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R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
I understand most not gelling with The Adventure (I love it) but what deterred about Belmont's Revenge? It's in that series-best era for me not by any accidental chance.

I will admit Belmont’s Revenge is a big step up from Adventure. The slow character movement in both games is what I could not handle.
 

conchobhar

What's Shenmue?
To each their own, but I don't see the movement speed as a problem in Belmont's Revenge (or Adventure, for that matter) when the entire game is designed and paced accordingly.

Agree that Belmont's Revenge is a top-level game.
 

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
Whew, I just beat Circle of the Moon, and boy are my thumbs tired. I don't think I'll be going through any of those alternative modes, or the battle arena. No magic? Ha ha! But seriously, no. How the hell do you think I beat Dracula in the first place?

Now I'm pondering a playthrough of Castlevania Bloodlines, since I have that other collection on Switch, and I never went through the whole thing.
 
I just beat Castlevania: Dracula X. I like the graphics and music a lot.

However, I think Super Castlevania IV controls better and is easier. I find that a little odd that Dracula X regresses (in my mind) in the play control department compared to SCIV. There is something about the jumping in Dracula X that feels off.

Also full disclosure, I don't love Rondo of Blood as much as most Castlevania fans. Rondo (playing as Richter) and Dracula X are pretty hard games and consequently I don't enjoy them as much as the easier Castlevania games. I find myself replaying certain sections past the point of an enjoying challenge.
 
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Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
I would consider Rondo to be one of the easier games in the series regardless of player character. It does a lot to tip the scales in the player's favour with increasingly nuanced play control, diverse movement abilities and the style of design employed--less reliant on wearing one down with extended and mean sections and focusing more on memorable and brief setpiece encounters.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
Argh, I've never played through Castlevania 3 before and I went through another to collect the other characters and after nearing the end... you don't get them, I guess, unless you are Trevor when you beat the bosses? That's what I assume because I dealt finishing blows with Alucard for both bosses I'm supposed to get those other characters with and nothing.
 

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
I got all the souls and finished Aria of Sorrow. The only game left on the Castlevania Advance Collection is Dracula X, which I might get to later.

My overall impressions from replaying the games after 15 years:

Circle of the Moon: Even better than I remember. DSS system issues aside, I think this is a great game. I appreciate the difficulty and lack of a shop. The plethora of healing items in the IGA led games take almost all the challenge out of them when you can pause and eat a seven course meal at a moments notice. Except for Order of Ecclesia, where you can’t eat food fast enough to survive some parts. The music is mostly old tunes, but they’re very catchy renditions of old tunes. The few original tracks like Awake are fantastic, as well.

Harmony of Dissonance: Worse than I remember. Trying to make a Symphony of the Night caliber adventure on the GBA was a mistake. Zipping between the two castles makes backtracking much more disorienting than intriguing for me. The sound quality took a big hit, yet the music is the one aspect of this game that aged better to me. Some of the compositions are very catchy, while others are admittedly pretty rough. I will always enjoy the shop theme until I am dead and buried. Maybe after.

Aria of Sorrow: As good as I remember. This game rocks.
 

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
Argh, I've never played through Castlevania 3 before and I went through another to collect the other characters and after nearing the end... you don't get them, I guess, unless you are Trevor when you beat the bosses? That's what I assume because I dealt finishing blows with Alucard for both bosses I'm supposed to get those other characters with and nothing.
Sorry if I've misread something here, but... I don't think it works that way?

Assuming you don't bypass their stages, you can join with Grant, Sypha, and Alucard, in that order. You can only have one at a time, and if you have Grant and choose Sypha or Alucard, or have Sypha and choose Alucard, then they leave you for good.

If you've got Alucard, then there's no way to get any of the others back, no matter who you beat or beat them with.

...unless there's some sort of hidden trick I've not known about for 30 years, anyway.
 

Beta Metroid

At peace
(he/him)
Sorry if I've misread something here, but... I don't think it works that way?

Assuming you don't bypass their stages, you can join with Grant, Sypha, and Alucard, in that order. You can only have one at a time, and if you have Grant and choose Sypha or Alucard, or have Sypha and choose Alucard, then they leave you for good.

If you've got Alucard, then there's no way to get any of the others back, no matter who you beat or beat them with.

...unless there's some sort of hidden trick I've not known about for 30 years, anyway.
Aren't Sypha and Alucard mutually exclusive? You can get Grant before either, but the branch you need to take to get Alucard involves leaving the forest stage before you get to the Cyclops boss that has imprisoned Sypha.

Johnny, are you on the second loop through the game? You can't recruit any characters on the second loop, unfortunately. If you had beaten the first loop with a partner, you do retain them, so you can take them to stages they can't access on the first loop. But you can't grab somebody new, for reasons that I'm sure made sense to the devs...
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
Johnny, are you on the second loop through the game? You can't recruit any characters on the second loop, unfortunately. If you had beaten the first loop with a partner, you do retain them, so you can take them to stages they can't access on the first loop. But you can't grab somebody new, for reasons that I'm sure made sense to the devs...
Yep. I was hoping collect all three. Soo... dang. OK, basically I'm going to get to Dracula's castle so I play all the levels I haven't yet (assuming there aren't secret levels. I went all low road for run one and all high road for run two so I don't know it that is making me miss any levels.), then start over to collect and play those characters just to see how they play, then move onto Castlevania IV.

