Topic: XBLA SOTN

[PyroMenace]

Well I'm playing it at the moment. Its pretty cool and the music is really awesome for such an old game. I notice how the recent DS games have borrowed from this games formula. Im even finding lots of common enemies. However its not nearly as forgiving as say the DS game I played Portrait of Ruin. Its hard.. or Im not getting it or something. I'm forced to go into an area where enemies take several hits and only a few hits from them are fatal. I have a rather worthless sword as I was stripped from everything earlier. There are two spells I can perform, dark metamorphosis does nothing as far as I can tell. In fact, I kept on dying I thought I missed something valuable in the area before so I started a new game to look, but there was nothing there. I guess I just suck... I didn't expect this...

[Cobra951]

Once you get the hang of it, it's easy.  Find and equip the best weapons and armor possible.  You'll find some things work well in combination with each other.  Different enemies are weak or strong against different attacks.  Your character will grow immensely in strength and abilities.  This was an epic game in its day.  There's a lot of depth to it.  The music is still the best the series ever had.  I'd say it's still the best Castlevania.

[TheOtherBelmont]

Once you get the hang of it, it's easy.  Find and equip the best weapons and armor possible.  You'll find some things work well in combination with each other.  Different enemies are weak or strong against different attacks.  Your character will grow immensely in strength and abilities.  This was an epic game in its day.  There's a lot of depth to it.  The music is still the best the series ever had.  I'd say it's still the best Castlevania.

What he said.  There's a point in the game where your armor and weapons will be almost too powerful for the enemies at hand before a pivotal moment in the game happens, once you get a few bosses under your belt your HP will be fairly good and you won't die as often.  The first hour or two of the game you have to play a little more cautiously because of your lack of HP and good weapons.  The music does indeed kick ass, I listen to it on occasion along with some rock remixes done by the original Castlevania music composer of all the older Castlevania tracks, the Castlevania 3 "Beginning" track sounds so awesome with guitars, drums, and bass.

[PyroMenace]

I am such an idiot. I spent the last hour and a half trying to figure out where to go, attempting over and over to use wolf form in different areas in utter frustration to find nothing.

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Then only to find out I had to go to the librarian to buy the Gem of Open. Wow, I really do suck.

[Quemaqua]

Heh, I went through that the first time I played it.  I'm playing through it again right now on my PSP.  I'm actually surprised to hear that you're having trouble with it, Castlevania vet and master gamer that you are.  Just stick with it, I'm sure you'll figure out whatever it is that's hampering you.  You'll find better weapons and armor as you go.  The librarian guy sells some, too.  If you haven't found anything decent before long, try buying the mace he's got.  I like that one pretty well.  Also, look at the cloaks.  The Elven cloak or whatever (green one) has pretty nice stats.

[scottws]

I never had a PSX, and only knew one other person that had one.  I never got to play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night before.  I always have heard good things about it though, so I picked it up on XBLA.

I love the game.  There were definitely some parts I found fairly difficult, but i've been moving through the game at a pretty steady pace.

[Cobra951]

Alright, 2 SotN virgins among us.   

The port is very good, but the music is lower quality, I guess so the whole thing fits in 100 MB or whatever the limit is for XBLA games.  The original had over 400 MB of uncompressed music files alone.  I also guess that due to the lower quality, its relative loudness was reduced for XBLA.  If you like it, you may want to look up the soundtrack CD.

If you really get into the game, into finding out all its secrets and objects to acquire, you can actually end up so powerful that the game becomes a cakewalk.  That's my only real criticism.  A couple of items in particular should have been nerfed before the final release.  Otherwise, I absolutely love the game.

[poomcgoo]

When this hit XBLA, I grabbed the demo and I was immediately reminded of how much I love this game.  I thought about buying the XBLA version, and then I realized I could just buy the wireless adapter for my controllers and play the game on an emulator. 

It was an easy decision:

$10 for SOTN
or
$20 for the adapter and any emulator/rom/iso combo I could possibly want.

