Does SotN have some of the most needlessly complicated game mechanics relative to its difficulty? You never really need to interact with any of them, and the most basic setup will get you through the game. Did you know that weapons have a strength requirement? Yep, if your STR is lower than the weapon's attack value, you only get HALF the strength bonus. Spell damage is calculated with 20% of your innate INT, plus 80% of your bonus INT (relics or equipment). Meaning a character with 10 INT stat, plus bonus equipment for 10 INT, gets a spell casted for 10 INT. You get DARK elemental weapons, but TWO enemies are weak to DARK (Richter and Sniper of Goth). Likewise, you get Holy mail to protect you from attacks from those two enemies. You can use potions or spells to protect you against all sorts of elements, but other than a few rather obvious lightning or fire attacks from bosses, I wouldn't hazard a guess what most attacks elements even are to begin to use it. Who does Dark damage? The relationship between CON and DEF is convoluted and involves square roots. Enough said. There's the whole elemental issue, but so few weapons that actually USE them meaning it's difficult to do any damage that isn't HIT or CUT. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0IfAqyOFQk
>>12071162I don't know the development history of SOTN, but I get the feeling a lot of games with RPG mechanics start out very ambitious, but as development progresses and it's time to actually realize those mechanics, they realize how difficult it is to actually balance it all out, and of course they don't have infinite time to do so without delaying the game, so they end up just making sure the most basic elements work well enough so the game is beatable. Most likely that was the case here. Perhaps with another 6 months of development or so, they may have been able to add more enemies that use or are vulnerable to elemental attacks, for example, or to refine the algorithms so they're more intuitive, but alas.
tell us something we don't know professor
>>12071178If the game was a bit harder, you might be forced to interact with some of these mechanics, like popping a strength or def potion, or trying to cast a spell to protect against an element. A Level 1 mode would be really useful. As such, really the only thing you need to care about in the game is ATT and DEF as stats. You don't need to understand anything other than that functionally. You get a big bonk stick and get a big defensive suit and you go to town. Who cares if that enemy does Dark and that one does Ice if they do 1 damage to you? On top of that: most players end the game with the Alucard Mail which halves damage from fire-ice-lightning, which covers many elemental attacks anyways.
>>12071178Relevant: The game has an H20 (water) element that is buggy, and half-implimented into the game. Many enemies are strong or weak to it, but Alucard is not able to actually use any attack that is water based.
>>12071178>I don't know the development history of SOTNA big thing the devs were going for with SOTN was replayability, that's why they put in a ton of stuff to discover, all the new game+ stuff, and had a pokedex thing so completionists can try to catch em all.
>>12071162Another thinly veiled "SOTN is the best castlevania game" thread
>>12071260In terms of breadth of content? Yes. None of the later games in the series compare. They're quite good, but somewhat scaled down in terms of scale and size.
>>12071162It was one of the first games that could be called a metroidvania and the disparity between the weakest and strongest weapons was staggeringly huge. It doesn't surprise me that it was unbalanced, they tried to balance it like an RPG and not an action game.
>>12071347>tried to balance it like an RPGLike every RPG ever, SOTN just needed a higher difficulty mode.Though balance is so tricky, I rarely hear about a game having good balance or a difficulty curve
>>12071162Nothing you mentioned is complicated. Obscure, but not complicated. You don't need to know all that shit to play the game.
>>12071260>SOTN is the best castlevania gameYou're damn right it is!
OP is right: wingsmash, rod, alucart sword, alucart shield, crissagream, and spells BTFO the game's leveling system. There's not much reason to delve deep into these mechanics if you can perform the inputs.
>>12071248They failed that mission if I dread thinking about replaying it.
That hack Jeremy Blaustein mistranslated a lot of shit, and he inserted a lot of random Lord of the Rings terms instead of the original mythological terms for seemingly no reason. I hope with the source decomp we get a PC port, and at least the option for consistent and accurate enemy and item names.
>>12072532This game already got retranslated on PS1, Anon.
