort of campy charm to the game as a whole, given how cheesy it often is. What impressed me even more however, was that the game feels even better to move around in once this prologue ends and you get to play as Alucard, who manages to have even faster, smoother mobility all around, having swords instead of a whip, giving the player a much faster attack speed without the long starting animation. Furthermore, additional things such as his backdash and double jumps all in all make him an extremely fun character to control with a lot of options to tackle most situations. This repertoire is further expanded by the form changes and additional moves that you gain throughout the game, such as the aforementioned double jump, along with being able to transform into a wolf for extremely fast ground movement, and then a bat or mist for the ability to fly/float, providing additional ways to traverse the sprawling castle that the player finds themselves in.

This game honestly feels like it wanted to cram as much as possible into it, which can be seen in the plethora of enemies, attack options and sheer size of the castle, really making a lot of it feel like a constant learning experience as you’re constantly thrust into new situations or finding new ways to improve what you already know. With this, the game manages to remain engaging throughout, despite it being far longer than any of the previous ones. Unfortunately, this quantity of content ends up throwing a lot about the game out of balance to varying degrees. While Alucard has his regular attacks, subweapons and magic spells, none of these feel quite right for the most part for varying reasons. The issue with regular attacks is definitely the smallest one, and that’s the weapons almost all being the same basic jab attack, a problem that I’d find far bigger if not for the fact that it’s definitely a great attack in general that manages to get the job done.

The inclusion of subweapons in this game at all on the other hand is something I find to be a bit questionable, as they largely add next to nothing, with only 1 or 2 points where I felt as if there was any reason to use them at all, and even those were really more out of wanting to change things up for a bit rather than out of even the slightest bit of necessity. These genuinely feel as if they could’ve been taken out of the game with next to nothing changing about it. The magic on the other hand, is possibly the most egregiously flawed of them all, but also definitely feels like a core part of the game, with each weapon having a unique special attack, and spells being activated with fighting game-esque combo inputs, bringing another layer of depth to combat. The issue is that while technically adding another layer of depth, magic really simplifies the combat to such a massive degree due to the fact that it absolutely trivialises so much of the game, especially soul steal, a fairly cheap spell that attacks everything on screen and then heals the player by a fair amount, essentially making the player nearly unkillable as long as they keep it in mind as an option. Even so however, I like the idea of it quite a bit, despite the flaws, and find that the additional options really sell the idea that Alucard is the powerful son of Dracula that the story says he is.

Of course, what would be good movement if not for a good area to navigate? Fortunately, Symphony of the Night does this quite well for the most part, with distinct feeling areas that have music and enemies to match the incredibly rich atmosphere of the setting, along with a lot of little charming, fun things about various places, such as being able to hit the librarian’s chair from underneath to send him flying, or being able to enter and exit a room to watch the growth of baby birds. With this, the castle has a real sense of character and detail that I personally feel was never quite captured again, all of the little things coming together to help make the game as a whole feel like a lot of love was put into it. What this does is slightly alleviate some genuine issues I have with the layout of the castle, although not by enough to justify some of this either.

While going through the castle, I found a few bad issues with the telegraphing of specific key paths to take to progress the game, most notably finding the button to access the caverns and catacombs, as the map you get along with the ability to unlock mystic doors makes it appear as if there’s a mere consumable behind the path with a button if you look at the map, making it seem like a less important path, causing the player to prioritise other potential paths. Even so, this would be a much smaller issue if not for the fact that running into dead ends in this game doesn’t feel like it rewards you with much of anything, the majority of weapons or items you come across being fairly useless and just clogging up your inventory, a problem made worse by the fact that the weapons will have the same basic attack, limiting the purpose of these even further, since they don’t even contribute to potential build variety or something similar. This is really where the sprawling nature of the map falls flat in terms of the bigger picture, as it makes the maze-like structure of the areas feel quite dull to explore as you continue to come across dead ends, and issue that’s exacerbated by the teleporter locations all being placed in rather awkward locations, often being just far enough off the right path to progress to feel inconvenient, which ends up taking away from some of the appeal that exploring these beautiful locations has after a while.

