Castlevania thread

[Anonymous No.8604881]

I recently got into the series despite having the games for about 20 years now

I am almost at the end of Rondo and have played bloodlines and dracula X

Are the nes castlevania's worth playing? Im getting that the first is the same as the 4th for snes.

I hear they remade it for ps1 as well. Which is the definitive version

Can't believe I waited until 2021-2022 to get into castlevania. Man is it a trip

[Anonymous No.8604894]

>>8604881
The Nes games are still worth playing.
The second one has it fans but it's a bit cryptic at times (no shame in using a guide for this one).
Also if you can try rebirth for the wii, it's a remake for the first gb castlevania.
For a different flavor also try sotn and if you like it there a lot of great games to follow up that style.

[Anonymous No.8605020]

>>8604881
For sure, but get the japanese version for the third NES one.

[Anonymous No.8605024]

>>8604881
The NES games (at least 1 and 3) are arguably the best in the series so yes

[Anonymous No.8605028]

>>8604881
There are loads of 'remakes' of CV1 but they're different games really. Super Castlevania 4 on the SNES shares virtually no content with CV1 on NES despite storywise being a remake of it.

The closest thing is the X68000 'remake' which is kind of an expanded CV1 with new graphics and music, new stages and the stages that are carried over from the NES are expanded on, so I suppose that is a remake. It is different enough to CV1 though that I wouldn't consider it the same game.

[Anonymous No.8605032]

>>8605028
I should add that the PS1 version of CV1 (Castlevania Chronicles) you refer to is the X68000 game. It has two modes, original (X68000 port) and arranged which uses new graphics and music exclusive to the PS1 version. I think it is also a bit easier but I don't know the details.

I'm not sure how it holds up as a port though.

[Anonymous No.8605036]

Nes games are too hard to be fun

[Anonymous No.8605204]

>>8605036
CV1 isn't that hard, you just have to figure which areas to be patient in and which areas to rush through, the bat bridge is an example of something everyone calls hard when you can just run past. Also holy water.

[Anonymous No.8605226]

>>8605036
CV1 isn't that hard
CV2 is easy, the only challenge comes from the cryptic retardation
Play the Japanese version of CV3, the American version "rebalanced" a lot, most notably making the extra characters suck.

[Anonymous No.8605334]

>>8604894
OP here
Yup I got rebirth for the wii, haven't had a chance of playing much of it yet
>>8605020
>>8605024
Got it so I should still try the nes games but I should stick to japanese of 3. Also get a guide for 2.
Ya'll wouldn't happen to know a good guide for 2 now wouldja?

Favorite weapon so far is the axe. Its almost always useful in every game from rondo to bloodlines to dracula x.
Least favorite weapon is the blue flame or blue jar. I think it does little damage and it kinda blows.

[Anonymous No.8605341]

>>8605204
death is complete bullshit unless you do the trick
you can't fight him legitimately

[Anonymous No.8605350]

>>8604881
>Are the nes castlevania's worth playing?
Yes.
CV1 is pretty good.
CV2 is kind of undercooked, but not too bad.
CV3 is sick as fuck.

>Im getting that the first is the same as the 4th for snes.
Super Castlevania is ostensibly a remake, but it's so different it's it gets called CV4, in spite of being a retelling of CV1. Also check out CV Bloodlines on the Seger

After 4th gen, Castlevania starts getting pretty different, particularly with the PSX, GBA, and DS games, where they turn into open-ended RPG-like games, some like them, some don't, but it's worth giving them a roll to see for yourself. On the N64 and PS2, they turn 3D, with varying success.

[Anonymous No.8605356]

>>8605341
Yeah death is hard if you don't trap him with holywater and have the whip upgrades.
He's beatable with no whip upgrades and sloppy holy waters though.
I dunno how possible it would be beyond that.

[Anonymous No.8605473]

>>8605036

[Anonymous No.8605515]

>>8605036

[Anonymous No.8605606]

>>8605341
>>8605356
Death is tough as hell, but the strat I believe the developers intended was for the player to grab the cross from the checkpoint before him and get it to triple shot before they reach Death.

[Anonymous No.8605639]

>>8605036
Nah I beat CV3 back in 2008 with no major problems.
CV1 I had beaten years prior too.

[Anonymous No.8605680]

>>8604881
1 is good, 2 is a bit of a mess, 3 is good but bastard hard compared to most other CVs.

