[ajutla]

I like Castlevania. I have for a while. I think Symphony of the Night is great. I think Harmony of Dissonance is one of my favorite games ever. I think Rondo of Blood is awesome. I think Simon's Quest is probably better than NES Zelda. I've read about the series mythology and I follow the new games that come out and play them and usually like them, sometimes to the point where it's a little bit irrational.

I realized this around January of last year, 2006, when I bought Dawn of Sorrow, which was, at the time, the new DS Castlevania. I had read the previews and I knew it was probably just going to be a rehash of Aria of Sorrow, except this time prettier and more gimmicky, but I bought the game anyway and I liked it. Seriously. The levels were mostly pretty boring (with a couple of exceptions - the clock tower, the...underground lab in the beginning? was that what that was?) but the game was so aesthetically slick that I didn't care. It was big and shiny and, to me, was kind of like a big meta-celebration of Castlevania itself - like Gradius Gaiden or We Love Katamari or something.

Yet in the back of my mind, there was some cognitive dissonance: Dawn of Sorrow was a bad videogame, yet I liked it. I recognized this. The game really did have shitty level design. There really was a lot of bullshit in it. It's just that somehow, I was choosing to ignore all of these things because I was maybe more interested in the "greater principle" of Castlevania - perhaps look and feel were more important than how the game itself actually played.

After playing Dawn of Sorrow, I thought about this some more and came to the conclusion that I don't think this way with most videogames, but with the entire Castlevania series I almost make an exception. I came to the conclusion that probably everyone has some series of videogames where they will put up with crap. They'll play the games in that series and appreciate or like all or most of them, even if they're really, really lame. I guess for me that's Castlevania.

For some people, I surmised, their series might be King of Fighters, or Mario or Doom or maybe Dragon Quest or, God help them, Final Fantasy. All of these are long-running videogame franchises with at least one entry that's widely considered to be total shit, but the fans of these series look past that and think, "yeah, but I really like the idea of Mario so much that I'm willing to look past the fact that Sunshine kind of sucks."

To be honest, Castlevania the series probably consists of more shitty games than good games by a huge margin, and, as standalone titles, I'm not sure how much I really like any of the individual Castlevanias; most of the games just have huge glaring things that are pretty clearly wrong with them. I put up with this because I like the Castlevania feel, which is very divorced from the way the games actually play.

So when Portrait of Ruin came out this past December, I thought, "hey, I should get this; more Castlevania!" My friends tried to warn me. "You, uh, might not want to actually spend money on Portrait of Ruin," they told me. "Yeah, whatever," I said. "I like Castlevania, okay." So a few weeks ago I went to EBGames.

"Do you have the DS Castlevania, the new one?" was what I said as soon as I walked in.

The dude behind the counter looked at me and laughed. "Hahahahahahaha! No."

"Are you sure?"

"Well," he said. "I guess I can look in the back on the offchance that a copy of it has somehow snuck into one of the boxes, but, uh, that's pretty unlikely."

He checked, though, and he found one - the last copy of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.

"This is why customers love me," was what the guy actually said.

I handed over my credit card and while the receipt was printing out, the guy asked, "Do you want to preorder any upcoming games? To avoid this situation?"

"What situation?" I said. "I ended up getting the game now didn't I."

"Oh, right," he said.

I took the game home. The first thing I noticed about it was that it has a really ugly box.


I'm serious. What the hell is this stuff? Who drew the creature holding the whip here? Why is half of his face covered with hair? Fuck this box.

But if the box is bad, the game is probably kind of worse. I don't know. A pet theory of mine is that in many videogames, mostly bad ones, there's a moment that happens called the "What The Fuck Is This Shit Moment." At the What The Fuck Is This Shit Moment, something happens in-game that is so ridiculous that it destroys any suspension of disbelief you might have previously had and makes you realize that, yes, you are playing a videogame, a really stupid videogame at that. After the What The Fuck Is This Shit Moment, a lot of the time, it's just over.

The WTFISTM here basically happens as soon as you switch your DS on. The game isn't immersive on any level: you control two characters, not one, and switch between them using a mechanic that makes no sense and seems only halfway-realized - but since the entire game is based around this halfway-realized mechanic, nothing you ever do makes any sense.

