Diplo's Symphony of the Night Article

his is a wonderful video game, though I fear the fruition of its real potential is a thing we'll never see. With each new installment the series brings, it becomes increasingly apparent that the things binding Symphony of the Night together, and the things promising the release of superior efforts, never were the basic constitution of the elements. Rather, it was what was done with those elements. Fast-forward to the Nintendo DS trilogy, and we are literally faced with the empty magnitude of a one-thousand-percent completion rate. What makes Symphony of the Night a good, or great, game? Many reasons can be traced to the game's sense of place. With so interesting a medium as video games are, it's an incredible shame that so few of the worlds we are given have something to say. I can count on both hands the game-worlds that have had an effect on me out of the hundreds sampled. It is the quality which makes Harmony of Dissonance the "best" post-Symphony title, even if it's not exactly the Best, if you know what I mean – and why it's hilarious to hear people say, "Castlevania: (insert sub-title here) has finely tuned the mechanics of its predecessor for an even better game!" That is part of the problem, right there. Mechanics and level design have always held places of common import in Castlevania. Now, the mechanics are almost the only thing being addressed. The mechanics of a video game are only as good as the things around them (environments, enemies, et-cetera). Architecture and aesthetic have also, traditionally, been inextricably bound so that the level design was, in a way, the art. Curse of Darkness, alternately, treats the two as separate ideas – or, rather, it shoves level design so far to the side that the world becomes a vacuous museum to hold an inactive aesthetic. It's so worried about anyone actually ruining (read: interacting with) its props that it pushes us away from walls if we get six-feet near them. The game is too concerned about keeping its theme park tidy, and preserving its own misguided interests.

Symphony of the Night is a great game for the worth its universe holds, how it feels to exist in and move through its spaces. This seems so obvious that it is almost crazy to know that Konami has tried to top its efforts by giving enemies "souls" to "steal," or coupling the protagonist with a partner so that the two of them can push boxes out of the way. Let's also make the distinction that Symphony is not, by way of the Metrovania formula, intrinsically or objectively good. Nothing is so – except, perhaps, blueberries? That anyone gives automatic props to a new Castlevania "because it's a Metrovania" takes the problem to even darker, more depressing depths. We, who hold a burning integrity in our hearts, did not truly love Symphony of the Night because we eventually acquired the Form of Mist to sift through grates, nor did we truly love it because the map resembled Super Metroid's. We did not truly love it because "Alucard was Alucard." We truly loved it because we could tell that the developers interlocked the rooms according to the level design's logic, separate from the resulting illogical framework of the map. Take a moment to reflect on how Portrait of Ruin's map is set up to mimic the side-view of a castle, suggesting more inner logic of the castle structure; in spite of this, we never feel the sensation of progress when going through the environments. This being acknowledged, we may assume that a few room types were made for each of Portrait's areas, and then crunched together so that the final result of the map's castle-like appearance would be achieved. Women and men: what a horrible, backwards world of game design we live in.

Some say that every game should be judged according to surrounding conditions – that we should lay off harder-edged criticism because the "weather" wasn't ideal for optimum development. I say that we should give a video game props if it was trying, but that we should still judge it for what it is. "Things could've been much worse" is a thought-terminating cliché, up there with "No game is perfect," and – my personal favorite – "It's just my opinion." Shut down the Internet, guys. We can go home, now.

It's certainly true that Symphony had benefits of being the first of its kind. There was a greater mystery surrounding its inner workings than the things that have followed – there was no underlying consciousness that every enemy would drop an item. There was no "formula"; the game was, more than ever, a thing isolated. A richer curiosity was actually allowed in grinding around the castle. Since then, it's more or less become a tired expectation. The interest may linger, but it's an increasingly artificial and obliged interest. Even today, playing the game, free of the ever-present convenience of a bestiary or map hovering overhead, we are allowed a startling, relative clarity to the adventure. And while the kleptomania is present, it's more of an aspect that hovers above or below, and not immediately in front. That Symphony's universe still holds more intrigue on a subsequent run-through than the initial experience with a brand-spanking-new Metrovania is a testament to the kind of care that went into its development. That it holds any intrigue in the age of instantaneous access to walkthroughs on the Internet might be more impressive. Even after Symphony has been finished, it seems as though it hasn't really been Conquered. A sensation hums and tarries. Turn off the game, and it's like that world keeps on churning beyond the deadness of the television screen and the Playstation.

