I am a longtime Metroidvania enthusiast, and this was my first ever Castlevania game! My husband has been talking them up for years, and I have to say - I see what the hype is about. Turns out I'm even more of a -vania fan than a Metroid fan. This game was addictive, but in a humane way - I could always happily play more of it, and it was always satisfying when I did. The quality of life features were way better than the early Metroids; I found the map much more helpful/intuitive. The shield rod was pretty gamebreaking once I got it, but honestly it kind of made the game more fun for me - up until that point, it was a little bit of a slog because it was so hard. The big twist - the inverted castle - totally caught me by surprise even though I've heard my husband talk about it before. That's how great it was. And what a satisfying twist! Another whole game's worth of gameplay! Holy shit! Who does that? My only complaints are: like I said, the game was a bit of a slog until I got the shield rod; there were some really frustrating points where it was hard to figure out what to do, or hard to find a save point, so I died and lost a lot of progress; the story was . . . sparse, and somewhat difficult to understand, but still intriguing. The game was also campy and overdramatic, but I loved that.

I am so pleased to have played this and have ordered the next few games in the series.

Growing up I never had a playstation, I never had any console for that matter, so there's many games I haven't been able to enjoy until more recently. In particularly, the PS1 emulation software has dramatically improved only recently, so I decided I should probably play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

I have so much to say about this game, I enjoyed it so thoroughly, I actually completed it in 3 days because I honestly couldn't put it down. To stop myself from rambling, I'll make a pros and cons list:

PROS:
- The gameplay was perfected, a brilliant RPG system with items and stats, lets you customise your character and gaming experience.
- The pixel art is so beautiful and nostalgic. All sorts of cheesy stuff like zombies, demons, plant creatures, witches even CTHULHU made an appearance!
- The difficulty is balanced. It's challenging but not impossible. I never had a cheap death.
- Cool features like the familiars that follow you around and help you.
- Crazy epic boss fights. One of the bosses was this huge levitating sphere of millions of corpses. There must be at least 20 or 30 boss fights in the game.
- Map and teleport system implemented so you don't have to backtrack around too much, and it's easy to navigate.
- Jaw-dropping twist mid-way through the game when you realise you have to go back through in inverted castle.
- Music, atmosphere, cutscenes and pretty much everything else about the game is on point. Voice acting/dialogue is cheesy and terrible, but I see that as a positive, it fits perfectly with the campy undertones of the game and merely adds to the beautiful experience.

CONS:
- The inventory system is awful! Whenever you want to use a potion or change your weapon or whatever borderline impossible to navigate all your stuff. When you have to spend 5 minutes scrolling through menus in the middle of a big boss fight it really breaks the immersion.

Anyway, ^that's my one and only complaint. In the past I've played Super Metroid and all the GBA Metroid games, and if you've enjoyed any of those, or any Metroid style game, then you have to play this. In fact, if you like any sort of 2D scroller game then you definitely must play this. I'm still in awe of how powerful that experience was, I'm sad it's over, I think I might replay it!

I played it on my plasma with headphones and my logitech wireless F710 controller. If anyone wants to try it out, the emulator I used was ePSXe. It was simple to set up and everything ran perfectly without any issues.

I am perfectly aware of the majesty this game carries with it. Perhaps unluckily, I got to experience the GBA-followups that had the benefit, not the burden, of getting to build off of one of the great formula-shifts in the medium. In response, I have the dark honor of getting to be contrarian and nit-picky where SOTN's contemporary audience had no choice but stare in wonder.

The game is utterly beautiful. It's presentation and UI's are perfect, having a reserved touch of nostalgia for the 4th console gen and neighboring design to the RPG god-king of its day, Final Fantasy.

But god damn, the art and the music. I am not close to qualified to really praise it properly, but you have to stare for hours to notice the weakness in the sprite work (It's the protagonist faces, even under the CRT glow). The backgrounds are flawless on their own, though I feel (as the later games agreed) that the set dressings could have been more diverse than different brickwork styles.

The weakest song in the game is the end credits music, which I could write a paragraph defending even then, but I'm certain would have stood well against your childhood shelf full of Disney-competitor VHS tapes that made you wait past the credits for a music video. Outside of that, the game varies the genre of song and everything is an absolute blast. They figured out how to make rock, hip hop and electric jazz work in a dour, gothic environment years before that became an iconic cinema style in the new millenia

The game is distilled energy. The combat is a more free version of the earlier game's arcade movement. You progress by killing, by opening doors, by doing everything that you already want to do. It mixes gameplay with progression in ways you have to fight to find even in today's 30 minute indie crazes. In all areas, SOTN does things right that other games should see and listen to. It's the best example of a game that should be part of a Gen Ed curriculum for University. You will learn things about yourself and your craft by giving it your time.

That said, it's a product. It's struck down in my eyes from its rightful place in a 5/5 list because the creators were too eager. They achieved good ways of dealing with the loading issues, but you can feel this game strain for a higher base movement speed. Your navigation options are mostly hidden (I don't particularly feel like praising it for having a gravity jump or a flying bat charge when a 100% run and read through of the manual doesn't reveal it) and usually require repeated fighting game inputs rather than... movement. I completed All-Boss Richter, I can super jump, but this is just one of those "casual filters" that I feel is indefensible.

Finally, the great debate of our times... I think reverse castle was a mistake. I feel by saying this I've signed on to a political party, but I did not feel like it was an appropriate ask of my time as a player. You can argue that playing Richter mode back to back with Alucard mode is not intended play, but you definitely do not get the full challenge of the game from Alucard, so in the roughly 40 hours I spent playing I had to navigate Castlevania 4 times when only 1 was perfectly paced. I get the value proposition, I understand the idea of only getting one game a year at Christmas, but my 10th birthday was a long, long time ago, and SOTN remains as it was. The game is too slow, the advance movement is clunky, it's padded, and frankly none of this had to be the case.

The game is refined, but it's unfair for us to further refine it ourselves to try to make it the best game of all time just because, from a couple of angles, it's got devilishly close. It's a wonder that the game is so good that it makes us want to push it up to a pedestal it didn't quite qualify for, afraid that we'll never be lucky enough to see something wholey better. I'm happy though, it's not about perfection anyway.