At least the PS3 has compatibility with PS1 games, I don’t even know where my PS1 is anymore.
I recently replaced my Nintendo DS cause the shoulder buttons broke because I was playing it too much. The first games I replayed were the 3 Castlevania games on the DS. Looking for a bit of a nostalgic trip, I fired up SOTN again.
So far I’m only about an hour in, but its remarkable how fluidly Alucard moves and how much SOTN set up the other games in the series. I remember 2D was starting to die a slow death back when the PS1 came out. Suddenly everyone wanted polygons and 3D in all their games. SOTN was a great shot in the arm for us oldschool gamers who still enjoyed a hefty dose of 2D and didn’t think everything needed to look like it was made out of plate glass to look good.
Anyway, the game still stands as one of the best 2D platformers from that era. The combat and inventory systems were ripped from RPGs in a time when platformers and action games didn’t regularly mix RPG elements into it. The game is innovative in the use of multiple weapons and random drops, sometimes requiring you to farm constantly for better upgrades if you want to really max out your character’s power. However, for those who didn’t like it the grind, you didn’t need to do that at all. You could get through the game without really farming, as some weapon upgrades are received on a fairly consistent basis.
During my playthrough of the 3 Castlevania games on the DS, I was a little worried that SOTN wouldn’t live up to its predecessors which all refined in some small way the original archetype set by this game. I really liked Dawn of Sorrow’s soul system, the dual characters in Portrait of Ruin was a nice touch, and the glyph combat in Order of Ecclesia was innovative though a bit bulky for my tastes. And each one of those games had a little bit better handling of the main character than Alucard, the controls felt more responsive.
However, the selling point for SOTN that still hasn’t been close to equaled by its sequels is the music. From the very beginning strings and orchestra to the pop song ending, to the Alchemy Labs or the Grand Library, SOTN’s music was like none other. I can’t remember a single track from the 3 DS games despite just having played them, but I could hum half a dozen tracks from SOTN off the top of my head that I remembered from a decade ago. And Alucard, of course, is a lot more memorable than the more cookie-cutter protagonists from the other 3 games. There’s only one major problem with SOTN, but the less said about the voice acting, the better. Remember, this was the era that gave us gems like “You were almost a Jill sandwich!” or the “master of unlocking” crack that I still can’t believe to this day was approved in the script.
Since I’m only an hour into it, it’ll still take me a while to finish it, but I’m going for the broken Crissagrim/Alucard’s Shield combo. I really think they need to re-release this game on the DS though. There’s really no good reason not to except maybe Sony still has partial rights to it. But I would love a portable version of this game so I could play it in the bathroom or while I’m driving
