I can almost hear the speech Koji Igarashi gave when he pitched Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to his staff (imagine the following being spoken in Japanese):
“Our formula is getting old. We’re doing things differently this time round, guys. We’re going to give the player freedoms they haven’t had before. Players are going to run around Dracula’s castle until they are hellishly lost, then backtrack and try to find that door they missed or that passage they overlooked. I mean, this place is gonna feel huge! Along the way they’re going to fight terrifying monsters with a veritable warehouse of potions, deli meats, and arcane death weapons. The graphics are going to be incredible. We’re going to have so much going on in the background that the players can’t help but feel like they’re exploring a real-to-life haunted castle. There’s going to be orchestral death metal. There’s going to be puzzles. There’s going to be a snarky hot chick with a terrible American voice actor who shows up every once in a while. Stop looking at me funny, it’s a great idea. It just needs one final thing to make it all come together.
What we need... is a bad-ass.”
And thus was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night born and thus did it gain its vampiric star. Alucard is a bad-ass, have no doubt. He wears a cape. He dual-wields swords. He has a move where he sucks his enemy’s soul from their body. Aside from the fact that he’s voiced by someone who sounds like his balls just dropped for the first time, Alucard is a worthy addition to the vampire Hall of Fame.
But there’s this funny thing about unstoppable vampire bad-asses. It’s actually not that fun to play as them.
Alucard is overpowered. That soul sucking move I mentioned? Alucard is invincible while he does it, it strikes every enemy on screen (and sometimes some that are off-screen), it heals Alucard almost entirely, and he can use it once a minute. Not even bosses are immune to it. Sounds like something you might get near the end of the game, or maybe not even until your second play through. Nope. It’s available right from the start. To activate it you have to pull off a quick series of button mashes reminiscent of Chun-Li’s Hurricane Kick, but the timing is very forgiving and you’ll have no trouble using it over and over. Believe me; I suck at Street Fighter, but I rock at Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. So will everyone who plays it. And that just doesn’t feel right for a Castlevania game.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not against accessibility. I like the fact that they revamped the stiff Castlevania controls for its PS1 break out. I like being able to maneuver Alucard in the air; I like that his attack response is quick; I like that he’s got shields and dodges to mix things up in combat. I just wish I got the chance to use some of these things. It feels like the potential is there. Some of the enemies look like they could mess you up. Classic enemies like the knights have been gloriously re-rendered and now come in all sorts of crazy flavors. I came across this knight at the palace gates who had an owl perched on his shoulder. He barked an order and the bird flew at me while the knight readied his blade, surely planning to attack me while I was distracted with his pet. I prepared myself for an intense fight but it was not to be. The owl died in one hit and the knight in six. Seven cuts of my blade, in as many seconds, had ended the battle before it had barely begun. Why would Konami spend so much time programming cool things like that knight and then not give them a chance to shine? The owl knight is one of the more powerful opponents you’ll face. There are enemies in Symphony of the Night who I’ve never seen attack me because I kill them too fast.
Worst of all are the bosses. I once thought that no boss could live up to those of the Castlevania series. But that was before I played Symphony of the Night. I’m not sure which boss here is my favorite. Is it the lizard man with the spear who stumbles backwards every time you hit him, opening him up for another attack? Or is it the giant dog woman who’s stuck in a wall and can barely reach you? I remember while fighting her I got knocked behind her and discovered that she had no ability to turn around. That made things kind’ve stupid. I actually felt bad killing her. It was like stabbing a defenseless puppy in the back.
By no means do I miss the cheap deaths of the early games in the series, where a single bat could knock you off a platform to your doom. I probably wasn’t the only kid who threw his NES controller across the room once every five minutes while playing the first Castlevania. You never felt fully in control of your doom in the early games. But this iteration lacks any doom at all. It lacks the tension that made the series enjoyable. The early Castlevania games had you earn your victories. The player felt like a bad-ass because he was besting a game that took him time to master and required skill and focus to beat. Beating a Castlevania game was an accomplishment that not everyone could boast of. Here, Alucard is the bad-ass and the player is nothing more than a face in a crowd, one of thousands of gamers who have come before him and beaten the game with the same damn soul sucking move.
I was excited to see this title make its way onto the PSN. I had missed it the first time around and had lamented my oversight as costing me one of the best games in the series. Now that I’ve played it, I come away wondering if this wasn’t where the Castlevania games started to go wrong. I can’t say I actively disliked the game. Most of Igarashi’s changes to the series came off as well executed. Yet, however much I may enjoy the rockin’ music or exploring the detailed confines of Dracula’s castle, at the end of the gaming day Castlevania: Symphony of the Night leaves me feeling unfulfilled.
It was a fresh perspective, but I’m not convinced it’s remained fresh.