Thanks for the insight.
 
Beat Harmony - man this game is a slog.
I feel Circle benefitted from being big screen, but same not true for Harmony. The graphics are generally gross, garish, ugly.
Juste is a cool sprite, but Maxim looks like he is from 1984.
Why is Juste glowing and alabaster? Isn't that reserved for Vampires?

The two castles, and the way segments of castle locked from one another until pretty late in that game means traversing back and forth is a total pain in the ass.

BLEGH!

On to Aria.
 
UPDATE

Since this I've beat Aria, which is just truly fabulous, and then SOTN. I didn't cheese it with Crissaegrim x2, but def abused Shield rod.

Idle thoughts on SOTN
Familiars level too slowly for length of the game
I never use magic.
Ghost, Demon and Bat Familiars all suck!

After, in want of a DS Collection, I played Bloodstained - I think this may be the best of the IGA games. Incredible.
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Bloodstained I think gets the closest to the standard established by Symphony. I'm looking forward to replaying it eventually when I double-dip with a non-Switch version.
 
Ruminating on blood stained - the best weapons are blocked until you can get to very last area and pick up some orraculum. But by that point, you will be able to melt Bael. I wish there was an earlier way to get these OP items before last area. Maybe there is?
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
If you want; you can pick and choose how random it gets.

I'd discourage you from going Full Chaos; makes things untenable
 

Torzelbaum

????? LV 13 HP 292/ 292
(he, him, his)
I do enjoy going FULL CHAOS but unless you're lucky it can degenerate into a grindy scavenger hunt.
Damn near anything you want; honestly Castle layout and monster stats are I think the only constants
And you can sort of change the castle to a tiny degree by shuffling the warp and save room locations
 
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Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I played through Castlevania: Dracula X (SNES) on that Advance Collection yesterday. There are things to like about it - the music is kind of weird but I like it, and the graphics are nice (if you forget the PC Engine CD version exists haha). I liked finding that key and saving Maria, though I have no idea where the other person you can rescue is (maybe she's on a different route through the game? Dunno).

The game is not good, though. Look at that Dracula fight - gaps everywhere, the first form is easy to dodge attacks, but the second form isn't so easy, and when getting hit can cause a death from falling into a pit, it's just not fair. I made heavy use of rewind just to get through it and to be honest, I have no regrets. It also seems like the levels were designed for a more agile protagonist than Richter here - while he can adjust the length of his jump, he's still a bit too stiff, and the gears in the clock tower moving faster than his walk is annoying because it forces you to jump and it felt like every damn level had Medusa heads flying around. The game feels cheap in a way classic Castlevanias usually don't.

Meanwhile, it's kind of weird how good Circle of the Moon gets when the game just tells you which enemies have DSS cards like the Advance Collection does. It's still annoying to not have an in-game shop, of course, and double tapping to run all the time is just dumb, but being able to reliably have some good attacks besides the base whip is nice. I'm having a good time with it yet again (although the Dracula fight in Circle of the Moon might be the worst in the series, even including Dracula X's dumb pits).
 

Super Megaman X

dead eyes
(He/Him)
(although the Dracula fight in Circle of the Moon might be the worst in the series, even including Dracula X's dumb pits).

I see this statement all the time everywhere around the net, and I just don't get it. I don't understand why CotM's Dracula is so hated. I'm not a great classicvania player, I struggle with those every time I play, and I really have no problem with CotM Drac. I'm not calling anyone out, I am legitimately asking where all this vitriol comes from. My best guess is the super powerful "death charge" he does, but those are easy to avoid: just wait until he's flashing, and then fly to the ceiling.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
My problem with Circle's Dracula is he's offscreen so often - it's hard to get any hits in. The fight is just this super long slog that consists almost entirely of dodging his attacks, which, yes, are relatively easy to dodge by leaping to the ceiling, but those bats (are they bats? I think they're bats) that get in the way of getting any hits in on Drac himself are worse. It's just an intolerable fight - and I really like Circle otherwise!
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
Most of Circle's boss roster consists of largely stationary or slowly lumbering and hovering opponents to suit the game's more awkward movement. In the rare cases where the pace picks up, such as Dracula's second form can represent, it feels less like a duel against a demanding foe than a struggle for Nathan to turn and react on a dime and with nuance he isn't really suited for. The oneshot charge isn't a problem since it's so binary, but the actual reactionary fight phase of getting to the eyeball is.
 
If the boss requires save states for a reasonable person to beat, I think its a poorly designed (or overly difficult) boss.

I would put CotM Dracula and Dracula X Dracula in that camp.

But I am thankful for the save states on the Castlevania collections. Without them, I don't think I would see the games all the way through.
 
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