We like to talk about the obvious: how Symphony's format was inspired by Super Metroid, pointing to the identical presentation of the maps (well, almost identical – Symphony's is better, because it shows where entrances and exits to rooms are), and more tenuous parallels, such as gaining abilities to bypass obstructions (indeed, there are a host of games that do this which aren't Super Metroid (question: is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time a Metrovania, then?)). I've said before that, unlike other media formats – such as books or movies, where each is a string of events – video games are more about places in which strings of events take place. There's no inherent advantage to either, mind you. Reflecting on a video game often feels like reflecting on a past environment; this may be because, in a video game, we are controlling an avatar through some manner of architecture, which is the closest thing we have to controlling ourselves through places (while reading a book or watching a movie are passive experiences dictated through the untouchable course of a narrative lens). Whatever the reasons may be, the most successful borrowing done by Symphony from Super Metroid is the persistence of its haunts and haunters. Again: Symphony is not a good game because it has a "plethora of weapons," or a "bounty of spells," or because there are several endings, just like Super Metroid isn't a good game because, "Back in 1995, Super Metroid had it all: a huge world, lots of power ups, and the ending that have every boy with a Super Nintendo scrambling to see: Samus would remove her space outfit if you were fast enough! Years later, it's still the pinnacle of platforming on the Super Nintendo" (yes, I made that up, and no, I'm not even going to begin to pick apart all the things wrong with it).

Every environment in Symphony has distinction. The Marble Gallery, with its winding, bottom-most room decorated with panther statues, two corridors of grandfather clocks (whose ticks may be heard the closer you come to the entrance of either), or the longest hallway in the game, leading to the Outer Wall. The Clock Tower and its crumbling bridge, interior of the tower's head, or its large, maze-like chamber with shattered staircases. The Castle Keep's enormous room holding a gaggle of flea riders, underlined by a wooden, bumpy path below. The Underground Caverns' extended, introductory shaft leading into the caves themselves, and the misty room with the waterfall (so iconic was this, it's since shown up in Aria of Sorrow (winner of the bunch for looking the best and cutting out the music), Dawn of Sorrow, and Order of Ecclesia). The Outer Wall's observatory room at the base (a bird making its nest in one of its protrusions), the elevator shaft running along the side, or the fact that most of it is, in fact, a single vertical "room," exterior exhibiting a nocturnal waterscape whose weather occasionally affects the locale via fog or rain. Et-cetera, et-cetera. It feels as if each place is in a constant, near-silent dialogue with itself, the microscopic context of a room informing the whole, and vice-versa. Super Castlevania has a similar vibe, one that is pronounced differently, on account of the linearity of the journey and the dot-by-dot map, which lends it a more distinct narrative. The "narrative" in Symphony, if you want to call it that, is hazier, even if there is a literal story jumping in after stretches of adventuring; you are re-treading ground, and not bound by the immediacy of a timer. And yet, there it is – the presence of the castle, the confidence and enthusiasm of each section's execution.

It's not so much that the level design on a super-singular level (a.k.a. the tiniest nuances of an individual room) is the crowning jewel; rather, it's that everything is connected so nicely, and that so much of it stands out wholly and separately that one can recall the ordering of things in their head, free of reference. Nuances indeed exist, though, which prevent an ease in dismissing the castle as a reducible series of boxes, boxes in some form though they may be (think on the two largest rooms of the Long Library's, shown to be large "boxes" when the map is consulted; this documentative summarization, though, is absent from the actual experience of moving through the rooms, with their absences, architectural angles and branching paths). Each area seems to grow in a sequence relevant to some sort of progressive logic, rather than according to how much of the map can fit on the screen before everyone groans at the ridiculousness. Unfortunately, the abstraction of the map, at this point, is being taken too literally: every room does not need to be a box because the map shows it as a box, and Konami doesn't fully understand this. And that's the crushing thing, isn't it: the level design could have gotten even better. I mean, let's be honest: more games should "rip-off" Super Metroid. Since Symphony, though, the state of art and architecture has either decayed or been inconclusively imbalanced. Harmony of Dissonance is caught being more interesting than Aria of Sorrow, but less memorable (in terms of allowing players to mentally link its castle together), while Aria of Sorrow is the opposite, with "stand-outs" like its huge bell-tower in the Chapel, a spot that's definitely there, but holding basically nothing to look at. Comparatively, Symphony has its massive, exposed chamber in Olrox's Chamber with crumbling architecture hanging off the ceiling, and a thrillingly detailed ghost-town (complete with a fountain whose water turns to blood) at the base – or its opulent staircase speedbumped with stair guards and dragon heads, and studded on the upper left with platforms holding breakable vases. There's a similarly built structure in Portrait of Ruin, also populated by stair guards, though that just serves to lead into the problem – it's already been done by Symphony, and much better. The staircase in Portrait of Ruin doesn't lead anywhere, except to an identical room with an identical staircase. It's terrifically ugly, and there are pointless platforms littering awkwardly placed columns.