There are puzzles that you have to solve in Portrait of Ruin, which involve making one character stand on top of an object that the second character pushes, but the very mechanism by which this happens is actually insane: you make one character stand on the object, you tell that person to stay, you switch to the other one, you push the object, and then you hit a button that, like, somehow REVERTS you to the character that was standing on the object, so that the one pushing it DISAPPEARS and REAPPEARS on top. Not one puzzle I solved made me feel the thrill of intellectual accomplishment - they made me feel a sick weird uncomfortable queasiness at bending the game's laws of physics. It just doesn't feel right.

Even little things, like the double-jump mechanism, are just wrong - to double-jump, now, you jump and then jump again by launching yourself off the shoulders of the other character, but this is clumsy and awkward and it has no momentum - it turns Castlevania from being an elegant thing where one character moves fluidly through a castle into kind of an embarassing thing where a couple of halfwits stumble through a big brown fuzzy mess, because that's all the castle is this time, and I don't even understand why or how, because most of the sprites are basically recycled, aren't they? I guess it's the backgrounds - they're drab and dull and boring. The visual style is hackwork. Dawn of Sorrow, even, was justifiably pretty. This is grimy and slapped together.

What I'm trying to get across here is that on the most basic level, everything you do in the game is just stupid catshit, and it's hard to find a reason to even keep playing - I mean, you're not playing because the story is compelling, because it's not, it's retarded. You're not playing because you think the game is fun, because it's more painful and cringe-inducing. The only reason you would play the game is because it's another Castlevania. Fuck that shit. I can tolerate, but only up to a point.

I suppose I can still say that I like the idea of Castlevania and its meaning in a greater sense than the individual games or whatever such pretentious garbage, but Portrait of Ruin just sucks.

[showka]

Even if there's a series that you like, or can tolerate some bullshit with, no one likes it when they can tell the people making a game cared less about it than the people buying it.

I think a game that was like this for me was th Megaman X series. The new games weren't quite originally, but I had some joy from the concept and the characters. I never bought any of them until X4, but that probably had to do with me not ever having money.

X5 came out and it was total bullshit, because it was clear they didn't care as much and the production values had gone done. There was recycled sprite art on the new enemies. Megaman has always recycled the protaganist sprite art, as well as art for the same characters, but that was the first game where they copy and pasted parts of some old, fully realized character to make some half-assed new character. The lack of animated movies made it seem like Capcom was trying to budget produce X5 (I've heard on the internet somewhere that they spent too much on X4 for what they got back on it).

Also, if you started as Zero, there was a scenario where you could lose Zero as a playable character, and then never get any armor for X (who started with armor, that got broke if you played as Zero). Why? To get X's armor, you had to have a full set, and one of the pieces required that you use X's armor... so if you didn't have one, getting any of that stuff was impossible. You had to choose between starting the game with an unfair advantage or being permanenty at a loss. It seemed too stupid of a design choice to not have been an oversight, and I don't think there's a flaw that bad in any other Megaman game. Because you could change between X and Zero at any time, who you start off with didn't matter, so it was better to start as X. Doing this took away Zero's blaster, a new gameplay mechanic which nobody ever was able to use since it was never worth trading away all of X's abilities.

I guess my point is, X5 really wasn't that bad of a game, and it was actually spectacular compared to the putrid dog shit that came right after it. But I guess I just felt disillussioned because here I was, as a fan, supporting a series that relied upon dated concepts and buying the new installment the moment it was released, and it was clear the people (or company) responsible for the game didn't have the same level of dedication as they had before.

I felt the same way about Dawn of Sorrow as you did, although I don't really like it now that much. Its clear that the people working on the overall plot and structure of Dawn of Sorrow really cared deeply about it, and the game is filled with nice touches. But the levels really are as bland as popular opinion here states, and it makes the game hard to replay, because it constantly reminds you how Konami isn't putting the same effort into the franchise as they did before.

[diplo]

yeah, portrait of ruin kind of really isn't very good.
i mean, i completely tolerated dawn of sorrow - hell, i outright enjoyed it. i've probably played through the game more than ten times. i have around 70 hours on my main file. it's stupid, i know, but the thing just compels me to constantly fiddle around with it because of how slick it is.

portrait of ruin though - wow! i haven't wanted to touch the thing since completion. it almost feels like some unholy, dirty relic - the recycled levels at the end, the wave of ripped symphony and dawn sprites, the less-than-half-assed partner "puzzles," the SOMEHOW boring backgrounds, the stage design which is more incoherent than even harmony of dissonance...
fuck!!

it's...a lot of little, hackneyed aspects compounding into a bland mess even i won't go back to. this is the first 2d igavania i've played where i can confidently say, "yep, this has no soul."

