M2 should remake the old Java cellphone game CV: Order of Shadows
3 Likes
the chinese company that made a bunch of java phone castlevania knockoffs should release a compilation
3 Likes
TBF with the scan lines on, that purple is a very different shade and texture, almost a brown, but who knows if thatās accurate to how it was originally presented in arcades.
I beat the Haunted Castle remake during a plane flight and it was alright. The only hard part on normal difficulty for me was the last boss - I wish the floating orb didnāt have a hitbox bc it seems unfair to get hit by it with everything else happening. Meanwhile I canāt even get to the second level in the original Haunted Castle.
The last boss has some neat puppet scaling and rotating that makes it look almost 3d, and its attack patterns makes it a pretty unique Dracula encounter. The only other interesting boss to me was the Frankensteinās monster who was chained to the wall but allowed to roam when its creator momentarily came to life and pulled the lever so the monster can rampage. Together with the bouncing fleamen Igors, which Iām surprised were never paired up with him before, it was a pretty memorable and (lore accurate??) Frankenstein monster encounter.
I laughed at how in the new remakeās opening, Dracula does silly sprite transparency scaling exaggerated kidnapping magic instead of just swooping in and snatching Simonās wife. The power of technology 
9 Likes
i love the little skeletons that you kill and then their souls come out and divebomb you
BUT I TIMED OUT ON A BOSS WHEN HE HAD ONE HIT LEFT I FORGOT ABOUT TIME LIMITS IN CASTLEVANIA GAMES FOR A SECOND i cant wait to play portrait of ruin a game with no time limit
2 Likes
are there any mechanical differences between the castlevanias where you can select which version you play
Youāre asking about specific ones right?
Castlevania III has big differences between regions, especially regarding damage.
https://tcrf.net/Castlevania_III:_Dracula's_Curse/Regional_Differences
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no in the menu for the one that just came out all the ds games you can pick which region theyāre in so Iām specifically talking about ecclesia, portrait and dawn of sorrow
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I think I read that the European version of Portrait of Ruin had some bug fixes but it didnāt specify which ones.
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This collection also includes new bugfixes, possibly because of the higher clock speed from being released from DS, as some old glitches that would have froze the game instead can play out normally. Iād just play all of them on the NA rom, to the best of my knowledge they never made balance changes.
4 Likes
I played a mod of portrait of ruin a few years ago that replaced all the how to draw manga style character portraits with ayami kojima art and it honestly made the game substantially better
I did the same with dawn of sorrow but thereās just no salvaging that game. itās just miserable to play. itās honestly remarkable how bad it is coming on the heels of aria of sorrow which I still think is just incredibly tight and well made.
ecclesia owns though. nice to see it getting some love. I feel like it was completely ignored when it first dropped.
8 Likes
i finished bloodstained and while it did kinda scratch an itch, it is kind of annoying how almost every single element about it is a direct self-reference to one igarashi castlevania or another, but, yāknow, lesser in some way and kinda lacking identity. even the music is like, legally distinct castlevania, reminiscent of what this zone wouldāve sounded like in previous games but not memorable.
game barely even feels like a remix of old elements, a lot of the castle feels similarly structured and layed out as previous castlevania games. itās like iām finding all the stuff i expect to find in the places iād expect them to be. my memories are being catered to way too closely! itās definitely comfort food but nothing more than that and iām not sure itās fine? like i did spend the 20 hours playing this but still feel disappointed. what is wrong with gamer brain why did i do that?
then i tried the classic mode and when i realized the level layouts mostly copy each part of the first castlevaniaās stages but bad i quit. is this the gruel gamers want?
4 Likes
IMO most Igavanias have one simple problem making them feel like gruel for people whoāve played more than one: theyāre too easy on normal difficulty. Thereās no pressure to deeply engage in the new systems each game introduces, so it might as well be the same as the previous one you played. The one exception is Ecclesia which is an appropriate difficulty for experienced players on normal.
In Bloodstained I knew this would probably be the case again so I looked it up beforehand and used the secret name-entry code to unlock hard difficulty on my first playthrough. Iām pretty sure this one hidden feature is a big reason why I thought of it highly.
8 Likes
i donāt care that much about this type of game being hard enough. if it was harder i wouldāve just deleted it earlier.
my problem is that recognizing every single element as something lifted from one particular castlevania or another gets so old so fast. itās the non-stop appeals to recognition that suck. like, suddenly i respect the last decade of āmetroidvaniasā a lot more because none of them are even nearly as bad as this
3 Likes
Is the Wonder Labrynth Lodoss War game part of the discussion here?
That Lodoss game seems comparable to Aria of Sorrow to me (the pixel art is extremely good, and itās short-and-sweet).
3 Likes
despite the claim that āeveryone is hereā this seems to include literally every single playable castlevania character (not including bonus characters like the por vampire twins or axe armor) other than the n64 characters. strange.
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not to be a hater but wasnāt this half the selling point of the original vampire survivors
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I guess this is the season of Castlevania (selling its old clothes at the thrift store)
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Their art style is so weird Iām a bit lost on who like half of them are supposed to be. The in game sprites look pretty straight though. Juste gets a lot of shine in the back half of that trailer.