Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
I beat Castlevania tonight. Well, actually, I got the traditional ending, the one that you get when you don’t obsessively try everything in the game and get every item in the first castle. You kick the ass of some guy, and then Alucard spends some time being mopey, and then the credits roll. Knowing from cultural osmosis that there’s a second half to the game, I boot up GameFAQs, try to figure out what I was missing (some important stuff, in fact), and unlocked access to the inverted castle...which is the same castle, only upside down. It’s also twice as hard as the original castle, which offers some interesting challenges and some really cheap shots, such as skeletons with wave motion guns that take out a third of your health in one go.
It’s an interesting trick, and also a real easy one for the developers. “Hey, this game should really be twice as long as it is, but we don’t have time and money for designing more background. Wait, I’ve got it!” I am getting a bit weary of the whole Metroidvania format, having to run back and forth from area to area, rechecking each passageway whenever I get a new ability...but I guess this is an early example of the format, before it was improved on. (Like Shadow Complex)
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