The Haunted Hoard: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Xbox 360)
Out of all the video game genres currently on the market, Metroidvanias might be the one hardest to decipher for someone unfamiliar with gaming jargon. To an unacquainted player it doesn’t inform them at all that it’s a game about exploring a large interconnected map that opens up as more skills and equipment are unlocked, but until a more succinct name emerges, it at least communicates what to expect pretty well. The Metroid series, outside of its spin-offs, has stuck to this genre pretty closely, but the second part of the portmanteau comes from Castlevania, a series whose early entries mostly stuck to action platforming. That all changed though when Castlevania: Symphony of the Night released for the original PlayStation, the series shifting into the genre it helped name and leading the way for many more Castlevania titles in that style.
It’s not surprising that Symphony of the Night helped create the genre name and codify its rules either, as this action platformer most certainly understands the thrill of exploring a massive map and finding new secrets and areas as you uncover more and more of it. The game has the player assume the role of Alucard, Dracula’s half-human son who enters his father’s castle after it mysteriously reappears despite the vampire’s defeat at the hands of the now missing Richter Belmont. Despite Alucard being our protagonist though, the real star of Symphony of the Night has to be Dracula’s Castle. As soon as you enter the front gate you’re locked in for the rest of the game, but Dracula’s domain has so much more going on in it than just the typical castle trappings. While you begin with the sort of expected architecture and rooms, Dracula’s Castle contains many diverse sections, areas like the long library, clock tower, colosseum, underground mines and exterior roof all containing their own unique monsters, backgrounds, and layouts so that you will immediately recognize the area for when you might need to revisit it later. Despite backtracking being necessary later down the line, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night manages to make much of the early game feel surprisingly open. As you get acquainted with the castle you will encounter a few paths you can’t take until later, but you keep moving forward through new areas with new enemy types for so long that by the time you do finally have to backtrack some to open old paths, you’ve already seen a huge amount of the castle, had the time to build your power up, and have faced quite a few bosses. There are secrets along the way you can already uncover before you start getting the abilities necessary for opening other paths, meaning the exploration is already incredibly enjoyable and full of discovery before you even get into the Metroidvania-style backtracking.
Alucard is a surprisingly strong main character even from the get-go and the game isn’t scared to give you the ability to build him up into a powerhouse over the course of the adventure. The half-vampire has a lot of different options for how he handles the monsters of Dracula’s Castle, but the most consistent thing he’ll be relying on is his weapon… or rather, a slew of weapons he can swap out as the player sees fit. There is plenty of treasure to be found along the way, some dropped by enemies, some hidden in rooms, and others as rewards for finishing off a boss or finding the cash to buy them from the Master Librarian. Swords, maces, knuckle dusters, two-handed weapons, nunchucks, single use throwing javelins and shurikens… Alucard can build up quite the arsenal and the player can equip whichever ones they find better in battle. They do have stats to follow so you can always go for raw strength, but some weaker weapons might swing faster or have better range. On top of this, you have two hands, so you can carry two weapons of different types to vary your approaches to combat, equip a shield to protect from some projectiles, or have healing or buffing items on hand just in case. Alucard has equipment slots to up his defenses and resistances too, the player also leveling up as they kill enemies to increase their stats. Special inputs can be used as well to do special attacks, although these require the right items first before you can start doing spells like Hellfire and a homing spirit attack.
The attack options don’t stop there! Candlesticks in the castle can be broken for a few goodies, this being the way you earn most money, but you might find hearts in them or special magical items. By drawing on the hearts you collect as ammo, you can use a variety of items such as an axe you lob in an arc, a pebble that will ricochet off walls, purification salts that spread out and damage anything that touches them, a stopwatch to freeze time, and a few other unique options. Most of Alucard’s abilities from weapons and spells are limited in reach or speed of use, so these items give you a quick option to hit enemies outside of your range or otherwise hold them at bay. The odd thing is though, despite the plethora of combat options, not many battles in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night will push too hard against the player. Bosses are actually pretty easy to take down, some having some strong attacks that might bounce you around and kill you if you get unlucky, but good movement and an aggressive playstyle can make a few fights surprisingly short and simple. This can partly extend from just being thorough in your exploration and thus you can come to them with quite a bit of power, and there are certainly some tougher bosses later in the game, especially when they start getting quicker attacks or come in numbers, but the general ease of most fights might extend from the way Castlevania: Symphony of the Night handles health.
