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 Castlevania: The Adventure | Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge Hello everybody! It is time to end the trifecta of Game Boy Castlevanias with its final entry: Legends! But really, it should be just a single Legend, the legend of Sonia Belmont, first of the clan to hunt vampires. Or rather, a single vampire. You know.  I'm starting with the story this time, because it is utterly tragic and honestly the most interesting thing about this game. This is entirely due to the strength of its protagonist, who outclasses Chillstopher in basically every way. Sonia Belmont was born with a special power around the time when Dracula first rose to power, her destiny being to eventually defeat him, probably. Honestly, the "special power" is vague as hell. The Castlevania Wiki says it's the ability to "sense spirits nobody else can see", which sounds honestly rather worthless. So I'll just believe Sonia is simply the only one to realize that poo poo is going down with that eponymous castle appearing in Transylvania und going to fix things by introducing ol' Drac to The Belmont Way. Oh, apparently Dracula also killed her grandfather whose last memento was a certain Whip so it's personal as well. Also also Sonia met a mysterious young man called Alucard who was looking for his father, possibly maybe in the direction of Castlevania. So she's got like three motivations to go in there and whip rear end. All of this info is barely in the game and manual, I got it off the Wiki who presumable translated the Japanese player's guide. Sonia is wonderfully mobile compared to Chillstopher (she can change directions mid-air!). She can make weapons out of defeated enemies' souls. She's so badass she can just decide to become invincible and plow through all enemies, damaging them on contact. When confronting Dracula, Sonia isn't content with whipping him into a pathetic pile of vampire meat, she's putting him down with a neverending series of sick burns as well. Of course, she does all of that while 17, and obviously she is the first and only other female Castlevania protagonist besides Shanoa in Order of Ecclesia.  Please ignore that godawful back-pose and check out how cool she is in the others. So, Sonia's the best. There's only two problems, none of them her fault. This game is not very good. And Sonia doesn't exist. After a cancelled Dreamcast Castlevania (Resurrection) which was supposed to star her around 2000, nothing more happened with her, and she was unceremoniously declared non-canon five years later because...well, let's just the series' creator tell us the reason. IGA posted:"Koji Igarashi didn't like the idea of having a female protagonist in the respective time period that Castlevania Legends takes place in, since it didn't quite fit with the motifs of a vampire story. He stated that: 'Legends remains something of an embarrassment for the series. If only that development team had the guidance of the original team of the series'" IGA is bang-on with Legends being an embarrassment, however. Also, ouch.  Let's not beat around the bush, this is not what anyone expects from a Castlevania entry that was released in 1997. Yes, six loving years after Chillstopher's Revengeance, and after Symphony of the Night. Legends has only five stages plus a secret one, is linear to a fault, has singularly unimpressive music, terrible bosses and even worse stage and enemy design hampered by an engine that needed at least three more passes to be as solid as the second Adventures', and I can't believe I'm saying that. The previous entry is way, way more polished than this. Legends is an uninteresting and unappealing mess and a terrible capstone for a series that could have been a really cool example of the leaps and bounds possible by learning from your initial mistakes and rigorously fixing them. Though I guess as confirmed before, this was an entirely different team working on the game. They had done one other game before - Goemon on the Game Boy - and went on to make Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on the N64. That was good, though, right? Maybe they needed the bigger platform? Anyway, you could rightfully claim that Castlevania: Adventure was way more of a terrible mess than this, and you're absolutely right, and yet I wasn't nearly as down on the game as I'm on this one. Well, consider this: Adventure came out six months after the Game Boy's release and was a very...interesting exercise in cruelty sometimes. Legends competes with every other platformer that graced the Game Boy since then, but all that pales before its one critical fault: it's very, very boring. I'm so sorry, Sonia.  