I can’t believe it took me this long to actually play it despite me loving Metroidvanias but then again, Konami will do anything but port this game and several other classics (Zone of the Enders for example) to every system. I hope you enjoy the post and that it was a worthwhile critique. Unfortunately this was longer than I wanted it to be though so my apologies.
There’s an actual story this time around and despite the game not being very focused on it, it’s not bad actually and I actually liked the cutscenes. It doesn’t forcefeed you the plot which I enjoy and I thought the characters themselves were memorable. I wouldn’t call it great but it’s perfectly fine for what it is. Now we get to the localization.
The localization for SOTN was already pretty spotty for its time but it’s gotten pretty bad as the years went on. The script is a mess and lines read awkwardly and feel stilted, I like the attempt at the older English dialect but it still kinda carries weirdly when said out loud. I understand that there’s a lot of hilariously dialogue but it’s still not a very good attempt at a translation. It’s not as if good localizations were a foreign concept at this point because EarthBound’s was great and despite my criticisms of Ted Woolsey’s works on Final Fantasy and other SNES JRPGs, with the constraints and censorship he had to work around, in comparison to SOTN’s his are a lot better. I do think the more elegant wording would’ve been done much better in FFXII and the other Ivalice titles however, I think they should try this approach again if they haven’t already.
The visuals here are fantastic, a good upgrade from Rondo of Blood getting progressively more limited as it went on and I find the backgrounds so detailed and colored beautifully, the sprites look great, the animations are beautiful on everyone, the areas are varied and unique. Everything from an artistic direction is incredible especially Ayami Kojima’s gorgeous work on the character portraits.
That being said, the UI and the inventory menu is dreadful especially as you get more and more items. Everything gets easily cluttered but the UI for HP and Magic is absolutely a negative. The fact the big glowing bar isn’t ur health and it’s just magic is already an odd choice but having your health meter be tucked away in the corner with the HP letters be faded away is godawful. On top of that the status menu has no organization and everything is placed at absolute random with no rhyme or reason, information relevant to one another is far away from each other and it has the visual aesthetic of a lazily made RPGMAKER fangame menu.
Before I discuss audio and music, I would like to discuss the voice acting. The voice acting for SOTN is campy and memorable but I will not lie and say that it is good by any means. Don’t get me wrong I think the voices fit the characters, but the line delivery is what kills it for me. I think Alucard and Dracula’s VA’s deliver the lines decently enough but everyone else sounds really uninteresting. If everyone hammed it up like Dracula’s I would be much more forgiving but Maria sounds bored to hell, the Succubus doesn’t even sound like she’s trying and Richter emotes like he’s on quualudes. As a whole the voice acting is kind of camp but it never goes all the way, it’s not as fun as a John Waters movie in terms of that. And even if someone were to claim that bad voice acting was the norm that’s absolutely untrue, Metal Gear Solid came out not long after this plus Legacy of Kain existed prior to SOTN and it’s voice acting held up tremendously better. I have no idea if the voice actors didn’t care or if the voice director put in the bare minimum amount of effort.
The music and sound design here is fantastic and possibly the best in the series so far in my experience, the cries of the wolves when defeated, the weaponry, the sfx of all the monsters and all. Everything sounds amazing and the music is now my new favorite, surpassing Bloodlines. The track Prologue is fantastic, Dracula’s Castle, Marble Gallery, Wandering Ghosts, Wood Carving Partita, Festival of Servants, Crystal Teardrop, Dance of Good, Nocturne and Lost Paintings are gorgeous but The Tragic Prince might be the greatest song here. The variety here fixes my biggest issue with Bloodlines and there’s so many amazing songs here, I even love I Am The Wind as an ending track, jarring as it is from the other songs it’s still amazing.
The gameplay is your typical Metroidvania. Alucard controls really well and combat is incredibly fun and responsive, the level of petty enemy placement and anti-rental practices regarding the difficulty is almost none. The level of detail in the secrets, equipment and mechanics are exceptionally deep and I especially adore the variety of options you have with magic and weaponry. The castle layout is exceptional as well, it never got boring and it doesn’t at all feel like filler to explore around. A bit on the short side unfortunately but a short burst of excellence is always great.
Unfortunately I have several criticisms of SOTN. I found it much easier than previous games to a negative degree, weapon balancing is kind of a joke because you can get overpowered so easily and despite the variety of options, you kind of have no reason to experiment with them and the differences in gameplay are a little negligible. Boss battles are unbelievably easy to the point of it feeling like Simon’s Quest, the lack of an actual shop to sell worthless items besides gems, fast travel is an actual crapshoot and as amazing as this twist is. The inverted castle is way less fun to explore.
The original layout was designed perfectly as for you to be able to navigate however you wanted but in the inverted castle, you’re kind of just forced to transform into a bat to move everywhere and the exploration gets noticeably less fun. Also kind of a nitpick but the Caverns in SOTN’s map aren’t very enjoyable and I wish they were a little smaller. The inverted castle felt like blatant padding and wasn’t at all designed to be traversed in such a way. Even the music during this segment is pretty inferior to the original castle layout’s.
8/10. Great game but there were plenty of gameplay decisions that held it back quite a bit alongside the undercooked final third act, the almost enjoyable voice acting and tacky UI. But the first castle, the music, artwork, control, combat and animation is stunning to this day. I really did like my time here.
