Castlevania 4 had the advantage of being made by the folks who would eventually move on to form Treasure, and those people loved the little background and foreground details and junk- it's something you can really see in pretty much any other game Treasure has made, from Dynamite Headdy on up. CV4 was probably one of the more full examples of this, with things like the sunlight actually breaking the blocked up window after beating Dracula, or the fact that the gold shows its true colors as lead after you defeat the treasury boss.
See, I love moody atmosphere. And CV4's moody atmosphere seals the deal for me. I still really like the funky upbeat nature of some of the other Castlevania's, but its not quite the same as the mature, haunting atmosphere I got from CV4. Closest to that was Symphony of the Night.
The thing is, I love the other games a lot, but they don't get the kind of emotional reaction out of me that CV4 consistently drags out of me. So that's saying a lot.
This is a good point. Dynamite Headdy is a classic for me, and one of the reasons I love it so much is the reason you mentioned!
The music is actually one of the main reasons I didn't really care for CV4. Aside from the Theme of Simon, which is freaking awesome, there's nothing else really notable about the music. I can't remember a single level theme other than the Waterfall stage. Even the arrangements of Vampire Killer and Beginning are lackluster. It does have a great arrangement of Bloody Tears, though.
My other big issue with the game is I found it way too colorful. And it still managed to be muddied. I just don't think the SNES was very well-suited to presenting a Castlevania game.
For me it's hard to beat the first three games as far as the music goes. Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia also had great soundtracks, with Order having some great jazzy numbers. Castlevania 64's soundtrack was also superb, probably the most atmospheric in the series.
By the way- there's actually a pretty extensive new romhack of Castlevania 2 that has a retranslation and adds in a save file system (which the FDS version of the game had anyway). This translation is pulled from the original Japanese text, where there were still lying villagers, but the actual clues were comprehensible and informative- the original localization made the game much more confusing and obtuse than it had to be.
CastleVania holds a special place in my heart as well. It's one of the game series I grew up with. Now, before reading this, keep in mind that although video games are by far my favorite hobby, I've never been known to be exceedingly good at them. Right off the bat, being left handed is a slight handicap: controllers are arguably made with righties in mind, this is why games like Megaman were always harder to me: it's almost impossible to button mash with my right thumb.
So I don't remember ever beating the first CV before emulators, I could never beat Dracula. I still loved the game to death. CV2 is my favorite games in the series. The music is unique and I just enjoy the mood overall. Grinding has never been a problem for me in any game so; I always completely owned and destroyed this game. I can even skip the red crystal/whirlwind with a little trick of mine. CV3 is a game I liked but could never beat either. The NES series came out when I was a young teenager and at that time, I was not allowed to own a console so by the time I had full access to the game, several generations of games had come out and I never bothered to go back to it. Last of the NES games was CV: Holy Diver, a crazy Japanese only CV game. All I remember from it is that it was HARD.
SNES, Genesis and N64? I have completely skipped those. Sorry!
Then came the MetroidVania games. I really liked them all but I only loved SOTN which I have played quite a few times. I love its music. My wedding waltz was from SOTN. The others were all fun to play at least once but they all mostly felt like Zelda games: an excuse to shuffle the order in which you get the powerups.
Finally, the 3D games. Lament of Innocence was a riot, I loved it. Zio_Falz said it best actually. Still, I preferred Curse of Darkness by far. It was an excuse to grind and craft stuff and the story was fun. I found it for a steal in a bin at Walmart do: win.
The newest ones, Lords of Shadows is it? I tried but never got into them. A bit too hard for me mixed with a completionist nightmare. Meh.
I would definitely say this is a legitimate concern. I've often wondered how hard it is to adjust to a right-handed controller ever since a kid at my old daycare had to flip over the controller and play it upside down simply because he was left-handed. It's kind of crazy to think about the way the consumer world is oriented so much toward the right-handed side of things, and most of us don't even realize it.
I've played (and beaten) CV1, CV3, SC4, Bloodlines and Symphony of the Night (all on emulators, but without savestates). I love these games and the music, and I can't resist the urge to link this amazing piano medley. Never really got in to the Metroidvania subgenre beyond SoTN, though. I tried a few of the DS games but quickly lost interest.
Lords of Shadow has been on my Steam wishlist for a -long- time, just haven't gotten around to buying it. Might do that when the Christmas sales come around. From what I understand it doesn't have that much to do with other Castlevania games but it's supposedly still good.
Last edited by Solar on Mon Dec 8, '14, 5:26 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Posted: Sun Dec 7, '14, 1:58 pm 