[JamesE]

I wonder when this exact same thread will be posted again! (Two weeks tops)

[Dracko]

How can you justify liking Simon's Quest? I'd sooner swallow a bowl of tumours than have to play that game.
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[diplo]

in before erupting burning fury

[les meat]

[ajutla]

Yeah, dude. I don't have time for this shit.

[robotaks]

See, the thing with ajutla is that he plays every game for about an hour, and that's it.

[Deets]

I think I can respect that.

[firenze]

[dmauro]

Playing a game you don't like for more than an hour is ridiculous.
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[showka]

I thought ajutla post wasn't so much about Castlevania as about how we forgive some series for things we wouldn't overlook in other games, and about the installment that comes along and destroys our ability to do this.

At least, thats what I hoped, because there are a lot of Castlevania threads.

I think this forum may give me the resolve to actually not buy Portrait of Ruin, since overwhelming opinion here states that it is shit.

[Focus]

When I was your Kentucky, chilling with your SB dudes, I picked up John's DS with Portrait of Ruin in it. I asked if I could start a new game, and maybe the words came out a bit strangely, but he let me anyways.

Right when I started I got a power up. Some things flashed around me and some text was up on the screen. I walked to the right for maybe, twenty seconds tops and BAM another power up. There is no sense of true GAIN here.

I can trump ajutla in saying that I played Portrait of Ruin for five minutes tops, only to put it down and never touch it ever, ever again.





Unless it is below twenty dollars.
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[BotageL]

This thread and my lackluster experience with the thirty minutes or so I spent with PoR has convinced me to send it back to Gamefly right now on my way to class. On the whole, I enjoy the Igavanias, but I just don't feel like putting up with PoR's bullshit. I had more fun messing around with the grossly underdeveloped touchscreen controls for your partner than actually playing the game straight, and even that wasn't much fun. Thanks for the push, guys. I wonder if I can get Gurumin for it before the week's out...
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Can we get this moved to the FKW forum, please? So we can go a week without a front page post about Castlevania?
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[ajutla]

jesus christ guys

thread is not actually about castlevania ok

[Mr Mustache]

My series would be Zelda. It helps that they are all good.

(maybe not the Capcom installments)
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The people are like wool to me

[Mr. Mechanical]

My series is GTA. I can't help it, but I've really enjoyed all of them so far, and they're all mostly the same.
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[Sklabah]

[Mr Mustache]

Fuck you, those don't count.







Also, the first Castlevania is a very good game, and controls in a limited but precise manner. Anyone that disagrees is probably emulating it, which is fucking illegal, and deserves to grind for souls in bland, nonsensical castles for the foreseeable future.
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The people are like wool to me

[diplo]

ajutla do you like haunted castle or dracula xx or legends

those are quite worse than portrait of ruin

[Mr Mustache]

Which one was legends?
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The people are like wool to me

[diplo]

the one starring sonia belmont who defeats enemies with her prominent breasts

[Mr. Mechanical]

What about The Castlevania Adventure for the original GameBoy. I bought it once I found it used and cheap enough to not feel dirty about it, and yeah, it's pretty terrible. I still like playing it for some reason though, probably because it's so straightforward and unforgiving.
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[aderack]

It also has exploding eyeballs, and some terrific music. In stereo!

[boojiboy7]

I did love the soundtrack to that game when I was a kid.

[JamesE]

[option]

[Mr Mustache]

So is Castlevania Legacy of Darkness less crappy than Castlevania 64, or are the differences in quality negligible?
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The people are like wool to me

[L]

[Intentionally Wrong]

I've heard that before.




(Portrait of Ruin is a flawed game, but it has merits for those who bother to search for them. It's a good litmus test for determining how burned-out someone is on Castlevania. If you're not already oversaturated, it isn't terrible.)
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JSNLV is frequently and intentionally wrong.

[username]

It just struck me that the topic title is a MGS quote, isn't it?

Clever little clover you...
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http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/castlevania-sotn/clip1.mp3

[Levi]

Guys somebody should play through Haunted Castle for FKW.

Maybe I'll do it.

[guest253]

[showka]

Thats funny, I feel the same way about Scurge.

[aderack]

[luvcraft]

Since nobody else has yet done so, I will take this opportunity to wonder aloud if the title of this thread is a Psycho Mantis quote.
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[chompers po pable]

...

[luvcraft]

[Pijaibros]