Was it Good? - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

what is a man a miserable little pile of secrets oh that's where that phrase comes from you know i've heard people quoting that for years but never actually knew the origin of it ladies and gentlemen welcome i'm josh drife and today we are replaying the classic playstation 1 game castlevania symphony of the night and asking the question was it any good well i say replaying because for me this isn't a replay it's a first play because i've never played this i know i'm ashamed of me too i had a playstation 1 i just never had this game and i know it's always included in top 10 playstation 1 games list but i never found the time as a kit so after spending the last two days finishing the entire game and i do mean the entire game including the inverted castle let's have a chat about this classic side-scrolling rpg action adventure game in this video i'm going to talk about the individual design elements that make up the game and then take you on a journey of my complete playthrough and show you all the parts that stood out to me the bosses the hidden rooms and the super secret hidden ending and then we'll talk about the whole experience as usual a massive thank you to the patreon supporters and twitch subs who keep the channels going more on how you can support at the end for now let's begin symphony of the night opens with a cut scene it's 1792 in romania and we're off to kill dracula the opening has you controlling a maxed out fully powered up richter belmont as you storm into dracula's keep and fight the final boss controls are simple but responsive left right duck jump and a tank you can also change movement direction mid-air which is kind of important later on when the screen is full of enemies and projectiles the opening dracula fight kind of throws you in at the deep end you've got your trusty whip and a few special weapons we'll talk about later but the most important aspect of this fight is you can't fail even if you do die which you probably will on your first attempt a little girl will appear cheer you on and this makes you invulnerable also the 3d background effect during the second half after the vampiric transformation is awesome and the quality of the actual graphics is something we'll come back to later so dracula dies but then it's four years later and bad stuff is stirring up again so we take control of the actual hero alucard now if you've seen the amazing netflix castlevania show yes that alucard symphony of the night even talks about how many years before alucard and richter belmont's ancestor trevor belmont took down vlad tepisch together alucard appears in this gorgeous parallax scrolling forest running through it parallax scrolling is a classic gaming technique of having various layers of background and foreground scrolling at different speeds to give the illusion of depth and this game uses it so well just like the richter start we begin with maxed equipment alucard is here to destroy the castle to prevent dracula being resurrected and the opening level has you one hitting high level enemies and just blitzing through the beautiful ground floor halls eventually you meet death who asks you to stop trying to destroy the castle and says even though he can't make you stop supporting humans he'd like you to stop trying to destroy him and you say nah still gonna do it so he takes away all of your awesome equipment and leaves you weak and feeble and now the game begins your only real goal is to reach the top of the castle the same room richter fought dracula in and destroy the castle now how you get up there is up to you my only real experience of castlevania symphony of the night comes from this very quick sound bite from youtuber zero punctuation in his video talking about dark souls he mentions that in dark souls a game i love you are free to explore and there are multiple routes to success similar to symphony of the night in fact the exact quote is this and then it hit me that's symphony of the night thinking and i love symphony of the night so i was approaching this as a massive dark souls fan and looking for similarities and it did not disappoint me early on an enemy dropped a weapon a short sword which i equipped because this game is a light rpg and then later another weapon a two-handed sword which i equipped and discovered this made me dodge slower okay i think i'm seeing it castlevania is an action rpg which focuses more on the action the rpg elements are more for mechanical game progression and not necessarily about character strength you've got loads of weapons armor shields spells rings and amulets and while most do boost your attack or defense in some way the game is much more about skill than stats killing enemies also levels you up and level ups increase your health and damage but again the stat boosts are there to support your skill not carry you through this is an action skill based game with light rpg elements so let's talk about death because you will die a lot and when you do are the blood symphony of knight is happy to take what few pixels it does have and spray them just everywhere death is a spectacle and when you die it's game over i hope you're saved because we are back in the playstation 1 era no quick saves no auto saves it's a case of manually finding a save room which of these rooms filled with giant spinning dice and saving this also refills your health pressing select brings up a map of the castle showing the rooms you've already explored it also highlights the save rooms in red and later on when you find them the transport room's in orange the map is vital in navigating and