Like before, I've played this blind. Unlike before, I'm also already done with playing it, so I can give you all those juicy details above. I'm also editing in important revelations into the videos themselves so you don't have to scream at past-me for not reading the OP. Initially I didn't even read the manual fully even though the game clearly expects you to, good call though because it spoils basically everything including all bosses. So click at your own discretion. For this thread though, please don't spoil without bars because the story at least has some reveals for us which I promise are juicy and ruin the game even further in my mind, poor Sonia.  Update Post 1  Update Post 2  Update Post 3  Update Post 4  Update Post 5  Update Post 6  *sigh* Now, this is all subjective of course. And this soundtrack isn't bad, don't get me wrong. But Adventure and Revenge has face-meltingly awesome soundtracks with some absolute masterpieces, while Legends has...this. Some interesting remixes. A good boss theme. And some tepid garbage. The absolute worst thing about this, however, is that the music isn't nearly good enough to support being stretched out over levels that can take up to 40 minutes (!) to complete on your first pass. Hell, even Revenge's music compositions would be hard-pressed in this situation. But here? I'm loving sick of these tracks, I never want to hear them again. To spare you even more whining, I just...won't comment individually during the update posts. Prologue Bloody Tears (Stage 1) Inside the Castle (Stage 2) The Clock Tower of Darkness (Stage 3) Highest Castle Floor (Stage 4) The Castle Lord's Room Underground Watercourse (Stage 5) Dungeon of Silence (Secret Stage) Dracula Castle Cathedral Trap Room Boss Battle Gatekeeper (Mini-Boss) Alucard Battle Count Dracula Battle Vampire Killer (Final Battle) Ending Epilogue Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 1, 2018 10:12
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 05:58 |
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 The stage names are incredibly creative for this one. The stage, and this is something I could say about every stage in this game, is nothing to write home about. It's mostly flat, with a few enemies put in seemingly at random, and you really gotta strain to look for setups that were actually planned out to inconvenience the player in any way or make you work for your victory. The fights themselves are super easy, everything that doesn't die in one hit has a practically nonexistant AI, and I'm forgetting parts as I write. The biggest feature of the stage are probably the trap rooms, which are a bafflingly stupid concept. They are foreshadowed by the candles being white, but design-wise, I fail to see their purpose: make you wake up after long minutes of nothing happening? There is ONE thing they could be there for, and that is teach you for how to unlock the secret stage, but even for that, I don't think they're needed per se. Also, later there's a trap room without a candle attached, so...? I'm equally not fond of the special item placement, the Axe from the classic games, because it's a blind choice between the dead-end path and the progress path. There is no way to tell which is which, so you end up getting lucky or backtracking. Wait, you end up backtracking anyway because of the "dead end" thing. And the collectible doesn't even do anything - baffling. The boss is named "Creatures Bat" and, according to the manual, artificially created via fusion of human and bat traits. That would explain why its legs are so stiff. Its pattern, like all of the bosses in this game, is dead simple and I won't bother to spell out any tactics. Whip it when it stops moving. Music Prologue Bloody Tears (Stage 1) Boss Battle Trap Room Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Oct 1, 2018 |
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Oct 1, 2018 10:13
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lemme just ruin the boss theme for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zflY5K63-wM yeah there we go
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Oct 1, 2018 10:58
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How many times has Konami declared that a given Belmont was "first"? I know we have Sonia, whozit from Lament of Innocence, and then the most recent entry of Gabriel from Lords of Shadow. At least we're not dealing with the absolutely silly bullshit that is apparently the Legend of Zelda timeline with three distinct branches all forking from Ocarina of Time. Have you played Harmony of Dissonance? It's another game on the pile of forgettable Castlevania titles, and while it doesn't entirely deserve its reputation for being bad it also is by no means a good game. Still, I'd prefer to go back to it than to Circle of the Moon. CotM is more polished overall, and yet the grind and relative immobility are just torturous. (Aria of Sorrow is still miles ahead of them both, naturally.)
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Oct 1, 2018 11:00
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Lords of Shadow's explicitly not tied to the others though, it even has its own version of Simon in the 3ds game.