>>8605334
Don't bother with a guide for 2, just get the retranslation patch.

>blue jar
That's holy water you fool!

[Anonymous No.8605704]

Here you go vr
I went and got all the nes and even gba castlevanias. I played a few mins and Circle of the moon seems to play really sluggish and unresponsive controls.

The other gba CV seem fine

So far my favorite one is Rondo

[Anonymous No.8605796]

>>8604881
Great you played the worst one. You can only go up from here.

[Anonymous No.8605852]

>>8604881
What’s the best port of Rondo? The PS4 has the SotN/RoB combo and the PSP/Vita has the original Rondo as an unlockable bonus in the remake. Are they the same?

[Anonymous No.8605860]

>>8605852
Just emulate it anon. Don't bother with ports

[Anonymous No.8605864]

>>8605680
>a bit
even if you play the translation fix+map+tinted false floors, it's still cancerous and obnoxious to play. There's too many sections that will rape you yet you will pass though them trying to figure out where to go and too much standing around farming.

[Anonymous No.8605878]

>>8605864
I won’t defend Simon’s Quest’s flaws, but the sequel ambition behind it is definitely a case of we didn’t know how good we had it at the time.

[Anonymous No.8605903]

>>8605878
I liked the idea, It would be nice if they had tried to go back and redo it, either NES or CV4 style. We could have had a classicvania with polished MV elements.
Does seem weird they left it to rot.

[Anonymous No.8605931]

>>8604881
>Are the nes castlevania's worth playing?
Absolutely, at least 1 and 3, they are awesome. And you should at least check Simon's Quest to see what it's like, it's confusing as fuck without a guide but it's still an interesting game. Make sure to play the Japanese version of 3, it's slightly easier but in a good way and has MUCH better music.

Super 4 is also technically a remake of 1 but it's different enough that you should still play both, I never played the PS1 version (Chronicles) but I think it's a similar situation. There's also an Arcade game you might want to check out (Haunted Castle), and then there's still all of the Igavanias (Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow, etc) which are different in style but still good, and the 3D games which are weird but I kinda like them (N64 and PS2 games, not the Lords of Shadows ones though, those were gay as fuck)

Overall Castlevania is a fucking massive series and most of the games are good or excellent, with a few exceptions here and there

[Anonymous No.8605993]

>>8605931
based cv enjoyer with good opinions

[Anonymous No.8606537]

>>8605931
>MUCH better music
Seems to be disputed.
>>8460191 >>8465975 >>8538345
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/730/

[Anonymous No.8606701]

>>8606537
Does this make all that wapanese language into anglish?

[Anonymous No.8607013]

>>8604881
I definitely recommend playing Symphony of the Night after Rondo. It's a direct sequel and really cool to play for the first time right after beating Rondo. People on this board often have a weird contrarian hate for it, but most people really like it so it's definitely worth a try. I haven't played any of the other following Metroidvanias since that type of game tends to burn me out a lot quicker than the pick-up-and-play style of the Classicvanias, but SOTN is a really good one.

[Anonymous No.8607031]

>>8607013
I will 100% check it out. I dont like metroid so i might not like sotn.

Also I just noticed they copy paste a lot of the enemies in the games. They even put the same songs in later games than rondo.

Its like they saved 70% of the work and budget on never recreating other enemies and bosses on so many games with rondo

Kinda cheap similar to how capcom reused sprites for every fighting game

[Anonymous No.8607037]

>>8607013
Sotn had such a strange turn of love hate love from people:
-Previews in magazines slamed it from being 2D
-Gets released without much fanfare in the west
-most of the people I know, loved it back then and word of mouth spreads.
-the next few years it's always in top lists
-then media picks it back up and hails it as the second coming of Christ
-new people come and try it out years later and are disappointed that it has flaws
-youtuber start posting videos of it and praise it.
-now it's cool and trendy to hate the game
>for me it's still the best castlevania experience that I personally had. But I do also love the games that came before

[Anonymous No.8607078]

>>8607037
SOTN is great. I played it for the first time around 2001. I hadn't played Super Metroid prior, so it was my first exposure to the formula. I now replay it, the GBA, and DS game yearly.