later in the game you'll be spending more time on this screen working out where to go than you will actually killing stuff the core of the gameplay loop is a nice even split of side scrolling exploration and combat and navigational puzzle solving for the combat there's a wealth of enemies to take down with each of them having different attack patterns and styles some rush you some dodge back most throw things at you and you'll quickly learn that avoiding being hit is far better long term than trying to tank damage because you can get stun locked one enemy hits you into another you have a very brief invulnerability period and then another hit into another enemy and before you know it your health is gone while fighting you've got whatever weapon you want to equip and whatever offhand item be that another weapon a two-handed weapon or a shield shields block most projectiles but won't protect you from enemy magic or melee attacks each weapon has a different range attack animation time cooldown time and elemental effect so it's a case of not only finding one good against any given enemy or boss but also a weapon you like the play style of huge two-handed swords have great range and do good damage but they swing slowly and lock you in place while attacking shorter weapons swing faster and have a shorter animation and a shorter range but they do less damage it's about finding a weapon you enjoy what works for you well until you find the combat knife which is absolutely utterly bonkers and broken because it swings as fast as you can press the button and has no animation lock the balancing in this game is sometimes questionable oh speaking of broken let's look at special attacks as an adventurer you either kill enemies or snuff out the flickering flames that fill every corridor and you can pick up hearts now hearts are not your health they are your special attack ammunition your current special weapon is shown in the little circle by your health and sometimes enemies bosses or snuffed out flames will drop special weapons if you pick a new one up you'll drop your old one there are multiple special weapons and you'll use them all throughout your playthrough and some are better than others to use them just hold up and press attack you've got the axe which arcs through the air the holy water which burns on the ground the diamond ball which bounces around and is mostly useless or the completely unbalanced sword which you can throw as fast as you can press attack with no cooldown special weapons can help trivialize tough boss fights or hit enemies just out of reach seriously what special weapon you have will decide how easy or difficult a boss fight is going to be now if you're not meleeing something or cheesing it with a special attack you might be using a spell symphony of the night is interesting because you can finish the entire game and never even find a spell i found one in my whole playthrough dark metamorphosis using a spell needs you to input a fighting game style sequence of button presses to activate use up some of your mana and then it does whatever it needs to do this one steals enemy health and adds it to my own but only if i spill blood specifically blood so i need to kill a living enemy not an undead and use a slashing weapon to make them bleed i like the limitation on that because it would otherwise be very exploitable as you fight you'll also find relics they are static boosts or helpful effects that can be turned on or off in the relic menu now relics can increase your stats boost your jump summon familiars to help you basically finding a relic makes you stronger but you don't need to use it along with combat you've also got to solve the problem of actually navigating the castle and this is where the rpg or the more linear adventure line creeps in at the start of the game you can't jump very high you can't double jump you can't turn into mist to pass through barriers and you can't assume your vampiric bat form to fly around but you will unlock all of these as you adventure and with each unlock you'll be able to access more of the castle early on you will pass a ledge you can't quite reach or a jump you can't quite make and you'll make a mental note come back here later when i can jump higher you've also got buttons switches and elevators accessed from various places that open gates activate or deactivate ground spikes or open up shortcuts you'll need later along with teleporter rooms all linked together and once you unlock a teleporter room you can move around the castle faster exploration is rewarded if you've not been somewhere you're always half hoping it's the rest of the game and half hoping it's a save room because you've not saved in ages and you're low on health and you don't want to go back to the last one the castle is an absolute joy to explore the level design the sequence layouts the relation of one location to the next and the complete consistency in keeping a perfectly scaled overall environment the place feels like a fantasy castle the background designs the ambient music really enhance the feeling of gothic horror so let's look at those castlevania symphony of the night is gorgeous it looks stunning i've always been a big advocate for defined graphical style over photo realism and this game drips with style the smooth animation of alucard is mesmerizing the flowing cape the buttery smooth movement of his arms while running the trailing of the cape in jumps even the ghostly flickers of previous alu cards following him once you're at full health are visual delights the backgrounds are detailed and elaborate from hanging tapestries showing fantastical events to