LogFAQs > #950965367

17. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, 1997)

I think there's a phenomenon in critical writing of video games where a somewhat-flawed game that historically was lauded as "best in the series" or possibly "best game ever" gets hit with an extra degree of criticism and negativity later on in its lifetime. The best, and most clear example of this, is Ocarina of Time, most likely due to the degree of praise it got immediately upon release and the general overall quality of the rest of the Zelda series. Symphony of the Night is another that feels to me to have hit this phenomenon - it was such a definitive and impressive reinvention of the series upon its release that it totally shifted the dynamic of the series, ushering in the "Metroidvania" era, and quite possibly single-handedly dooming all the failed attempts to bring the series to 3D. (Okay, it's probably that most of those games were hot garbage.) So despite a number of folks who would love to tell you that the best Castlevania game is Aria or Dawn of Sorrow, Order of Ecclesia (ew), or possibly one of the classic linear games like Castlevania III or Rondo of Blood, I'm gonna double down on SotN: I think it's still, easily, the best game in the series in 2021, and despite its "flaws" it still has more than enough charm, creativity, and great gameplay to back it up.
Symphony of the Night has a lot of obvious strengths: its merging of the Castlevania universe with the open exploration of Metroid works perfectly; instead of a linear progression of fixed stages, you have the entirety of Dracula's castle with which to explore, fight enemies, and discover secrets. Additionally, SotN adds on a RPG-style leveling system - enemies give experience points, and enough will level you up, giving a buff to combat stats. This has the benefit of allowing the player to progress past difficult challenges in multiple ways - you can grind up levels, you can keep taking your shot at the combat, or you can seek out extra items, armor, weapons, or health to make progress in a different way. SotN's protagonist is Dracula's son Alucard, and unlike almost every prior Castlevania protagonist, a Belmont with a whip he is not. Alucard comes with a sword, shield, and armor, but they're swiped from you early in the game and you have to acquire (or re-acquire) items and skills to make progress. It has a good balance of customizability and familiarity in its sense of progression, and it works very well.
SotN is also a game with a previously unprecedented level of cinematic flair, for both the series and for 2D action games. The game opens with the ending battle of Rondo of Blood: Richter confronting Dracula, wonderfully campy and beloved voice-acted banter (What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets!), and a user-controlled rendition of the final battle against Dracula. It's followed by a long expositional text scroll accompanying intense, dramatic music, then drops the player into the main game proper with a fancy screen-scrolling swoop into Alucard dashing toward the castle - it's a hell of an opening 10-15 minutes, and sets the stage for the type of game that SotN strives to be. But it's not just the opening - the game fills its chambers with clever nods to the rest of the series, little hidden easter eggs (like the confessional booth in the Chapel that attacks you, or the usable binoculars along the outer wall), and lots of little atmospheric touches. Among all the Metroidvanias, I think SotN's castle is the most comprehensively realized - it feels the most built like an actual structure, and feels the least like a connected series of copy-and-pasted rooms (usually). The game's incredible soundtrack adds some depth here, too - the symphonic quality music brings a level of seriousness and intensity to the experience. And although it might not be as memorable as the opening, the rest of the voice-acted dialogue scenes are still hilarious and charming.
I'll make a quick mention of the game's weaknesses, too: its enemy and area balancing is all over the place; throughout the game, there are bosses that are wickedly hard for the level you are roughly going to be at, and just as many that are comically easy. There's an optional boss that is ridiculously tough to conquer without a ton of items or a very cheesy strategy, while Dracula himself is...not very hard. And there are some insanely overpowered weapons that make most of the endgame a joke. There's a few too many items that exist solely to lazily block progression and force backtracking (gotta go to one end of the castle to get the Blue door key to unlock a blue door at the other end), and others that just feel extraneous (an item to see enemy names?). And as much as I love the campiness of the game's dialogue, it comes across as very silly and is not particularly well done.
Still, though, I think SotN pairs its addictive and engaging gameplay with a ton of charm. There's something to be said about a game being perfectly balanced and even - I think it's important for, say, a fighting game, but in a single-player experience I think some unevenness is not only acceptable but actually good. I think it's nice to find something that's super-overpowered (especially when it's not just handed to you) or to grind out an especially tough boss fight. Having the experience be so much less homogeneous and streamlined makes it feel more real, or at least in this case, less cookie-cutter than some of its GBA and DS successors. And SotN is the introduction of the "fake-out" ending for the series, too: the storyline sets you up to a confrontation between Alucard and the turned-evil Richter Belmont at the top of the castle, but that's only the false or "bad" ending: to reach the entire second half of the game, you have to dig your way into the lowest reaches of the castle to find some hidden items and secrets. It's a little obtuse (and said second-half of the game isn't great), but it's such a memorable way to engage the player with the game's universe: it's not just a restructuring of linear levels into a nonlinear order, but actually shifts the experience with and around those areas as the game goes on.
This was supposed to be a lot shorter of a writeup, but I think all my rambling helps me bring home my point (for my own tastes at least): SotN is not only such an outstanding game for its time that helped set new standards for the series and its genre, but it's also full of unique quirks and charms that really help it stand out among later releases. If Super Metroid can reasonably be considered the game that birthed Metroidvania as a genre, SotN is the one that brought about the name "Metroidvania" itself. And while other Castlevania games (or Bloodstained) might have tightened up the formula, there isn't one that has as much ambition, grandeur, and brilliance as Symphony of the Night.

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