>>12071162Still waiting on that SOTN level editor and renaissance of SOTN hacks.
>>12072532>not for another 6 yearshttps://github.com/Xeeynamo/sotn-decompMost of us are gonna be in our fucking 50s
>>12072842noooo... symphony sisters...
>>12071162Its my favorite ps1 and castlevania game but ya mechanically its kind of a mess in alot of ways. Understandable when they were doing something so different and it likely had dozens of weird mechanics and iterations cut in development
>>12071248SotN doesn't have New Game+ though. It's one of those games where doing a "challenge run" means doing "uhhhhh... idunno lol", until the designated point in the game where you're allowed to do what your challenge run is actually about.Meanwhile, play AoS and every soul you collect is basically a new extra mode you can now play the entire game with. Just start New Game+ anytime and you have it from the start.In fact I think a majority of the handheld games are more replayable than SotN for this reason. SotN not having New Game+ is a major functionality issue for the type of game it's trying to be.
>>12071162It's fun
To me, it feels like the SOTN devs decided to put as much stuff as possible into the game just because they had the space of making a 2D game on the PS1.
>>12071162>You get DARK elemental weapons, but TWO enemies are weak to DARK (Richter and Sniper of Goth). Likewise, you get Holy mail to protect you from attacks from those two enemiesCheese strats
>>12071162They just added stuff that thought would be cool, and probably didn't have enough time to worry about making it balanced. Wasn't the reversed castle made in 2 weeks or something? They just thought it would be fun so they threw it in there.
>>12074604This. SotN and Rondo of Blood before it were meant to be goofy spin-offs, hence why they were titled in Japan as "Dracula X" and not Akumajou Dracula. The developers just decided to go nuts with all their fun and funny ideas as they didn't think it would be the franchise's direction going forward.
>>12074640Rondo of Blood was a mainline title, dummy, the X was added because it was meant to sound KEWL and also it was the 10th Castlevania game at the time, likewise SNES Dracula X kept that name as a marketing stunt due to the hype people had due to EGM and others talking about the original Rondo and wanted an American release, so Konami just hastely made a shitty spinoff game for the SNES calling it Akumajou Dracula XX but treated it in Japan as just a sideline spinoff non canon game that used some Rondo sprites due to lazyness and quickjon, while the US release used the cover of the PC engine game and even anime artwork from it to trick people in believing it was a port, this is why SNES Gets a bad flack (also still kinda crappy).
>>12074604>They just added stuff that thought would be cool, and probably didn't have enough time to worry about making it balanced. Wasn't the reversed castle made in 2 weeks or something? They just thought it would be fun so they threw it in there.The actual reverse castle itself would be trivially easy to program, since it's just the stages flipped over, but the maps are filled to the brim with unique enemies and bosses, and they barely re-use any enemies.
>>12074671>>12074640What I heard is that the mainline Castlevania devs were working on the N64 game, which was meant to be the next mainline series. Dracula X was the spin-off side series, and as such they had more freedom to experiment. Nocturne of Moonlight was to be the last Dracula X spin-off game before the real N64 game came out and soft-rebooted the series, so they went a little nuts. Yet in reality, the N64 game was ignored, and it was Rondo and Nocturne that everyone liked. In fact, I think Koji Igarashi made a huge stragetic blunder by making a Rondo remake on the PSP, instead of a NEW game. It should have had Rondo and Nocturne unlocked from the start, and a NEW Dracula X game, in 2D, that is as big and expansive. Probably have Richter and Maria as middle-aged since they're the main stars of the Dracula X series. Like the N64 game, Igarashi's PSP Rondo remake has beenn completely ignored, to the point that Sony re-released the PSP game for PS4, and just removed the 3D remake. It was that forgettable.
