5/5 ★ – wondermagenta's review of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

I’ve had this experience a few times now where I’d play Symphony with someone who’d already had their hands on it at least once, and they’d repeatedly go “oh shit I didn’t know you could do that.” I think it’s easy to look at this game as this perfect package of unmatched visuals and music, tight controls and a big-ass non-linear world to explore, but that’s probably part of what makes the case for it seem so deceptively simple at first. The way spells are implemented is still wild to me and a perfect example for what I mean: Alucard technically has access to all of them from the start via a series of fighting game commands, but the game doesn’t actually divulge the necessary inputs unless you purchase the respective scrolls from the shop or stumble upon them by accident. I don’t know how exactly to relate this sense of spitting-your-drink-out surprise that I got whenever I’d trigger some new crazy move, but it’s exemplary of that natural curiosity Symphony inspires that draws me to it so much. Do we even need to talk about the inverted castle? It’s hard to say whether it was some kind of last minute addition (Bat Form means the level design doesn’t actually have to “work” upside-down and a lot of the mob enemies here can fly around too,) but the fact the devs seized that possibility at all is so impressive to me. The pacing in this second half is completely different from the first, letting you experience familiar locations in way that’s nothing short of alien. It’s honestly odd how Metroidvanias made in the wake of Symphony haven’t replicated this idea of giving you a dedicated endgame to actually flex with all your new abilities in (instead of just the token collectible item hunt with no new enemies or obstacles to make that process more interesting.) That’s on top of all the insane technical bullshit Symphony lets you overpower its challenges with, from Bat-Dashing over slopes to all the wild effects you get with the Shield Rod, another itch most modern genre takes don’t scratch. If you wrote this game off because you felt it didn’t have enough substance, I encourage you to give it another look and dig into its bottomless treasure chest of secrets and painstaking details.