What really helps is that each half is genuinely distinct and contiguous enough to feel like a discrete game. There's no sense of loss, or sense of repetition if you play both back-to-back (Contra Hard Corps drives me up the wall on both counts... welcome to the jungle, we've got long stretches of tedium!)Ronyn wrote:I am amazed at how D's Curse generates deference for sporting a mild level select, presenting one tier enjoyable while the other can be frowned upon. But that it is in this state viewed as a complete game when the gripe part can easily be dropped and ignored is bewildering to me. It almost constitutes a golf clap from my part of the field.
CV4 is a subtly different case. It takes overly long to reach a boiling point, but I still value that preamble for atmosphere and the sense of journey (I wish the outer areas kept the downbeat mood, ala st1's haunted stables and st2's grim forest. I want a sense of overgrowth and neglect, not ROTATION STATION).In my opinion SCIV has it's flaws (length, tautness, 8-way), but now I can't help but imagine how players might think if it had simply given the same treatment as The Curse. Take your pick and leave the rest. You like?
I could easily start it off at Dracula's front door via Loop 2 PW every time, but yuuuck! I fucking refuse. I love the abrupt sense of "holy shit, I'm not welcome here" as 63rd ARMOURED BONEY-KUN DIVISION rolls up. And everything from that point is good to great, occasionally excellent, so there's nothing to choose. Slow burner + overly long duration means it's something I play less readily, but that goes for some of my favourite games ever like the first two Silent Hills.
CVIII gets going quick enough, but one half is notably aggravating and gimmicky, best seen occasionally if ever. You can only play one, so the choice makes itself really. A side, B side.
I dunno, I wouldn't even compare them directly (beyond their obvious shared affliction). DDII's a friendly game with lots of novel mechanics and variety, almost a mini-Rondo in that regard. XX is as stripped-down and punishing as the series got post-CV1, relying on a small but effective set of building blocks.BrianC wrote:Control gripes aside (and honestly the slight slowness in Belmont's revenge never bothered me that much. I found Legends and Adventure to be worse in the slowness), Dracula Densetsu II/Belmont's Revenge still has far superior level design compared to XX.
The arcade game is conspicuously absent from the this discussion. I've barely ever played it, but I know it's got its fans here and there. I think you're quite into IIRC, SuperDeadite? I'm nowhere hardcore enough for PCBs, but I did get Hamster's crummy, possibly MAME-stolen PS2 disc for a rainy day.