>>12074780Your canon is wrong mate, dont try to play revisionist with people, Rondo was a mainline title, literally a sequel to the original Akumajo Dracula game, agian, the X in teh title is meant to make it KEWL and NEXT STEP, as well as being the 10th castlevania game made.CastlevaniaMSX Vampire KillerHaunted CastleSimons QuestThe AdventureCastlevania 3Belmonts RevengeSuper Castlevania 4Akumajo Dracula X68000Rondo of Blood was the 10th game in the series in general, only both Kid Dracula games were considered spinoffs of sorta, and even so more like the Wai Wai games.The fact that Rondo was made for the PCEngine instead of the SNES or even the SEGA CD was because they tought it was the most flexible and versatile console to make a new main entry in the series, becuase PCE was at 2nd place in japan and before the Super Famicom, it was like in the number 1 spot, and nobody gave two shits about the Mega Drive in japan. (tough realistically they should just ported Rondo to the Sega CD even if it was just for NA like they did with some PCE titles).And SOTN using the Dracula X moniquer in japan was mainly due to THAT being a spinoff gaiden game of Rondo.
>>12071178>>12073039Correct they cut a lot of things. The dark/light alignment system seems pretty wild. Cast too many spells and Aclucard is Dark aligned and it would possibly affect the ending? https://shmuplations.com/symphony/
I literally just ignore all of that RPG shit apart from "bigger number better", and that seems to get me through the game (also seems to get me through most games).I largely find this genre kind of stupid and bloated, in that regard.
is the Quality romhack the best romhack for this? can it be combined with the alternative EN translation that seems better?
>>12075019nah, most of the romhacks are being bundled in the randomizer now.
>>12073168you can play as richter as a challenge. and maria in the saturn / vita version but she's op in the saturn version. and you can give alucard certain names that change his stats like doing the luck build that cuts your hp.
This board killed this game for me.
>>12071187you're welcome
>>12075582smoke a little weed. It'll be resurrected.
I was this years old when I found out Shield Rod Spells use your Strength rather than your Int to determine damage. What? You like punch really hard and it makes your gorgon face laser do more damage?I always thought spells = int, so I'd pop a smart potion beforehand.
>>12071162>You never really need to interact with any of themWhich is what makes it fun. Didn't read the rest of your utterly retarded, asinine, underaged post. If you can't comprehend the idea of having fun for the sake of fun and not because it's a direct requirement to generate a skinner box bingbingwahoo reward, just fucking neck yourself already, you intolerable subhuman.
>>12075829>pointless number systems that do nothing are funWhy?
>>12071178That happens to a lot of games. Look at the game Hybrid Heaven. You almost always go into combat in neutral initiative. You can also get a preemptive attack or have a back attack on yourself, but these two rarely ever come up. Why? Because they're remnants for when Hybrid Heaven was going to have stealth mechanics. I'm sure the vast majority of games started with a wider scope and then got cut down to what they are because of multiple factors. Can just be simple time constraints that they can implement mechanics or content within the time frame they need to. The hardware just doesn't allow them to easily implement what they wanted at all or without considerable work. Or they just didn't figure out how to really implement those things within the game so rather frivolously spending time on what isn't in the game, they keep creating what already is known.
>>12074868Huh, maybe thats related to that cut demon Maria ending they still recorded lines for in both languages?
>>12071213Is Hydro Storm water based?
>>12071213What resource is that? I'm interested in the data.Like, does it specifically have "cat" attribute damage for the Cat-eye-circlet equipment Alucard can use, to recover large amounts of HP when hit by the Witch's cats?The attribute systems for the Igavanias from SotN onwards are interesting but mostly inconsequential, since they didn't have enough of an impact to make you change what weapons you're using, or try builds that emphasise a strong suit.It wasn't until Order of Ecclesia that the games really make you think about your weapons attributes.
>>12076162I always assumed it was holy damage
>>12076202Ya Holy being the best overall damage was really the only thing that mattered before then.
>>12076162Holy+hit. The bottle itself does hit damage only, if it hits the ground it does holy+fire.
