“What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”
“Die, monster. You don’t belong in this world!”
Early on during a playthrough of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the gamer is presented with that exact exchange in absurdly over-the-top voiceovers.
The moment is memorable for its ridiculousness, and has by now, of course, been turned into various Internet memes.
The dialogue, however, serves as a helpful guide for what is to come.
“What is a man?” is hinting at the ambiguous nature of our protagonist, the anti-hero son of Dracula himself.
“A miserable little pile of secrets.” explains the nature or perhaps selling point of the game itself.
“Die, monster.” is the definition of Castlevania games in their purest form.
And “You don’t belong in this world!” provides foreshadowing for the game’s biggest twist.
Like the best James Bond stunts or the coolest action sequences in a Star Wars movie, the excitement here is explained before it is shown.
Was that intentional?
Who knows?
But the end result is the same: the game builds anticipation and sets expectations at the outset, and then delivers upon those promises in spectacular fashion.
(We also got a really goofy bit of dialogue out of the deal.)
This game, Symphony of the Night, is going to give you a traditional 2D Castlevania experience with a new, exciting lead character, a ton of hidden secrets amidst a sprawling space to explore, and a massive plot twist halfway through.
Once properly warned in the game’s prologue, the gamer is free to let the whole experience just wash over them.
And what an experience it is.
“Castlevania: Symphony of the Night” at a glance:
Genre: Exploring platformer
Released: 1997
Platform: PlayStation
EGM’s “12th Best Console Game of All Time”
Symphony of the Night was developed for the PlayStation (and eventually the Saturn) as a direct sequel to the PC Engine game “Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo,” better known as “Dracula X,” or more recently called “Rondo of Blood” here in the States.
This was an interesting direction to take on several levels.
Firstly, Castlevania had, by now, veered wildly into the world of prequels, loosely related sequels, and remakes, so choosing to do a direct sequel, which picks up directly after the events of the previous game, was a departure from standard operating procedure all on its own.
Second up, this was a sequel to a game that had never received a proper release in the West! Dracula X was never brought to North America on its original platform (called the Turbografx-16 over here), and while it was eventually reinvisioned and ported to the Super Nintendo, that game was a fundamentally different (and stripped down) experience.
So, all of the implied benefits of going with a sequel – ease of following the story, investment in a world and characters, and even just building up an audience in terms of numbers – just weren’t there.
Finally, as a proper sequel to Rondo of Blood, the game employed a traditional 2D perspective in its platforming … during an age when virtually every other major video game series was making the leap to 3D.
Heck, Castlevania itself would make the leap to 3D with Castlevania 64 just two years later, so yeah, it was a pretty odd choice to delay that move in favor of a 2D sprite-based experience here.
An odd choice, but a good one.
Because while 3D platforming was never going to leave the scene after such massive hits as Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, and Tomb Raider had shown that it could be done, and that it could be done well, the whole thing, circa 1997 or so, was still a little … goofy.
Historians will point to the above examples as being great games worth experiencing. Modern gamers, however, may look at the rudimentary visuals, flat textures, janky cameras, and general globby feel and say, nah bro, those games didn’t age well.
There’s some truth in both viewpoints. But there’s no denying that the technology was still in its infancy at that point. And because of this, going with a 2D perspective allowed the fine folks at Konami to produce a game that had more shine to it.
A game that had a chance to withstand the judgment of time through style and refinement.
Problematically, audiences didn’t universally see it that way at the time.
Symphony of the Night sold poorly initially, having to scratch out respectable sales numbers over time through strong word of mouth. But famously, even some critics were left scratching their heads over the game at release, complaining about the game’s adherence to a look and game play approach that felt outdated.
25 years of experience later, we all know that mindset was foolish and shortsighted. 2D gaming is never going to go away.
(It is especially never going to go away when you give gamers the opportunity to murder Dracula over and over again … please take note of this, Konami)
But it was definitely a thing at the time. Everything had to be 3D. (Even Doritos.)
Fortunately, as we’ve established, the developers of Symphony of the Night didn’t succumb to the pressure to “go 3D.” Instead, they innovated in different ways.
Whereas most Castlevania games, and indeed most platformers at large, had adopted a linear approach to their games, Symphony of the Night took its cues from oddball series entry Castlevania II, and reintroduced exploration and RPG elements, such as experience points and leveling up, but also item accumulation that will affect the protagonist’s abilities.
The most clever part of doing this, of gradually unlocking greater abilities for the gamer, is that through intelligent design, you can also gradually unlock different parts of your game in the process.
So for example, if your character gains the ability to jump higher, he can now access areas that are higher up that were unreachable before.
Said character, Alucard (Dracula spelled backwards … get it????? Hahahahaha!) stood out partly for those abilities, which included the ability to turn into a bat and fly around for a bit, as an example. But he also stood out for being a reluctant participant in the affair and a blood relative of the big bad himself.
The stakes here (ha!) were a touch higher as a result.
Of course, part of the brilliance of the game is that high tension or not, the gamer has the freedom to explore to one’s content without fear of reprisal. Indeed, discovering new areas one couldn’t access before almost invariably led to finding more power-ups and weaponry. And in the case of one major reveal in particular, it paid off in spades to be curious.*
* I’m not going to spoil what said reveal was, but I will advise you to check with a walkthrough or guide once you’ve completed the game to make sure you’ve *really* completed the game.
The gamer was incentivized in multiple ways to explore. Yes, in part to find the way forward, but also in part just because you might find something cool around the next corner.
This wasn’t a new concept in 1997, but it was one that had rarely been applied well. NES games like Rygar and Blaster Master utilized the idea of unlockable areas and backtracking to great effect, but there was no map, way of tracking one’s progress, or even a way of saving one’s game.
That put a cap on how deep the adventure could run, but it also had the side effect of making the games more nonsensical in terms of their puzzle solving.
“Where do I go next?”
“Oh, through this wall you encountered earlier in the game that was originally impassable and you don’t even recall being there because it was nondescript and that was two hours ago.”
The action-adventure series Metroid had much the same trouble early on, but through expertly refined level design and the simple addition of a map introduced in Super Metroid (another game on this list), the game developers were able to expand on the original concept in a satisfying way.
Due to Symphony of the Night’s similarities to Super Metroid as heightened examples of level design set against an exploration-based 2D non-linear action game, the term “Metroid-vania” was eventually (and appropriately) coined to describe such games.
Metroid did it first, but Castlevania took the term and concept and RAN with it, releasing another half dozen games under that umbrella over the following decade.
Many other games have taken direct inspiration from Symphony of the Night since, among them the Ori games, Guacamelee!, and Hollow Knight, to name a few.
But why does this game inspire so much?
Because it’s good, and because it’s fun.
You really need to play this game to understand why.
So what makes it worth playing today?
A “perfect” score in these rankings is perhaps a misnomer, since I can find fault or issue with every game on the list. Symphony of the Night is no different, as the amount of backtracking it requires of you sometimes works to the game’s detriment.
As Randall Graves intoned about “The Lord of the Rings,” “All those movies were was walking.”
Lots and lots of walking.
Of course, one could also take issue with the sheer volume of weaponry to acquire, since by and large, most of it is useless, or at minimum, unneeded.
Give me something that boosts my stats and let’s get on with it, yes?
But these faults are baked into the experience, and the whole of that experience is one of the most valued in all of gaming.
So, scoring the game a 10/10 isn’t so much about saying the game has no faults, but rather that the game’s faults aren’t irksome enough to ruin the entire cake, so to speak.
If I’m talking in riddles and metaphors, perhaps it’s because I’ve succumbed to Dracula’s spell.
“Something, something … miserable pile of secrets.”
Anyway, the point, I think, is that Castlevania, as a series, is one of the most important in all of gaming.
And while I hold Rondo of Blood in higher esteem than I do Symphony of the Night, taken as a pair, they are an absolutely essential chapter in platforming history.
Enjoy the raw, unflinching challenge of the former, before immersing yourself in the more casual, engrossing depth of the latter. In the end, having experienced both, you’ll gain a better appreciation for the evolution of gaming over time, but also for this stellar series’ place in that history.
Now, go get to vampire hunting.
Dave’s Score: 10/10
Check out the whole Retro Gaming Essentials list here!
How to play
- Original hardware on PlayStation and Saturn (Saturn version is slightly different)
- Xbox Live (Xbox 360)
- Konami Classics Vol. 1 (Xbox 360)
- PSone Classics on PlayStation Network (PS3, PSP, PS Vita)
- Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (PSP, iOS, Android)
- Castlevania Requiem (PS4)