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Me.. play.. never before. Which, play...me ?

your thoughts on the series and what would be a good starting point plz!
I'm thinking starting at the very beginning

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

You need pretty high levels of oldschool tolerance to survive the first few Castlevania games. If someone wants to start early, I usually recommend they try Super Castlevania IV first. It's an "improved retelling" of the first game in the series, and the action is pretty solid. The second-best oldschool Cv is probably either Castlevania III on the NES (which is quite challenging, good luck with that) or Rondo of Blood, which had a very nice PSP remake a few years back.

If you want to try out one of the *modern* Castlevania games, that question begins and ends with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the PS1. It's also on XBLA and the PSN as a download. You might not know what the **** is going on at first, since it stars characters from Rondo of Blood and Castlevania III, but it's the real benchmark game in the series. If you don't want to try that one, then try out one of the Cv games on the DS or GBA - we've talked about those before.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
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Quote (laszlow @ 26th August 2011 10:25)

If you want to try out one of the *modern* Castlevania games, that question begins and ends with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the PS1. It's also on XBLA and the PSN as a download. You might not know what the **** is going on at first, since it stars characters from Rondo of Blood and Castlevania III, but it's the real benchmark game in the series. If you don't want to try that one, then try out one of the Cv games on the DS or GBA - we've talked about those before.

That and:Avoid the n64 disater of castlevania right laszlow?

Oh GOD! the camera angles in that game are the pits.

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Or at least, don't play Reinhardt.

I recommend CruelestChris's Let's Play videos fro Cv64 and Legacy of Darkness. He shows off pretty much all the games' key features (except for the fight against Death) without you having to go and play them yourself.

Seems like they were a good starting attempt at truly 3D Castlevania games, but why they didn't just go all the way and make them metroidvanias instead of level-based games does confuse me. Also, the areas are kinda dull at times.

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As for the series itself, here's a summary:
* Dracula is evil. Dracula has a castle. It pops up every so often to terrorize people.
* Simon Belmont is a pretty awesome vampire hunter, eh kills vampires and does not afraid of Dracula. He is also extremely manly, in spite of wearing a skirt. He defeats Dracula.
* Konami remixes Simon defeating Dracula into like seven different games. Konami also produces a sequel, where Dracula curses Simon and Simon goes and resurrects Dracula and defeats him again. While getting piss-poor clues from the locals.
* Konami realizes the demand for more Castlevania games and gradually produces more games that establish the following mythos:

** Every 100 years, Dracula rises again to cause shit. Sometimes more often when bad people summon him in crazy rituals.
** The Belmont family wields a holy whip to defeat Dracula.
** There are some other families involved in defeating Dracula, such as the Fernadez/Belnades, Lecarde, Baldwin, and Morris families. This provides a link to Bram Stoker's Dracula story.

* Castlevania games are produces for almost every system you can name.

In the course of all this, developers begin innovating level meta-design.
* First, they made branching levels giving an explicit choice to players.
* Then, they gave multiple exits to levels, giving an implicit choice to players, letting them navigate the levels themselves.
* Finally, and possibly influenced by the success of the Metroid games, they co-established the "metroidvania" genre, by giving players a continuous and interconnected world to explore and backtrack freely.

ALMOST all the earlier Castlevania games are straight platformers divided into linear or multi-linear levels. Starting with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, however, the most prominent of the more recent games are metroidvania-style platformers. This includes three games on GBA and three more games on DS.

(Actually, there are two metroidvania games that precede these more prominent ones. These are Vampire Killer for the MSX and Cv2 Simon's Quest for the NES.)

In the meantime, also, a guy named Koji Igarashi, a.k.a. "IGA", took control of creative direction of the series. He started attempting to clean up the now-messy timeline (which spans over a millenium) and actually try to justify things. His ideas, changes, decanonizations, etc. have been controversial, leading to frequent arguments among fans.

However, what ISN'T controversial is that the series as a whole has a very large pool of really great videogame music. Michiru Yamane is probably the most famous of the series's composers, having written the score of Symphony (most famously) and various other games, but she is by far not the only awesome composer. Others include Sotaro Tojima, Taro Kudo, Soshiro Hokkai, Yuzo Koshiro, and Yasuhiro Ichihashi.

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So yeah, come for the music and metroidvania gameplay. Try not to think too hard about the plot. It doesn't always make sense.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 26th August 2011 22:11)

eh kills vampires and does not afraid of Dracula

olololololo

I appreciate the summary Glenn, you'll be pleased to know I'm pretty good at suspending my belief when it comes to Konami games I'm sure.

doesn't the "metroidvania" style get tiresome at points? there are warp points right, in case you wanted to go back to remote areas?

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

Quote (Blinge Odonata @ 29th August 2011 02:22)

doesn't the "metroidvania" style get tiresome at points? there are warp points right, in case you wanted to go back to remote areas?

All of the games have warp points of some kind, IIRC. You'd lose your mind if that weren't the case.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
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That actually makes the Castlevania metroidvanias somewhat better than the Metroid Metroidvanias, where you actually have to go and backtrack all the way.

To be honest, after playing Cv metroidvanias, I got spoiled and demanded them from other metroidvanias...

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )