Mobile gaming, gambling machines and health clubs IIRC. I'm under the impression they could close their main gaming division entirely and still turn a profit.
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What happened to IGA (Koji Igarashi)?
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Mobile gaming, gambling machines and health clubs IIRC. I'm under the impression they could close their main gaming division entirely and still turn a profit.
Music? Different people have different taste so I can't dispute this but I can't remember a single track from SotN while the village and pinnacle themes from DoS are still stuck in my head. Same with Iron Blue Intention and Crucifix held close from PoR and I usually don't pay that much attention to music.
Transformations? Uppercut all day everyday, transformations just slow you down. And turning into giant monsters in Aria >>>>>>>> turning into mist. EDIT: Just remembered the wolf one. That was nice.
Controls? I'm not sure how SotN is better in this regard. Can't remember any control issues in any of the IGAvanias.
Weapons? It does have Valmanway but so do the Sorrow games. Does SotN have Claim Solais, Balmung or something similar? I'm seriously asking because I didn't mess around with it enough to find all the weapons.
Unnecessary? More like fun and another reason to make killing enemies more enjoyable. Dawn takes it even a step further by using souls to synthesise new weapons, a mechanic that's sadly absent from the sequels. Alucard's arsenal is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more limited and certainly not good enough.
More secrets? Can you jog my memory? All I remember are breakable walls.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Harmony of Despair was addictive as hell and quite entertaining.
Curse of Darkness and Lament of Innocence had godlike soundtracks.
I enjoyed literally every Metroidvania (I still play Aria of Sorrow, despite beating it 6+ times)
I'm still trying to will my way through a single play-through of Lords of Shadow.
IGA haters can eat bags of doorknobs. The man made games I like to play and that counts for a fuckton.
Curse of Darkness and Lament of Innocence had godlike soundtracks.
I enjoyed literally every Metroidvania (I still play Aria of Sorrow, despite beating it 6+ times)
I'm still trying to will my way through a single play-through of Lords of Shadow.
IGA haters can eat bags of doorknobs. The man made games I like to play and that counts for a fuckton.
cartman414
Member
I disagree. He at least got rid of the overly long corridors from SotN.
CotM won by virtue of being a launch title.
cartman414
Member
So we can have more backtracking?
Rondo I will concur to, but SotN dragged on a bit with its design. Aria onwards at least streamlined things and doubled up on warp points to reduce the backtracking.
Here's what Hagihara was (partly) responsible for:
http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Castlevania-SymphonyOfTheNight-Dracula'sCastle-MarbleGallery.png
http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Castlevania-SymphonyOfTheNight-Dracula'sCastle-OuterWall.png
http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Castlevania-SymphonyOfTheNight-Dracula'sCastle-RoyalChapel.png
http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Castlevania-SymphonyOfTheNight-Dracula'sCastle-UndergroundCaverns.png
Where's your god now, hmmm?
cartman414
Member
Double post.
SotN was a top-tier game from Konami, but it was full of recycled sprites and was probably Castlavania's last gasp at staying top-tier. It needed to be reinvented for it to stay on top.
A number of teams within Konami were showing the series some love, just as it had always been. N64 games, Saturn games, Dreamcast games, this was a series that had a chance to find it's way.
Then Toru Hagihara retired and Iga inherited his team. Iga brought everyone together by writing an all-inclusive timeline for the series, building up the mythology. Konami looked at that and said "this guy can lead Castlevania into the future" so they put him in charge of all things Castlevania. But then the first thing he did was boot all the games he hated or didn't understand from his precious canon, and told other teams that they weren't allowed to touch his stuff. You're not allowed to try and have fun with Castlevania if that means that skeletons ride motorcycles. Iga ended up as the only one who wanted to make Castlevania, but that was his own fault.
His own attempts to move the series forward were met with failure after failure, and he blamed Konami for never giving him the budget for what he needed, but I'm not sure he knew how to ask for money. And even if they gave him money for new sprites, I doubt his vision for the series would have put it to good use. Just look at Castlevania Judgement.
Iga did make a few fanservice games in the handheld ghetto that were well received and didn't lose money, but that wasn't his primary job.
Konami apparently quietly asked Iga in Japan, Cox in Europe, and somebody else in America what their plans would be to save Castlevania, and Iga pitched Harmony of Despair, while Cox pitched Lords of Shadow. Konami told Cox he won but... hold off on calling it "Castlevania" for now because we have an Iga problem to deal with.
