USgamer Club: We Take on Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Part 2
Do The Monster Mash with your pals at USgamer as we play until the end of Symphony's first castle.
This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.
Blah, blah blah! When last we left Adrian Fahrenheit "Alucard" Tepes, he had just discovered some dude who smelled like a Belmont was going around calling himself the boss of Castlevania.
How unthinkable! This week, it falls to us to sort out this strange mystery and put an end to Richter's reign of terror, which admittedly isn't that terrifying. But hey, there's a boss to beat and levels to grind up, so it's all good.
Jeremy Parish
Wow, I had forgotten how lengthy Symphony of the Night is. By the time I put the wraps on this chapter of the game, I had nearly six hours on the game clock. My Moonstone relic almost doesn't work anymore! Sure, some of that time came from my decision to play with the luck code, which makes for some slow going early on, but it's still a bit of a time investment.
A lot of what makes this phase of the game so time-consuming is that reaching the ending requires a fair amount of backtracking to reach out-of-the-way nooks in areas you already explored. You can earn the game's ending pretty quickly after meeting Richter in the Colosseum — defeating him earns you the Form of Mist, which you use in the Long Library to acquire the Form of Bat, which allows you to fly to Richter's lair in the Castle Keep.
Of course, that's not the real ending. Earning that requires something of a scavenger hunt throughout the castle: You have to collect the Echo of Bat, find a special suit of armor, meet Maria twice to collect a pair of special rings and a specific headgear accessory, and figure out exactly when and where to equip those items. Simply trekking to the extremities of the castle takes quite a while, and then you have to sort it all out.
At this point, Symphony of the Night becomes less like an action game and more of an adventure. You've already staked out all but a few little areas of the castle by the time you meet Richter; what comes next is a test of memory and deduction as you figure out where the little hooks for additional exploration showed up throughout the game and try to sort out the mystery of those weird rings. It's a slower, more methodical portion of the game, but it makes great use of the full expanse of the world you've been exploring.
Jaz Rignall
No way could I finish the game this week. Unfortunately I've had Diablo III to take care of. Well, I say unfortunately, but I actually mean fortunately, because it's awesome. What's funny is that going from Symphony of the Night to Diablo III isn't that much of a leap. Both have a foreboding, gothic air, and a sense of decay. Thinking about it, you could probably make Symphony of the Night isometric, and Diablo III into a platform game, and they'd both work.
But I digress. What I've forgotten is just how many weapons there are in the game, and how they can affect your fortunes. I was using a seriously crappy cudgel, but through a fortuitous drop upgraded to a 2H sword that seemed to do about 3x the damage. It made me start to rethink what I was doing. Should I go seek out the uber-drops and overpower my char? The novelty of gearing up a character for mass slaughter is fun, but in the end I decided not to. Just seems like a bit of a pointless exercise in a game like this.
Mike Williams
What? That's the best part! I'll spend an hour or so, backing and out of a specific room just to get a specific weapon or armor bit. As I said before, I need my favorite Crissaegrim, the sword that attacks as fast as you can press the button. It's just such an awesome weapon, even if it trivializes certain encounters. The game is just full of weird, quirky items that allow you to tailor Alucard to your playstyle, you just have to be patient enough to find them.
And on the bright side, it's not Aria of Sorrow or Dawn of Sorrow, so there's no grinding for hours and hours for souls. I know that means nothing to you, but Castlevania will know what I'm talking about.
Jeremy Parish
I knew the bit of the game where you retrace your footsteps was coming up after Richter, so I actually held a big chunk of new ground in reserve for this phase: I didn't explore the underground area — the waterfall and catacombs — at all until now. I kind of wish I had headed there sooner; thanks the luck code, I discovered a totally crazy new item I've never seen before in all my previous playthroughs of the game.
Down by the waterfall, a toad dropped an item called the Blue Knuckles. Curious, I tried it out and discovered it has practically zero forward range but allows you to uppercut about half again Alucard's height. And using them doesn't stop your forward momentum, so you can basically turn into a whirl of explosive upward force as you dash forward. It's amazing! Even better, I acquired the Blue Knuckles right before fighting the Succubus, an enemy who spends the entire fight hovering above you. She didn't stand a chance.
