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Nice to see this being LP'd. It tends to get overlooked, so it's good to actually see being played well - and informative of course. Thinking about it, yeah it is amusing just how much of a fractured mess the series is; you have the "first game", which spans about five consoles, all with different mechanics - some being remakes or reinterpretations or both. And of course, they all have regional differences on top of that. The four versions of Rondo of Blood all on various systems. The aformentioned gameboy games (with a Wiiware reimagining of one), and PS2 games which are mechanically sequels to each other, but not necessarily narrative sequels, and do their own thing to the "mainline" series. The two N64 games, one of which is a remixed expansion sequel (which is narratively a prequel) of the other. It's such a clusterfuck. The most "complete" attempt at doing the whole Castlevania series on the forums I'm aware of covering at least a large chunk of the games prior to Symphony of the Night - was Zeratanis' megathread (YT link for those without archives) - should be noted  spoilers for Bloodlines, Rondo of Blood and later Symphony of the Night. And even then some games slipped by.Part of the reason why it's probably not been done since, is the sheer amount of time involved (some 30+ games) with high risk of burnout, especially once you hit the Metroidvanias and subject to the whims of RNG and Luck for various drops to show off everything. And then there's the 3D games, which are their own ballpark of jank.
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Jan 13, 2020 06:17
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That's an interesting take on the werewolf - anyone more familiar with the classic Castlevanias, does this kind of (ranged) battle show up elsewhere? SotN and the later games do feature werewolves but they're always the melee kung-fu kind.
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Jan 14, 2020 01:31
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Fiendly posted:Not at all, glad to see some first-hand experience with Dracula X Chronicles as I have none myself, I'm just gonna cover what I've already said about it again at the end of the LP. I've heard the remake of Rondo is not that great, it was just run at AGDQ and first impressions seemed to be generally negative, and looking at some videos of it myself, I really didn't like the look of it. Since it has the original game included, though, there's no harm if one prefers that over the remake. I've already been asked about doing more Castlevania LPs after the ones planned for this thread, Rondo+Symphony seems like the most obvious place to take things next if I do decide to go that way and Dracula X Chronicles is the perfect way to hit them both, just too bad about it being doomed to a failed console. quote:I was gonna plug these at some point, seems a good time, I watched Simon's LPs of the Game Boy Castlevanias while I was preparing this thread and I really enjoyed them. In stark contrast to my approach, he knows the classic series well enough to tell you what these games are doing right and wrong at any given time. They're a great source for more of the old-school whip-em-up action (albeit slower action than usual), and one of the three Game Boy games is actually good! anilEhilated posted:That's an interesting take on the werewolf - anyone more familiar with the classic Castlevanias, does this kind of (ranged) battle show up elsewhere? SotN and the later games do feature werewolves but they're always the melee kung-fu kind.
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Jan 14, 2020 10:44
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I have been stuck on the Death fight in Rondo(as Richter) for awhile. I should get back to it. Castlevania is easily one of my favorite franchises, I have played every single one except for the one you are doing in this LP and the multiplayer game Harmony of Despair. Personal favorites are Order of Ecclesia, Harmony of Dissonance, SoTN, Rondo, Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness. I also have a strange enjoyment for Circle of the Moon and the two most recent DMC style games. The N64 games are super rough, but I still kinda liked them. The GB ones kindly LP'd by Simon are bad, with some minor exceptions. Are we including Kid Dracula? Also, if anyone likes Castlevania watch the Netflix show. It is basically the plot of CV3 with elements of Curse of Darkness added in. It kinda looks anime-ish, but it really isn't. It does however absolutely nail what makes Castlevania so awesome. I loved every moment of it, CV Dracula is the best Dracula. They did cut out Grant De Nasty, but frankly the dynamic between the 3 main characters more then enough and he never really fit anyway in my mind. Also Warren Ellis has been trying to get this off the ground since the mid 90s, and the produced show seems to be exactly what he pitched way back in the day. It's clear he's a huge fan of the franchise, because there are so many little jokes and visual references that I think would fly right over the head of people who weren't in the know. Who is Slogra? Zushio fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 00:30
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Zushio posted:Who is Slogra? He is the demon who loves his life.
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Jan 15, 2020 00:38
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Zanzibar Ham posted:He is the demon who loves his life. Ever since I posted that I've been looking for what was probably a fan comic that I read in high school when we were all obsessed with SoTN. In one of the frames there is a wanted poster with a picture of Slogra and the quote I originally said. If anyone can find that would be appreciated. 