I don't think that Mercurystream should have control over the series, because I think that creates the same problem that happened under Iga, which is that people need to ask for permission to have fun, but Iga needed to be demoted.
A number of teams within Konami were showing the series some love, just as it had always been. N64 games, Saturn games, Dreamcast games, this was a series that had a chance to find it's way.
Then Toru Hagihara retired and Iga inherited his team. Iga brought everyone together by writing an all-inclusive timeline for the series, building up the mythology. Konami looked at that and said "this guy can lead Castlevania into the future" so they put him in charge of all things Castlevania. But then the first thing he did was boot all the games he hated or didn't understand from his precious canon, and told other teams that they weren't allowed to touch his stuff. You're not allowed to try and have fun with Castlevania if that means that skeletons ride motorcycles. Iga ended up as the only one who wanted to make Castlevania, but that was his own fault.
His own attempts to move the series forward were met with failure after failure, and he blamed Konami for never giving him the budget for what he needed, but I'm not sure he knew how to ask for money. And even if they gave him money for new sprites, I doubt his vision for the series would have put it to good use. Just look at Castlevania Judgement.
Iga did make a few fanservice games in the handheld ghetto that were well received and didn't lose money, but that wasn't his primary job.
Konami apparently quietly asked Iga in Japan, Cox in Europe, and somebody else in America what their plans would be to save Castlevania, and Iga pitched Harmony of Despair, while Cox pitched Lords of Shadow. Konami told Cox he won but... hold off on calling it "Castlevania" for now because we have an Iga problem to deal with.
I don't think that Mercurystream should have control over the series, because I think that creates the same problem that happened under Iga, which is that people need to ask for permission to have fun, but Iga needed to be demoted.
Purple Cheeto
Member
Didn't IGA have a much larger role in SotN than most hardcore fans give him credit for?
He's a producer so probably not.
May I please know on how you got this information? Please don't tell me it is all conjecture?
Igarashi was an Assistant Director; Hagihara Produced and Directed the game. The blurb in the wiki article saying that Igarashi had the most influence is speculative based on a line from a random website article which also speculated that "it could be argued" that Igarashi had the most influence because he helped write the scenario and did some coding.
...what?
It's true that Igarashi had input in the game's design and scenario, but even the scenario and design isn't entirely his doing, and he didn't call the shots--Hagihara did--and it shows in the final product.
Igarashi is shit, his titles are recycled, uninspired shit and anyone that tries to credit him for Symphony/Nocturne being amazing is just a fanboy apologist making excuses for their false idol.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
....What? Really? Wow. It's my favourite game soundtrack of all time, precisely because just about every track is so memorable.
He also didn't have the budget of Lords of Shadow.
For the canon and retcon stuff, I remember when it happened. Various teams made stuff like Dracula XX on the SNES, but after Iga got promoted, he got pissy about how those games insulted his team's work (Rondo of Blood), and booted them from his canon.
For the Japan/America/Europe thing, I found this link.
http://www.gamestm.co.uk/features/castlevania-lords-of-shadow-the-epic-konami-interview-part-1-of-2/
Dave Cox said:
These points can be argued, but you're not doing a very good job of it. It sounds as though you haven't played Symphony in a while. You have to know both sides to argue well.
lol,
I wouldn't list a disappointing and late port and a game helmed by Konami USA which got cancelled to show the love Konami gave to the series at the time.
It's true that in late '90 Castlevania was still seen as one of Konami main franchise and got some good to great games on PS1 and N64.
Actually Iga pitched this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5cANFk2FRE
Here are the US figures I have, LTDs, rounded to nearest 25k:
Symphony of the Night 475k
Circle of the Moon 475k
Lament 350k
Castlevania 64 - 350k
Dawn 275k
Portrait 225k
Dracula X PSP 200k
Curse 200k
Order 175k
Aria 150k (missing reprint sales)
Harmony 125k
Chronicle (PS1) 75k
Castlevania Darkness 64 - 50k
Judgment 25k
Thanks for this. How much did Lords of Shadow do?
Here what Stumpy had to say:
Note that the list was compiled by him (I checked and looks sound), I just added a more up to date figure for CoM (SotN and CoM sold roughly the same in US)
I don't know what to tell you, Symphony is the most recent IGAvania I completed and I'm not seeing myself playing through it again any time soon. Part of this due to me no longer having access to a PSP. For the record, I never replayed any of the Metroidvanias once I set them down after having gone through hard mode and clearing all the extra ones.