Consider, too, how Symphony treats the inhabitants of Dracula's castle. If a clasically restrained avatar were in the place of Alucard, contending with enemies would have a stronger sense of conflict. Yet while the enemies are, in practice, easy to deal with, the game makes sure to use them to enhance the atmosphere, both by controlled distribution (toads and frogs being in only a couple rooms, for example) and by having the monsters somehow parallel the environment, or specific spot, they are situated in. In this way, flawed as it is, the enemy placement becomes a reinforcement of the universe, rather than existing separately. The enemy placement in, specifically, Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin conforms to what I (and some others) like to call the "monsters on shelves" syndrome, which is a way of saying that the creatures are set up to accommodate kleptomaniacal design, thusly giving their positions a "stocked" and faceless appearance. This has, rather naturally (or unnaturally) enough, affected the level design itself. It was with the aforementioned Dawn of Sorrow where this "grind on the go" philosophy really took hold, so that the castle had a more cubicle-by-cubicle and unnecessarily sectioned-up structure. Order of Ecclesia started to slightly break away from the mold, but it can still be used as an example of doing things wrong. For instance, there's a hallway in its Arms Depot that is weirdly split into two "rooms." You exit one side of the hallway, without any transitional arch or whatever, and appear on the left side of the second, and last, part of it. It's clear that this split exists for grinding. One "room" has a Final Knight and a King Skeleton, and the other side has two Sword Poltergeists. Both the game's swamp and forest stages have no transitional sections, either, and yet they, too, are split up into three main and two minor "rooms." Perhaps this is also why grinding in Symphony, though still banal, holds more import than its successors – because it rarely feels convenient.

There is, furthermore, form and function, a topic I touched on in my review of Order of Ecclesia. That is, Symphony of the Night gives its structures definition beyond "platform," so that, within all the absurdities that would never work in real-life, and all the care bestowed upon the graphics, the game is consistent taken on its own and can be accepted as such. Make your way up a tower in the Royal Chapel on rickety scaffolds perched on by ravens; get to the Jump Stone by navigating a course of broken pillars and ruined pedestals for knightly statues; leap across bodies of chilling water via thick chunks of ice that yield in angles to your weight; descend decaying staircases of a mineshaft that break and fall with you on top. In Dawn of Sorrow, you may come upon platforms which are but little golden slabs hovering against a black backdrop; a video game though it is, where plump sacks of money fall from the remains of destroyed candelabras, it still seems queer to see these platforms exist in their most elemental state. To further the point, the same game's first area, a snowy village, is its strongest place out of the dozen or so simply because a lot of its structures are bound to the environment they're in. There are two or three points in Symphony with examples of the platform-platform, yet there's something to be said about how they bob under your feet when you jump on them. It's a funny acknowledgement from the game developers of your, Alucard's, interacting with the platforms' anti-gravity.

All of this is supported by the game's beautiful exoskeleton, whether one is speaking of the immaculate settings or the sprites themselves, pulsing with character and life. There are other 2D games endowed with more "detail" or, now and then, more fluid animation (the Metal Slug series comes to mind), but Symphony is the best looking game I've ever played. Caring for the aesthetic is one thing, but disputing the craftmanship that brought about the aesthetic is something I've never heard, and hope to never hear (for fear of how mocked that person would be, perhaps to the point of suicide). In the series canon of visual evolution, Symphony can be described as a heavy elaboration of Rondo of Blood's pop-Baroque vibe – it's more romanticized, subtler, darker. Beyond Symphony, no Castlevania game has matched the consistency, weight, self-scrutiny, and depth of its visual application. Statues of warriors cap the tips of towers, the insides of which show fragments of the structures' skeletons, abandoned spinning wheels resting in the background. Elsewhere, a single column rises to become the head of a serpent, flanked by reliefs of open-mouthed faces and, on the right, the great, golden, meaty rendering of a lion head welcomes players into the next part of the area. At the very bottom of the castle, strangely festive clothing decks the bones of the deceased, the bodies set up against lolculi, framed by viscous, green brickwork. Within the chambers of a vampiric boss, an extended dining table, chairs, and thick candelabras sit beneath stained-glass exquisitely depicting a holy warrior, and pillars rise up on the sides, stone figures curling around their capitals. Perhaps more than the music, Symphony's décor is its most impeccable feature. It will always look good. Even the few three-dimensional effects, thanks to the Power of the Playstation ™, stand strong in their jaggedness: clouds scoll, lava flows, and windows and buildings shift perspective with a grace that somehow doesn't disrupt the smoothness of the spritework.