>>12075625u r gay
>>12076202>What resource is that? I'm interested in the data.https://guides.gamercorner.net/sotn/weapons/>Like, does it specifically have "cat" attribute damage for the Cat-eye-circlet equipment Alucard can use, to recover large amounts of HP when hit by the Witch's cats?No, because of the way its coded "cat damage" isn't an element, it's just a quirk of one attack and one piece of equipment.
- anything I need to know if this is my first castlevania? controls or lore wise- is there no way to view the map in full screen?- hearts aren't hp?
>>12076689You might as well play Rondo of Blood first, since Symphony is a direct sequel to it. It's not that hard. Warning: You may fall in love with Maria, sparking a life long obsession. >>12076689>- is there no way to view the map in full screen?Select>- hearts aren't hp?It's always been your ammo counter.
>>12076696>Selectit's overlaid over the current screen which is annoyingalso am I supposed to hit every candles and every wall for secret?
>>12076741If you're playing on SotN on a handheld, I'd understand why the small map would be annoying.That map will eventually fill out the entire display area though, it was designed for playing on a TV after all.Hitting candles is to replenish hearts and changing subweapons, a few candles in fixed locations will drop money instead.There's a lot of destructable walls that'll reveal items and secrets. You aren't expected to pixel hunt them, the faerie familiar can let you know about suspicious spots.Not all secrets are as simple as attacking solid walls, either. Some rooms are only accessible through obscure methods, and I don't recall if there's anything in-game that indicates the method.
>>12076253There's at least one significant fight in Aria of Sorrow where you should stop swinging that Claimh Solais, and it's against Julius.It still does good damage despite the holy resistance, but you're better off using a Balmung or the Kaladbolg not just because of the dark attribute damage, but because it doesn't use an overhead swing.
>>12076762>There's a lot of destructable walls that'll reveal items and secrets. You aren't expected to pixel hunt them, the faerie familiar can let you know about suspicious spotsYes there's little need to test every wall and floor you come across. Usually they're noticeable, and you're not missing much if you miss them
>>12071162>>12071178>>12071213>>12073039>>12073802I know this may sound weird to some but I miss games being not fully polished, having a few remnant mechanics that wasn't fully implemented, glitches and stuff. I miss how games couldn't just be patched the final product was the final product.Modern games feel too perfect and sanitized. There's no room for creative accidents. I think this is actually a major reason why the vidya industry is stagnating. It's grey, politically correct and too "perfect" and any imperfections can be patched out. Sometimes you need to innovate through mistakes and accidents. Fleming accidentally "made"/created penicillinIf games back then was like this we wouldn't have a combo system in fighting games. After all, a combo in Street Fighter was a glitch and now it's a core aspect of fighting games. Not even a mechanic. A core. If Street Fighter 2 was made today the developers would've immediately patched out combos and no innovations would come out of it.
>>12078426I bet you want a bf who's a bit damaged and sometimes beats you a little but that just brings you closer together
>>12076253charlotte can wreck house if you know the good spells and what enemies are weak to which, seems like it's necessary for hard mode level 1.
beat the game today (first half anyway) and just used one potion and no other consumables, I just spam the bible and attack with whatever strongest weapon, bosses are so trivial. interesting to play it today, it feels so innovative and has a lot of cool factors but its also so rudimentary compared to games that took from it. the level design is mostly flat and boring and they just copy paste the same enemies in boring ways, the backtracking is so dull and tedious, and for the longest time I believed it had in depth rpg mechanics but its so shallow and you dont need to engage with any of it. even the socalled metroidvania aspect is underwhelming because most of the stuff you unlock is optional gear and often weaker than you already have.
>>12071162>>12076345
>>12078891Have you tried to sequence break the game and stick to a weak weapon? mine is the basilard, and you can use the trick to activate the jump kick early on without using the leap stone.Seems like people just wanna find an excuse to shit on the game because of le heckin youtubers, specially that homo Derek Alexander.
how are you supposed to know- super jump- bat going fast
>>12079591>- super jump You get the gravity boots and will probably get curious what they do. You will accidentally do a super jump periodically and work it out. >- bat going fastBoth bat and wolf have go fast moves that are not exaplained to you. Wolf is super easy to get, since you get a relic and you will experiment to activate it. Wing smash is kind of hidden though. I think you'd need guidebooks for that?