Care to list your 2 favourite tracks?
Are we doing some weird revisionist history Saying Symphony was not a great game? Oh...
And those examples don't hold a candle to Portrait of Ruin mirroring the same map for 4 stages. Sorry, Toru's legacy will never be tarnished.
This is something I doubt. Japan's salaries are far far far higher than Spain's and MS were just 40 people. Also, I wouldn't give the man a LoS budget after Lamment of Innocence.
Around two million, it shipped one million like 1 month after release. They had a press release and everything thanking the fans for their support. Which is funny after the "4M is a failure" SE debacle. Castlevania is far bigger in europe than US, guess why they didn't do a LE for North America.
Shmuely Bully
Member
SoTN's OST is consistently rated as one of the best in videogame history, while opinions may differ mine is backed by quite a few accolades.
SoTN has a super jump also and Richter can fly.
Alucard's movement is considerably more responsive than in CoTM or HoD at a minimum and by virtue of the additional inputs on the dualshock there is no fiddling with your inventory required to get around the map.
It has better than that. See: Marsil, Holy Sword, Sword of Dawn, Heaven Sword, Shield Rod, Alucard Sword, and Masamune Katana. In particular Marsil's alternate attack makes the whole fricking screen explode.
I enjoyed the cards in CoTM, souls in AoS/DoS, and combo attacks in PoR (glyphs are overrated), but to be the most effective you had to interrupt gameplay constantly to change what you had equipped.
The only ability in SoTN you might have to interrupt gameplay to use is Sword Brothers.
About 75% of the game can be skipped entirely without much trouble. You get the bad ending if you do so, but it can be done. The abandoned mine and catacombs can be skipped in the original castle and the entire inverted castle is easily missed, as are a number of areas even in the castle entrance that require the bat or wolf to get to. EDIT: I believe that the underground caverns and clock tower can be skipped as well since you only need the jewel of open, leap stone, form of mist, and soul of bat to get to the top of the keep. As can (almost all of) olrox's quarter.
There are also lots of other little things that you can easily miss, such as the ability to bounce the master librarian for items, the chapel ghosts, and at least one of the familiars.
In retrospect, that looks like crap.
I wanted more maps in Harmony of Despair. What a joke Konami is with handling this series.
Not surprised he lost so easily, when a team of 10 barkrupt (at the time) people did this in two months https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeEX6NLJ8aQ and pitched against him.
What does "window seated" mean? I've never heard that expression, and google isn't helping.
I didn't say it didn't have one, just that the uppercut is a much better mobility option than the bat and mist transformations. Do you honestly mean to tell me you enjoy using those two?
Didn't play CotM yet so I can't say but HoD never gave me any trouble. It would be great if you had some technical data to back up your claims.
You didn't have to fiddle with your inventory that much to get around the map in the later IGAvanias and once you got the uppercut that was basically all you needed.
The shield rod does seem interesting but since I can't try the weapons out in person it's kind of pointless to continue discussing this. BTW, your description of Marsil's alternate attack is quite the exaggeration
You talk as if you swapped souls every 5 second... Still, the bigger flow of new abilities does mean that you will see the equip screen more often but hey, if that bothers you that much, you can ignore new abilities and play the games Symphony of Boredom style. It's not like the games are so hard as to require constant equipment changes. Additionally, Dawn and Ecclesia also allowed you to have 2 easily swappable sets of soul. Not to mention that even with the more frequent trips to the equip screen, the experience of the IGAvanias on DS was still much more fluid because of the map on the second screen.
Optional content that's pretty hard to miss (there is a map and the bad ending is obviously bad) =/= secrets. But hey if we go by your criteria, Dawn still wins because it had 2 (!) bad endings. So much skippable content.
I get that the discovery of the whole second castle must have been blowing at the time but I already knew about that way before I first played Symphony and I've also come to expect bad endings that withhold content from you so fro me it was nothing special.
Dawn has a lot of little things too, like the newspaper giving you hints on how to encounter some of the more elusive creatures; throw curry in a certain spot and a yeti jumps out...
Lee Chaolan
Member
Here he is accepting an award for HoD at the Playstation Awards in 2012
I can't believe we didn't get a sequel to HoD. or even just new DLC. People want it >_>
Got it, thanks.
FlyingSaucer
Banned
As someone who prefer pre-SotN Castlevanias, the franchise got so much repetitive under his tenure that I can't really say I'm sad he doesn't work on the series anymore.