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Jan 15, 2020 00:46
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Pesky Splinter posted:The most "complete" attempt at doing the whole Castlevania series on the forums I'm aware of covering at least a large chunk of the games prior to Symphony of the Night - was Zeratanis' megathread (YT link for those without archives) Didn't know about this attempt. It shows its age on a technical level (a lot of the commentary is close to unintelligible) but it's still a much better way to see the numbered games in the CV series, all the archived LPs of those games are much older and have some gimmick or flaw that makes watching them extra tough. For example, from the CV3 LP in the archives:  No thanks! I definitely wouldn't wish a full series LP on anyone, I just figured most of it would've happened just from the community doing stuff for so long, but I guess with the first 5 or so years of LP being mostly unsalvageable and the CV series being such a mess, it's not as automatic as I thought. And now, time for one of my patented audibly sick updates:  The Floating CorridorThere's way more crammed into this video than any 8-and-a-half minutes should be able to handle, they tossed as many inexplicable ideas into this block as the entire rest of the game so far. Here are the music tracks I recommend listening to at the end of the video: Moon Fight (Original) Moon Fight (Arrange) And while I was looking through the soundtrack for the first time, I found out the Arrange composer did do a hosed up, terrible, amazing Bloody Tears like we all expected and it just didn't get put in the game, but it is here: Bloody Tears RMX
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Jan 15, 2020 05:00
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The impossibly slowly collapsing bridge is such a classic. Wonder how many instances of it are there? Surely this can't be the first, does CV3 have one?Zushio posted:I have been stuck on the Death fight in Rondo(as Richter) for awhile. I should get back to it. I'm a huge fan of Metroidvanias, so I prefer those actually. I never got SotN on release, so for me it's only okay, just too uneven and experimental; I prefer Aria of Sorrow onwards, they really nailed it there. Dawn is probably my fav and most played one, despite sigil-drawing sucking rear end. Circle is great as well, I should finish it at some point! quote:Are we including Kid Dracula? Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 14:10
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I know you say that the bridge collapses slowly, but that sequence is still terrifying to watch; I did a little jump when that medusa head hit you. There's this deeply ingrained feeling that landing on any even slightly tilted platform should result in a slide into a bottomless pit.
anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 16:12
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anilEhilated posted:I know you say that the bridge collapses slowly, but that sequence is still terrifying to watch; I did a little jump when that medusa head hit you. There's this deeply ingrained feeling that landing on any even slightly tilted platform should result in a slide into a bottomless pit. It is actually pretty stressful, I kinda laughed at how slow it was when I first saw it but the way parts of the bridge break the moment you land on them or even before you get to them psychologically tricks you into panicking and making mistakes. Simply Simon posted:I wasn't actually a big fan of the show (I did finish the season, though) - it was way too slow for me, so many long dialogue scenes where nothing really happened. I have a similar issue with Witcher though, so maybe I should just stick to high-octane braindead action movies haha I liked the Castlevanime well enough, it did try a little too hard to be grimdark but that meant the violence was very overdone and cool. I didn't find it particularly gripping and I didn't finish the second season, and I was kinda frustrated by the ineptitude of Dracula's vampire cabal, but I'm really glad it's so popular and well liked and I hope it makes people care more about the old games. Zushio posted:Are we including Kid Dracula? Konami included it in the recent Castlevania anniversary collection, its first official release outside of Japan. I guess it's technically one of those CV games that forgets to put Castlevania in the title or play anything like CV, which is a series tradition.
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Jan 15, 2020 17:53
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I just watched the Dracula X Chronicles run for this year's GDQ and saw another collapsing bridge. I was curious about the release dates and realized that this game LP'd here came out less than half a year before Rondo (which, as the original for DXC, also features a collapsing bridge I think). That's some rapid-fire publishing and also explains why I keep thinking I played this one - it's just very similar. In other notes, my thought process whenever someone mentions The Adventure is "man that really sucked" -> "heh, Chillstopher" -> "the stage 1 theme is fuggen sick tho", so I checked if by chance it was on Spotify. It's not, but a bunch of others are! This led me down a googling hellhole with some tracks, and like with the games themselves, the remixes and medleys and borrow-from-this are manifold and incestuous. Also, re: names quote:An Empty Tome, also known as Twilight Stigmata or Dusk's Holy Mark [...] Make your loving mind up!
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Jan 16, 2020 14:27
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I was gonna one day track down all the old Castlevania OSTs that I remember playing throughout my life. I just don't have the focus right now. However.. I did run into a guy on Youtube (well namely his channel) who did some pretty good arrangements and remixes of quite a bit of them. Check out Jorge D. Fuentes or namely go here. Tower of Dolls got re-used in Order of Ecclesia. This game may be the first to have a ball-room level, which seems to have been a tradition in most of the metroidvania-type Castlevanias since then and Super Castlevania 4.
