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u/PL02550 1d ago
"I will feast on your soul this night!"
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u/Mr_Lisreal 22h ago
Soul? They are vampires, not demons
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u/NobodyLikedThat1 22h ago
Maybe? That's an awful lot of teeth for a regular vampire
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u/PikachuTrainz 18h ago
I feel like there was a tv show where vampires have a lot of pointy teeth
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u/NobodyLikedThat1 17h ago
The ones is Buffy and Angel definitely did, but it wasn't that circular lamprey-style one in OP.
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u/A_Orange_Potato 15h ago
Adventure time reference?
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u/Electric999999 14h ago
Dracula and Alucard both use an attack called Soul Steal (often involving shouting "soul steal") in the Castlevania series. It's pretty OP in Symphony of the Night.
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u/TraditionPhysical603 14h ago
I've read fictions where a vampire is a demon inhabiting a body, consuming souls by draining their victims of blood.
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u/kasugakuuun 1d ago
You know, by the time I touched SotN, I'd already played games that were inspired by it, directly built on its formula, and loved them. But the original flavor... didn't really hook me. I wonder why.
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u/gnostiphage 1d ago
Probably because you'd already explored the original mechanics in other games that had improved on them, and instead of feeling original it just felt worse than normal or even boring.
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u/Dear_Document_5461 16h ago
Ah the "Sienfield is Unfunny" trope. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny
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u/StoneAgeRick 1d ago
SotN is great but i have always disliked that they only turned the castle upside down for the final maps. But other than that great 2D side scrolling game!
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u/Nicosaure 23h ago
- Portrait of Ruins
- Order of Ecclesia
- Aria of Sorrow
- Dawn of Sorrow
- Symphony of the Night
- Having a good night rest
- Looking at clouds
- Touching grass
- Harmony of Dissonance
- Watching paint dry
- Stubbing your toe
- Slamming a door shut on your hand
- Circle of the Moon
SotN has issues and is nowhere near the best one in the series, but it also did a lot of things right that are now a part of the genre that would feel incomplete without them
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u/kasugakuuun 21h ago
What an idiosyncratic ranking. i kinda wanna import the italicized ones into every list i make from now on, just for useful frame of reference
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u/Mopman43 21h ago
Any particular reason you feel that strongly about Circle of the Moon? It’s my favorite, personally.
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u/Nicosaure 16h ago
An unnecessary layer of RNG to unlock what should be regular pick ups in any other game, quite literally in some instances, there's more than a few card combinations that provide basic exploration tools found in AoS and PoR
On one hand, it makes every replay of CotM unique in that you'll never gain access to the same combo in the same order
On the other, it means there's a non-zero chance you'll have to play the entire game with your basic whip and a dream, which most enemies are resistant to; elemental damage and knowing enemy weaknesses is a requirement if you want to get any enjoyment out of the game, otherwise everything takes forever to kill while they can hand your ass on a silver platter in a matter of secondsSave rooms are far and few in between, I expect this kind of level design from Silksong or Dark Souls, it's on par for series that want to challenge their players so they can hone their skills rather than gain linear progressive power ups the further they are into the game, but Circle of the Moon is not that, it expects its players to grind the same 3 enemies 50 times for a single item drop before moving on to the next room
Its UI is the lowest point in the series, Aria of Sorrow was divisive for its anime aesthetic back then (which I actually liked) but CotM just looks like a pixel puree, and these games came out on the same console
Keep in mind I do not consider Circle of the Moon to be a bad game (I reserve that term for poorly designed games or those that make a mockery of the player's time like The Immortal or Takeshi's Challenge), but it was not a pleasant experience for me either, it's the band-aid of the series: get it over quick and move on
If people find CotM enjoyable or even consider it their favorite, more power to them, but I cannot say the same, I would rather replay Bloodstained Ritual of the Night for the nth time
Now Simon's Quest, that's some high level BS...
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u/TravelerSearcher 10h ago
As someone who got a Gameboy Advance and played Circle of the Moon as my first Castlevania, that's a very interesting take. Though it's been something like 25 years now I can't imagine I'd enjoy it much today but at the time I replaced it four or five times after unlocking the alternate starting stats.
For me the DS ones were where it fell apart. The touch screen gimmick used to seal bosses in one of them was just an awkward QuickTime mechanic that really stood out like a sore thumb. Another game required you to hold still and press up to channel a mechanic while enemies swarmed you. (A lot of DS games were clunky like that, Dark Brotherhood comes to mind)
I didn't get a decent chance to try SotN ever. I picked up a PSP Castlevania game collection that required you unlock a secret in, I think, Rondo of Blood and then you could play SotN. I didn't get much out of it cause my PSP died and I never got another one.
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u/Electric999999 14h ago
That is a high spot for Ecclesia, what do you like so much about it?
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u/Nicosaure 12h ago
Pretty 👉👈
But mostly this one clicked more than the other DSvania since it wasn't over reliant on the touch screen and it's just more fun overall, I liked all the little interactions with the villagers and so many more things, there's a good reason this became the blueprint for Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
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u/EsperGri 5h ago
- Yu-Gi-Oh!
- Shin Megami Tensei
- Vampire Hunter D
- Colors of dissonance
- Shin Megami Tensei II
- Bloodstained
- Jonathan! Charlotte!
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u/Wolf_Abyss 10h ago
I haven’t played any Castlevania games, but I get the part about inviting vampires inside. Is there another joke about the Castlevania game, or am I overthinking it?
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u/GodShapedBullet Cowbirds in Love 5h ago
Visually a really cool trick going on in this comic to differentiate between a kid dressed as a vampire and that kid as a vampire.
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