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Oct 1, 2018 11:03
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NGDBSS posted:How many times has Konami declared that a given Belmont was "first"? I know we have Sonia, whozit from Lament of Innocence, and then the most recent entry of Gabriel from Lords of Shadow. At least we're not dealing with the absolutely silly bullshit that is apparently the Legend of Zelda timeline with three distinct branches all forking from Ocarina of Time. HoD can die in a fire for all I care, I played through all of it just so I can complain with full authority: it is insanely boring from start to finish and way too long for how utterly unfun it is to play. I bought the original for a friend as a gift once because the box art looked awesome, and to this day I regret having lost contact with that friend because I still feel the need to apologize.
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Oct 1, 2018 11:39
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No castlevania Games, not even a 3D one, can hold a candle to this baby in terms of the worst Castlevania Game ever. I've played this straight up garbage, and never got past the first boss, nor did I ever want to. I am really curious to see how this game could go worse.
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Oct 1, 2018 11:40
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NGDBSS posted:How many times has Konami declared that a given Belmont was "first"? I know we have Sonia, whozit from Lament of Innocence, and then the most recent entry of Gabriel from Lords of Shadow. At least we're not dealing with the absolutely silly bullshit that is apparently the Legend of Zelda timeline with three distinct branches all forking from Ocarina of Time. Trevor/ Ralph in Dracula's Curse, the first to defeat Dracula, Sonia, in Legends, and Leon from Lament, the first of the clan to fight vampires. Circle is another one they struck from the official record, though they could have resolved it just by saying "This one wasn't actually Dracula" since he has gently caress all to do with things compared to Camilla.
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Oct 1, 2018 17:27
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Everybody knows teenage girls are the best vampire slayers.
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Oct 1, 2018 18:37
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Been a long time since I've played this one. I forgot just how bad some of those sprites were. I mean yeah, the bats and boss weren't so bad, and there probably isn't much you can do with the worms, but those shadows and spearmen are just awful. They look like something that would be on one of those cheep things where you could see where all the sprites might be even when the thing was powered off. As for the merits of other Castlevanias, I actually kinda liked HoD. It's not the most original in design or plot, but it had an interesting special weapon system with the way the books could alter the subweapons. CotM was crap. Way too over-reliant on luck for getting any equipment, the hero was slow as Christopher while playing in a massive metroidvania, and even if you were lucky enough to find spell cards a lot of the time you wouldn't even know what the combos did unless you looked it up. I know they offered different stat builds to allow you to play the game different ways after the first time through, but if I had such a miserable time the first go around, why would I bother? The only thing I'm willing to grant it was the different elemental variations of the armor enemies could be interesting. That's it.
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Oct 1, 2018 18:57
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I think I was the one to request the blind run  .There are definitely worse Castlevanias, but...not many. Judgement, for one.
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Oct 1, 2018 21:41
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Edvarius posted:Been a long time since I've played this one. I forgot just how bad some of those sprites were. I mean yeah, the bats and boss weren't so bad, and there probably isn't much you can do with the worms, but those shadows and spearmen are just awful. They look like something that would be on one of those cheep things where you could see where all the sprites might be even when the thing was powered off. Even the worms (my wife said they look more like leeches, actually) are super crappy because they are in a completely different style from the rest of the sprites. They have super sharply defined outlines, whereas most of the other sprites are deliberately muddled at the edges. quote:As for the merits of other Castlevanias, I actually kinda liked HoD. It's not the most original in design or plot, but it had an interesting special weapon system with the way the books could alter the subweapons. CotM was crap. Way too over-reliant on luck for getting any equipment, the hero was slow as Christopher while playing in a massive metroidvania, and even if you were lucky enough to find spell cards a lot of the time you wouldn't even know what the combos did unless you looked it up. I know they offered different stat builds to allow you to play the game different ways after the first time through, but if I had such a miserable time the first go around, why would I bother? The only thing I'm willing to grant it was the different elemental variations of the armor enemies could be interesting. That's it. My biggest issue with CotM except for the already mentioned repetitiveness of some areas (though it's WAY more varied in geography and enemy placements than HoD is) is that you need to double-tap to get a move on, and that's a little annoying after a while. If you always do it, the movement speed is fine, though. And you can't hate a game where you can make your whip into a rose whip with thorns. That's fabulous and I love it a lot. I get that collecting all the drops is a serious pain in the rear end, but just the few combinations I happened to find randomly were already fun enough to play around with. I never finished it because of some hard bosses and I'm always a little hard-pressed to motivate myself to get deeply into games I just emulate, but I still liked it enough to try it twice and never got really bored. Maybe if I can find a used cartridge at some point... To bring it back to the topic at hand... Discendo Vox posted:I think I was the one to request the blind run  .It's fine though, I had fun recording it, but just playing would have been torture. I'm also having fun editing the videos, so all's well. Still, the flaws we already saw in Legends will only become more apparent as the game goes on: there is no level design. It's just corridors with random platforms and enemies. In a sense, pretty much exactly like HoD with (system's fault, I guess) less bells and whistles...
