Retroview - Super Castlevania 4 and Dracula X

Source: Youtube Channel DarkEvil87

I just ordered Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate for the Nintendo 3DS and I have my worries.  I love the Castlevania series and have come to embrace the Metroidvania style mechanics that the handheld series utilizes after the creation of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.  So a certain dread came over me when I heard that the newest handheld Castlevania is not being made by Konami, is not a Metroidvania free-roam gameplay, and will be touching upon the stories of Trevor and Simon Belmont.  The game is developed by the same studio that created Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (which I have but yet to play).  Since it's another studio making the game, how much of the original Castlevania do they know about?  It makes me scared of what they might have done with the stories behind the original characters within the series.  I'm not against the original style of Castlevania, but I do have some problems with it.

Super Castlevania 4 was a game I played quite a bit when I was younger and continued to play because I was never able to complete it.  Last summer, I decided to finally sit down and beat it as I'm much more experienced in playing games than I was when I was younger.  The major differences I noticed when I first played the game when I was younger was that I could control my jumps rather than committing to them.  The second major difference was the whip could be manipulated.  As a kid that played the original, these two changes were really awesome.  Supposedly, this made the game easier than the original, but I still couldn't finish the game.  Fast forward nearly 11 years later to last summer.  I'm playing the game again, but it felt different for me.  Everything was more familiar because I've played so many other games similar or more difficult than it.  I'm more patient, observant, and I utilize my items more effectively.  In Castlevania 1, items were essential in completing the game.  In Super Castlevania 4, it wasn't as essential; however, they were really nice luxury items that helped make boss battles easier.  Being more knowledgeable in game design now that I'm actually working on them rather than just playing games, I felt that Super Castlevania 4 had the right idea about the whip, but didn't quite design the game around it enough.  Other than a few parts of the game where the player can swing from platform to platform with the whip, there wasn't much else that worked with the whip other than killing enemies.  The game was straight-forward and pretty fun, but had potential for more.  From what I understand, Castlevania:LoS-MoF will utilize the whip quite a bit, so perhaps it will borrow ideas from Super Castlevania 4 and capitalize on creative utilization of the whip.

Castlevania Dracula X (video above) is the game I had problems with as well as many other fans did.  What was supposed to be a port of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood turned into a different game with the same assets and setting.  Rondo of Blood had a lot of challenging and creative level designs that made it difficult, but entertaining.  But for some reason, Dracula X has similar levels with diabolical changes where every part of the level had something to piss me off.  Be it falling debris and enemies, enemies that spawn out of nowhere during a mid jump, or having to get through a part in one go or forcing you to jump off and die just to restart the level, there was always something unexpected that happens that cannot be foreseen.  Castlevania's difficulty usually is designed around giving the player an obstacle and taking the time to conquer it.  In Dracula X, it was designed around creating unexpected traps and events and learning from it AFTER dying.  I have to admit that Rondo of Blood did have some of that in it such as the boss doing one last attack right before they die unexpectedly.  This would have been fine if it weren't the fact that where were lives and running out meant restarting a level.  The one design choice that was made that I fear might appear in Mirror of Fate is the multiple paths.  Without doing something very specific, the player misses out on certain levels and will get bad endings.  This is an old design practice many games had alongside extreme difficulties in order to extend playtime and replay value.  For the Metroidvania style, the player can replay the game as different characters, a harder difficulty with their items intact, or different modes like flipped mode.  With Dracula X, you just replay the game again and hope you find the specific places and events to trigger something different.  And the boss fight against Dracula at the end was possible one of the most annoying ones I have ever faced in a Castlevania game (And if you bring up Order of Ecclesia, that was just difficult, not annoying).  You essentially fight on pillars and must jump to him in order to strike him which made it really easy for him to tap you in mid-air and have you fall to your death.  Did I have fun?  Maybe a little.  It didn't leave a good impression on me though.

Mainly, the biggest problem I have when hearing that Mirror of Fate was going to be like the original Castlevania games is that it was going to be too short.  Both Super Castlevania 4 and Dracula X took me about 1-2 hours at most to complete each.  Many fans of the older Castlevania complained that the newer Metroidvania style Castelvania games were too easy.  That's probably true, yet I enjoyed them a lot; however, Order of Ecclesia proved that it could have free-roaming maps, RPG elements and still be incredibly challenging and satisfying.  I spent about 14 hours on my first playthrough of Order of Ecclesia and loved it.  I've waited for quite a while for a new Castlevania game for handheld to release once again, and now I'm worried about the outcome.  Honestly, I worried about Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia when I first heard about it but ended up enjoying both.  Maybe I'll end up really liking LoS - Mirror of Fate.