[Anonymous No.8607102]

>>8607037
>>8607078
burned a copy last year to give the game a shot, 20 minutes in i was already browsing jewbay and mercari for a US and JAP copy ready to take the hit to my wallet, that game is a gem. There's quite a lot to like about the style of the game, the amount of effort put into the sprites, every animation, that game is a fucking GEM and i would never let a single shit taste queer tell me otherwise. That soundtrack, man that fucking soundtrack.
It's about to be my first castlevania i finish, i'm debating wether to get filtered by jumping straight to the NES castlevanias or possibly gba, i heard those were as good if not better.

[Anonymous No.8607114]

>>8607102
I'll tell you what. I like you.
I'll give you my formula for playing CV games.
Since you started with SOTN I'll run it from that point and circle back around.
SOTN
CV3
COTM
Rondo
HOD
CV1
AOS
SCV4
DOS
Bloodlines
POR
CV2
OOE
CTAR

[Anonymous No.8607136]

>>8607114
Alright, nice.

[Anonymous No.8607143]

>>8607136
If you don't play in that order, I'll fucking kill you.
Making type out all that shit. Fucking hell...
FUCKFUCKFUCCKKKKKK!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.8607147]

>>8607143
Calm down weeb schizoid, i believe it.

[Anonymous No.8607157]

>>8605341
I've only ever beaten him using my whip n cross ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ still tough but if I can do it then I have faith you can as well :^)

[Anonymous No.8607168]

Hijacking this thread to ask a castlevania related question. Why do the Belmonts use a whip? What is the reasoning? Why not say a sword?

[Anonymous No.8607170]

>>8607168
more humilating to kill satan's minions with a whip, kind of like crackin' the whip on your slaveniggers.

[Anonymous No.8607171]

>>8607168
The first Belmont was a queer that used a whip. His gf became a vampire so he killed her with it and she bound her soul to it so it would be extra effective against evil creatures and vampires. So it's just the strongest weapon you can use against Dracula. That's why they use it.

[Anonymous No.8607195]

>>8607170
Based drac breakers

[Anonymous No.8607202]

>>8607195
>drac status: about to be broken

[Anonymous No.8607404]

>>8604881
1, 3, and - despite what dumbass contrarians on here will tell you - even 4 are absolute kino and you shouldnt miss out on them.

[Anonymous No.8607539]

CV3 is the best game in the series. Skipping the Famicom games is a foolish mistake.

[Anonymous No.8607576]

>>8605032
Chronicles has some weird bugs in it. Enemy behaviour is kind of fucked and the timer counts down faster than usual, meaning you have to take a death by time in one of the later stages because it goes so fast. The remix version seems to work fine though. If you’re itching to get your balls crushed in a vice that much, just emulate the Sharp version

[Anonymous No.8607583]

The NES games are fantastic. 1 is a classic for a reason, 2 is a cryptic mess but it’s still charming and fun if you can tolerate its bullshit. It’s important to recognise it as an early attempt at making an RPG styled action game. It might not have worked well but it’s an important game regardless. 3 is the best of the trilogy, some might say the best game of the series. Four playable characters, branching paths, great music. It’s pants shittingly hard though, so be wary. The Japanese version has beefier music and a more tolerable difficulty so play that if you want an easier time. They’re basically just plays, all of them

[Anonymous No.8607592]

>>8607404
do people really say to skip 4 now?
contrarianism has gone too far
cv4 is one of the best games ever made
that it came out in 1991 as one of the first sfc games blows my mind

[Anonymous No.8607627]

>>8607013
There's nothing weird about contrarianism. It's a universal impulse. You even get shit on here for not being contrarian enough.

[Anonymous No.8607636]

>>8607627
univeral impulses aren't something to share at all times
otherwise we'd all be calling each other ugly or fuckable constantly irl

[Anonymous No.8607637]

>>8604881

1 is Classic. As in - Pac Man/ Mario bros classic
2 is a zelda 2 inspired rpg that is a meme at this point
3 is good. not great but Id say its the best on NES
4 is Classic and one of the best games on SNES hands down.
Rondo/ X are pretty damn amazing but maybe worse than 4, its a personal pref. thing.
SOTN is pretty badass. if you even remotely enjoyed Metroid you have to play but it is NOT like other normal castle games. its new

Gameboy games : 1st one sucks balls but looked amazing for the OG gameboy the game came out 89 so take that for what it is.
2nd one is god tier for the gameboy. Better in every way from the first.
the GBA games are all AMAZING. but they adopt the style of SOTN giving you a large map or castle to explore. so if you want classic castlevania on GBA you got to get the re releases pf the NES games ( which play great on the gba)

>rondo and sotn look and play amazing on ps4 btw

[Anonymous No.8607645]

>>8607037
Not that weird. Similar stuff happens with a lot of games; Earthbound, Sonic Adventure, Sonic CD, Super Mario Sunshine, Zelda II, Wind Waker. Even Rondo of Blood to an extent.