opulent hallways to dank dark caverns the enemy design is intricate and in some cases beautifully vile castlevania actually highlights one of my biggest issues with modern pixel art games when someone says they're making a pixel art game today they often mean they're making a minimalist game using pixels or they're going to reduce characters down to simple block colors and justify their simplicity by saying oh it's pixel art well back in the 90s pixel art wasn't about how little can we get away with it was about this how much excessive detail can we add while limited by the pixel count the boss fights the moving parts the explosions the background effects they are gorgeous there's even sections using certain 3d rendered backgrounds like the stairs at the start with a 3d clock tower in the background or this bit where you push through a spinning bookcase to find a hidden room and the bookcase is rendered as if it were 3d but these moments are used so infrequently they remain special this is why having a defined style matters more than just high definition graphics because style ages gracefully if you told me this game was made last week by a big budget team i believe you because it's beautiful and now onto the music and here's where i'm going to anger some of the hardcore symphony of the night fans sometimes the music is perfect it fits it works it resonates with the location and the general ambience sometimes you're in a grand castle and it sounds like a grand castle and the enemies screams echo and their deaths resonate throughout the grand castle and it flows and sometimes it does not i think the moment i sat back and started asking wait what was during the underground mine section when we go from gothic high art violins and pipes to funky jazz just listen tell me if you think this music as good as it is fits with the ambience they were going for uh [Music] [Music] no i'm not saying it's a bad bit of music none of the music in this game is bad it just doesn't fit the tone of the level and once you start to notice this you'll see it crops up a lot in the second half of the game about an hour or two and you'll meet maria she wants to destroy the castle too and later on you learn she's actually looking for rick to belmont after he disappeared after the original confrontation with dracula so there's a bit of subplot and just like dark souls you can completely ignore this and keep playing if you want to so castlevania symphony of the night it's a gorgeous looking stylized pixel art side scrolling action adventure game with light rpg elements focusing on skill over stats set in a massive open castle with a pseudo freedom of movement system meaning while you can technically go anywhere from the start you need to collect certain items or skill upgrades before you can actually access every place with an optional subplot you don't need to worry about and hidden items you may never find cool let's finish the entire game and ask is it any good so when you start the game you'll discover it's voiced but its voice to the classic standard that only playstation 1 games ever managed to reach die monster you don't belong in this world it was not by my hand that i'm once again given flesh i was called here by humans who wish to pay me tribute tribute you steal men's souls and make them your slaves perhaps the same could be said of all religions your words are as empty as your soul mankind ill needs a savior such as you what is a man a miserable little pile of secrets but enough talk how about you now here's a random secret i found by chance i was jumping around as richter and i knocked this brick off which opened a button so i hit the button and that made some steps happen and okay symphony of the night is just full of secrets there are so many hidden rooms and i'm gonna see how many i can find all right we kill dracula and we start as alucard fight my way through and discover the first harsh lesson this game is hard and the save points are brutally far apart saving is vital and each trip from a safe room to the next is a challenge the opening zone of the alchemy lab has you dealing with respawning enemies out of reach throwers and floor spikes all at the same time it wastes no time making sure you die and make no mistakes you will die a lot now the spectacle fights are the bosses and there's loads of them and they all use different attack styles and you'll soon learn that fighting a boss is more about pattern recognition than strength or power you can bait bosses into certain attacks you can dodge you can sometimes hit their projectiles and positioning yourself getting a few hits in and then moving away will keep you alive much longer than getting into a slogging match with any of them symphony of the night is a tactical action fighter not a stat based brawler killing any boss always rewards you with an increase to your maximum health but because the enemies get stronger the deep into the game you go you realize you're actually just leveling the playing field and it's your skill as a player that needs to improve not just your hit points i think i speak for all castlevania players when i say [ __ ] enemies throwing anything dodging projectiles while also trying to fight and dealing with your own combat animation locks is annoying this door is also meant to say magically sealed but the m got cut off so it's vagically sealed not gonna lie i chuckled and if you chuckled two you know have to like the video and subscribe to the channel now here's something i love this blue knight is just a blue version of a red knight from earlier so i'm expecting the same enemy with bigger numbers but no the higher versions