You’d be hard pressed to name a modern AAA 2D platformer not bearing the Nintendo seal of quality. But, not too long ago it was the genre of choice for big name developers. Epic Games, Capcom, Blizzard, SEGA, and of course Konami all had a hand in the veritable pot of gold towards the end of the last century. The 2D platformer was the “video game”, the archetypal example of what games were. Now however the 2D platformer is largely relegated to indie developers and releases seen as somewhat insignificant by their publishers. With the amount of funding and economic capital big devs came into as the Video Game industry became more wealthy and popular, they sought to leverage newer hardware to produce more expansive and technically complex 3D games. Though, at the intersection between developers becoming wealthy and the main genre of games being in the 2D space, there is a game that stands above all that came before, and quite possibly after.
Coming off the heels of hugely successful Super Castlevania IV (and before abject failure Castlevania 64), Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was an attempt for Konami to expand on and perfect the 2D action series, and became such a groundbreaking game that some argue it’s simply the best 2D action platformer ever to exist.
My personal experience with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is incredibly recent. I bought, played, and finished it just a few months ago in March 2023. I had played Castlevania 1 & 2 back on NES when I was really young and a few times since, but modern Castlevania games have passed me by. I’ve known of them of course as they were coming out, my friends often mentioned Lords of Shadow, but I never took to trying any of the games pass the NES era.
To my knowledge of the retro games, Castlevania hadn’t really excelled in the story department in previous entries. Not unlike most games of the era, story was generally relegated to footnotes in the manual. Later, walls of exposition became the norm, which this does include to an extent, though they made sure to have much learned by the player in-game with some of gaming’s worst acted and most poorly translated cutscenes, which, again, was pretty par for the course at the time. Just googling up some YouTube clips of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night you could get the feeling that it wasn’t given much love from the story department, which… I kind of agree with. To my eyes at least, this story is definitely kept to the side, never really interfering in the gameplay besides the <10 total dialogue scenes. Mostly, you’re just thrown on an open-ended quest and you just keep killing until it is done.
Speaking of murder, the gameplay perfectly executes all the 2D action they wanted. You usually ride a smooth difficulty curve as you run around killing baddies and fighting bosses. Even though it has RPG elements and is open “world”, it never felt too grindy to me as most enemies die in a reasonable amount of time at most times. One or two bosses were slogs, especially when they deliberately make them hard to hit like the weird floating ball of flesh thing around midway through the game.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the “Seinfeld Is Unfunny” Effect, but there is a bit of a trope where when you revisit a piece of entertainment that was once considered revolutionary and groundbreaking when it first hit the screens, and now you will see it as unoriginal or just lacking when revisiting it. The issue is that it wasn’t overplayed or tropey then, it was what everyone tried to copy. Everything in that entertainment genre bootlegged it and made it overdone. It was the first, or in this case, the one that figured out how to perfect the genre. Sort of like that Matrix bullet dodge effect that everyone ripped off in the early 2000s. Watching that scene now is like “eh ok but everyone did that a lot and it kind of dates this movie.” But, because it was so great at the time, that’s why everyone copied it, and it’s a sad ffeature of our culture that we basically ruined the original with our shitty offshoots.
Basically what I’m getting at is that I had to remind myself rather often that while it felt at times I was playing a pretty standard sidescrolling action game, this is the reason every 2D sidescrolling action game feels like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. And even saying that, it was really fun anyway! It raised the bar in countless ways for this style of game. I love running around slashing folks and getting new fancy weapons. It’s also good that it isn’t just “swords” you use, but also things like clubs and knuckle dusters (even though the animations don’t really change). I do enjoy having variety in RPGs.
So with all that being said, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to my modern eyes can still hold up rather well, if you go into it with the understanding that you’re playing a retro game. I do dislike that part of me that really can’t get over the hump of sitting down to watch black and white movies or boot up an Atari 2600 game and actually enjoying it.
