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[Alevice]

the balance is iffy and the spritework is all over

[Tanner]

the menu interface is essentially programmer menus and that is great.

has everyone here seen the iga devs play video?

[gunswordfist]

It looks a bit jaggy in places, including Alucard himself, to me, but overall it looks great. Except for maybe Super Metroid, it's my favorite looking Metroidvania, especially on enhanced visuals for 360.

[Faust06]

i dont get why ppl say this game is "rough". the only thing that is really bad/janky about it is the menu interface.

Maybe in a blocky ps1 kind of way, visually speaking, but I shouldn't say "rough" precisely. Someone described it as a vague sense of incompleteness - I don't know if it's that either, but it's something the other iterations don't possess.

[s0]

hmm idk

like i said i haven't finished it yet so i may be missing part of the picture, but to me it feels obviously more ambitious than the handheld iga games (and also looks better). maybe because of that it's less polished? but it doesnt feel unpolished in any obvious way to me, except for i guess the translation, but im gonna chalk that up to the times.

maybe it just looks unpolished next to its obvious inspiration super metroid?

[FK in the Coffee]

Can I just say, I've been noticing a lot of similarities between this game and Dark Souls. Minus the soundtrack, the atmosphere, the giant bosses, and the interconnected world all feel like they could've been points of inspiration for the Souls games. In a lot of ways I feel like the Souls games play like a 3-D Castlevania should play.

[SousaVilla]

maybe it just looks unpolished next to its obvious inspiration super metroid?

We would eventually get to this discussion, wouldnt we?

Also:

[Tanner]

wow i can't stand that guy's voice or mannerisms. i'm sure he has some worthwhile things to say but holy crap i couldn't make it more than five minutes in.

[Cobralad]

I definitely agree with the notion that dark souls is the best 3d castlevania game.
It combines igavania exploration and tasty grind with old castlevania bullshit difficulty spikes sence of danger and need to calculate your next step.
Its really ironic how Lords of Shadow were made by some guys from Mercury Steam  that made Severance, which is hardcore dark third-person action/rpg with stamina-based combat.

[Dragonmaw]

extra funny because severance is a disaster area lmao

[s0]

severance is pretty ok actually. its one of those super janky and obviously overambitious/underbudgeted but still somehow endearing european pc games.

anyway the main guy behind severance isnt even in mercury steam. the lead is (was? do they still exist?) the level designer of severance, who in addition to developing the lords of shadow games, developed a massive ego problem and began to think of himself as some genius auteur and treated his team members like shit. thats why LoS2 was such a complete and utter trainwreck (1 is a decent god of war clone, mirror of fate is dross).

[Cobralad]

oh wow, thats some messed up stuff.
Severance was actually considered cult classic, i mean there were nothing like it at the time, especially on pc.
Lords of Shadow 2 demo actually made me reconnsider playing those games.
I thought that first on was bland, but when Dracula said that one dialog bit everything was forgiven. It was so bad its ascended into awesomeness.

[Dragonmaw]

yeah i'm being a little harsh, severance is interesting. it's just not good.

[s0]

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=38504.msg1000983#msg1000983

here's the full story on LoS2 if youre interested.

[Cobralad]

oh, thanks man.
It was kinda sad seeing that game diving into its own batshit thing esp considering such continuuty-fanservice heavy series.
It is actually my favorite thing about the series and it may have came as negative, but i like when they put Super Castlevania stuff into their recent games. It also stuff that is not really pandery. They have old belmonts showing up, but who even remembers Slogra and Gaibon or main boss from Kid Drakula?

[gunswordfist]

I finally started this game again after such a long time of not playing it! Naturally, on Thief Mode.

I ended up fighting Dracula on the beginning Richter stage twice because I forgot to put my license on this game, smh. I tried not relying on the invincibility the second time even though strange enough, I abused the super cross and super holy water so it made it kind of moot. I still beat him with a little bit of health so I felt good about that.

Long series of words later, I was Alucard again. I actually went, "Why's my health 25?!!" then I remembered that I put in the Luck Code. lol Everything you face before you met Death is of course laughable easy either way. Then enter the skeletons. They take way too many hits with reduced stats, whether you have a sword or not. I died twice failing the get past the first bone thrower in Alchemy Laboratory. Even more than that counting getting caught up in trying to get past him and the two shield skeletons on the lower floor. It was brutal. I also went back to save and I forgot/didn't know that the bloody zombies come immediately after you leave to go to Alchemy Lab. That surprised me. Luckily they have a stupid amount of stun animation so I had no problem killing them and saving. Eventually got through the lab, got the trusty first shield/The Leather Shield, some other stuff along the way, saved a couple of more times and got up to the first boss.

My favorite boss in the entire game. No joke. These two are more fun with the extra challenge added. I'm a sucker for enemies working together (which is a reason why DMC1 was my favorite game for so long) and I just love blocking fireballs with a rickety shield. That's just so cool to me. I forgot/didn't know that the beaked one could shoot fire out of its spear, which really caught me off guard since they already cornered and surrounded me at the left side of the screen. It didn't end too well for me since I got ate up by fireballs from both sides and then they eventually killed me after I got out of that spot. They did the same thing to me a time or two again but after another try I killed the beak monster and it was just me against the winged beast. The way it flys up diagonally hits me two after and between that and its fireballs caused me a lot of trouble. I still won with just a little bit of health but I was kind of hoping it would kill me so I could fight them again.

That's where I left out. I logged in about an hour of gameplay.

[Türbo Bröther]

Ya shoulda done the Death skip so you can keep your gear.

[gunswordfist]

I was thinking about it but I just took the turkey.

[Türbo Bröther]

You've gotta get back to it so you can cast Sword Brothers when visiting the Librarian so you can glitch out your gem count and make megabucks. Also walking through walls and getting outside the castle to get over 200% completion. It's a laugh to break this game because it's so easy it's trivial.

[SousaVilla]

I'm just starting the game and I'm not gonna have much time to play until next week. After replaying some of the gba igavanias not so long ago, I think the one with the best movement options in the beggining of the game is HoD. You can dash fowards and backwards and cancel the dash into another dash, so spamming is really satisfying. The slide is surprisingly fast, although not as good as the dash.

I think symphony would be better with that system. Having only a backwards dash puts you in the weird position of, if you want to move faster, going backwards through levels. Having said that, the running animation of Alucard is really cool and I know I'll get other movement options later with the transformations, so it's not a big deal.

The death moment is a standard one in videogames by now, but is always satisfying when is pulled off. I have this "gonna catch them all" mentality and know I got a motivation to explore all the castle and get my stuff back.