Also, hoorah for my Wii. After four NES crashes I broke down and decided to play the copy I have on VC. Took a bit but I've bested Dracula. Got real lucky on the second form as a "II" item droped from a fireball in his first barrage. Feels good to have accomplished this.
Look at our friendly members:
MX7 wrote:I'm not a fan of a racist, gun nut brony puking his odious and uninformed arguments over every thread that comes up.
Holy cow, FC Dracula's second loop is pretty tough. I've never really bothered with it since the first feels like such a perfect action gaming session in itself, rather like FC Ninja Ryukenden and its sole loop. But I decided to venture forth this evening after beating myself back into 1LC shape over one grueling lunchtime. It's pretty much loop one with added pest spawns and slightly more numerous regulars, but since the game's already pretty well-populated breathing room quickly feels scarce. The controls' precision really shines with so many once-innocuous stretches now potential deathtraps demanding authoritative play. Whiff an attack here and panic-blunder into a projectile there and you'll be dead in no time. Will definitely make reaching loop 3 this weekend's pet gaming project, I hope it has at least one more difficulty tier before levelling off.
Anyone else tried looping the older games? I know saucykobold caned the hell out of X68k Dracula / Chronicles Original Mode to a heroic degree. Actually, I'm not sure any of the traditional home-release games besides the first and its X68k remake have infinite loops (as opposed to "second quests").
I wish the sequels hadn't gone all Saturday Night Fever with Dracula's teleporting pattern. The FC's near-total lack of telegraphing and tight escape window makes the whole thing a tense, reflex-testing encounter every time. Spasmodically move the wrong way when he randomly decides to materialise on top of you and you're getting a -4HP boot in the ass. Fail to close in on him from a distance and he'll escape with another opportunity to soften you up so Cookie Monster form can splatter you. Good stuff. Rondo is a particularly (and surprisingly) bad offender at this, its Dracula is essentially an FC copy/paste with EZ teleport dodging and no crazy Densetsu / Vampire Killer-style boss rushing to make up for it.
BIL wrote:
Anyone else tried looping the older games? I know saucykobold caned the hell out of X68k Dracula / Chronicles Original Mode to a heroic degree. Actually, I'm not sure any of the traditional home-release games besides the first and its X68k remake have infinite loops (as opposed to "second quests").
I'm working on finishing a second loop on Haunted Castle. Having the sword in the early stages throws me off.
"That which does not kill us, makes us stranger." ~ Trevor Goodchild
Always looking for obscure Castlevania ports and related items.
In the FC cart version, it seems all further loops are identical to the second - cleared the third and most of the fourth tonight on my first go. Still, cool loop regardless. I was a bit disappointed that stages 5 and 6 are more or less identical to their first-loop versions, but they're busy enough anyway and the first four get way the hell deadlier. One-lifeing both loops could be interesting, I died at stage 2-4's birdyard every time and had to take out the creature with the dagger.
Probably would've had to anyway, since it seems you need the watch to avoid risking instant death by fishman in the raft section earlier. Cheesy! But it's cool, I should be less dependent on cheesing Frankie (and Death) with x3 subweapons.
For those that may have missed Gameside's feature issues on Castlevania some years ago, they're reprinting all CV-related stuff into one volume in their new spinoff series, Action Gameside.
No love for the last installment in the series???? Has anyone tried already Mirror of Fate??
I'd like to hear any opinions about it just for the record.
Phellan Wolf wrote:No love for the last installment in the series???? Has anyone tried already Mirror of Fate??
I'd like to hear any opinions about it just for the record.
Seems people pretty much hate it, from what I've read. No first hand account due to Nintendo's region-lockout preventing me from buying a 3DS.
Phellan Wolf wrote:No love for the last installment in the series???? Has anyone tried already Mirror of Fate??
I'd like to hear any opinions about it just for the record.
Seems people pretty much hate it, from what I've read. No first hand account due to Nintendo's region-lockout preventing me from buying a 3DS.
Yeah, it's meant to be a pile of cock. To be honest Lords of Shadow was competent, but hardly special - it's puzzle filler was just irritating - but at least it was snappy in the combat department. Lose that and there won't be much left.
Phellan Wolf wrote:Has anyone tried already Mirror of Fate??
I played the demo and it was awful in just about every way.
May I point you that a demo is a demo and sometimes differs quite a lot from the final product???
It happened before, just look at Bangaioh on XBLA, the demo is a shame but the real game is terrific. I admit the Castlevania demo performs terrible and the controls feel too slugish but, actually I enjoyed it.
However as for the comments that skykid just said, have tried the real thing??
Mirror of Fate certainly doesn't feel like a CV game. It's slower (even to just turn around), relies on some more unneeded control motions, and combat focuses on multi-hit combos (plus command blocks and dodges). In other words, it's pretty much Lords of Shadow molded into 2D form. I don't expect to get back to MOF anytime soon but I don't mind answering any specific questions.
I see. Anyway I'll try the real thing by myself. I'll probably rent it and give it a play through.
By the way how is Castlevania Rebirth on Wiiware??? I have seen some videos and reminds me of good old times, and since I dislike almost all metroidvanias except Aria of Sorrow (sorry but SoN although playing as Alucard was really cool I couldn't bear with the game pace).
How can AoS be the only Metroidvania game you like when CotM is the closest to being an old school Castlevania with the newer gameplay style? Feeling legit confusion here.
ChainsawGuitarSP wrote:How can AoS be the only Metroidvania game you like when CotM is the closest to being an old school Castlevania with the newer gameplay style? Feeling legit confusion here.
ChainsawGuitarSP wrote:How can AoS be the only Metroidvania game you like when CotM is the closest to being an old school Castlevania with the newer gameplay style?
