Sumez wrote:I'm not even sure what point you are trying to make here, but SOTN blew me away the first time I saw it, and it still does every time I see it. It's definitely not a nostalgia thing, the game isn't that old to me.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is... Look, I'm old. I didn't even approach SotN the way most others did, I guess: a lot of people were probably taken by surprise by the unxepected greatness of it, but I was already anticipating it. In 1995, I had tracked down one of the few local stores that had a copy of Castlevania Vampire's Kiss for the Super Nintendo: when everyone else was fond of Ridge Racer or Doom, or Donkey Kong Country, Castlevania was already one of the last few things I cared about coming from the medium. The Playstation had gotten an amazing 1996, with the likes of Tomb Raider, Wipeout 2097, Residen Evil, Command & Conquer, yet I only drooled over magazine previews of "Dracula X".
SotN has achieved the enviable status of perfectly crystallized classic, so everyone gets back to it no matter what, but fans of -vania episodes that followed have to try to put things into perspective. I've done this, and I found out that I kept enjoying the formula after the blueprint, and that Iga did outdo himself five times out of six at least in pure gameplay terms. Circle (no Iga involvement), Aria, Dawn, Portrait and Ecclesia all feature substantial improvements in what was SotN's soft underbelly: the challenge factor. With time, boss battles have been made more satisfying, gimmicky powerup items such as Crissaegrim have been removed or made rarer, the games have been balanced for the better; alternate modes have been added and so on.
So you see, when you say
Sumez wrote:For every new metroidvania we were all hoping for a worthy successor to SOTN that never came fully realised
that couldn't be more far removed from my experience: I liked what this team was doing. They were doing their thing, and the games were constantly good, and they were the only ones around doing this (unlike today where one indie game out of four is a non-linear action adventure). And they kept improving on a number of key issues, striving for excellence despite being rerouted on the portables market, until Konami plugged the cord.
Sumez wrote:Bloodstained does not look good, and will never blow anyone anywhere.
There are two ways to look at SotN. If you look at its hand-drawn 2D aesthetics, it can't be matched. Probably the best thing you can do if you want a match in that department, is to go get Alundra or even better Suikoden II. If you only look for a tapestry of godlike pixelart, you're out of luck here.
It's important to recognize the developers their due, that they never conceived the Kickstarter campaign, saying that Bloodstained was going to compete in that department. The 2.5D approach and the use of Unreal platform were staples of it since its inception. So yes: it doesn't look as good, but that wasn't the goal.
The idea of the project is that people have been missing that type of game experience; not that they've been missing 2D pixelart, which is obviously also true, only Bloodstained won't remedy that.
Sumez wrote:I've come to terms with the fact that I'll never see a new console Castlevania with every detail as incredibly cared for as they were in SOTN, and I wouldn't recommend anyone expecting that from Bloodstained either. That's the only approach I can recommend, and a successor to Ecclesia is more than I could have hoped for anyway.
Again, I think Iga, Curry the Kid, Yamane, Kojima Ayami and all the other talents involved in Bloodstained but also in the previous Igavania did their best and cared. It's a conundrum: even if you ask me, SotN is always on the first place of the pedestal, but I've come to terms that this doesn't detract from the following ones / doesn't imply that they rushed things or cared less. Quite the contrary, in fact.
http://www.shacknews.com/article/105622 ... -the-night
Let's just be happy they're miraculously still out there giving their best.