Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)

Last October, I embarked on a mission to plow through every single 2D Metroid game leading up to Metroid Dread so that I could appreciate what came off as a love letter to fans of this oft-ignored franchise (at least in terms of its creators.) Long story short, I got through them all fairly quickly, though I must confess I gave up on the original and hoped that both remakes of Metroid 2 would work in place of the Game Boy exclusive original. I put down that sort of game for a while after finishing ...Dread, mostly burnt out after all those repetitions of exploring, upgrading, and eventually conquering an alien environment and its many dangers, though I certainly appreciated my time nonetheless. All along, I must confess I assumed Castlevania would be more my cup of tea, especially the famous and heavily influential Symphony of the Night, a unique game in the awkward early-3D PS1 days in that it continued forward with 2D graphics and side-scrolling gameplay and was all the better for it. Yes, the gothic aesthetic immediately appealed, and the things that had been spoiled for me, like the secret second half of the game, only increased my curiosity and reverence from afar, though when I'd pick up the game, I'd usually end up getting frustrated and putting it down before any attachment could be formed. This time, in the wake of all that Metroid, I suppose, everything was different. I found myself dipping my toes in and gently poking around with the game amongst doing other things, and before I knew it I was completely hooked. The first time I decided to look up a walkthrough to gauge how far in I was, I discovered that the area I was standing in was the fake final boss arena, and that it was apparently already time to be trying to solve the game's biggest mystery. I was thrilled.

Hey, I just realized something: let me back up one second and mention something that stuck out as strange when digging into the story surrounding this game. The devs, for one reason or another, never name-check Metroid as a series or any of its individual games when discussing influences, and instead seemed mostly interested in adapting the Zelda blueprint to Castlevania, or vice versa. This is strange as it's clear that this game is doing very similar things as its now-synonymous sister series, relying heavily on the exploration of a huge environment, which you slowly gain access to as you discover new abilities and stronger gear. The combat feels smooth enough early on, and the map design, perhaps the most important aspect of a Metroidvania game, seems strong. The actual in-game map is a single button press away at any given time, and it's very handy at helping you figure out where to poke your head in next. An early moment where I discovered the Leap Stone and suddenly opened up tons of new places, which facilitated an almost completely recombing of the map from top to bottom, felt like pure genre bliss. The presence of a story and characters is appreciated, coming from Metroid, and gives the player lots of little moments to rest in between bigger setpieces, and the game's moody qualities are much appreciated as a horror hound. I especially like the way the game is constructed to basically trick you into dooming the world, and that you have to follow up on leads and explore every inch of the game's map in order to solve the mystery, gain access to the second half of the game, and actually save the world. It's brilliant, and still fairly unique, even today.

But there's no denying the main draw: the presentation of Symphony of the Night is immaculate in every aspect. Pixel art has not lost its appeal or even its popularity in recent years, and so Symphony... still stands as a benchmark of sorts even today, over twenty years later. The use of all sorts of very advanced old-school techniques to create these wonderfully impressive backgrounds combined with effective use of early 3D feels unique. And those animations! The music is no slouch either. At times subtle and subdued, gothic and spooky, at others melting your brain with guitar virtuosity, Symphony... wears its goth style on its sleeve and uses its presentation to deliver some really memorable and awesome sequences and it is perhaps the only part of the game that is completely faultless, especially when combined with the earnest attempt by the writers to write something that sounds like a Shakespearian drama. It's not the goldmine of hilarity people go on about at length and have done for two decades, but it is charming.

A surprising development...

Well, I hope those of you out there who love the game have had your fun, because I'm about to make you all angry. I promise, I'm not normally this picky, and I'm as surprised as you all are the game lost all its steam after the first half was over and done with, but that's where I'm left nonetheless. Once you arrive at the Inverted Castle, everything about the game that was once merely quirky becomes more than a little irritating, and the game's lack of intelligent moment-to-moment design, as seen in Super Metroid for example, becomes a serious issue. The second half of the game being a literal repeat of the first, only now everything is upside down, is fine. Yeah, they could have stood to flip it both ways, but whatever. It still feels somewhat alien from this new angle. It's just that you would expect that the level designers would then redesign these inverted areas to better facilitate movement across them and make them feel fresh, and that's entirely not the case here. Sure, you get some new enemies, a few of which might be the most annoying enemies I've ever faced in any video game ever (those damn witches and their cats) but for the most part, everything is 1:1 with the original, only tipped over, so you have to use your slow-ass bat form to fly nearly everywhere. It's the kind of thing you don't notice at first, but as soon as you do, it makes you just want to stop. Moving between sections of the map becomes excruciating, and that's before you realize there's little to no story left to tell either. This whole section of the game feels like it's been slapped together, and is nothing but a boss-rush with little context and next to no guidance. Just explore every single area all over again and you'll find the way forward eventually, it seems to say. All of this is upsetting considering how hyped I was for the Inverted Castle, but it's nothing compared to the more serious issues inherent in the game's controls and general design.