Phellan Wolf wrote:Cause I missed that one, that is why
Ah, I should have known.
I'd argue that OoE is even farther from the Classicvanias than usual. Your attacking style is just way too flexible whereas Castlevania was always about cautious play due to slow whip lashing and limited jumping phsyics. CotM's platforming manages to be fairly intense despite not having any bottomless pits to worry about due to excellent enemy placement and strong attacks that make them impossible to ignore. OoE feels more like a side scrolling beat 'em up with how little variation there is between enemies and obstacles and with how long you have to be wailing on them before they die.
Phellan Wolf wrote:No love for the last installment in the series???? Has anyone tried already Mirror of Fate??
I'd like to hear any opinions about it just for the record.
I played it at Comic Con.
Clunky controls. Combat is 2d but is simplified like 3d combat (Get out of the way to avoid hitbox? Ha ha no. Just hit evade button). Looks ugly as hell. It was pretty bad to be honest.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
ChainsawGuitarSP wrote:How can AoS be the only Metroidvania game you like when CotM is the closest to being an old school Castlevania with the newer gameplay style?
Only thing about CotM is the walk/run speeds. Too slow and too fast, respectively. I just can't get acclimated - and romhacks that give you 'always run' don't really cut it, either. I find OoE feels more like Classicvania, probably purely due to the difficulty. Since getting hit hurts so bad, you have to do the good old range-finding style combat that characterizes the classic branch.
Damn it, if only he'd resisted that giveaway "teh" he'd have given us our own Repercussions of Evil. But then, he wrote RoE, so who can stay mad at him?
Ecclesia is the best of the DS games, in my mind. Portrait of Ruin was very uninspired, and Dawn of Sorrow was trapped in its untimely launch window with unnecessary touch-screen additions.
I picked up Mirror of Fate recently. I am not terribly impressed with it from a gameplay standpoint. Visually though, I think it is better than people are making it out to be. Still, it runs at 30fps or less (ugh), and the 3D doesn't work very well.
Just scored a minty CIB copy of FC Akumajo Dracula (cart) and have been getting my credentials back up to snuff after a long time away... as with rediscovering Ninja Gaiden (NES/FC) a while back, this is a game I've been pretty comfy with at a casual clearer level for many years, yet never really looked into any deeper. There's a lot more to do here since the game has at least one loop difficulty increase, and it's pretty tough with lots more nuisance enemies occupying space/time that's comfortably vacant the first go-around. On top of this Dracula's heavier (though no less razor-sharp) control makes it inherently less open to improv kamikaze play than NG. I've cleared the loop before but not without lots of deaths and struggle, so a respectable 2-ALL no miss will be my pet gaming project for the next while. I hope the difficulty has at least one more notch in later loops, IIRC I made it pretty far into the third loop without noticing further changes.
I've noticed this game's enemies have some really nicely player-controllable patterns, which will get broken up into much harder to handle behaviour if you're unaware or caught off-guard. Hunchbacks will always approach Simon with their rapid, short hopping until they're roughly within short whip range, then execute the big arcing jump over his head. Never run away, they'll simply outpace you and collide with small hops. Just approach them, wait for the big hop and *BOOM* kill them on the way down. Or of course you can just smack them as they approach, but this game has a way of preoccupying the player. Skeletons' keep-away tactic can be a pain in the ass if you've not got a ranged weapon - unless you know to retreat a bit, which will cause them to follow and pause to chuck a bone, leaving them wide open for a volte-face crack of the whip or firebomb. The infamous Medusa Heads have no targeting AI whatsoever and are actually aimed to miss Simon by default while he's advancing the screen.
Dracula's first form apparently has no pattern, be quick or be dead. I'm sure TASs have something to say about this but humanly his teleporting seems gloriously random and merciless. Fireballs are aimed of course.
This stuff is no doubt well-known to many, but as a longtime fan and player-by-ear, it's been really satisfying to sit down and properly analyse this game. And also put it under some intense scrutiny... this is most definitely not a nostalgia piece. The absolute focus on strategic action and the corresponding absence of flawed viewpoints, sloppy animation and glitchy controls I've had to tolerate from more modern but less perfect sidescrollers is a mercy.
Lament of Innocence is a Devil May Cry-style third person action game with a first-class combat engine and bargain basement-class level designs. The controls are absolutely impeccable, impacts feel fierce and solid, and Perfect Guarding and the evasion roll are both satisfying defensive options. The unlockable "@crazy" difficulty gets pretty intense. It's also a pretty good-looking game that maintains a solid 60fps under all but the most extreme graphical overloads, and Michiru Yamane's soundtrack is phenomenal.
Unfortunately the maps are like something out of Wolfenstein 3D... lots and lots of empty square rooms connected by empty corridors, with a nagging sense of flatness. And rather than having a linear, well-designed castle or an interconnected free-roaming one, you get Rockman-style disparate locales connected by a central hub. In spite of that there's a decent secret-finding aspect to unlocking the optional superboss, so it's not totally dire. Very disappointing though, considering how Koji Igarashi was kissing up to Hideki Kamiya's DMC while bashing the N64 games in the press prior to release. A game combining the N64 CV's towering, perilous stage design with this combat would've actually been great.
If you love beating the shit out of monsters in 3D, you may very well forgive it the boxy world designs - otherwise, don't spend too much money acquiring it. If it's of any help, LOI's Japanese version (simply called "Castlevania") got at least one budget reprint, so it should be pretty affordable even brand new. Haven't finished COD - the again boxy level designs put me off early on and I've yet to return.
Last edited by BIL on Thu Sep 26, 2013 3:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
