“Castlevania: Symphony of the Night” Puts the Vania in MetroidVania
Warning: This review does contain spoilers of the game. Fair warning if you want to play this for the first time and don’t want anything spoiled for you.
In modern gaming, there is a sub-genre of gaming known as the “MetroidVania”. This is the kind of 2D style game that has you in a massive map that makes you feel like a you’re in a maze while exploring and finding items in order to progress. An action adventure game that's non-linear path and makes the player use exploration in order to discover the world they are in. These kind of games are amazing as you can explore and find an area you can’t get to until you find that one item that makes you go “Oh sweet! Now I can check what’s beyond that wall I could not get to. The best example of this is of course, Super Metroid for the Super Nintendo. Super Metroid is to many one of the greatest video games of all time, with it’s dark and creepy atmosphere, story telling, great music and a game that’s made for you to legit get lost in.
However I want to talk about the Vania part of the genre. As Super Metroid is one half, the other half comes from another game, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. As both Metroid and Castlevania started on the NES, I feel like Symphony of the Night is the parallels to Super Metorid. Getting a formula that felt like the limited of the system held it back and that now we can get the game the way it was versioned.
I want to talk/review Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as I feel like there’s a ton to talk about here and I want to do something special for Halloween so what better than a game about vampire hunters and Dracula?
The basics of Castlevania is you play (in most cases) a member of the Belmont family, who has a history of vampire hunters. Ready to invade Dracula’s hunted castle filled with monsters, demons, skeletons, you name it. All leading up to the showdown with Dracula himself. On your adventure, you can find powerful items hidden in each stage. Finding the right item for the job is the trick to beating Castlevania.
However, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night gets MUCH deeper than that. Instead of going level to level, the entire game takes place in Dracula’s castle, and this place is HUGE! Think of a full map in well Super Metorid. Tons of rooms to explore filled with monsters, items, and everything in-between. If you think the map is not big enough, then let’s just say everything gets flipped upside down as far as what you think the full game is… If you know you know. Oh what he heck I’ll spill the beans. There’s a point in the game where the entire map gets inverted and you’re upside down. Yes this means what you thought was the entire game has now doubled in size. Newer and much tougher monsters appear in this version of the castle all while being quite different than the normal version of the map. Kind of look at it as a 2nd world like say The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past’s Dark World.
The story of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has you starting as Richter Belmont, who is off to stop Dracula in his Castlevania, this prologue lets the player get use to what a Castlevania game is like and even has a feel of the older games at this point. You run into Dracula who gives his famous gaming “What is a man!?” speech. The voice acting is… not the greatest, but it kind of has a bad horror movie charm to it, so it kind of fits. It’s both aged well and badly at the same time. It’s a sense of this is the Castlevania you know, but the rest of the game is a whole different animal. You then have a showdown with a monster form of Dracula, but it’s early game/scripted fight and you can’t die here without trying. Beat Dracula and the castle is no more… OR IS IT!?
Richter disappears and the game fast forwards to 4 years later and the castle has returned. The game now has you play as Alucard, the son of Dracula with a human mother (this is important for story reasons). Richter shows back up later in the game as a major plot point so don’t feel like you won’t see him again and that the start of the game was meaningless.
Early in playing, the game does a classic Metorid trope of starting you with all your awesome items, only to have them taken away from you. A much more recent example of this would be the start of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom where you start with max hearts only for them to be taken away from you. I’m starting to think this game is inspired by Zelda as much as Metroid. Symphony of the Night has that feeling of exploration and learning new things while going into the unknown.
The game as it is 2D and giving that it was 1997 and it was all about 3D gaming, I can see why people might have game this game a pass because “eww 2D game. However, as far as 2D sprite work goes, it’s one of the best looking games I’ve ever played. There are some 3D elements here and there with some monsters but it’s more to add to the game and not be the entire game. Just little drops of 3D rather than going full out. The game does a fantastic job doing this where it’s not distracting or looks off putting. Some mini boss fights has so many moving parts and smooth movements that there’s hardly any other game that pulls this off as well as Symphony of the Night. A masterclass of how a 2D action adventure game should look.
The music of the game is also fantastic, with a mostly classical but awesome soundtrack that has many feelings that bring the atmosphere. One of the better soundtracks in this era. As the game’s music goes into different genres, the soundtrack never feels out of place in the area you are in.
The gameplay feels very smooth as most Castlevania games up to this point felt very stiff. Alucard feels great here and as you gain more abilities to find more areas to explore. If you are a pro player, you can also do a back dash that’s faster than walking if you are into playing games quickly. That’s part of why I love this game. The more you play and explore, the more you find. Not to mention getting that new power up that can get you past that jump you could not make before, or that wall you could not break. There’s a major difference between he first time you play the game, and the next time giving everything you know. Kind of like Super Metroid or maybe even The Legend of Zelda with its exploration. The more you play the better you get and it becomes a test as to how fast and fluent you can play the game, a speed runner’s dream. There are tons of abilities you can learn such as double jumps and being able to transform into things like a bat to get into some high places along with other skills and things you can learn and do. This is a game where you no doubt get stronger and stronger and by the near of the end game, you feel like an unstoppable beast that can take on anything. Amazing job with progression here.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night also adds RPG elements to the game, having damage be done ala numbers, health also works this way. You can equip stronger items for an attack boost or get that defense buff you might need along with leveling up. There is also sub items or one time items much like older Castlevania games. There’s nothing like finding that right item that can shred a boss you might struggle with beforehand.
I only have two major gripes with the game. First the game does have a bad ending that you can reach half way into the game. It’s kind of obvious as it’s a choice you make half way in, but I can see players picking wrong and then thinking the game ends there with the bad ending. I can’t say I know any other video game where you can get about 60% into it and decide “Meh I want to bad ending”. My only other issue is it’s the kind of game where you start so low leveled that you really don’t have any room for mess up or error and you will die A LOT early on, and it’s the kind of old school game where the only checkpoints is the last time you save. So if you’ve not been in a save room in over an hour and run into a monster that you’re not quite ready for, then guess who’s doing all that work again? Not to mention when you die, there’s a game over screen and it takes a bit to get back into the game, being having to deal with old PlayStation era load times.
Since Castlevania: Symphony of the Night’s release it along with the Metorid series has created the “MetroidVania” sub-genre. The best modern example would likely be Hollow Knight, but there are other both main games and indie games like Symphony of the Night to scratch your itch as well if MetroidVanias are your kind of game.
Overall as it might be a little hard to get into, once you really bite your vampire teeth into Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, it’s one of the best 2D action adventure games you can play. There’s tons of ports but some are not as great as others, so there might be a little research that you’ll need to do before diving in. The version I remember playing was on the Sony PlayStation, so that might be the one to go after. It’s hard at first but stick with it, you’ll be glad you did as it’s no doubt my favorite Castlevania as it is for most fans of the series.