Still a pity Konami hasn't found a better use for his talents, thought
Still a pity Konami hasn't found a better use for his talents, thought
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Calling MoF plataforming the same as classicvania is like saying that GoW plataforming is like Super Mario 64 plataforming.
MoF is piece by piece a 2D GoW game. That's not classicvania.
It wasn't, but it was the best Symphony clone. Because it wasn't.
Dracula XX tells the same story as Dracula X with a few minor differences (The only real significant ones being Maria fighting along side Richter and two other women Dracula took hostage who were missing from the SNES game). Pretty much one of those has to be canon and the other doesn't so he selected Dracula X.
Similarly he took Legends out of the continuity as it directly contradicted the story for Castlevania 3 and delegated CotM and 64/LOD as side stories as they didn't really fit with the continuity at the time.
It honestly seems like you are spinning things to make him look malicious. He actually went out of his way later on to work CotM/64 in later on so I highly doubt he was trying to discredit anyone.
I disagree, but I think it's one of the better ones. Deserves more credit than it gets IMO.
Shmuely Bully
Member
Mist form is actually excellent for getting past certain difficult/frustrating enemies. My description of Marsil's special attack is hardly exaggerated. Its normal attack is firebrand's special attack and its special attack fills most of the screen with fireballs. (Start at 7:10)
The map screen appears and disappears almost instaneously in SoTN, it's much, much faster than messing around in your inventory screen. DoS has flying armor, bone ark, puppet master, and paranoia. PoR has toad morph/owl morph. OoE has magnes, paries, and volaticus.
Dawn has a few areas that you can miss if you don't mind the bad ending, it's not remotely comparable to how much can be missed in SoTN. Everything I mentioned other than olrox's quarters and the underground caverns is quite easy to skip, not hard at all. Dawn has a handful of small things, but it doesn't compare to the amount of secret rooms, items, and other extras in SoTN (Dawn doesn't even have any real secret rooms). There are a lot of things that were clearly put into SoTN just because they could (see: Outer Wall elevator).
Name me the ways that MoF isn't like classicvania games outside of the maps you can backtrack through and the ability to hang from ledges (which itself is similar to Grant's abilities in CV3). There aren't many.
I think you're missing something here. Your explanation is true for Europe/America, but my understanding is that in Japan, it's a little different. High ranking people in the company who make big mistakes aren't fired, as you might expect. Instead, they are given a corner office, where they can play Angry Birds all day and not mess up company operations any further. At least, that's my limited understanding of how it works.
cartman414
Member
Maybe I should have given a little additional explanation. (And no, I don't disagree on Portrait.) SotN's level design had a different problem: length for the sake of length. Which led to additional needless backtracking, especially since you needed to retract all the way to the other end of the castle a couple times. You only had 5 warp rooms to jump between. Now don't get me wrong, I did enjoy SotN, but all that (re-)traversal through those long hallways and shafts put a damper on my enjoyment a bit. What I'm saying is that the notion of all of the followups are lesser clones is BS. Aria and Dawn for their part largely reduced the aforementioned fat and doubled down on the warp areas, reducing the backtracking.
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Why are we still having this SotN is the best discussion when Order of Ecclesia is just better in almost every way?
OoE's bossfights are all several notches above SotN's both in difficulty and in design. The fact that OoE's encounters are actually designed with all the glyphs you can obtain in mind that means that you can basically build your own strategy on how to fight every boss though obviously some strats are better than others.
Also Dracula in OoE is my favorite castlevania boss fight hands down, there were so many fun ways to get that boss down and learning his patterns baiting out attacks and using dominus to finish him off was incredible!
OoE's environments are obviously more varied and the fact that it has a ton of areas besides just the castle make the game feel a lot bigger and the stakes feel a lot higher. Sure just having a castle more fleshed out is probably going to lead to a better designed area but i'd argue that each area of the smaller OoE castle feels unique enough and pretty neatly designed over all. It's the shock factor of having cleared like 8 areas and then THE HUGE castle opens up. To me that left a bigger impression than the inverted castle existing.
The areas in OoE also had less bloat, each area was designed more meticulously in OoE, which lead to over all tighter feeling design, especially when it comes down to enemy placement.
The Glyph sleeve lets you hold 3 load outs at the same time to minimize inventory management.Your traversal methods if you ask me are more fun, it's a shame that the wings glyph is only unlocked at the end though, but using Magnes was really neat.
