Bloody Tears of Joy

By Paolo Cosejo

I live with my older brother who no longer plays games. In our adolescence, he picked up the guitar while i held onto the controller. I was telling my brother about Carlyle-vania (a.k.a. Picard-vania or Lords of Shadow) and he asked me if it played like Symphony of the Night. He was disappointed by my answer and ambivalent as he had stopped gaming by the time God of War came out. I never got around to playing Symphony of the Night in the late 90's. The gothic setting and occult whatnot scared me for some reason. Playing the game for the first time over a decade after its release, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night does not disappoint.I'm not one for nostalgia. I am staunchly against it in fact. The game being held in such high regard, making practically every top 100 game list, was working against the game in my regard. In the past few years or so, I've started a Castlevania or two. The Belmont's dominant genetic traits for bulky, lumbering frames and the typical side-scrolling action Dracula's castle offered never interested me enough to actually follow through. I've also gone through a Super Metroid play through and played Zero Mission and Fusion independently. Like Castlevania, I only played the Metroids in recent years and have no nostalgia for them and I naturally dislike like them for their high regard in gaming. I enjoyed the Metroids for what they were but there was an overwhelming sense of "been there, done that" while playing Zero Mission and Fusion after Super. Like the Castlevania series, every Metroid game is almost exactly the same. They were sequels without evolution, which is exactly what I'm against in the making of a sequel. There is a turn that came with both series though. The Metroid series changed with Prime. The parallel turn in Castlevania occurred in Symphony of the Night, when Castlevania turned into Metroid.

In Metroid, you know you're going to get bombs and roll around like a jackass trying to find a hole. You know you're going to find the wave beam and high jump and all the other things you know you're going to find. In a Metroid game, you know what you're going to find and you know what you need to do to find what it is you need to find. Samus is played out. For a series about exploration, there is nothing left to explore.

Symphony of the Night, for a first time player of a Metroidvania style Castlevania, was truly a new exploration and adventure. Dracula's castle was no longer a series of platforms in front of a scrolling background with the occasional set of stairs that the Belmonts handled like geriatrics with bad hips. The different wings of the gothic castle offered more visual variety from the different colored rocky settings of the Metroids. Alucard himself was a mystery, something to be explored. I knew I would need to get new abilities to find new areas, but I had no idea what those abilities would be or when/where I'd be getting them. Finding a double jump is a given. It's a platforming standard. Alucard's transformations caught me off guard. They are infinitely more interesting than the ability to turn into a ball and shit out bombs. The RPG elements of equipment/drops and leveling (to a lesser extent) made the experience of playing Sympthony of the Night more worth while. It's always satisfying to decide the means by which you get to kill evil minions. The multiple endings offer more incentive to keep exploring as well. For a while I was stuck with killing Richter Belmont until I discovered the catacombs. Symphony of the Night rewards the player's exploration by opening up the castle further giving the player access to new monsters, equipment, and the ultimate face off against Dracula.

As I'm gripped by Castlevania fever, I've borrowed a few of the Game Boy Advance titles from a friend. The "been there, done that" feeling that bores me about Metroid is starting to sink in, but the card system of customizing the whip in Circle of the Moon is keeping things interesting enough, as is the curiosity of how a non-half-vampire will manage to navigate the castle. However, I can't see myself still being entertained by this familiar bag of tricks after the next GBA Castlevania. But alas, the flames of Alucard's fireballs melted my icy, cynical heart and I shall hold a torch for Symphony of the Night forever.