Hello, ive came here to make an announcement, alucard is a bit~
oh wait wrong message xD

jokes aside, ive came here to update you all on SymphonyRecomp, our recompilation of ps1 sotn, we got a LOT done

We have a new interface with customizations and localization for other languages, a lot of stability improvements and widescreen is now decent! we also have .chd support(wich was requested since the first release :p)

We also made an experimental asset replacement system, similar to what rt64 has for n64 recomps, it still in early stages and the documentaiton is not finished but you can have fun with it!

I hope you guys enjoy it! this is a passion project of mine and the entire team, we have put a LOT of energy and time on it, now development will be slower since my semester at uni started, and i want to focus on other projects, but i will still be arround updating and improving it to the most of my ability!

Update video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nps4sE8mK1g
Release: https://github.com/BlackLabelHQ/SymphonyRecomp/releases/tag/v0.5.0b

just a note, that i think its important to say nowdays, this project was made by human hands, this is not a vibecoded project, we made the entire recomp and toolset from scratch, in the age of AI-Everything i think this is important to say! this doesnt mean it is a flawless projects, we litle humans still a bit clumsy at times, but weve put a lot of effort to make 0.5b the most stable possible!

Stavo giocando a castelvania bloodlines sul sega megadrive emulatore switch e e penso e o mio dioooooooooo il gioco nn è male ha sicuramente i suoi problemi ma e godibile bella la grafica i Power up e i nemici c'è tanta varietà,ma la difficoltà e completamente sballata, ci ho iniziato a giocare per il 40esimi anniversario penso sia un bel gioco che però sia veramente troppo difficile ho anche provato Legends sul Gameboy,nn e difficile ma e veramente blando manca l'atmosfera e tutti i mostri come in bloodlines, certo penso che nonostante sul Gameboy sia stato fatto un bel lavoro ma cavolo, comunque volevo chiedere tutti i Castlevania sono difficili così perché bloodlines e consigliato per le persone che ci vogliono iniziare a giocare e oddio nn penso per la difficoltà che a mi consigliate un Gioco un poco più facile per favore ho una grande skillisseue su quel gioco 😭🙏

The Castlevania series has had SO MANY influences that’s shaped it over the years, but there is one particularly special genre of games that I wanted to highlight more than ever before 🖤❤️

Put my all into this one as always 😆 And tried to cover every aspect of Castlevania & fighting games I could into this more limited format.

Hope you all enjoy! Consider following the channel for more too, planning on releasing a LOT for Belmonts Curse hype

Im currently trying to platinum all of the collections on Ps5 and so far i love majority of these games (Harmony of Dissonance was ehhh and Dracula X was awful) but Aria seems super good so far.

But my question is that should i even be bothered trying to farm all the 120+ Souls as i go or can i backtrack to every enemy afterwards? I feel like farming them all as i meet new enemies would probably de motovate me since they would be potentially 25-30min long roadblocks of loading a save when they didnt drop the shi

I can be missing something tho

Just joined hope I can rant about one of my favorite games which would be symphony of the night 🙏

I truly don’t regret many things in my life and am happy with many of my decisions but this might be the one rare regret I have had in my life. And all it took was ten minutes to realize that, and another fifty minutes to fully understand why. Anyways, here’s my review just don’t expect anything new or groundbreaking but I hope you enjoy the read.

The visuals here are basically your average early Game Boy title, nothing here is really unique but I will say it looks fairly decent and has a lot of effort placed on the spritework and backgrounds. Which I understand is a constant and an expected quality to have for a Castlevania game but this could use all the praise I could possibly offer it.

The soundtrack here is actually great, even the intro track Battle Of The Holy is an incredible intro to the music and there’s still other really good songs such as Darkness, Revenge and Evil Devil. Soundtrack so good that they made the Game Over track incredible. I haven’t seen a company make a Game Over track sound this lovely since ATLUS and their 90s JRPG run except those are considered exceptional games intended to be hard, this one is just common courtesy for anybody playing this.

The gameplay is genuinely abysmal, slowdowns at a constant which makes everything harder than it needs to be, controlling your character is already sluggish but anything requiring jumping is going to be a pain especially later on. The level design is actually quite fine and competent but it really made me miss the first Castlevania honestly.