of enemies actually have new attacks they have a melee attack now the game has mechanical progression not just numerical meaning when you see a pallet swapped enemy you have to think right what are you gonna do that i've not seen before i love this kind of progression over just pure numbers about two hours in i fight one of the hardest bosses in the game myself if you had this game as a kid how did this fight make you feel because it's one of the first bosses you bump into and as an adult i hate this enemy you fight you and you get shown how bad you are at the game when you get killed by you using all the skills you have but aren't using as well i died so so many times and how did i eventually win the same way that i'm gonna win almost all the boss fights mechanical exploitation when you jump and move backwards they jump and follow you and you can turn and hit them in the air and you can repeat this absolute cheese for about five minutes and finally win a bit later in you find the soul of wolf one of several soul objects you can use to turn into different forms to pass puzzles but honestly the soul of wolf is pretty much useless i've also been collecting a load of money while i've been playing and i don't know where to spend it but watching numbers go up makes my brain do the happy chemicals so i'm going to keep collecting every bit of gold i can find this bridge is my first real am i going the right way moment because this bridge falls down plunging you into a giant skull fight it's not even a boss it's just a regular higher level enemy so i backtrack and try to make the jump and i can't quite make it and i'm not sure if this means i'm not meant to be here yet or i'm not timing the jump well enough but after about 30 minutes of trying i think yeah i will come back here later open this door by just blowing it up with a cannon i can't see this being a very practical way to build a castle gotta say the color palette for this area is gorgeous in fact every part of the castle is so visually distinct we've gone from the dark grey stonework and the stormy sky of the outer wall to this deep orange and maroon interior every section is strikingly different and this is not only visually diverse it's also a navigation tool you remember the colour and style of the individual castle sections by now i'm realizing one major gameplay element this game is hard but fair and that's where the dark souls comparison is strongest in video games i see two types of player deaths deaths i call fair deaths and deaths i call some [ __ ] deaths fair deaths are caused by factors you are aware of or in control of and you die because you made a mistake you jump into a projectile already on screen you get greedy with attacks and you don't dodge in time you walk into an enemy group unprepared or you don't use your items in situations that really need them fair deaths are on you on the other hand some [ __ ] deaths are where you die to some [ __ ] like an enemy throwing a projectile from off screen or enemies not respecting their own attack cooldowns or random unavoidable insta kill traps or unblockable damage the vast majority of symphony of the night is indeed very hard but it's also very fair your success or failure is your responsibility and this will remain true right up until the final fight run into my first linear adventure related blocked path this great telling me mist could pass right gotta go and find some missed four magic somewhere these curse balls are irritating as hell to kill they fly around and getting hit curses you which removes the ability to use weapons or items apart from the uncurse thankfully the flames can be snuffed out to drop uncursed so at least the game does take pity on you these book enemies are awesome they are 2.5 d sliding out of the bookshelf background and attacking you that is such a cool effect finally i meet this guy the library keeper he is the game's shop and he lets me spend gold and buy items weapons and armor i pick up a castle map which is super helpful but by no means actually a complete map but look at this there's a tactics section with boss names so i buy one and ah it's a video tutorial of how to unlock the secrets of each boss and then how to defeat them so once you've already killed a boss you can come back and watch your guide on how you should have killed it useful i suppose for a second run but not too much help for a new player oh those book enemies they spit this horrific black tar style face out at you and the reason this is so horrifying is because the black goo is a much higher resolution than the rest of the game and it's just a static image so there's this jarring graphical dissonance where it seems more real than the pixel art around it it's shocking and i love it because this is the only time the game does this it's reserved in its use of shock value find my first magic spell dark metamorphosis i use it and i realize the controller input to actually activate it isn't worth the time in the middle of combat so i don't actually use it much in my playthrough check this out you've got to climb this long staircase and there are enemies specifically designed to fight on it with a diagonal stance and i love this now usually in side scrolling games enemies are designed to walk on flat surfaces and stairs are just purely practical connections between levels but no here they said how can we make the design element of a staircase into a gameplay mechanic you're fighting from belug the enemy has the height advantage they have used every part of the platformer element and added combat to it the background depth of the chapel is gorgeous they've used a combination of