I honestly really like the combat of this game, often being fairly fast paced, especially once the player really gets good at being able to control Alucard, knowing when the right time in the air to attack is to cancel the animations early, leading to faster attacks, or chaining bringing up the shield into backdashing to essentially move at double speed, all this stuff really adds some complexity to fully optimising combat, and I like that quite a bit. The issue is that a lot of this ultimately can feel a bit useless due to how overpowered Alucard is, with even a half decent armour set trivialising the damage that most things can do to you, making having to really learn the enemy patterns something that rarely comes into play, since you can just go and spam attack and run into everything they have to throw at you without much risk of death before you defeat them. It’s actually the bosses that epitomise this issue, as while they’re often visually incredible and conceptually interesting, they tend to be so weak that you could barely count them as even a small speed bump, much less worthy boss fights, a lot of them even becoming regular enemies later on. While difficulty definitely isn’t everything, when the game ends up being this easy in a lot of cases, it does make the exploration of the castle end up feeling a bit mindless at points as nothing really challenges you.

Really though, even though the game has its flaws, its still a really damn impressive game with a lot of love and charm put into it that ends up being quite an enjoyable experience regardless as you slowly open up more paths of the castle as you go along, well, until you get to the inverted castle anyway. While I genuinely do love the first half of this game, I’ve got to admit that I found the inverted castle to be quite boring all across the board, with the concept of just going through the castle but with everything upside down feeling quite uninteresting in many ways. The biggest issue is really the fact that this part of the game is open and meandering, as the player has all of their movement options at this point, leading to the sense of discovery and progress being lost. What makes this even less enjoyable is the fact that navigation becomes considerably more cumbersome for other reasons as well, with a lot of jumps now being just slightly out of reach, requiring the player to transform into a bat or mist to make it up, which ends up becoming quite tedious.

Talking about tedium, the worst aspect of this comes from the music in this latter half of the game. Gone are the varied, majestic symphonic tracks that cover a wide range of atmospheres and tones that fit with each area in a unique way, such as the sense of wonder of Olrox’s Quarters or the dark, oppressive nature of the catacombs, instead replaced with almost every area having the same 1 or 2 tracks that manage to be the weakest in the game, lacking anything particularly memorable about them but also not really reaching the same sort of amazing atmosphere either, really makes the areas feel even more monotonous. The balance here is somehow even worse as well, with some bosses you fight almost immediately doing the bare minimum damage, with it barely hurting you even if you’ve removed all of your armour, but then having enemies nearby that will kill you within only a hit or 2, with barely anything else in the game doing even close to that amount. What this does is make the game feel absolutely mindless, but then pull the rug from under you when it feels like it, with even these situations being quite avoidable just by utilising one of the many broken tools at your disposal. Putting all this together ends up making for this last part of the game feeling like 3 hours of pure filler content with only occasional moments of excitement spread throughout, such as the fight with Galamoth, the one boss in the game that provides any sort of challenge, as even the final boss feels quite anticlimactic.

Overall, I can definitely see why people call this game a masterpiece, with it having the amount of scope and influence that it did, along with absolutely masterful sense of style and atmosphere that the game has, but at its core, I find a lot of aspects of the game extremely flawed in ways that hinder my enjoyment. Even so, even I can’t even be close to denying just how great this game is in a lot of respects in terms of how much fun I had through a great deal of it, with the negativity of this review stemming more from the fact that I feel like discussing the flaws of such a perceived masterpiece leads to a much more engaging thing to write about than simply gushing about the things that people have already said ad nauseum about it. So in the end, I do like this game quite a bit, but also find its lack of polish, especially compared to some of the later entries in the series, to bring it down. While I believe that this game isn’t quite as good as Super Castlevania IV, I do also feel like I enjoy this one a bit more regardless, as this is really one of those games that I could see a lot of people considering an imperfect masterpiece.