When you see Alucard has a health counter in the hundreds, he might seem like an unstoppable powerhouse… until even a regular enemy gets a hit in. Alucard’s health can slough off in huge chunks if you are careless against even your simpler foes, and while he can certainly weather quite a few hits and keep on fighting, the game limits your healing options quite a bit to make up for this. In the thick of the battle, whether it be with a boss or just a regular pesky monster who is lingering around the castle, your means to heal are very limited. You can whip out a potion to get a good boost, but they take time to fully activate. You pick up food on your journey, but to eat it for a heal you have to toss it on the ground first and then pick it up, with the amount it will heal a mystery until you’ve tried that specific food before and know what to expect. The main way to heal ends up being finding save points, and another testament to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night’s excellent map design is how well these are spaced to preserve the danger of Dracula’s Castle while also not making the player feel like they’re ever absurdly far from one. It’s not uncommon to find yourself low on health and wondering if you should plunge into new territory ahead because it feels like a save point is coming up or maybe you should turn back to the previous one just so you don’t lose any progress you made since last saving. Unless you don’t look around areas very much you won’t ever have such a drought of save points that you would potentially lose tons of progress, but death does become a concern as you move deeper into the castle and the game throws more aggressive enemies at you.
The enemy variety is another way the game gets around your absurd power so it can still challenge you. For example, Medusa Heads are little flying heads that go across the screen and can be killed in one hit with most any weapon… but they keep coming in as long as you’re in the areas they appear, harassing you as you try to climb the towers they dwell in. The many skeleton enemies of the game almost all have some gimmick, such as throwing an item at you to bother you from afar or coming back together after you break them to pieces, but there are many strange and unusual creatures to encounter along the way as well, such as ectoplasm that curses you to be unable to use your weapons if it touches you, flea men who bounce around erratically so they’re hard to hit, various living armors that hit hard and can sometimes block your attacks, and plants that grow from the ground in a way that makes them hard to hit but easy to accidentally touch and take damage. There are a lot of little touches to these enemies as well, such as the Owl Knight who fights alongside his owl, but if either dies they’ll stop to mourn the other. The hunchback enemy who uses a lamp’s fire to fight you will set himself on fire by accident when you deal the finishing blow, and some basic enemies even have voice lines. Many enemies pull on myth or horror for their designs and the same is true of the bosses, this being a game where you not only have to fight Scylla and Cerebus, but Frankenstein’s monster and The Mummy as well, although usually the story bosses like Dracula or original ones like Alucard’s reflection are the ones that put up better fights.
Perhaps one of the best things when it comes to difficulty in the game though is a sudden inversion as you near what seems like the end of the game. Dracula’s Castle is already a massive place full of great areas to explore, but everything gets turned on its head as you reach what could have been the game’s end and actually can be if you get the bad ending. A new enormous area opens up for exploration after the game’s midpoint, one that plays with your familiarity with the castle but also manages to play into the fact you’ve become so powerful by that point. While exploring Dracula’s Castle Alucard will have gained some abilities like a double jump and the ability to take on various forms like a wolf, bat, and mist. These mostly allow him to reach areas of the castle he couldn’t before, the wolf being the odd one out but it finds its legs as a way to move around quickly once you’ve uncovered some of its unlockable abilities, while bat and mist instead help Alucard move freely through the air and even damage things as they get their special upgrades. The back half of the game though knows you’ll have these abilities and thus can design around them. You’ll do much more regular navigation with your special forms here, but you’ll also be facing incredibly tough enemies and more devious traps as you try to get to the true fight with Dracula. Even with all your upgrades and powers you can still get torn apart if you underestimate these late game enemies, and the bosses even start to pack more of a punch, those moments of tension from the early game where you didn’t know what waited for you up ahead perhaps even more tense here when you can’t increase your power much further than you already have.
