Each time the DS games are discussed I feel a twinge of regret for selling my unplayed copy of Order for £crazy some years ago. Still got the first two in my library, waiting for attention. I played and enjoyed all three GBA titles but never got far with the DS ones. Burn-out, partially, with the games appearing so frequently and alongside plenty of Metroids. The touch screen boss seals in the first DS game put me off, too, and that was the start of my Castlevania break. Little did I know that we were about to swap from glut to drought of Metroids and Vanias.
Anywho.
One Dracula whipped in Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge. Much improved over the first game. Not sure I'll play it again but I'm at least theoretically open to the possibility.
One Dracula exploded into bats and melted by the sun in Super Castlevania IV. I had a hell of a time with that fight, pun intended. At first it seemed easy, and I was digging the unexpectedly tranquil music and chill purple visuals. Then came the flame faces. Oh gods, the flame faces, with the spawning right next to me or the moving so I couldn't seem to avoid taking a hit either from them or from the pile of flame left behind. And the little purple ball thingy which spat tiny purple ball thingies. And the teleporting right on top of me wherever I moved to. And the surprisingly large hitbox on the lightning columns. This fight felt like too much for my eyesight to cope with; too many factors to track overall and without much warning, the purples which blended in with the background, some tiny dot sprites, other parts I couldn't see reliably in time to react because they're outside the central area where my sight is reliably clearest. Took me around an hour of rewinding save states made after each clean Drac hit; I feel like it shouldn't count because I had to cheat so much, and at the same time it should because I persisted through something which honestly felt semi-impossible.
I'll revisit IV in the future. I can see a lot of merit in it and did enjoy some parts. Music's great. It's got some ideas which give it personality, like the 8-directional whip. Against that go two factors. 1) I find the whip sound effect underwhelming. 2) I have a hard time visually interpreting the graphics thanks to muted, samey colour choices at certain spots and some tiny sprites. I'm constantly dying in any of these classicvanias and this is the first one where I've felt it's because I'm physically incapable. Save states will be a fixture with this one and I kind of hate that. It's hard to know how I feel about the game when so much of my time was dominated by an increasingly bitter awareness of that my contact lenses only fix most of my sight most of the time. But I liked enough things to at least give it some more time, see if I can figure something out to improve my experience.
Planning either Bloodlines or Simon's Quest for my next Classicvania. Maybe Bloodlines. It has an easy mode and I could use a morale-booster after IV. Then I could do II, then the other route of Bloodlines, on to the face-beating that is III's legendary difficulty, Rondo, then back to the comfy grounds of the Igavanias. Time permitting.
Anywho.
One Dracula whipped in Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge. Much improved over the first game. Not sure I'll play it again but I'm at least theoretically open to the possibility.
One Dracula exploded into bats and melted by the sun in Super Castlevania IV. I had a hell of a time with that fight, pun intended. At first it seemed easy, and I was digging the unexpectedly tranquil music and chill purple visuals. Then came the flame faces. Oh gods, the flame faces, with the spawning right next to me or the moving so I couldn't seem to avoid taking a hit either from them or from the pile of flame left behind. And the little purple ball thingy which spat tiny purple ball thingies. And the teleporting right on top of me wherever I moved to. And the surprisingly large hitbox on the lightning columns. This fight felt like too much for my eyesight to cope with; too many factors to track overall and without much warning, the purples which blended in with the background, some tiny dot sprites, other parts I couldn't see reliably in time to react because they're outside the central area where my sight is reliably clearest. Took me around an hour of rewinding save states made after each clean Drac hit; I feel like it shouldn't count because I had to cheat so much, and at the same time it should because I persisted through something which honestly felt semi-impossible.
I'll revisit IV in the future. I can see a lot of merit in it and did enjoy some parts. Music's great. It's got some ideas which give it personality, like the 8-directional whip. Against that go two factors. 1) I find the whip sound effect underwhelming. 2) I have a hard time visually interpreting the graphics thanks to muted, samey colour choices at certain spots and some tiny sprites. I'm constantly dying in any of these classicvanias and this is the first one where I've felt it's because I'm physically incapable. Save states will be a fixture with this one and I kind of hate that. It's hard to know how I feel about the game when so much of my time was dominated by an increasingly bitter awareness of that my contact lenses only fix most of my sight most of the time. But I liked enough things to at least give it some more time, see if I can figure something out to improve my experience.
Planning either Bloodlines or Simon's Quest for my next Classicvania. Maybe Bloodlines. It has an easy mode and I could use a morale-booster after IV. Then I could do II, then the other route of Bloodlines, on to the face-beating that is III's legendary difficulty, Rondo, then back to the comfy grounds of the Igavanias. Time permitting.