Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

From thecrankyhermit

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
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Companies Konami
First release date Mar 20, 1997
Original platform(s) Playstation
Current official platform(s) Official emulation: XB1 Store

Platformer adventure

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
The OG Metroidvania. Slick, stylish, full of content and a healthy variety of weapons and tactics, with a legendary soundtrack worthy of the series and the 32-bit era, and some of the best 2D spritework at the time. Alucard, now bishonenified after 320 years of "beauty sleep" since Castlevania III, breaks into yet another one of Dracula's enormous vacation homes to murder him and his servants again. Only now the linear stage design is gone, the trademark weighty controls give way to light and responsive ones, and Alucard gets stronger and more mobile as he gains experience and finds new gear and magic abilities. The world design is a huge, cohesive, and fully explorable map, filled with more secrets than a man. The experience is unfortunately hampered by the most common pitfall to games in this style; it gets very easy far too soon. Dracula and his late game minions simply pose no threat to Alucard who grows stronger at a rate far exceeding the environment's natural difficulty curve.
Key people Michiru Yamane, Koji Igarashi, Rika Muranaka, Ayami Kojima