"What is a man?"

Without getting too into the realm of hyperbole, Symphony of the Night is one of the 10 or 20 best games ever made. Really, it is. Play this however you can, and it's especially accessible now that it's been released on Xbox Arcade.

Story

The game begins with you in control of Richter Belmont. After a brief time of controlling him, you are faced with a one on one battle against Dracula. It is not a battle you could possibly lose, because 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 was fine and good. But as anyone knows, this means nothing in the Castlevania universe. Four years later, Richter Belmont suddenly disappeared. Fearing the worst, Maria Renard sets out to look for Richter. As if Dracula himself knew of her journey, Castlevania appears 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. It follows the path of Super Metroid -- the first of the so-called "Metroidvanias", as it were -- where you find some new equipment to beat the hell out of the enemies with on a massive map, backtrack now and then and eventually 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

Some of the best 2D gameplay ever made, without question. 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 just 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. First and foremost, Alucard is an absolute badass. Any sane human being would cower in fear at the sight of a giant armored Axethrower going nuts, but not Alucard. He just walks up, stabs the guy in the face, laughs at his becoming an armor corpse and moves on with life. He's that hardcore, and that's only the face value of the gameplay seen in the first few minutes. 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 has to deck himself out with the latest and greatest 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. 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 are 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 games rarely do. The game even has voice acting, although that can be chalked up in the "so bad it's good" category. Anyone who has played Kingdom Hearts knows that the fights feature the enemies using voice acting during the battles. Symphony of the Night was doing stuff like that five years before Kingdom Hearts hit 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 are actually difficult on top of looking good. Even now in the era of next-gen Hi-def graphics, few things beat solid 2D gameplay.

Music

The game is called Symphony of the Night for good reason, because it has a soundtrack worthy of the title. As a gaming soundtrack aficionado, this has one of the best soundtracks ever.

Overall

To be blunt, 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 if you don't abuse the broken stuff. Games like this -- hard, yet fun to play -- don't seem to be made anymore. Symphony of the Night is a true gem, and any real gamer needs to play it at least once.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/13/04, Updated 09/27/10

Game Release: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (US, 10/02/97)