parallax scrolling at the opening to add forest depth and 3d rendered depth into the castle and both work really well helping the areas stand out as visually distinct i've got a couple of food items and to use them you equip them to one of your hands return to the game press the hand button and then run over to the food you've dropped this is really strengthening the comparison to dark souls because it's just like using souls or items or herbs by equipping them climb this tower the raging sky in the background the ambient music the whole section is just absolutely artistic and now i present to you the consequences of my own actions symphony of the night is a hard game and save points are few and far between so to make my play through a bit smoother because i'm a filthy casual i've used the emulator's save state feature basically letting me save the game anyway now if you played this on playstation 1 and you were forced to endure long walks back to the boss let me fill your cruel heart with shade and freuda i quick saved right at the start of a boss fight not realizing i have 10 hit points i now have to kill this boss taking absolutely no hits or i fail this was awful so sit back and enjoy my probably rightfully deserved torture for being a filthy casual and using save states [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] [Music] but i am nothing if not tenacious and after endless resets i did it hitless boss runs here we go oh check out this little easter egg in a conversation with maria you have a little thought bubble pop up as you think about richter and the image they use is richter's character model from the earlier castlevania games i really like that finally i find my first mechanical upgrade the leap stone this lets me double jump and opens up just a whole host of new paths around the castle including that stupid collapsing bridge from earlier crossing the bridge gets me into the clockwork tower which has a plethora of grinding gears in the background and this this is what pixel art games can be this is stunning the background has depth and intricacy while also using those mechanical elements to inspire gameplay changes like the cogs and gears moving as i stand on them while some bosses are unloving uncaring balls of difficulty some are complete jokes like this guy and it's quite cathartic how do you like that yeah it's not nice being stun locked in the corner is it yeah it's not fun when you can't attack back stupid boss oh cool i have found the stairs from the opening of the game which means the keep is up there but the stairs are broken and they're too high to jump right i had to find another way up and the moment i find it we've basically finished the game find a stone mask head item obviously i'm going to equip it because nothing has ever gone wrong putting on a random stone mask you find hidden away now i find the clock room and remember this room because it will be important later and you have to actually wait in this room for a minute before the upper path opens to you which is a nice use of the actual mechanic of time and here we find a rather strange plot twist the lord of the castle is not dracula but instead richter belmont he survived the fight overtook the castle and in this coliseum pit boss he throws his minions against us right i guess we're actually fighting to kill richter i did not see that coming killing the coliseum boss gets us the missed form spell finally those pesky greats will hold me back no longer and now pretty quickly this lets me find the next transformation spell soul of the bat this lets you turn into a bat and fly around and once you've got this the game is basically entirely open to you in fact once you've got this the game can be finished you can return to the broken steps fly up to the keep using the soul of bat grab the same secret item from the same secret room rick to belmont himself unlocked earlier and then go and fight richter now word of warning richter is tough as nails and he does actually have some aoe spells like holy rain that will constantly drain your health he is fast he hits like a truck and you cannot stun lock him and it takes me quite a few attempts to figure out the trick just use the bat form to fly up to the top wait for him to go to the side of the screen drop down hit once and then repeat it's not conventional but it works so richter dies and we get to enjoy some cheesy 90s cgi cutscene showing the castle being destroyed and there's even an actual song over the ending credits so um game over right wrong so very very wrong because what you saw there was the bad ending and if you want the good ending you're about a fifth of the way there symphony of the night actually hides about eighty percent of the entire game behind a stupidly hard to find secret quest line so let's go and do that getting the form of the bat opens up most of the castle and now begins our hunt for two hidden items a silver ring and a gold ring and along the way i find my first familiar a fairy who heals me and the gravity boost relic so i can jump even higher which is nice but kind of irrelevant seeing as i can fly ah find the stock weapon now if this game really is close to dark souls i may have just found one of the best weapons in the game but honestly no using the stock moves you forward as you attack and has a super long cooldown animation meaning you lose a lot of control in fights or you attack into damage high damage is not worth the loss of control now entering this room throws you into a nightmare about alucard's past which again ties in really well with the netflix anime adaption the writers really did do their homework you