Retroview - Ys 3: Wanderers From Ys (and Ys 1-4)

Wikipedia Page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys_III:_Wanderers_from_Ys

Source: Youtube Channel KamilDowonna

I remember as a kid, I wanted Ys 3: Wanderers from Ys for the Super Nintendo and begged my father to get it but never got it.  I found it again much much later in my life but never got around to playing it.  Just this past Steam Summer Sale, I bought Ys Origin and Ys: The Oath in Felghana (this one being a remake of Ys 3) and decided it's time for me to play the original so I have something to compare to the remake.

Let me tell you, it rocked and sucked hard both at the same exact time.  I've always had an interest in Ys because of the colorful graphics, catchy tunes, and that flaming sword that you get at the very end of every Ys game.  The Ys series is usually played as a top-down Action-RPG; however, Ys 3 is the first and only game out of the series to be played as a 2D Action-RPG.  Doesn't this switch sound familiar?  Ys 3: Wanderers from Ys was released on 8 different systems, not counting The Oath in Felghana for Windows XP/Vista/7.  They were all essentially the same game aside for graphics and audio differences (except for the Playstation 2 version).  I'll start out by saying that it's possibly the best Ys between Ys 1-5 in terms of gameplay.  The Ys series has always had likable graphics, memorable tunes, and an on-going, cohesive story line that links all the games together; however, Ys 1, 2, and 4 used an odd combat mechanic where you run into the enemy.  When you run into the enemy, it's Adol's (the main character) right hand that has to touch the enemy to attack or the player will take damage (sometime, it's a lot).  So to have that much more control over your character in Ys 3 is a huge relief, BUT there were a lot of design flaws in the game.

First and foremost, the Ys series (at least from the first 4 games) is a freaking grind fest.  It's not surprising to have this implemented back in the day to virtually extend the gameplay time.  But for a 2D Action-RPG, can you imagine how boring it is standing in the entrance way of a dungeon and killing the same enemies for an hour?  Luckily, I found a great grind spot in one of the dungeons (Ilvern Ruins) where I could just stand there and hold down the attack button which helped me max out my character level and farm enough gold to get all the essential equipment at an early part of the game.  The combat mechanics, although significantly better than what was used in Ys 1/2/4, had some problems.  When you hit an enemy, there's very little feedback.  You don't hear a sound when you hit an enemy, but you do see them flash a little.  They don't flinch when you hurt them, so they can easily hurt you.  When you get hit, you hear a little "crackle" sound to indicate you got injured.  It's not very noticeable, and so getting getting hit by lethal enemies that can 1-2 shot you won't really register in the player's mind unless they're intently looking at their life bar.  The hit box is way off on a lot of the enemies.  To put it simply, your character is not touching the enemy at all, but you're taking damage from them.  A lot of the boss battles are require cheap and tedious tactics in order to defeat them (watch the video above).  The game was hard in an odd way: no recovery animation and stuff that hits really hard, even if you didn't touch the sprite for it.  It was also difficult to gauge the range of Adol's sword, and that's what usually gets the player so close to the enemy.  The enemy doesn't really need to hit you or anything, they just run right into you and *BAM*, you get hurt.  The last boss wasn't too bad, really.  Compared to that second boss (as shown in the video), all the other bosses were fairly easy.

Probably the aspect I enjoyed the most out of Ys 3 was the music.  I was really hoping to hear remixed/arranged versions of the original tracks in The Oath in Felghana and so looked it up.  They did, and it's glorious:

Source: Youtube Channels Cellidor and zBiyte

Ys 3: Wanderers from Ys wasn't great, but I'm glad I played through it.  Ys 4 was never officially released in the Western market, but I found an English patch and tried it and hated it (screw the bumper car mechanics!).  Ys V (which I never got to play) was the first in the series to retain the top-down view and allow the player to control the attack of the sword like in The Legend of Zelda games.  The remakes of Ys 1 and 2 also allows this (which got me to playing them).  The remake of Ys 3, The Oath of Felghana, goes back to the top-down view Action-RPG with 3D graphics.  Ys 6, 7, and Origins also uses this style of graphics for the game.  The upcoming remake of Ys IV: Mask of the Sun called Ys: Foliage Ocean in Celceta will release on the PS Vita and have the camera behind the characters in a 3D environment (I really hope the bring it over to the Western market).  Now all they have to do is remake Ys 5, localize it, and the whole series is set for the Western Market.

