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Game Review: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
2016-May-16, Monday 18:35
What does one write about perfection?
Symphony of the Night is the game I've beaten the second-most times, just behind Chrono Trigger (which I'm sure I'll get around to writing about one of these days). I still remember the first time I beat it, in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uriany's basement as we boggled at the choice of I Am the Wind as an ending theme. The gameplay leading up to it, I remember mostly in snatches. Farming for a Crissaegrim in the inverted library. Discovering that some weapons had special abilities you could activate using fighting-game-style button inputs. The way I was better at casting Soul Steal when it counted. Trying to do the tricks we had heard were possible--skipping Death at the beginning and keeping your equipment or dashing right at the beginning to end up outside the castle. They're both possible, but we never managed to do either of them.
Symphony of the Night is my favorite platformer ever. It doesn't have the purity of Super Metroid, and definitely not that of Super Mario Brothers, but it has plenty of madcap possibilities and it's those that make me love it. It's relatively easy to shatter the game's balance completely and end up either invincible or the next best thing, but that's the price of freedom.
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Symphony of the Night is the game I've beaten the second-most times, just behind Chrono Trigger (which I'm sure I'll get around to writing about one of these days). I still remember the first time I beat it, in
uriany's basement as we boggled at the choice of I Am the Wind as an ending theme. The gameplay leading up to it, I remember mostly in snatches. Farming for a Crissaegrim in the inverted library. Discovering that some weapons had special abilities you could activate using fighting-game-style button inputs. The way I was better at casting Soul Steal when it counted. Trying to do the tricks we had heard were possible--skipping Death at the beginning and keeping your equipment or dashing right at the beginning to end up outside the castle. They're both possible, but we never managed to do either of them.Symphony of the Night is my favorite platformer ever. It doesn't have the purity of Super Metroid, and definitely not that of Super Mario Brothers, but it has plenty of madcap possibilities and it's those that make me love it. It's relatively easy to shatter the game's balance completely and end up either invincible or the next best thing, but that's the price of freedom.
man /man/ noun 1. A miserable little pile of secrets.
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