OP, wondering if you yourself are a longtime Castlevania fan/vet because IGN has a habit of penalising CV games for not being Sotn (*cough* LOS....)
I am a longtime CV fan (though I enjoyed the metroidvanias more) and wondering whether this game warrants purchasing a 3DS. OOE for the DS was my favourite, and I felt the linearity of the levels (with the options of going back to explore) as well as the comboing system and the difficulty levels (L1 hard cap) hit the nail on the head. I've finished L.1 mode with Shanoa and Im now almost done with Albus.
How does this stand up to its handheld predecessors in your opinion?
yeah, ive noticed that. i didnt like that they gave LoS a 7 point 5, but when that game came out people really were expecting something that felt a little more like castlevania and a little less like the genre castlevania helped spawn. (an interview with one of the people who made DMC should clear that up lol i forget who, or where exactly i read it, but he cites castlevania directly. ill try to find a link). But in all fairness this game wasnt the ONLY reason i bought a 3ds (thank you eshop lol), but it was the deciding factor. if a castlevania game released on the Vita tommorrow i guarantee i would be one of the first in line for it at gamestop. I went online and bought all the original castlevania games and n NES. i still play these games and to me they are the only games in the series that warrant a replay from me. Ive always tried to make it the games without taking damage or dying. not saying this is an impossible task, but it is damn close and something i managed to do on Super Castlevania 4 (the crown jewel) lol
as far as holding up to its handheld predeccessors, i say it stands fairly well. to me out of all the SotN clones the only one i ever went back through and played more than once through after completely exploring the game was harmony of dissonance. that game felt closer to what castlevania shoudve have been after Rondo of Blood . Granted it is probably the most massive rip off of SotN, it just felt good playing through the main game with a whip weilding Belmont. I love SotN, but it just never felt like the proper successor to Rondo of Blood. now i have played thourgh SotN a good number of times, but i could never actually categories these subsequent playthroughs as fun. they felt more like work then fun. Exploration has never been one of my favorite changes to the series. the originals (im excluding Castlevania 2 from this) managed to be challenging without having you search all over hells creation trying to find one to lead to another item to continue on. i would have played an rpg if i wanted to do these things lol the metroidvania style has grown on me over the years though, but only becuase the classic style was just abandoned. realistically i knew i would never see a game that held up to my ridiculously low standards as to what castlevania was (until harmony of dissonance anyways lol) and before i get asked, yes, i played harmony before going back and giving SotN the chance it deserved. i had seen the game played when i was a kid, but i just prefered my Super Castlevania 4 over SotN.
I know i didnt exactly answer your question, but instead choose to answer it on a broader scale. how did the game stand up to the series. In my opinion, it fares better than most of the SotN clones, and seems to do what i dont think SotN managed to do well enough. it managed to play differently and feel like a castlevania game. SoTN has been the gold standard for a long time, but i never thought metroidvania style was a good fit. But i feel this game manages to take the pure action and challenge of the first castelvanias, the mundane exploration the metroidvanias, and then new combat system and mesh it all together to form the true handheld successor to SotN. now i know it seems like im putting down the metroidvanias alot, but i view what konami did with the metroidvania style to be very on par with what activision has done with Call of Duty. for the most part, after SotN, i feel as if creativity had been choked off. i never it made it past the first area of aria of sorrow. it took me 3 years to pick the game up again and finally play through it once. i played Order of Eclessia once through, and found the combat system to be the innovative thing to come to castlevania in a while, but it still just felt like way to much of a rehash of its own predecessors to truly stand out and shine. this reason right is why feel SotN was successful. it was the same game over and over again. it was the start of the new era. it did everything well, it just didnt feel like a castlevania to me. so im done ranting now. but thats how i feel it stacks up against the older games. Challenging like the first castlevania, vast explration like the SotN games, and the melee style combat of the reboot all come together to make the best castlevania i have played in a while.
on an unrelated note, here is how i rate the top 5 castlevanias:
1. Super Castlevania IV
2. Symphony of the Night
3. Rondo of Blood (the PC engine version, not its SNES Dracula X counterpart)
4. Castlevania 1
5. Castlevnia III
now to be flamed by the internet lol
That's a really interesting take on how it pulls up alongside the Igavania style games.
I was thinking the other day that while I was playing MOF it was actually a lot of fun, but where I believe it fell short is that it was still hampered by what older entries did successfully.
Let me explain:
Pros
-Combat was solid (I appreciated that this game was whip based too)
-Level design was there (for the most part)
-Lots of platforming
-Brilliant 3d (some of the best on the 3ds)
-Trevor's portion of the game was brilliant (the entire game should have been Trevor {and not Alucard} imo)
-You can die quite easily (like classic Castlevania)
This is where the game is a let down for me:
Cons
-Subweapons were crap (although combat/whipping was well executed)
-Many Levels looked the same (Trevor's game was aesthetically the best)
-Music felt relentless, unvaried and jarring (especially compared with the variety found in previous games)
-Lack of enemies (dead corridors i.e. lack of having to keep moving like in older CV games)
-When fighting enemies barricades surround the player i.e. 9/10 you have to fight (slows down the feel of the game, direction of the camera and the pacing)
-Platforming was more like Prince of Persia (running, hanging, etc, no use for whip-jumping unless fighting enemies i.e. No medusa heads over spiked pits, no candlewhipping)
-Story was self explanatory but story telling was average (and Trevor becoming ALUCARD in name makes no sense, it would make more sense if he was just called Trevor)
-Camera was shaky/ poor (how do you stuff the camera on a 2.5d game?)
-Boss fights were underwhelming and contained checkpoints (Although the last bossfight was interesting and different but Dracula never transformed - oh well)
-The puzzles... Why? (they were terrible, the puzzles in the original LOS were so much better crafted)
-Story cutscenes including Belmont domestics were unattractive.
-The memento style story telling which added nothing beneficial other than leaving Trevor's game (the best) until last.
-Simon's portion of the game (which also never explained why the Combat Cross Replica has the power to defeat Dracula - who crushes the original combat cross with his bare hands - so we have to assume that its because of Gandolfi's alchemy in crafting it? I don't know and at this point..)
This was my issue, the game wasn't terrible, but I believe the cons heavily outweigh the pros here.
This is not a terrible game, I just believe it's the weakest entry into a strong series. I thought of it like Metroid Other M: Highly enjoyable but weak against its brethren.
One point I agree with you on is that HOD for the gba was a SOTN ripoff but really felt like the environments pushed the player through the game to have a sense of purpose in such a vast open Castle, rather than SOTN where you could choose to skip 2/3 of the castle even with the real ending.
Here's basically the way I believe the newer Igavania's have gone:
CV+Super Metoid= SOTN/Nocturne
SOTN evolves through COTM>HOD>AOS (introducing Soma; Soul system)
AOS is refined and tweaked through DOS (which also adds a whole new mode with a true alternate ending)
OOE which is an even more refined version of DOS (Glyph system) puts a classic spin back into the game with its Simon's quest-style environment(s) and higher difficulty of older CVs
The above was the natural evolution of the series, and I would have really liked to have seen where Iga could have taken it after OOE, where the artwork, difficulty, and innovation of the series were all corrected from previous entries. Sadly I don't think MOF was a smart entry into CV, imho Soul of Darkness for the DSIware is a more enjoyable game with a very simple but more succinct story.
My top 10 CVs go something like:
1) OOE
2) DOS
3) AOS
4) Adventure Rebirth
5) Dracula X/ Vampire's Kiss
6) Nocturne (yes, over SOTN)
7) Legacy of Darkness
8) Bloodlines
9) Simon's Quest
10) Rondo