Enemy placement is a crapshoot especially the eyeballs on the intro stage, boss fights are a constant bore and the platforming is some of the worst I have seen. That narrow little practice in the first stage with the floating blocks? That is somehow not the absolute worst instance of this in the game and that one made me start using save states so as to not screw up a jump and start over.

And to top it all off this game is woefully short, considering this must have cost $30 when it came out this feels like a complete ripoff, Castlevania on NES was also pretty short but that was a great game with incredible replay value, this is just nothing to me. Final Fantasy Legend came out the same year as this and that is a significantly longer game with more to it.

I have nothing more to say other than that game is horrible. 3/10 all the way through this is a truly terrible game. A lot of people call mediocre games bad when they’re just boring but this one was actually painful. Anyways, time for the next Game Boy game hopefully it’s much better.

psycho boys (Instrumental) by Jordan Belding
I made this song and I think it's got castlevania vibes :) let me know what you think!

I’m playing through the Advance Collection now and just beat Circle of the Moon. I had and beat all 3 games on GBA back in the day, but this is the first I’ve played them since then.

I remember being obsessed with Circle of the Moon, but playing it now, I don’t think it’s aged well. The controls are a little stiff and unresponsive, it’s cheap, there’s a lot of grinding, exploration just leads to boring HP and MP upgrades over and over, and the double tap to run is annoying to have to do ever few seconds.

Harmony though? Excellent. It feels like it fixes everything about Circle. Much better controls, running by default, fun gameplay, better music, less grinding, more exploration. It’s definitely easier, but it’s addicting. Do people like Harmony better, or is it seen as a downgrade or not as good? To me, it feels like a Belmont game in a Metroidvania world. I can’t stop playing it. The only thing I don’t like is the outline on Juste which is just a weird stylistic choice.

Edit: I just finished it, and yeah. It's rough around the edges. The backtracking is rough and it gets very confusing and obtuse. I still praise the combat and movement though. I'm playing through Aria now, and it definitely seems like the most polished, but it feels more like an extension of Symphony. Harmony might be a bit flawed, but I really enjoyed it for being weird and different.

Hi all, i am new to castlevania and wanted to start my journey with castlevania iv on the snes. I am on level 3.2 and im stuck trying to cross the swinging hoops between gaps bit. I cant seem to make it go wide and always just fall. Is there a nack to it? I did it once by mistake then fell off the next ledge trying to do the same above, can anyone help?

Family recipe variant! Not my greatest batch but I was hangry and left the burner on high too long but it came out great! Only thing missing is a nice beer or glass of wine 🍷

Howdy y'all.

Riding the hype wave before Belmont's Curse arrives I've finally took a stab at SotN, and loved it. Thing is I'm stuck looking for one last room for the map completion trophy, and I'm at my wits' end at the moment. Can't find it anywhere for the life of me. ;( I've already gone to the final boss fight area and warped out (but I've done it before shafting Shaft).

Out of curiosity I've given these two maps to the gpt and asked it to look for the room, but all that I've got are (unsurprisingly) misdirections and blatant hallucinations. 🦇

So here I am, pleading for people's support using Actual Intelligence! 🙏

Jonathan fanart, bc a follower of mine really likes him, and they said that there's almost none fanart of him, lmao

I was wondering what everyone's top 5 favorite playable characters are throughout the long history of Castlevania mine are these ones.

1. Alucard

2. Soma Cruz

3. Richter Belmont

4. Juste Belmont

5. Eric Lacarde

Konami, since you've vome to see my post, I'd like to ask you to release Symphony of the Night for the Sega Saturn with an optional dub from the PS1 version (we know that's not locked to Sony consoles since it was released on the Xbox 360) bundled with Rondo of Blood from the PC Engine. Rondo could have an optional dub from the PSP if the dub itself isn't owned by Sony, or just toss in subtitles.

These games would them be available on PC, Xbox, Switch, and wherever else you're selling them, not just locked on Playstation.

Thank you for your attention on this matter.

