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Articles

Non-stalgia: Symphony of the Night
Hard. My playthrough of the
game was hard with a capital
HAAAAAARRRRRD. The opening
few areas posed little threat but
only a few minutes in and I was
dying. Frequently. Symphony
of the Night, like many games
of the good old days, was
unforgiving; a few smacks and I
was down and upon biting the
dust I was banished back to my
last save game (and if, as was
often the case, I hadn’t saved
for a while at specified points,
due to my modern gamer’s overreliance on forgiving autosave
mechanics, well... that was just
tough). I didn’t mind though, I like
a challenge. Playing areas over
and over again did, however, give
me time to reflect on the game’s
many retrospective downfalls.
My character, Alucard, moved
slowly, like a man slogging
through water (or blood, to stick
with the theme), he ran slow and
jumped slow and though his dash

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 Edition

move left behind afterimages to
suggest speed, I wasn’t fooled.
The stages were dull, art design
was lacking and my character
model was simple, plain, ugly. At
least the monster designs were
cool, which was good, because it
was they that I was smacking in
the face.
I waded through it though,
determined to discover the
gem that has so many in awe
of the series. As my character
strengthened, boosting his stats
and upgrading his equippable
weapons, I eventually found it.
For me, the thing that sold oldschool Castlevania as a legit
gaming experience was that it
had the molten, beating heart
of an RPG and carried with it the
best feeling when dealing with
RPGs: progression, the feeling of
becoming one bad ass-mother.
Areas that tore me to pieces
over and over early on could

suddenly be flowed through in
a bloody, vicious dance of grace.
Exploration was a blast as well there’s no set path through the
titular Castle of Castlevania so
there was a satisfying sense of
progression as I unlocked abilities
(bat, smoke etc) that allowed me
through previously impassable
areas, slowly unveiling more and
more and more of that damn
map until I accidentally stumble
into a boss fight that turned me to
organic mulch sending me back
in time...because I’d forgotten to
save.
Aesthetically it hasn’t dated well
but for me gameplay is what
counts and I can safely say that
my non-stalgic look back on
this game has instilled in me
a reverent respect for a game
series that I’ll be exploring in
more detail for (I’m sure) years
to come.

23 • GameOn Magazine