One of the best purchases I've made in a long time.  I'm almost done with SOTN, and I just started Vagrant Story.  My roomate and I have been playing NFL Blitz on PJ64 almost non-stop, too.  Fun fucking game.  The 360 controllers work flawlessly with everything I've tried so far.

[PyroMenace]

Heh, I went through that the first time I played it.  I'm playing through it again right now on my PSP.  I'm actually surprised to hear that you're having trouble with it, Castlevania vet and master gamer that you are.  Just stick with it, I'm sure you'll figure out whatever it is that's hampering you.  You'll find better weapons and armor as you go.  The librarian guy sells some, too.  If you haven't found anything decent before long, try buying the mace he's got.  I like that one pretty well.  Also, look at the cloaks.  The Elven cloak or whatever (green one) has pretty nice stats.

Im no Castlevania vet thats for sure. Theres a lot of the games in the series I missed on. Earlier I was having trouble fighting one of the knight enemies. I finally pass them and discover there is a save right after. I found a dagger that does good damage, its short range but I can jab with it like a mother. Then I got to the Librarian and bought the saber. Hopefully this will be the only major snag I hit.

[Quemaqua]

You'll do fine.  It's sort of RPG-like in the sense that as you go you get better, but you find new areas with tougher enemies.  Then you get newer stuff, and kick them around too.  It works really well, though, because it's still satisfying to play through the older areas.  The main difference is you can just go through them faster and not worry about dying.  And then you can just start playing like a stylish bastard.

I'm at around 80% or something on my PSP playthrough right now.  I fucking love this game so much.  Been a while since I've actually gone through the entire thing, so this is really fun.  Last few times I played it was only for a couple hours just because I was testing out an emu or something like that.  I fully intend on getting the full 200.6%.

[K-man]

1.  take some time early on and level up

2.  You can perform every spell from the beginning.  You just need to meet the following criteria:

     A:  You have enough MP to cast the spell in question
     B:  You do the correct d-pad motion to cast the spell.

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Don't waste your money at the librarian buying the spells.  Just do a quick gamefaq

3.  Use the soul steal spell, love it.

4.  Dark metamorphisis will allow you to regain 8 hp for every enemy you kill that bleeds.  This means bats, those zombies at the beginning, etc.  Once you have enough mp for soul steal, this spell is pretty useless.

There are very few awesome weapons available to you at the beginning of the game.  Most of the badass weapons come much later in the game.  Kill Dhurons until they drop a werebane.  If you do a hadoken motion with it and press attack you'll get a special move out of it.  This is the weapon I stick with most at the beginning.  You can find dhuron's in the library.

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Oh, and once you get the crissaegrim you are officially a god.

[Cobra951]

Whoa!  Easy on the spoilers.  That last item changes the character of the game, and should not even be mentioned to neophytes.  Let them read up gamefaqs after they've gone through it once "honestly".

Quick note: dark metamorphosis won't work with a bludgeoning weapon.  You need a cutting or stabbing weapon.

[K-man]

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He has personally witnessed the destruction I have caused using the Crissaegrim.

[Quemaqua]

Tags added just in the interest of... I don't know?  Being overly cautious?  There may yet be other people who haven't played it and might not want to know schmancy stuff.  I'm sure this is entirely unnecessary, but SOTN is holy to me.  I shall err on the side of super-caution.

[Cobra951]

[This should also be a . . .]

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He has personally witnessed the destruction I have caused using the Crissaegrim.

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Yes, I have witnessed it.  I found it honestly too, which is to say by blind luck.  At first I loved it, then I hated it, then I hated whoever allowed it to get into the game.

[K-man]

Tags added just in the interest of... I don't know?  Being overly cautious?  There may yet be other people who haven't played it and might not want to know schmancy stuff.  I'm sure this is entirely unnecessary, but SOTN is holy to me.  I shall err on the side of super-caution.

If it was a relatively new game I could understand, but SotN has been out for 10 years. 

[Quemaqua]

Of course, but I know for a fact there are several people here who haven't played it, including Pyro who's on his first run as you know.  The XBLA release is going to be the first time for many who missed it.

[scottws]

Yeah.  The XBLA version is my first experience with it.  I've never seen nor played it until last week for the first time.