[Anonymous No.8607658]

>>8607637
>if you want classic castlevania on GBA you got to get the re releases pf the NES games
Wasn't only the original rereleased?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Classic_NES_Series_games

[Anonymous No.8607667]

>>8607658
Damn yeah you are right.

[Anonymous No.8607785]

>>8607168
Mostly because of the poor controls in the older games. The idea was that with weapon upgrades, you could extend your range and hit more distant enemies withour having to worry about taking damage. (which in the early games, HP meant a whole lot)

In the classic series (1-3) Belmonts used whips, so later games adapted the whip into the lore and made it a key part of the belmonts arsonel.
SOTN came around and we no longer needed a Belmont to fight Drac.
So swords, spears, brass knuckles, knifes, (and even guns) came into the picture. The Belmont clan (which mostly used the classic whip formula) fell out of favor during the GBA era. Alucard, the Morris Clan, the Belnades clan, Soma, etc took their place.

TLDR:
>Iz a a spooky wapon

Classic ranking:
1- Still holds up! Its got that classic NES difficulty (being a bit unfair sometimes) but really has the charm of early Nintendo.

2- It's criminally underated. Despite being obtuse with its puzzle mechanics, it tried something different. Warning, you will rage quit without a guide.

3-Pure kino, its essentially CV1 with a glow up. Multiple characters make the difficulty a bit less frustrating. You can cheese difficult sections with Alucard, and make bosses wet their pants with sypha's homing attack. It's got its difficult moments, but its my personal favorite out of the classic series.

4-Some more whip slinging fun, its got great stage layout, bumpin tunes, and while not as mechanic diverse as CV3 was it still brings brand new ideas to the series (the moving rooms were my favorite).

SNES Rondo- The classic series decline starts here. It can get janky at times, and while the item swap mechanic was a long time coming, SNES pales in comparison to PC Rondo.

Overall, their all great games. I recocmend you should at least give them a shot.

[Anonymous No.8607806]

>>8607031
>Also I just noticed they copy paste a lot of the enemies in the games. They even put the same songs in later games than rondo.
There's LITERALLY nothing wrong with this.

[Anonymous No.8607823]

>>8607168
The real reason is that the director really liked Indiana Jones, and wanted to incorporate some of that adventure feel into the game, same reason why everything is some kind of classic horror reference. Guy really liked his kinos.

[Anonymous No.8607868]

>>8607785
I do not think CV1 is unfair at all.

I can easily name unfair parts for CV3 but almost without exception every time you take a hit in CV1 it is due to your error. If you are playing 'optimally' with knowledge of the game and what subweapons to use there should be no situation whatsoever where you take a 'cheap' hit and casually/blind you shouldn't either, with two exceptions below.

The only times I can see this happening is

1. Taking a hit from a medusa head when on the stairs in the clocktower in the final level
2. A death scythe spawning on top of you during the boss

Both of these result in only a single hit and require you to be fairly unlucky. Honestly I think CV1 is one of the fairest hard NES games I can think of.

[Anonymous No.8608163]

What are all the movesets of rondo or dracula x

I know richter can do backflips but what are the button controls?

Any other special moves like uppercut?

It sucks that the manuals dont come with the games you have to figure everything out on your own

[Anonymous No.8608221]

>>8608163
Richter can do a back flip (double tap jump, this is essential for avoiding damage vs some bosses), moonwalk by holding the attack button (actually more useful than it seems), and if he does an item crash (select button btw) with no sub weapons equiped he does a special attack setting his whip on fire. The air dash and uppercut were extra things added in SotN

Maria can double jump, slide (down + jump, turns into a roll if you do down + foward instead) and project her stand foward to ora ora enemies for high damage (up, down, down-foward, attack like in a fighting game, I can almost never get this one to work)

[Anonymous No.8608575]

>>8608221
Thank you this helps a lot.

[Anonymous No.8608819]

>>8607868
What about getting past the giant bats before the clock tower?