Can a game simultaneously be too easy and overly frustrating at the same time? Well, I think this game is absolute proof that they can. Repetitive enemy encounters make backtracking a massive pain once things go sour, and not because of the minuscule damage they deal, but because any damage at all causes a knockback animation that you can easily get locked into infinitely by a gaggle of persistent enemies. Worst of all is how often I would get juggled out of the room by assailants no matter how many times I tried and tried and tried to prevent it. It's like death by a thousand cuts. And my god: the sub-weapons. Several are downright useless, but the way they drop means you inevitably end up picking some up when you don't want to, which then occasionally renders your original impossible to reclaim by casting it into a pit or through a door, and that's when you even notice that it's happened. And there are a few times where upgrades that make the game much more pleasant to play are locked behind breakable walls and floors that are infrequent enough to be nearly impossible to find without a guide or the fairy familiar, which is something the game could have at least hinted at a bit. All of this probably makes the game sound difficult, right? Well, in the sense that it was difficult to push through once Shaft's plot had been exposed, then yes, but otherwise, especially when compared to Super Metroid (I know what you're thinking Castlevania fans and I'm so sorry,) this game is shockingly easy. Super Metroid had some downright harrowing boss fights, and none of the many, many boss fights in this game stand out as being particularly difficult at all, usually buckling in one or two attempts. While I can appreciate a game that's breezy and fun, that usually comes with the expectation that it won't still frustrate me to no end, which this game fails at quite badly. What exacerbates this issue even further are all the hidden moves and secret spells you can pull out of your ass if you know what you're doing, which annoys me on so many levels, but that crucially make an already-easy game even easier, at times to an absurd degree. Forget the fact that it's not very friendly to beginners to hide all these commands away and force them to go outside the game to discover them, because even if you were familiar with them, it would just mean that you'd would just tear through the game with zero difficulty. The most overpowered example requires you pick up two easily acquired items before entering a button combination with them equipped (which isn't hinted at anywhere,) but even if you did somehow know to do all that, it totally, irrevocably, breaks the difficulty curve over its knee and is probably best left alone anyway. I actually had both items, just because their stats were good and they were reliable, and didn't realize until the very end that using the two together and tapping a few buttons would end any fight, even the final boss, in seconds with minimal effort. Were the devs just really huge fans of Mortal Kombat, or what? So while these pro secrets initially put me off the game, seeing people who knew what they were doing doing things in-game I had no idea how to duplicate, maybe it's for the best that it's hidden away. I'm not convinced one way or the other, in any case.

It's super important that I stress that being easy wasn't the issue. This game, despite its lack of difficulty, never really achieves that satisfying upward curve of becoming more powerful and more capable of moving swiftly through the environment, like in another game I've mentioned a hundred times by now, and that kind of kills it for me. That's the high you play these games for, and the upgrades in this game just don't cut it. Right up until the end, traversing and backtracking through the many rooms of the inverted castle was aggravating and made me wish the final battle with Dracula would hurry up and arrive already.

Alright, alright, I'm getting there...

Did I enjoy my time with Symphony of the Night? Absolutely. Am I glad I have it under my belt? You know it. Is it a great, historic work that deserves respect? I think so, yes. It has been highly influential for decades since its release, and it, along with its oft-mentioned sister franchise, can be seen reflected in many current marvels, like From Software's cryptic oeuvre or the countless independent Metroidvanias that have been coming out in droves for a while now. It's a popular format, and Symphony... should be proud of helping establish it. Still, coming from Metroid, this game has clear flaws in its design and is more than a little overstretched. Perhaps if the people making it had realized the connection between what they wanted to do with this game and what Super Metroid had done a few years prior, then things could have been different, but who's to say? In the end, it's a massive game with a massive fanbase that there's no denying, and despite a few rough spots, it's absolutely still worth playing and experiencing in 2022. And it has a great end-credits tune as well. Just don't expect it to stand as the undisputed king of the genre or anything, because it's now becoming clear to me that Super Metroid will likely never be topped.