Castlevania: Symphony of the Night1574 views

by Solvesoul January 5th, 2013

If you ask someone about Castlevania then they'll surely know Symphony of the Night. Since every top 3, 5 or 10 list of best Castlevania games always puts Symphony of the Night on top. It's that great! The game is also known as the first "Metroidvania", that means that it takes the exploring elements from Metroid and puts it into a Castlevania game.

This time you don't play as any of the Belmonts as you did in the previous games, now you play as Alucard, the son of Dracula (note that "Dracula" backwards is "Alucard"). Alucard is so powerful you can one-hit all creatures in the beginning of the game, that is until "Death" comes along and steals all your equipment, leaving Alucard unarmed and less powerful.

As you explore Dracula's Castle you'll find many power-ups, some will give you the ability to turn into a bat or you'll find some boots that lets you defy the laws of gravity. It's often so that you'll need some of these power-ups to continue on in the game. They're not always obvious to find, there is some cryptic stuff going on in Dracula's Castle, but that's what makes Symphony of the Night so much fun!


Most people who bought the game and completed it, even 100%, didn't know there was a secret second part of the game. No spoilers, but if you manage to find out how to get to the second part of the game then you can complete it to 200,6%! That's right, back in the day people didn't have internet so many people didn't even know that they've only beaten half the game. The second part of the game is Dracula's Castle but upside down. New, tougher enemies appear, new bosses, more power-ups and everything is upside down.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is such an amazing game, but still it's a mixed opinion kind of thing. As many people praised the game as the best of the series, others hated it. Why, you ask? Well because this game took the recipe of Castlevania and mixed it up with RPG elements such as leveling, gear, free exploring, ... Whilst the older games where (extremely) hard, linear and were limited to a whip and a few sub-weapons such as the holy water, holy cross, throwing knives, ... And people who liked the older games so much, were disappointed that Symphony of the Night was too easy.

The game has since been released on many platforms, most notably on xbox and PSN. The only downside with the re-release is that the graphics aren't upscaled to 16:9. The aspect ratio is still 4:3 which would normally leave most part of the screen black. They did implement some kind of fancy frame around the actual gamescreen so the black borders aren't much of an annoyance.

Nevertheless, Symphony of the Night is a game so well-made that I recommend playing through it every two years or so. Preferably if it's Halloween, that sets the mood right to play this gem from 1997.

In short: This is a great game that any Castlevania fan and none-fans should play.