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Oct 2, 2018 01:01
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I am curious if it would make sense that the whole game was meant to run maybe 20% faster, other than the timer.
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Oct 2, 2018 01:22
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NGDBSS posted:How many times has Konami declared that a given Belmont was "first"? I know we have Sonia, whozit from Lament of Innocence, and then the most recent entry of Gabriel from Lords of Shadow. At least we're not dealing with the absolutely silly bullshit that is apparently the Legend of Zelda timeline with three distinct branches all forking from Ocarina of Time. I like the Aria of Sorrow explanation that Dracula's castle is a thing of Chaos and does what it pleases. The gently caress does it matter which was the "first" Belmont? Maybe Dracula decided to get all chronoturge about things and kill the Belmonts off early and that's why all the different flavors of armor show up in a game that's technically before Trevor Belmont times!
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Oct 2, 2018 02:30
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Simply Simon posted:A Game&Watch? Or one of the Tiger Electronics games.
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Oct 2, 2018 04:32
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Good to see you LPing more Castlevania games! I never heard of this one and after watching the first chapter... you're going to suffer because it looks really bad.
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Oct 2, 2018 09:15
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Discendo Vox posted:I think I was the one to request the blind run I'd rank this one below Judgement. Judgement is stupid in many ways, but it's reasonably fun to actually play. Plus, any game that references the Boku Dracula-kun series can't be ALL bad.
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Oct 2, 2018 16:31
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I had the Tiger Castlevania game. I think the graphics were a bit better than this game, mostly. The bats looked like bats, at least.
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Oct 3, 2018 00:24
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Nidoking posted:I had the Tiger Castlevania game. I think the graphics were a bit better than this game, mostly. The bats looked like bats, at least. Tiger Games are not Castlvevania. Tiger Games are their own categories. They deserve their own LP/Games Thread to talk about how cheap and awful they are.
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Oct 4, 2018 02:42
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 Told you about the creative stage names. It's been four days or so since I edited this video and I had to watch it again just to remember the stage. It might be even less memorable than the first because that at least had the (stupid) trap candles, this one has...badly programmed Boo skulls...? That's like double spooky. Consider this in the spirit of Halloween or something. Oh, right, it's super dumb how the "secret" passages in this game work. It's going to get even worse as the levels get (how???) even longer. The boss (Death Dragon  , slain by Drac himself then resurrected!!!) might be quite difficult if it didn't die so fast. I think it'd be fine if I was just more patient, however it doesn't require me to learn it, so...why should I?Music Inside the Castle (Stage 2)
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Oct 4, 2018 20:43
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For that gap you couldn't get across, I want to remember from my brief testing of this game once upon a time that Sonia also gets faster when you activate burning mode, which should allow you to make that jump.
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Oct 5, 2018 23:41
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Right! That must be it! I will finally activate BURNING MODE in the fourth video, and Sonia does indeed gain a significant speed boost. So you have to sacrifice your one activation of invincibility to heal, when you could instead use it...to prevent getting hurt. I love the logic of this game.