There are so many little things to talk about in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night such as familiars you can find who fly along and help in different ways, weird touches like a room containing a confessional you can sit on either side of for a brief scene, the opening of the game actually having you fight Dracula as Richter in a prologue designed to mirror the end of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and plenty of environments that inspire the imagination like a room with a floating eye outside the window or the staircase where you can see a green exterior area of the castle that looks like you could run around in it. However, there are a few small touches that aren’t the best. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night’s progression is thankfully fairly intuitive, with it being pretty clear that you’ll need a power to get to a certain area if you can’t reach it now and that power immediately being the clear solution when you find it. However, there are moments where a big chunk of the map, albeit an optional one, is available only with weird leaps in logic, like one moment where you need to destroy a fairly innocuous patch of ice on the ground to continue into an area. While the game will hide secrets and paths behind destructible walls often, this is a different beast. You can pull up your map with ease during gameplay and if there’s a path forward you can usually see the room you’re in has an open spot on the map, but since there are very few hints in the game itself about secrets, it’s possible to miss this chunk of the map. Perhaps this feels more egregious than it truly is because exploring the map is such a joy, but there is a problem that is more clearly an issue, and that’s the game’s odd voice acting.
Once voice acting started to become common in games, there wasn’t often a lot of talent called in for it as a cost-saving measure. While this is the Xbox 360 rerelease of the PlayStation 1 original with only minor changes like the screen borders to maintain its original resolution, the corny voice acting from the original was retained… and that might be for the best all things considered. By now, Dracula’s odd comments on religion and delivery of his lines have become iconic in gaming culture, and the story of the game doesn’t exactly need good performances to deliver a narrative that doesn’t go for anything too serious or dependent on the actor’s emoting well. There are serious elements to it, like the fate of Alucard’s mother, but otherwise a lot of it is either functional or stuff that might even be improved by the hammy acting. In fact, it’s a bit of a shame one of the changes made for the Xbox 360 rerelease was removing I Am the Wind from the end credits, which, while a soft ballad that didn’t really match the game’s tone or other music, felt like it made for a good pair with the oddity of the vocal performances. The extremely solid gameplay means the odd delivery of the story doesn’t really hurt the game, and if you can accept some cheesiness in the game, it really doesn’t make for a bad fit. After all, the mostly gothic atmosphere and horror monsters do give way to sillier creatures at times too like the enemy Yorick who is a skeleton who kicks his skull around by accident or the somewhat large frogs and toads in the underground caverns who are inexplicably some of the most bothersome enemies for your powerful vampire character to overcome.
THE VERDICT: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night took the action platforming and horror elements of the Castlevania series and pushed them into a new genre gloriously. Exploring Dracula’s Castle manages to be rewarding but still tense, the limited healing options pairing well with surprisingly strong enemies in your path. Even when you find the upgrades and equipment to make you a powerhouse, Alucard will still find Dracula’s forces put up a powerful resistance, save for a few bosses that fold too easily. Even with small issues like the cheesy voice acting though, the map design for the game world is so superb that it enhances the experience above any small tripping points, with the game providing an abundance of goodies to reward discovery, incredible openness as you begin your journey, and a world design that achieves an air of mystery while making sure progression is often apparent enough that you won’t be left bumbling about aimlessly.
And so, I give Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for Xbox 360…
A FANTASTIC rating. Truly, Symphony of the Night deserves its renown and its spot as half of the name for the Metroidvania genre. After all, it so beautifully executes the core principles of that genre and serves as an excellent reference point for anyone looking to design one. Dracula’s Castle has plenty to uncover once you get more of your upgrades, but it begins with an open design that allows you to search around for secrets early and identify spots to return to while still moving forward and providing new things to see so that by the time when you do need to go back and use your new abilities in old areas, its enjoyable to return to these places you haven’t visited in some time. If you need to get around quickly, you’ve got the power to do so and helpful things like warp rooms or the wolf form’s speed upgrades to get you there. While it would be nice if bosses put up more of a fight, they’re also designed to let players who didn’t scrounge around for every health upgrade and marginal improvement in equipment progress, just with a bit more of a battle to do so. The general difficulty around the game manages to stay strong because even regular enemies can pack a punch, with sometimes the challenge of a boss not being their strength but your state going into the battle or coming out of it. There are so many small extras to find or engage with on your journey that the game never feels like its lacking in content, it just has a few areas where it could be brushed up to make an already amazing experience into something undeniably stellar.
I hadn’t played Symphony of the Night until playing many of the games it helped inspire, including later Castlevania entries, and still, it manages to hold up excellently. Finding a new area, fighting through new foes, and finding the upgrades and secrets hidden there make it rewarding and exhilarating to push forward in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, your character’s power allowed to reach great heights while enemies still find ways to challenge you so you still have to fight and move intelligently. Teeming with wonderful small details on top of its evolving sense of strength and engaging area design, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night stands as a shining beacon of what a Metroidvania game can be.