Wednesday, October 15, 2008

A Night with Symphony

Having played almost all post-Symphony of the Night Castlevanias, i was still pleasantly surprised when playing symphony for the first time at how familiar it seems and yet, altogether different than the rest of the games that followed. Perhaps that's the true testament of an all-time classic, it's so well ahead of its time that it still possess the ability to surprised and amazed even to jaded fans of the series such as myself.

I'm amazed at how much innovations Symphony has introduced and yet, somehow all the games that followed in the series failed to adopt it. The ability to transform to both a wolf and a bat, though isn't much of any use in the puzzles or the boss battle is still a welcome addition to the series. The ability to equip different weapon in both arms, clothes and equipment that appear on-screen when equipped, it's easy to see why Symphony of the Night is such a beloved entry in the series. Perhaps it's not fair to compare Symphony with the Castlevania GBA and DS games that followed, after all Symphony was a console game and i have always maintained that console and handheld game are very different, especially in the nature of the time and resources invested by the developers onto the project.

I'm hard-pressed to decide which one i liked better between Symphony and Rondo of Blood, being an action junkie Rondo of Blood felt like the Die Hard of the series with it's endless boss battles and straight-forward action approach while Symphony was amazingly innovative.

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