I don’t have a huge amount of gaming experience. As I was growing up my parents didn’t buy any consoles for my brother, so I didn’t grow up with anything other than
Lego Star Wars. This means that I am approaching the games I play both without nostalgia, and with an unfamiliarity that is different from probably most people who consider themselves ‘gamers’. A little over a year ago I emulated
Super Metroid [スーパーメトロイド], which was the first
metroidvania that I played. It was a revelatory experience for me in many ways, as I was unaware of the concept before. You can laugh at my naivete in this regard if you want. I found it nice that one of the most influential games in a genre was my introduction to it. It’s not like I am finding out what it invented after being familiar with games that borrowed from it. Now I had some minor issues with
Super Metroid [スーパーメトロイド]: I felt lost at a few points, the backtracking got a little repetitive towards the end, and I never would have found several of the secrets without playthroughs on the internet. Mostly though I had a great time.
With that lengthy preamble out of the way, which hopefully establishes where I was coming from as I played Symphony of the Night, I need to say: this was the best gaming experience of my life so far. I doubt I can offer any truly new perspective about why this game is so revolutionary and respected to this day, and I certainly cannot make any new points about its role in the grand scheme of the
metroidvania genre, but I can talk about why I liked it so much.
I enjoy art in a variety of different mediums, (I like literature and film the most), and I want a different experience out of those different art forms. This game does something for me that I cannot find in any other medium. Firstly, the map design is truly immaculate. No matter which direction I went in, I never felt lost, or like I was wasting my time. The art direction in every different room was also superb. They all looked distinct in their own beautiful way. The score was similarly incredible. The different genres that they draw from never feel dissonant from one another, yet allow every section of the game to have its own charm and feeling. It is cohesive in its variety. This meant that I never got tired of exploring through the game, even when I would have to backtrack through the rooms. I was also delighted by how little backtracking I needed to do. The castle was circular in such a way that I usually ended up connected to somewhere else I needed to go at the end of exploring any given section.
Some people seem to complain about the inverted castle, so I will offer my own defense of it. It is unnerving in a captivating way to traverse a map that you are familiar with, but has been flipped on its head. That in combination with the new enemies, colour schemes, and (occasionally) score meant that it was a particular combination of unique and familiar that caused it to never get tiresome for me.
As for the combat system, I greatly enjoyed that aspect too. I didn’t go out of my way to look up guides to find all the little (perhaps unintuitive) mechanics you can do to give yourself an advantage, and I didn’t feel like I needed to (except I looked up how to get the lighting absorbing crown so when I found out it was pretty much a necessity to beat the one boss). I can’t write in as much detail about this, as I don’t feel like I mastered it on my first play through, but many of the different weapons you are given are very cool. Also you receive new power ups at what feels like exactly the correct pacing. These new power ups meant that as the game went along you could move through the castle even more easily, which further prevented any backtracking from becoming a slog. I am certain this was integral to preventing the inverted castle from getting tiresome, as towards the end I could move through it as a mist form that did damage, which made me feel both powerful, and avoided any annoyances from getting stuck doing too much crowd control.
As a final note, I found the voice acting rather charming. I really loved that final cutscene where
Dracula complains about sarcasm as he dies. It was a very satisfying conclusion to a superb game.