Just wanna talk about Castlevania and how awesome it is.

I love the series and am currently playing Harmony of Dissonance, which I started after beating/destroying Aria of Sorrow. What's your favorite Castlevania game and whatnot?

 

I' m gonna be dazzlingly unoriginal and say Symphony Of The Night. Best gameplay and musics in the whole series to me.
Although the GBA/DS sequels were quite nice none of them really managed to bury their PS ancestor. One of the series strong point is its music but, unfortunately, neither the GBA nor the DS can deliver CD quality musics. The other series strong point is its gameplay, SOTN added some metroid-like exploration and A-RPG aspects to the original NES formula and the result was so awesome that, remakes or 3D games aside, they kept it ever since.

If I had to recommend a single Castelvania game though it wouldn' t be SOTN, it would be Dracula X Chronicles on PSP. It' s a Rondo Of Blood remake. It comes with the old NES gameplay and out of this world difficulty, it is in fact so hard that I lost any hope to ever complete it. So why the hell would I recommend it you say ? Well because the PSP has CD quality musics and DxC happens to have heavenly unlockable musics, and because another unlockable feature is ... SOTN !

I hope Konami will treat us with a 2D HD Castelvania one of these days, it' s almost at the top of my gamer wish-list. I mean a full-fledged game, not just a multi-player PSN app. Unfortunately most developers are afraid to release 2D games on HD consoles, nowadays most gamers seem to have the (moronic) idea that 2D cannot be as pretty or impressive than 3D, or that it' s necessarily easier to make or something (boy are they wrong). Overall they consider 2D to be outdated and don' t wish to see it anywhere but on handhelds. Grr, someone please hand me a whip.

 

Well... The original is the best in My opinion.
If i had to recommend one I think it would be Rondo of blood.

 

I own, love, and have beaten most of the hand-held Castlevanias. Circle of the Moon, Aria of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia... I also own but haven't beaten Symphony of the Night and Harmony of Dissonance. Same reason in both cases; I get stuck because I can't figure out where to go. I respect the games for their open structure, though, and I'm sure I'd have a ball with them if I put more time into them. Out of those, my favorite is Aria of Sorrow; I could lie and say OoE, but AoS is my most-played and longest-enjoyed.

The hand-held Castlevanias kicked off my love of Metroidvanias, along with Metroid Fusion. I'd love to make one of my own Metroidvania one day, adhering more to the Castlevania style, but I don't have the programming/spriting know-how to develop anything freeware. That, and it'll be a long time and a lot of work before I get a chance to work with official systems. I hope the world hasn't forgotten about those games by then... I sure won't.

 

About that, in Symphony of the Night, if you' re stucked where I think you may be stucked then by all means don' t feel ashamed to look at a walkthrough : this game has an insane amount of hidden stuff, which includes secret passages, glitches, tricks, moves, summons and street-fighter input spells or attacks. I found some of them on my own (mostly by accident) but most aren' t mentioned to even exist, which is a shame because once you know them the game gets much funnier to play. The handheld episodes corrected that mistake and made sure to leave clues about all the hidden stuff here and there.

 

To be honest, out of the latest i've only payed attention to lords of shadow, never played it because the only castlevania's i have played are the ones on NES, the original trilogy , the third one being my favourite and simons quest being my least, the first one though brings back nostalgia, also i really liked symphony of the night, it was diffrent but a bit annoying as they gave you the best things first and then take it all away, even if there are better weapons and equipment to gain through the game.

It's a bit of a tease, sort of like giving sora the master form drive first and then getting it taken away after about 10 minuites into the game. But still, i loved the original 3 on the NES.