The only places that SotN outdoes OoE in are the music department and visually, but as far as gameplay goes, OoE gave me a huge adrenaline rush. If you ask me OoE is Iga's master piece.
I'm not saying SotN is a garbage game because it's absolutely not, it's earned the legendary status it has on its own merits and it deserves it completely. I just think that OoE is the superior experience.
OoE's bossfights are all several notches above SotN's both in difficulty and in design. The fact that OoE's encounters are actually designed with all the glyphs you can obtain in mind that means that you can basically build your own strategy on how to fight every boss though obviously some strats are better than others.
Also Dracula in OoE is my favorite castlevania boss fight hands down, there were so many fun ways to get that boss down and learning his patterns baiting out attacks and using dominus to finish him off was incredible!
OoE's environments are obviously more varied and the fact that it has a ton of areas besides just the castle make the game feel a lot bigger and the stakes feel a lot higher. Sure just having a castle more fleshed out is probably going to lead to a better designed area but i'd argue that each area of the smaller OoE castle feels unique enough and pretty neatly designed over all. It's the shock factor of having cleared like 8 areas and then THE HUGE castle opens up. To me that left a bigger impression than the inverted castle existing.
The areas in OoE also had less bloat, each area was designed more meticulously in OoE, which lead to over all tighter feeling design, especially when it comes down to enemy placement.
The Glyph sleeve lets you hold 3 load outs at the same time to minimize inventory management.Your traversal methods if you ask me are more fun, it's a shame that the wings glyph is only unlocked at the end though, but using Magnes was really neat.
The only places that SotN outdoes OoE in are the music department and visually, but as far as gameplay goes, OoE gave me a huge adrenaline rush. If you ask me OoE is Iga's master piece.
I'm not saying SotN is a garbage game because it's absolutely not, it's earned the legendary status it has on its own merits and it deserves it completely. I just think that OoE is the superior experience.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Only 2? That's gonna be hard. The Tragic Prince, Dance of Pales, Dracula's Castle, Wood Carving Partita, Lost Painting, Rainbow Cemetery, Heavenly Doorway, Festival of Servants, Abandoned Pit... wait, I think that's more than 2, is it?
Like I said, the whole thing is amazingly consistent.Relaxed Muscle
Member
The complexity of the plataforming makes a world of difference, or how the game clearly differentiates the combat parts with the plataforming parts (like GoW), something it was integral to the classicvania series and most old action games. We can play this backwards, name ways in which MoF isn't like GoW 2D clone?. It has the similar setpieces, similar simple plataforming, similar combat system, QTE, it even has the spare puzzles across the game like in GoW.
The main difference is the incredibly braindead backtracking, which is not very classicvania. Is very clear that the similarities with classicvanias are very superficial (it has a whip! OHHH!), the game core design is more closer to what you see on games like GoW.
I was answering out of context because I hadn't seen the original mention of the corner office. But it's odd to me that a society built around shame wouldn't make someone take to walk of shame.
Shmuely Bully
Member
Congrats, you've named the two ways it differs from classicvania that I didn't: some puzzles and QTEs. There are all of about 3 puzzles in the whole game (although I'd point you to CV2 to say it's not unheard of in Castlevania). The QTEs are the only part that is really overdone.
God of War does not have multiple character arcs, open map design (it's an extremely linear game), and most importantly it's not fricking 2D. Any similarities between GoW and MoF are superficial-I've played both and it doesn't play like GoW. Outside of enemies taking longer to bring down and optional backtracking, it has a very, very similar feel to classicvania and yes, a key part of that is the traversal even if you dislike it.
There's no puzzles on CV2.
MoF isn't a classicvania nor reminds one. You can think that if you want, but you're simply wrong.
Shmuely Bully
Member
Yes, it's a classicvania with nods to modern game design because it's a modern game. If you're going to try to contradict that, have some common courtesy and give a better reason than, YOU'RE WRONG!!1! because I'm not seeing any from you.
How about an additional point of similarity? Dark magic closely mirrors CV2's flame whip and Richter's default item crash.
That is fair enough, there are a LOT of things that remind me of classicvania and the feel of it is quite similar to me. Even for your example I could point to Shaft as an similar scenario from classicvania, but the differences as a whole do add up enough in ways that I could just be splitting hairs.
Certainly I consider it a lot closer to classicvania than the metroidvania formula though.