Mike Williams
I do feel like my luck this time around hasn't been as amazing as it was in previous runs. I've had to do more grinding to get certain items and I feel like I've had less randomly throw my way. I could go get different equipment to increase my luck, but I think that would throw off my overall flow.
I've never been a Knuckles guy, there's just not enough range to make me feel safe and I'm not precision enough to fight face-to-face without taking some damage. I'll stick with the 1-handed swords the game throw my way.
Kat Bailey
It's funny that you all feel like Symphony of the Night is longer than expected because I feel like I've been cruising at an unexpectedly fast pace. After getting out of the Coliseum, I grabbed a host of abilities in quick succession, including the Soul of Bat and the extended mist form. I'm also kind of surprised how easily I'm beating the various bosses. I knocked out the Lesser Demon in just a handful of hits. Why do I remember this game being really hard?
One thing that I enjoyed was unexpectedly finding myself in Dracula's Tower. Just for the heck of it, I decided to go and fight Richter, and of course he immediately destroyed me. I always like it when a game will let you go and confront the final boss whenever you're ready (even if in this instance Richter isn't technically the "final boss.") It makes me feel like I'm moving at my own pace.
Mike Williams
I'm moving at a quick pace, but I think that's because I remember the flow of Symphony of the Night from playing so many times before. Grabbing all the powers, getting specific items and weapons, blowing through bosses and secrets alike. It's like playing Quick Man's stage in Mega Man 2: at some point you're just moving on reflex. There's been the occasional hitch where I forget where a secret is exactly, but the internet is always there to help me.
Bob Mackey
Like Jaz, review duties for things coming out in the near future prevented me from wrapping up this portion of Symphony of the Night in time. It's a big game, and while I appreciate the teleportation rooms sprinkled around the castle—something that would have been great in Super Metroid—I wish the map had just a few more of them. There's a point in the game where it's not entirely obvious where to go next, and I completely forgot you had to buy the Jewel of Open from the Master Librarian to open those blue doors. I prefer when the game goes for more natural barriers instead of lock-and-key-style progress gates, but a game so big and sprawling can't carry the same amount of inventiveness across every single one of its rooms.
That said, as I stated in the first part of this USgamer Club, I've been a lot more experimental with this playthrough. I still haven't dropped my trusty baselard, even if the game has thrown much more powerful weapons my way—any increase in offense can't compete with how fast I can hammer that square button. And since I know Alucard will be an overpowered monster by the end of the game regardless of my actions, my cape choices have been primarily based on what color I want to see him in at any given time.
Jeremy Parish
Incidentally, my luck code playthrough has been going phenomenally. Aside from that one death in the Cathedral against the Puppet Sword, it's been a breeze — albeit a hard-fought breeze to begin with. I keep getting rare stuff, and thanks to everyone's advice the equip the Jewel Knuckles during our stream, my Alucard has become a critical-hitting monster of destruction. I had to take special care not to just completely demolish Richter when I fought him; between equipping the Holy Armor and Mormegil, he could barely hurt me, while I cut him down like a weed. But of course that's not the point of that battle — can you dig it?
Also, I think my favorite part of the lead-up to the Richter battle in the Keep is the way the design has subtly changed from the prologue. Not only has the ramp leading to the upper parapet where Richter awaits crumbled away (forcing you to find the ability to change into a bat), but other details are subtly different, too. The hidden chamber above the hall leading to Richter has a slightly different layout, and the drops you earn from the statues in the attic are different, too. One of the big ideas Symphony introduced to Castlevania lore is that the castle itself is "a creature of Chaos," and the truly attentive will notice how they designers are already selling that concept.
But you know. Little details. It's what Symphony excels at.
Mike Williams
Who needs critical hits when you can hit a boss 20 times in 5 seconds? I stand by my ultimate weapon until the end of time.
Jeremy Parish
Dude, you can't even get the Crissaegrim until next week's portion of the game. You're abusing GameShark codes, aren't you?
Jaz Rignall
Oh man. I didn't know about the Jewel Knuckles thing. I'm definitely going to try that.
