11/01/05 - Castlevania (PS2/Xbox)

[schild]

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the chance to play this. Hell, I'm still catching up on last week because of the AGC. So yes, you could call me completely uninformed right now. I do have the soundtrack though...and it is good.

[Shockeye]

voodoolily has been working on her devil forgemaster skills.

[voodoolily]

By now I assume schild has gotten into it a bit. Did you go and get everything (including Pumpkin Head)? Since I had to return it, I didn't want to spend the time on getting 100% for everything. The only place I didn't get the secret room was in the Ruins, and I never got my devil all the way up to uber. I read a FAQ that says how to fully evolve the devil, but it looked WAAAAAY not worth the trouble.

[schild]

I've finished about 75% of it. But I got the guidebook (Doublejump books puts out amazing strategy guides, I have them for games I don't own). So I'll get 100% eventually.

[Signe]

Thanks for the write up!  It sounds like good fun and I'll pick it up over the holidays.  I find hack n slash games to be very theraputic during holidays.

[jpark]

Bah I am  PC man - but I appreciated the write-up.  Any plans for the PC?

[stray]

I doubt it. Very few platformers or beat 'em ups get ported to the PC. The ones that I do usually see get ported are movie license based rush jobs. Whoever publishes these knows they're making crap, and knows they won't be making any money unless the game is on as many platforms as possible.

That, and Castlevania is Japanese. Japan doesn't seem to care about PC's for the most part, and never has.

[voodoolily]

Thanks for the write up!  It sounds like good fun and I'll pick it up over the holidays.  I find hack n slash games to be very theraputic during holidays.

God, ain't that the truth, honey! Especially when baddies respawn so you can keep killin' 'em and killin' 'em. Mmmm.... killing. One complaint I have, that I forgot to mention in the review, is that although Castlevania is an RPG you don't really get to allot your level gains to specific areas (e.g., strength, constitution or defense). Some armor will increase your constitution, but doesn't really seem to matter because the function of increased constitution is unclear or extraneous.

Speaking of what Stray said, are there even many RPGs at all (that aren't MMORPGs) for the PC? I actually just don't know the answer to that question, not being facetious.

[Yegolev]

Speaking of what Stray said, are there even many RPGs at all (that aren't MMORPGs) for the PC? I actually just don't know the answer to that question, not being facetious.

There are a lot, and most are better than any console RPG.

[voodoolily]

Better than Paper Mario? (It was my brother's one-year anniversary last week and I wanted to get it for him.)

[stray]

I think PC RPG's are dead, and just don't know it.

True, they're nothing like console rpg's. PC rpg's tend to have a more western outlook on things. Console rpg's, almost exclusively Japanese. They're completely different types of games as far as I'm concerned. It's just that very few PC Rpg's try to break out of that "D&D/Fabio in bearskins wielding a golden axe" mold. A lot of it is just the same bullshit to me.

Some recent ones aren't:

Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines (it was buggy when it was released, but supposedly all is well now).

Dungeon Seige II (Diablo-ish....Not my thing, but it's OK, I guess. Fabio optional.)

Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich (Good game, but you'd have to like goofy super-heroish stuff a bit).

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic I & II (Great games. Liking these are more about how good Bioware is, than anything Star War-ish.).

Bard's Tale (Remake of an old game. It's fantasy, but it's funny...And again, no Fabio).


[edit] To be fair though, the real Fabio has only appeared once on a game box, and that was for the NES:

[Yegolev]

Better than Paper Mario? (It was my brother's one-year anniversary last week and I wanted to get it for him.)

Mmmm... derrr... different.  1k Door is great but there isn't really a lot of party customization, it's a console RPG at the core even though it is a very-well-done one.  You can barely see the Final Fantasy 1 in there.  I am thinking more along the lines of something not derived directly from FF, like Divine Divinity where if you take a break for too long you get totally lost if you didn't take God-damned notes (although Radiata takes steps in this direction by not implementing any method of tracking sidequests); Daggerfall for the crazy-ass character creation; Ultima VII's world full of crap to pick up; the SPECIAL system in the Fallouts; something like Darklands with its deep representation of a mystical Holy Roman Empire (it is probably closest to Romance of the Three Kingdoms); or something like Might & Magic _, but they don't make that shit anymore.  Maybe I'm on the crack, but playing a console RPG is like watching a new season of Dragonball Z: you're pretty sure you have seen this already.  The ones I find on the PC seem less predictable, although I do end up being chosen to save the world a lot.

Stray makes many valid points.  Wheat, chaff, whatnot.

An inescapable bonus for the PCRPG is ease of modification, either sanctioned (Morrowind), semi-sanctioned (Thief 1/2), or via good-old hex editing.

[schild]

[edit] To be fair though, the real Fabio has only appeared once on a game box, and that was for the NES:

The opening guitar riff from ironsword is one of my ringers. Also, I have it on multiple CDs.

[Yegolev]

The opening guitar riff from ironsword is one of my ringers. Also, I have it on multiple CDs.

I only have one ring: Super Mario Bros.

[voodoolily]

That used to be my ring, but it was always too quiet to hear unless my phone was sitting on the table next to me. i wouldn't even hear it in my pocket, even turned up to max.

[Yegolev]

That used to be my ring, but it was always too quiet to hear unless my phone was sitting on the table next to me. i wouldn't even hear it in my pocket, even turned up to max.

Vibrate plus ring.  I might note that I have a Blackberry, which is generally a piece of shit but does use MIDI for ringtones.  YMMV.

I have recently taken up a crusade to finally obtain and play Symphony of the Night.  I'd rather not pay more than $48 for a used/pirated copy.  Any ideas?

P.S. -- Don't say 'emulate'.

[voodoolily]

There's one on Amazon for $38.98, but that's pretty much the same. Sorries! New copies are $100? wtf?

btw, I did have the phone on vibrate, but it was still too quiet. I looked around for the Legend of Zelda theme, but they ranged from full-length-but-lame-fake-synth to perfectly-real-sounding-but-only-small-portion-of-song. Bah.

Edit: sometimes those big one-stop shopping type grocery stores have discount games for the pS1, and they're generally pretty clueless about the actual value of what they have. You might try that. (we have Fred Meyer's here that sells games in the home electronics dept., and they always have the old NES on the GBA games on sale for cheap)

[schild]

Gamestop/EB sells SotN for $29.99. Finding it ain't easy. I know there are 4-5 sitting in stores in the valley though. Just do a search at Gamestop.com for it and do a 30 mile radius on the store lookup. You'll find one. The website is accurate. If you call the store, they'll simply tell yuo they don't have it because they don't want to go looking for it (stores have no inventory in the computer for N64/PS1). Yea, that means you could just walk out with it and they wouldn't notice for probably 3-4 months.

[Yegolev]

Gamestop/EB sells SotN for $29.99. Finding it ain't easy. I know there are 4-5 sitting in stores in the valley though. Just do a search at Gamestop.com for it and do a 30 mile radius on the store lookup. You'll find one. The website is accurate. If you call the store, they'll simply tell yuo they don't have it because they don't want to go looking for it (stores have no inventory in the computer for N64/PS1). Yea, that means you could just walk out with it and they wouldn't notice for probably 3-4 months.

I knew there was a reason I spared you.  Many thanks.