>>12079619>>12079591Double checked, and yes, Sword Brothers, Wolf charge, and Wing Smash are 100% hidden spells that the game doesn't tell you about. The reason speed runners take so little time even in glitchless is they chain wing smashes whereas, I was a dumbass walking everywhere.
whats the deal with these guysI saw a vid where they drowned instead of poking
It looks like the developing team was running ahead of schedule and just stacked mechanics on top of another. In particular, I always found weird how Alucard can use the classic Castlevania weapon system. I seems so incompatible with the RPG weapon equip system. The former should've been Ricther only.
>>12079807You can push a box to block off the water so that it fills up and kills them. I believe they stay dead forever if you do that.
>>12072532>>12072842>>12076621Is there any resource with Alucard's physics/movement data?
>>12071162>Does SotN have some of the most needlessly complicated game mechanics relative to its difficulty?Legend of Mana beats it easily.
>>12078426Look at gunz: The duel which became one of the biggest games ever due to K-style but then actively removed it in Gunz 2.
>>12079841https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx6JXR8hqko
>>12079925Metal Gear Solid 3 had something similar where you could cancel the animation of bazookas and stuff. And that made it really fun especially vs Volgin tank. If they had patched and polished that it would be bland
>>12079825The sub-weapons were used because the devs thought, "It's a Castlevania game, it needs sub-weapons".It wasn't until Aria of Sorrow that they realized, "We've changed up so many things since the NES games, why are we still using sub-weapons?"
>>12080008Aria tried to make the lore coherent by explaining everything. Sub-weapons, spells, and single use items are merged into a single kind of attack: Bullet souls. You can use most or all of the original sub-weapons, including many more. Dracula has the power of soul dominance over demonic souls, and his setup in the classic games was Flame Demon, Succubus, and Red Minotaur. He then uses a transformation soul to turn into his final end-boss form. So it tries to explain everything by building upon the past and trying to make the systems into a single coherent system.
When it gets a decomp, I'd like to see a full "vanilla" set of bug fixes and hitbox fixes. Things running under the surface that you'll probably not even notice. I know there's a lot of small and major bugs, and I know hit boxes for some attacks and weapons can be a bit iffy.
>>12079636The boss fight viewer at the library shows the bat move. When I saw it back in the day I eventually got it by pulling off random movements.
>>12075582Watching the Netflix "anime" did it for me. I can't enjoy the games after watching Sodomy of the Night.
>>12080026succubus my ass, he never used a succing move until ecclesia (and it was really cool in that game, would love to see it in a classicvania)
>>12078335Actually the 2 breakable floors I remember had a very early health max up which is super helpful and a large secret area with a relic in it, so they were kind of important. Although the bullshit thing is those are like the only 2 breakable floors in the game so you stop even looking for them since they're so uncommon just to find out there was something important behind them
>>12080891Weird how Ecclessia of all things has the most intense and elaborate Drac fight. He's usually a push over and pretty static. Lost it when he started strutting around.
which way?i hate color
>>12071347The correct terminology is Willyvania as Jet Set Willy predates Symphony of the Night.
>>12081523What romhack? I played one that changed the color palette but I recall it was darker, and it also changed Juste's standing stance
>>12081582https://retrogametalk.com/repository/gba-roms/castlevania-harmony-of-dissonance-visual-improvement-hack/
>random ass enemies drop the best rings... totally NOT designed to sell guide books btw.
>>12081736why does only the giant skeleton have a drop exclusive to replay files? like you think either there'd be none or more
>>12081792In the original game it's called the Skull Ring. Yeah, it's likely just a bonus end-game equipment for replays, nto meant for normal regular play. Also meant to be a super secret item for people who bought the guidebooks. There's one of them in the normal castle specifically so you can farm them for it.