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Jan 17, 2020 02:30
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Some of these songs sound like they came straight out of Ace Combat 2, which also had a large number of rocky/jazzy tunes for its genre.
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Jan 17, 2020 06:05
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Fuentes is a legend, his CV mixes have been around as long as the web has.
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Jan 17, 2020 06:15
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Simply Simon posted:Make your loving mind up! anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Jan 17, 2020 |
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Jan 17, 2020 12:05
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Simply Simon posted:Make your loving mind up! I think Dusk's Holy Mark is an attempt at literally translating Twilight Stigmata, with an Open Tome just being an English name because they didn't want to have a song named Stigmata, no matter how fitting it is for Shanoa.
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Jan 17, 2020 17:40
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Update:  The Torture Chamber/Laboratory
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Jan 30, 2020 18:52
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I believe Castlevania usually calls them just "The Creature". e: Actually, purely out of interest: Death having two forms is something that started with SotN? anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jan 30, 2020 |
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Jan 30, 2020 19:56
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anilEhilated posted:I believe Castlevania usually calls them just "The Creature". In Castlevania 3 he had a second phase where he was a huge skull.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:12
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The weird looking babies in jars are called homunculi.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:06
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anilEhilated posted:I believe Castlevania usually calls them just "The Creature". This is correct, any Frankenstein's Monster type enemies are always referred to as The Creature in Castlevania. This is probably because Victor Frankenstein refers to his monster as such at several places in the book (amongst other things).
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Jan 30, 2020 23:12
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Oh god now it's gonna get good. I hope you're showing off that one side room.
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Jan 31, 2020 01:37
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Update:  Count Dracula's TowerBonus material: Full soundtrack Illustration Gallery by Ayami Kojima Interview with producer Took long enough, but we're here, the big climax. Clearly, this is indicative of the fact that I can't handle the responsibility of maintaining an LP like this right now, these games are super hard and the next one will require I play through with both characters, often recording both their runs and editing them together, and I'm afraid that's just too much work for me to take on at this time. So with Chronicles complete, I've got to call a hiatus. I'm very excited for Bloodlines, it's an amazing game, but I want to do it justice, so I'll get to it when I can. In the meantime, enjoy the end of this great game, and maybe check out some of the resources I used if you're interested. Speedrun from AGDQ2019 - This was my introduction to the game, and just from seeing this, I had to buy it and show it off. It's not even that great a run, it was really just the game itself that sold me. My favorite part is when he gets hit on the map screen. Original Mode Loop 8 run - This is the game played through on the hardest difficulty, showing off most of the secrets and changes. I barely had a chance to touch on it in my commentary, but enemy movement is gradually increased with each loop, and I've read that enemies gain a chance for critical hits that quadruple the damage they deal, with that chance being 50% by the 6th loop. Of course, you take a quarter of your health bar per hit on Original, so that means every hit is a coin toss as to whether or not it's a one hit kill (if this feature actually exists, I have no confirmation just some random youtube comments about it). I believe these videos are tool assisted, but regardless, they're thorough and show off the game at its most brutal. Slowbeef plays Chronicles - I barely used this as a resource, but Slowbeef is always entertaining and knows way more about the series than I do, so it's fun to see his blind reactions to the game's tricks. He's playing an emulated X68000, which means he's on Original mode, but he has a weird hacked rom that makes him only take one damage per hit. Alright, thanks for watching Chronicles, hope to see you for Bloodlines when I get to it.
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Mar 4, 2020 03:10
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That's a surprisingly atmospheric level for a classic-style Castlevania - both the burning corridor and big bat bridge are really cool setpieces. Anyhow, thanks for a great LP of a game I've would have found out otherwise and here's looking forward to your next projects.
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Mar 4, 2020 14:32
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I suppose it applies to basically every level but that is some even tighter timing for jumping and whipping. That would have driven me absolutely mad as a kid since I probably would have tried to kill everything. I'm looking forward to Bloodlines whenever you get around to it, and thanks for showing me this.
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Mar 9, 2020 00:21
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Neat Fiendly, thanks for showing off this lesser known Castlevania. Informative, thorough, and entertaining as always. Looking forward to your take on Bloodlines whenever it happens. (Also checking out Simply Simon's chill GB playthroughs because of the thread). Sharing this remix album of the game, which can't stop listening to. Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 15:59
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Fiendly posted:Update and hiatus stuff Sorry if you're getting burned out! I'll definitely look forward to whenever you think you can get to Bloodlines!
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Mar 10, 2020 23:11
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We're archived! Thanks for watching Chronicles, hope I can get back to this thread before too long. I also endorse this, it's a real testament to how underrated this game is that these awesome metal covers of its excellent soundtrack all have less than a thousand views.
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Mar 15, 2020 15:14
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