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Oct 6, 2018 18:53
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 This stage is a tragic travesty. Or a travestic tragedy. It's a loving Castlevania Clock Tower, it's meant to be serious poo poo, and in Legends? It's, like, three moving platforms in total, which is somehow the entirety of those in the entire game. I have never seen a platformer that just eschews the idea of moving platforms instead of going "well they're technically an obstacle". I thought just putting random moving platforms somewhere was the most lazy way to design a jumping puzzle or whatever you want to call it. I was wrong. This stage convinced me that this game is boring garbage, and I adjusted the editing accordingly. You're welcome to join me in mockery. Apart from how terrible it is that there is nothing to the stage at all, there's not much else to say. They go for "rope poo poo" like the other Game Boy games (and because of stuff like this, how the whip upgrades work and other small things like the [atrocious] password system, I do consider these games a trilogy), but do it worse than Adventure, somehow. Revenge nailed it, but Legends, as almost always, just doesn't get it. The rope dudes are so loving bad, I want to cry. EDIT: Jesus Christ I completely forgot to comment on the boss. It's DEATH and I forgot to comment on him. That's all the comments this guy needs. Freakin' non-memorable AI-challenged "Grim Reaper" Death. How utterly pathetic. EDIT˛: Right as I make the final updates, I realize I have artwork of the dragon miniboss in this stage lying around unused. Guess who forgot about ANOTHER boss?! It's in the update and OP images now. Music The Clock Tower of Darkness (Stage 3) OF DOOM! Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Oct 20, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 01:30
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Simply Simon posted:This stage is a tragic travesty. Or a travestic tragedy. It's a loving Castlevania Clock Tower, it's meant to be serious poo poo, and in Legends? It's, like, three moving platforms in total, which is somehow the entirety of those in the entire game. I have never seen a platformer that just eschews the idea of moving platforms instead of going "well they're technically an obstacle". I thought just putting random moving platforms somewhere was the most lazy way to design a jumping puzzle or whatever you want to call it. I was wrong. My guess about the Clock Tower not having moving platforms is that it's a limitation of the GameBoy, with regards to how many moving objects can be on the screen at once.
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Oct 11, 2018 02:16
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Kheldarn posted:My guess about the Clock Tower not having moving platforms is that it's a limitation of the GameBoy, with regards to how many moving objects can be on the screen at once. You can 100% animate background tiles without it being an object.
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Oct 11, 2018 04:47
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Kheldarn posted:My guess about the Clock Tower not having moving platforms is that it's a limitation of the GameBoy, with regards to how many moving objects can be on the screen at once.
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Oct 11, 2018 10:46
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OK, then I guess it was due to a lazy/bad dev team.
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Oct 11, 2018 14:25
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Well that was something. Never seen a Castlevania game sporting the Ninja Gaiden Enemy Respawn problem.
