- Over 140 different enemies, bosses and ghastly creatures..
- Awesome magical spells - transform into a bat, a wolf, or ethereal mist..
- Hidden weapons, secrets and characters... the largest Castlevania ever!.
From the Manufacturer
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The vampire is back with more depth and better graphics in this
sequel from the long time favorite series. You take the role of
Alucard son of Dracula in an attempt to find out what has
happened to Richter Belmont a descendant of the game's first
hero.
Review
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Since its US debut in 1987 on the NES, Konami's Castlevania
series has gone on to become one of the most popular franchises
in video-game history, with releases on nearly every major
platform (including the Super NES, Genesis, and GameBoy). The
latest installment - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the
PlayStation - is quite possibly the best 2D action side scroller
ever.
Symphony takes place four years after Dracula X, a PC Engine
title in Japan that never saw a US release. Unlike most previous
Castlevania games, Symphony features a main character who isn't
one of the whip-cracking Belmonts. Stranger still, it turns out
that our hero, Adrian Fahrenheit (aka Alucard), is actually a son
of Dracula. Your task is to explore Dracula's castle (rumored to
only appear once a century) and find out why Richter Belmont, the
hero of the first game (and descendant of the original
Castlevania hero, Simon), has mysteriously vanished. Oh, and
you've also got to kill quite a few monsters along the way....
Since the main character doesn't carry a whip, gameplay has
obviously changed quite a bit from past Castlevanias. Now you can
use several different weapons and items, each of which is kept in
an RPG-like inventory subscreen. But Symphony mimics an RPG in
more ways than one. Experience is gained from killing enemies;
attributes are raised whenever Alucard levels-up, which is good
incentive not to pass up enemies when trying to get from one area
to the next; special skills are learned by performing different
control-pad movements that subsequently save to a move list in
the subscreen; and you can find and use numerous magic items
during your quest. Even with the new trappings, though, the
basics of the game are true to previous installments - break
candles, collect hearts and money (which you can now actually
spend in a shop), and fight ghoulish enemies.
Perhaps the most important new feature added to Castlevania is
its system. Extremely similar to the one in Super Metroid,
the (which can be viewed at any time by pressing the Select
button) opens up room by room as you travel through the castle.
You can buy an extended that shows you some of the areas you
have yet to visit, but as you might imagine, it's limited and
doesn't show you any of the castle's hidden portions. Even if it
did, it wouldn't much matter; like any good adventure game, many
areas can't be accessed until later in the journey. Specifically,
you can't visit certain places until you've found the three souls
that Alucard can transform into - Wolf, Bat, and Mist, each of
which can be used at any time for a small a of magic power.
Needless to say, the graphics and musical score are great, which
is what you'd expect from Konami. The anime-style look of Dracula
X has been replaced with a more Roman approach that adds a
surprising a of depth to the game's wonderful atmosphere.
Each area comes to life with vividly animated enemies, gorgeous
backgrounds with multiple levels of parallax scrolling, and
stellar special effects (particularly of note are the lighting
and fog effects used in certain levels). The voice acting is also
good, and the storyline is awesome.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is easily one of the best
games ever released and a true testament to the fact that 2D
gaming is not dead by any stretch of the imagination. The game is
very large and will keep you entertained for a long time. --John
Ricciardi
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