see alucard's mother a human called lisa being burned at the stake and in her dying breath she implores alucard to kill all humans except this isn't true alucard remembers his mother telling him to forgive humans she loved dracula and it was her love for dracula that caused the humans to hate her alucard remembers his mother telling him to love and forgive humans to protect them even if they are flawed and the nightmare is caused by a succubus that you realize when you break out of this spell the succubus is another boss fight followed by an even more questionable voice acting and killing the succubus gets you the gold ring one of the first items needed for the hidden ending eventually i make it all the way to the underground cave system remember this entire part of the game is hidden you won't see this unless you actually go and actively look for it and this tower climb section just highlights how tight the platforming controls are and oh check this out my familiar actually helps me this is really suspicious looking i love that familiars do more than heal or fight they help with exploration they really have combined combat rpg and discovery together very well pushing this box to plug a leak drowns these enemies and it makes me feel good but i can't help but think i've probably locked myself out of a secret item or something later by doing this here is a sequence of design elements i absolutely adore and game designers should study why this is so good at the start of the corridor there is a wooden bridge and you can see items below but not get to so you want to break the bridge but you can't then at the end you're thrown into a very small room with an identical bridge and a barrel throwing zombie attacks you and the barrel breaks the bridge showing you how to break the bridge then as you backtrack there is a new barrel throwing zombie in this room but very far away from the bridge so you've been shown an item you want to get to blocked by a bridge then shown the technique to reach the item and now the game gives you enough to figure it out for yourself lure the zombie to the original bridge that is a lovely sequence of game design events all building on the previous strong design a cerberus boss another nicely designed little encounter and then i find the combat knife possibly the most overpowered weapon it is a tiny one-handed blade with a very short reach but it has no cooldown to the next attack you can just spam attacks and do insane damage now the catacombs does see a difficulty jump in both combat because you've got less room to move around and navigation puzzles especially this bit the bat form now has a sonar ability and you need to use it to navigate this pitch black room with walls covered in spikes and you only have brief flashes of vision it's slow methodical and in true me style i got all the way to the end then made a mistake and died through the end of this route you do get the spike breaker armor which does exactly what it says on the tin wearing it allows you to break spikes you walk on opening up even more secret parts of the castle there are so many hidden optional areas in this game there's even optional areas within optional areas i don't need to go this way to unlock the hidden ending i'm just exploring for the sake of exploring now and thank god i did because i found one of the coolest bosses in all of gaming the grand floon stupid name horrific haunting design it is a mass of tortured and mangled bodies the boss is made of various sections and hitting a section causes corpses to rain down and become zombies attacking you on the floor and when you finally do slash your way through the outer shell the middle is a tentacled monstrosity that blasts laser beams out at you you even need to use the form of bat to fly up then drop down and attack while you're falling in the air this is a super fun super memorable boss encounter and it's completely optional bump into maria a more side plot is given and get given a silver ring which is the second item to unlock the hidden ending with both the silver and gold rings found return to the clock room told you this room will be important later wear both the rings and wait the floor will open up and drop you down into the evil heart of the castle use the form of bat to fly around the edge and enter the inner sanctum and you'll meet maria again she will explain that richter is being controlled by an evil force and gives you the holy glasses wearing these lets you see illusions so now head all the way back up leave the caverns return to the castle head back to the battlements fly back up and fight richter again but this time wear the holy glasses now in the fight you'll see a green orb flying around quite quickly ignore richter which is hard to do because he's even more aggressive now and attack only the green orb after doing enough damage you'll discover it's an entity called shaft who has mind controlled richter from somewhere else and is using him to resurrect dracula now you'll get to watch a different ending cutscene showing you the sky ripping apart and an exact copy of the castle you're in falling out of the sky upside down and then you will start the game again inside the inverted castle and if you've got this far congratulations you are halfway there now the actual challenge begins you need to fight through the entire game again upside down with even harder enemies and hunt down five hidden pieces of dracula to prevent the resurrection now the regular castle was hard but the inverted castle is insane everything wants to kill you everything throws projectiles they now bounce even more knights do hundreds of damage per hit