Why is this even a term? When Metroid invented the genre and Castlevania just made a game copying what Metroid did before?
>>728988751It refers to the Castlevania action RPGs starting with Symphony of the Night. People thought collecting new abilities to unlock new areas was a Metroid thing (even though it was directly inspired by Zelda) so they referred to those Castlevania games as "Metroidvanias." In the same vein, the older stage-based Castlevanias were referred to as Classicvanias to differentiate them. At some point other nonlinear platformers were also compared to Metroid so they used the same term even though they weren't Castlevania games. So in the end it describes a genre of platformer that is neither Metroid nor Castlevania.
You shouldn't be able to get lost in a platformer. You just go right.
>>728988751Metroidvania was originally just a term used within the castlevania community to differentiate between "classicvanias" and "metroidvanias". From the get go, it meant "(castlevania) games that were inspired by Metroid" and it was never intended to mean "games that were inspired by Castlevania and Metroid". The term just sounded cool so it stuck. The only real claim castlevania has to the genre is that it was their community that coined the term. Anyone who says "rpg elements are necessary for a game to be a meteoidvania" are retarded and don't actually understand where the term came from.
>>728988751Metroidvania was first used as a term to mock SotN. But SotN turned out so good that not only did Metroidvania become the overall name for the genre, devs started taking more influence from SotN than they did from Metroid.
>>728991254Honestly everything sbout SotN was amazing except the gameplay, its pretty easy to mindlessly mash through most encounters with zero thought or effort at all. A lot of the castlevanias after SotN suffer from this.
>>728989090It's been genericized to the point where any non-linear platforming game is now referred to as a "Metroidvania" despite the actual content
>It's should be Search Action!>It should be Metroid-like!I'll call it a Metroidvania because I like the way it sounds and that's the end of it
>>728992189Can we at least agree that metroidbrainia is retarded though
>>728988751Castlevania wanted to be a part of it.Kinda like how people call Soulslikes "Soulsborne" sometimes. Bloodborne ain't adding anything to the conversation lil cuz
>>728988751Is just a silly term that stuck. 2d games with exploration, item progression, backtracking existed before NES Metroid.