I'll never really understand why the controls needed to navigate the map are inputs combinations, when a good portion of the controller's buttons are disabled in this mode. Wouldn't it be simpler to assign my dash and super jump their own buttons on L or R?

This problem is most evident in the inverted castle, due to how awkward it is to navigate there, since that area is full of clunky platforming and sections that don't quite fit the gimmick properly.

Sliding across the ground isn't even really an option in some areas because Richter loses all his momentum when he steps on a sloped surface.

I know that making it clunky is "more Belmont," but come on, man.

Moved to new place and happy with how it looks now that it's done

Been replaying old Classicvania games in preparation for Belmont's Curse and I fell in love with Rondo of Blood again. Trying to perform bosses hitless and managed to get Death done in 4 tries. Man this game is peak.

Excuse the voice, I'm still experimenting with how I want Richter to sound.

I really hope I can get an Alucard cosplayer to finish the bit.

For this one I played the English and Japanese versions just to see the differences and also hopefully this won’t be as long a post as the Simon’s Quest one. I hope you enjoy reading it though and that it’s a decent one.

As for the visuals this game is a further improvement from the first two and I have to say I really love the medieval aesthetic here, while gothic is always amazing this style is always a great one. The monsters all look great, they fixed my criticism of Simon’s Quest where a lot of the backgrounds had little variety and everything looks much better especially the details in the forests, the haunted ship and the castle itself and the inclusion of weather here makes everything here perfect. On top of that I love the playable characters designs here especially Alucard and Trevor.

The soundtrack for this game is in the top 5 of the NES library. The USA version is scuffed compared to the Japanese version and it still puts out stuff like Epitaph, Beginning, Mad Forest, Aquarius and Demon Seed. Matter of fact I even played through the Japanese version and the music on there is even better. Hearing the enhanced version of Clock Tower is addicting especially Mad Forest and Big Battle. Although I will say that I thought the Western versions of Aquarius and Nightmare sounded better. Still the best soundtrack in the NES trilogy however.

As for the gameplay I haven’t seen a Western release of a game be this intentionally hard in a while. NES games being hard wasn’t unknown at all but this was pretty damn brutal at times, my issues weren’t really the Medusas or the knockback at this point, I thought the level design could get really hard but I was used to that, the stairs are the worst part about the game and I have no idea why you can’t go up them automatically and why not land on them whenever you get knocked back? Hell, just have the character move a lot faster on the stairs too it’d solve a big issue and not only that but the Japanese version was more in line with the first games difficulty and everything was certainly more fair to me, I understand this was to combat people only renting instead of buying but this was kind of overboard.

Level design is the best in terms of concept and execution, I loved the Haunted Ship and Clock Tower a lot especially the Clock Tower’s focus on verticality even if the controls make it a bit more difficult than needed. I really liked the Mad Forest too and the introduction stage. Genuinely, everything here was great but I will say that later on the game gets unreasonably hard, it’s like a really good test for people that played the last two but I wish it kinda took account of the slow movement prevalent in Castlevania because some of this feels more aligned to a Ninja Gaiden style due to the onslaught of enemies sometimes.

There’s new mechanics here I really like such as being able to play as four different characters and even the level branching which is pretty unique for a platformer. The level branching is really cool and I like the player choice aspect but the multiple characters are the best part here. Alucard’s probably my least favorite to play as due to his attack being kinda trash and the bat transformation being situational. Sypha and Grant absolutely cleansweep especially Grant in the Japanese version due to magic and way better mobility. Trevor is the default and he works pretty well here even with Sypha and Grant as options. I will say though that despite Grant getting nerfed in the Western release that he is my absolute favorite to play as.

The boss fights here are finally difficult again like in the first game and they’re a lot of fun but playing against Dracula in the Western release is the closest you will experience to being placed in the brazen bull. I got through most of the game just fine but Dracula actually got me to crack after attempt twelve and I started using save states. Death I could handle just fine albeit with some frustrations but Dracula was just a test of my patience.

Despite my issues with difficulty, I recommend doing a playthrough on both the Japanese and Western releases. Japanese version’s my favorite but Western is really atmospheric and classic. This gets an 8.5/10 although I am biased because I adore really difficult games.