For the tl;dr version of this article:
-Ys 3 was a better game than Ys 1, 2 and 4 but still wasn't very solid
-The Oath in Felghana is the remake of Ys 3: Wanderers of Ys
-Ys 1, 2 and 4 used a bumper car combat mechanic, which sucked
-All the remakes have made the original games a lot better
-Ys: The Oath in Felghana and Ys: Origin is available on Steam

VGCulture - Filler - Patty's Sand Canyon

Source: Youtube Channel d4tboi614

I never get tired of Lucky Star...or Kirby remixes.

VGCulture - Did you play games in the 90's?

Official Site: http://www.kongregate.com/games/saybox/were-you-a-nineties-gamer
Source: Youtube Channel videogamemusicgalore

Anyone can instantly recognize the theme to Super Mario Bros., but there were quite a bit of games back in the 90's that only those that played games in the 90's would know the songs to.  A game uploaded onto Kongregate follows one of many "guess that videogame title" music guessing games and works mechanically well.  It doesn't force the player to speed through it and has helpful (not all the time) hints if the player gets stuck.  I'll admit that there are a number of obscure titles I've never even heard of before, and those that played mostly on Sega Genesis may get more answers than those that played a Super Nintendo.  I managed to get 76/93 points before I started doing research based on the hints.  After I completed the whole thing, I realized there's a guide online with all the answers (try to figure out how much you know before you look it up).  Good luck and have fun.

Source:
-Kotaku: How Well do You Know Your 90s Video Games?

Retroview - Demon's Crest

Source: Youtube Channel LordTyphoon

 I remember being scared of this game when I was a kid, and for good reasons.  Look at those deep, rich and eerie backdrops drawn by the artists.  There is so much detail and mystery within the environment.  And just listen to that music:

Source: Youtube Channel 61u

It’s a simple melody, but is also entrancing and haunting.  The subtle nature of the music is truly atmospheric, completing the aesthetics of the game's world and environment.  You know why the music is so good?  Because it's by Toshihiko Horiyama, the same composer who has created incredible tracks for games like Megaman X1, X3, X4, Megaman 7, Megaman & Bass, Onimusha 2, and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.

 Demon's Crest is a far cry from its predecessors.  No longer will Firebrand be walking through boring towns with empty houses or running into random battles in a large empty map that's linear anyways.  No longer will Firebrand be subjected to flying for only 2 seconds or running errands having to go back and forth.  He will; however, still be slower than his enemies and have an ambiguous hit-box around spikes.  As you can see from the video above, Demon's Crest start off with a boss battle right from the get go and goes about his usual platforming.  After completing the first level, the player is presented with a world map.  BUT, you fly around instead of walking around AND the map is non-linear.  This means that the player can complete the levels in any order they wish rather than being subjected to a single path.  The way the map is presented reminds of Actraiser where the player hovers above and chooses a level to go into with a similar side-scroll platforming gameplay.  The archaic vial and lives system has been taken out entirely and the player can continue as many times as they want.  This, by no means, makes it any easier.  The level designs are challenging, but fair (much more fair compared to the first two games).  The bosses have diabolical movement patterns that's a lot harder to predict and can inflict quite a bit of damage if the player doesn't have certain items yet.  After about 2-3 hours of playing, I finished the game.  I was surprised to have reached the ending when I only had 20% of my items.  I realized that I had the most basic ending and that there was still about 60-70% of the game that I haven't played yet.  Many levels can be revisited several times over as multiple paths branch out into different areas.  Demon's Crest has a lot more abilities than the first two and requires a lot of switching between forms and abilities to get through some areas.  This was extremely bothersome in the first two Gargoyle's Quest and even more so this one as the pause screen would be an entirely different screen rather than a small sub menu on the bottom.  There are 5 abilities and 5 forms to choose from, and having to constantly “pause” the game to switch between them really broke the flow of the game.  Using the R and L shoulder keys would have been a great solution to switch between the abilities via a wheel selector or at the very least kind of like what Secret of Mana did for a menu.  Still, the transition between Gargoyle's Quest 2 and Demon's Crest is so significant that it's like a game of its own.  There's a lot of thought put into concept, level design, the aesthetics, and even the story is vastly different from the first two.  Demon's Crest is undoubtedly the best in the Gargoyle's series and is sadly underrated and forgotten by many SNES players.  After playing these three games, I find Firebrand to be a very enjoyable character to play in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.  I would recommend playing Demon's Crest out of the three.