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Oct 13, 2018 05:15
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this game makes me sad, Simon
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Oct 13, 2018 05:32
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Blood Sally posted:this game makes me sad, Simon 
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Oct 13, 2018 13:15
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 Already forgot everything about the stage again. Okay, I edited this video before a two-week vacation, but still. There's some moving ropes that are a pain in the rear end to use but hey, a level gimmick?!??!?! They can, but they don't most of the time. The spiders are a semi-interesting enemy which would be right at place in the first or second level of an actually good game. The big sword knights can suck my nards, I have no idea how they work and I suspect the game doesn't either. Aaand I just remembered that there's a miniboss in this stage. Actually had to go back and change the picture for that because drat, Medusa. What a non-event. First glimpse of BURNING!!! mode.  A severe "lol" at Alucard. The boss that might be a roadblock if you couldn't loop him easier than Luigi Raceway in Mario Kart 64. Also, what the gently caress is his role in the story? He meets, befriends and sleeps with Sonia, at some point leaves her to deal with devil dad but tells her about Castlevania and where to find it, apparently just expecting that she's like "cool, see you later bae, good to know that you're not in the local whorehouse"? Then when she actually shows up after having fought through all of the castle (remember: top floor), he gets super indignant and thinks she's tooootally not up for Drac. Sonia then humiliates him so hard that he decides to sleep for a hundred-odd years like that's a reasonable response to a rough whipping session he wished for himself. IGA probably erased Legends from the timeline because Alucard is so pathetic in it. Even Sonia doesn't try to convince him to stay awake instead of scurring away tail between legs. What a loser. Also, thanks for mentioning the trap door, rear end in a top hat. You're lucky Symphony and your contributions in CV3 are so good. Music Highest Castle Floor (Stage 4) The Castle Lord's Room Gatekeeper (Mini-Boss) Alucard Battle Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Oct 20, 2018 |
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Oct 16, 2018 09:58
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Quick LP organization question: I just edited the next video, it's the final stage (but not the final video! Ooooh) and it's 35 minutes long. There's a good cutoff point 12 minutes in, so I could easily split it there to make the thing a little more watchable. But if you guys prefer a longer episode, that's also fine with me, just tell me what you want  .While deciding, you can also check out the footage of the canceled Resurrection I found which would have been Sonia's second game. Gotta say, after seeing that outfit, especially the skirt situation, I'm kinda glad that she got spared that further humiliation... EDIT: Oh hey they give her some pants in later pictures! Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Oct 16, 2018 |
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Oct 16, 2018 10:01
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I'm fine with a longer video.
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Oct 16, 2018 13:39
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A 35 min video is far from long considering other LP's I watch so go ahead with it.
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Oct 16, 2018 13:44
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Commander Keene posted:I'm fine with a longer video.
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Oct 16, 2018 14:42
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Personally, I like the shorter video format. Also, it's a good thing you weren't playing as the Castlevania: The Adventure version of Chillstopher, or that 1-Up would have vanished long before you got to it...
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Oct 16, 2018 14:50
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Commander Keene posted:I'm fine with a longer video. Same. Also, I could barely tell what Sonia looked like with how bad the video quality was. Then I saw some of the concept art. "Huh, those blurs look like they're supposed to be censoring something, but theyre not quite in the right place, must just be the video quality...." *10 seconds later* "nope, guess that's where they think nipples are."
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Oct 16, 2018 21:16
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I could only make it half way through that video and it's bad porn soundtrack. One thing I noticed is that her legs are messed up there, too. I guess Sonia just has bad legs. 
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Oct 16, 2018 21:55
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Simply Simon posted:A severe "lol" at Alucard. The boss that might be a roadblock if you couldn't loop him easier than Luigi Raceway in Mario Kart 64. Also, what the gently caress is his role in the story? He meets, befriends and sleeps with Sonia, at some point leaves her to deal with devil dad but tells her about Castlevania and where to find it, apparently just expecting that she's like "cool, see you later bae, good to know that you're not in the local whorehouse"? Then when she actually shows up after having fought through all of the castle (remember: top floor), he gets super indignant and thinks she's tooootally not up for Drac. Sonia then humiliates him so hard that he decides to sleep for a hundred-odd years like that's a reasonable response to a rough whipping session he wished for himself. IGA probably erased Legends from the timeline because Alucard is so pathetic in it. Even Sonia doesn't try to convince him to stay awake instead of scurring away tail between legs. What a loser. Also, by the timeline, Alucard hadn't been born yet. His mother hadn't even met Dracula in 1450. Further, it's pretty weird that the Belmonts were a legendary clan of monster hunters who the church had to go crawling back to in 1476 when, with this game, Trevor would only be the second Belmont to hunt monsters. It really doesn't fit, is what I'm getting at.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:24
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That cutscene before the Alucard fight is like a reversal of the Maria battle in the Saturn/PSP versions of SOTN. I guess that's cool?
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Oct 16, 2018 23:31
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