some enemies are indestructible this is an entire secret game and it basically wants you dead now killing the opening bat gets us the ring of vlad we fight through the inverted clock tower which is packed with flying knights and possessed swords and medusa heads that turn you to stone on contact this place is a death trap and all the secret areas you found before in the original castle you can find them again and if you look carefully you can actually find all of the super powerful equipment that you started the game with before death took it away from you honestly in some parts it's best to just avoid enemies and use the form of bats to fly over everything and yeah it's cheesy but it's also kind of essential to not die now this enemy really reminds me of devil may cry you can't tell me this is coincidence these black cats run at you then turn into a puddle slide along the floor then pop up to attack you again from behind exactly like that stupid mini boss fight in the first devil may cry take down medusa one of the easier secret boss fights because a shield just blocks her gaze and makes her useless and then you meet and fight death now he was probably meant to be quite tough but i just spammed the sword special attack and he goes down in a few seconds i'm not gonna pretend there aren't balancing issues with certain tactics once you get all five bits of dracula from all hidden bosses in the inverted castle return to the inverted clock room the clock will ring and the ceiling will open this time so form of the bat fly up fly around and drop down into the inverted castle heart and prepare for the actual final fight you need to fight shaft and there is no way around this you're going to take damage he has these orbs zipping around electricity zapping between them shields missiles the guy is a whirlwind of damage and you're gonna be jumping and blocking and spamming splashed attacks for all you are worth but eventually he will go down but that is not the end now with no break or reprieve you will discover shaft has succeeded dracula is back and we have to fight dracula one final time and this fight is hard now the dracula fight is pattern recognition taken to the extreme his attacks can one or two hit kill you and remember if you were playing this on playstation back in the day there's no auto save or save state before this fight you'd have to load your save from a save room fight all the way to shaft beat shaft sit through dracula's intro speech which is unskippable and then fight him with whatever health you had left the reason these old boss fights are so tough isn't just mechanics it's the minutes of setup each attempt takes to get to now once you recognize the patterns jump over one swiping hand jump over the other avoid the thrusting skulls backform around the triangle beam attack platform away from the enemy crusher jump over the background to foreground energy ball it is possible to do this fight taking no damage and i mean you basically have to do it that way this fight is a brutal test of memorization avoidance and holding your nerve because it is a long fight but eventually you will win you take dracula down you get the final cut scene the castle is destroyed maria and richter are safe and free alucard explains his blood is still technically evil so he'll go back into magical sleep until he's needed again and after hours of work and an unforgiving second half of the game you get the good ending castlevania symphony of the night is fantastic it's a super tight well-made action adventure with enough rpg elements to give the player meaningful equipment choices but it always remains focused on skill over stats the fake out ending leaves you wanting more and the hidden ending delivers that more in abundance the inverted castle is a beautiful touch having the entire regular map which is already substantial flipped and be only half the game is crazy it looks gorgeous it plays super smooth and while the soundtrack doesn't always fit the environments it is still high quality it's a tough game but it's a fair game it's a game of skill and when you take a boss down hitless or you blitz through a section you can smile knowing it wasn't stats that carried you through that it was your skill so was it good yes good god yes it was and it still is an incredibly good game i didn't have any nostalgia going into this playthrough and i loved it i can see why this game deserves a spot on anyone's top 10 list of any games not just playstation 1 games so with hidden weapons hidden areas and an entire hidden plotline leading to hidden items unlocking a hidden new game with a hidden ending to end this review i will happily award castlevania symphony of the night a miserable little pile of secrets out of 10. thanks for watching if you played castlevania symphony of the night when you were younger let me know what you think of the game another massive thank you to all the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel alive you can support from only one pound a month check the video description for links to the patreon twitch twitter and discord and as always remember tell me what what were lisa's last words she said do not hate humans if you cannot live with them then at least do them no harm for theirs is already a hard lot she also said to tell you that she would love you for all of eternity lisa forgive me farewell my son

Channel: Josh Strife Plays

Views: 709,201

Keywords: playstation 1, classic rpg, classic gaming, retro games, retro gaming, 90's games, action rpg, castlevania, metroidvania

Id: hslPcKlo_-I

Length: 37min 5sec (2225 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021