Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

"This is seriously one of the best games I have ever seen. I am honestly speechless."

It may have taken me a damned long time to do it, but I finally got my hands on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night after watching Alucard and his game constantly surprise people in the contests held on gamefaqs. There are certain things in life that hit you like a ton of bricks when you first experience them, be it your favorite band, your favorite TV show, the first time you have sex, or a video game that is so damned good that you wonder what took you so long to play it in the first place. Symphony of the Night definitely belongs in that upper echelon. From the first time you play the game, it will grab you like a cheap freshman on prom night and refuse to let you go until you are finished. Come to think of it, there is not one single reason why you should be reading this review before playing the game itself. Get out there, find the game, play it all the way through, sacrifice the random furry animals and virgins of your choosing, then finish reading this. Symphony of the Night is one of those games that no games should be without.

Story

The game begins with you in control of Richter Belmont himself. After a brief time of controlling him, you are faced with a one on one battle against Dracula himself. It is not a battle in which you can possibly lose, for even if you 'die', Maria Renard bursts onto the scene and bring you back to life. The battle serves as part of the prologue, and Richter of course wins.

With Dracula seemingly out of commission, all seemed fine and good. But four years later, Richter Belmont suddenly disappeared. Fearing the worst, Maria Renard set out to look for Richter. As if Dracula himself knew of her journey, Castlevania, the legendary house of Dracula, appeared out of thin air on the night of a full moon. It was then that the son of Dracula, Alucard, decided to infiltrate Castlevania and put an end to his bloodline once and for all.

You begin the real game as Alucard on his quest. Right from the start, Alucard is equipped with a load of fun equipment and greeted by infinitely spawning monsters. Unfortunately, the fun doesn't last long. Death soon shows up, strips Alucard of all of his equipment, and Alucard is left to fend for his own.

Thus, Symphony of the Night begins. You are left to fend for your own, find some new equipment to beat the hell out of the enemies with, and to find and destroy the vampire bloodline once and for all. You also get sucked into Maria's quest to find Richter Belmont along the way, but your main goal is to kill anything stupid enough to move until the game ends.

Gameplay

To be blunt, this game has the best damned gameplay I have ever seen. It trumps even Chrono Trigger and Link to the Past in this department; there is too much time spent in menu screen in those games, plus there is the fact that they are each single genre titles. This is not the case with Symphony of the Night. In the beginning, it may not seem like the amazing the game it's made out to be. After all, Alucard is simply running around with no equipment, and you're stuck pressing either Square or Circle until you find stuff.

However, you will quickly learn that Symphony of the Night is one of the best two dimensional sidescrollers ever made. First and foremost, Alucard is an absolute badass. Any sane human being would cower in fear at the sight of a giant armored Axethrower throwing medeival throwing axes at their face, but not Alucard. He simply walks up, stabs the guy in the face, laughs at his demise, then moves on with himself. He's just that damned hardcore, and that's only the face value of the gameplay. Any two dimensional sidescroller has a main character that kills things, but Symphony of the Night goes far beyond this.

For starters, Symphony of the Night has RPG elements involved with it. Alucard gains experience points and levels as he goes through Castlevania on his massive killing spree, so the kills he racks up are not mindless. They all mean something. The enemies also drop items and gold for Alucard to use, and Alucard even has to deck himself out with the latest equipment in order to put up a good fight against the game's stronger monsters.

Secondly, the game has a fighting game element to it, which is, in my opinion, one of the single best things I have ever seen grace a two dimensional title. While Alucard is busy going through a two dimensional sidescroller, you can enter various button combinations to make Alucard do special attacks. And while it may seem easy to do, a lot of the attacks are difficult to pull off. If you attempt an attack and fail, you leave yourself wide open to take a lot of damage from the enemies in the surrounding area.

Finally, despite all of these new features that rarely, if ever, seen in two dimensional sidescrollers, the game stays true to the two dimensional roots the whole way. This delivers nostalgia and a 'fresh' factor at the exact same time, which is something that I rarely see any game do. The game even has voice acting. Anyone who has played Kingdom Hearts knows that the fights feature the enemies using voice acting during the battles. Well Symphony of the Night was doing stuff like that five years before Kingdom Hearts hit the shelves.

Graphics

Being a two dimensional title on the Playstation, the animation in this game is amazing. This game alone makes me wish that companies would mix modern graphics with sidescrollers. That way we could have games coming out that were actually difficult on top of looking good.

Music

This game's soundtrack ranks right up there with Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross as having the best soundtrack I have ever heard. The game is called Symphony of the Night for good reason.

Overall

Plain and simple, this game has everything necessary to be one of the greatest games of all time. It has amazing gameplay, a great soundtrack, high replay value, and mixes multiple genres together to appeal to most of the people who play it. The game also pays high attention to detail, and winds up being a rather difficult game to play. Games like this -- hard, yet fun to play -- don't seem to be made anymore.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/13/04