I'm not sure whether or not I wish to stress this point over the things that Symphony does right; in any case, take it as you will: Symphony of the Night is a flawed video game, the largest and most obvious of its flaws being the almost shocking lack of difficulty. Certain players have put it to themselves to do "naked" runs of the game, wherein they never equip anything to Alucard's body – or, if they do equip anything, they make sure to have it be low-level. I can kind of salute these people for self-enforcing a limitation in order to glean more from the experience, though I have done the same, and the most it seems to do is stretch out the time it takes for enemies to die. Symphony is in a weird position, where part of what defines it and gives it its charm also detracts. In a way, it was loved by the developers too much for its own good. The game is too giving to its players. The baroque generosity of armor, healing items, statistical-boosters, and the rest has a place in crafting the dense lore of the game – but there's no functional application for it. The sense of empowerment begins to overpower itself, until the mountain of weapons you have stacked up in your inventory blurs together; distinction becomes indistinction on account of overflow. Use the multi-bladed Crissaegrim; or, don't. Who cares, really? Alucard is so powerful, you might as well use anything. All the weapons converge into a single, general device to dice up whatever passive things are unfortunate enough to get in the way.

Could a game with the sheer density of Symphony exist economically? It seems plausible, though it would be difficult. Super Mario Bros. 3, decorated with its one-time level-design "gimmicks," wealth of power-ups, obscure methods and routes, and everything else manages to always command the player's attention. The stages are designed around Mario's physics, the power-ups have their quirks, and the enemies are all they need to be. Its messiness, though, is on a much smaller scale. Whatever the possibilities are for success under such an enormous weight of trinkets, it's hard to not be enamored with the sheer quantity of oddities stuffed into Symphony, the playful maximalism you can feel – almost as if you can see the day a team member came to work and said, "Hey, wouldn't X be cool?" Equipping the Alucart Sword, Shield, and Mail changes Alucard's status on the pause menu to "Alucart," and gives his Luck attribute a hefty boost. If you manage to find some peanuts, you can toss them in the air and press up on the d-pad at the right moment to heal yourself. Attacking with two Heaven Swords at once causes them to perform a special move that harms everything onscreen. If you slice up enemies whose wounds leak blood onto a Muramasa sword, the blade's strength progressively increases. As if to drive the "point" home, you can purchase an object called a Duplicator from the castle's librarian for five-hundred-thousand gold; equipping it allows Alucard to use any perishable item an infinite amount of times. The wastefulness of each post-Symphony title, however, has a less than genuine appeal; whereas the volume in Symphony is retardedly massive to the point of it being heart-breakingly precious, the volume in, say, Dawn of Sorrow is neither Less-is-More or More-is-More -- it's just . . . there. Since the Metrovania mold was considered to be a recipe for money by Konami, the development cycles of the games have contracted. With this in mind, it seems that the best decision would be to strip a new entry down to its essence, rather than trying to shuttle in forced nods to Symphony's goopiness, falling quite short, and wasting valuable time and energy. Give us a single jump, nuanced primary and secondary attacks, perhaps a secondary mechanic (like wall-climbing), and steaming, sexy level design where the enemies are simultaneously at home and ready to take Sir or Madam Vampire Killer out.

The other most often-cited complaint about the game centers around the inverted castle, which is self-explanatory in presentation, but undentifiable, source-wise, in the game's universe. Harmony of Dissonance would later go on to give the basic idea – re-using environments – context within the story, but the alternate castle in Symphony is an anomaly, descending from the heavens as the last-ditch effort of a dark priest. Like the clutter, it should be examined for its positives and negatives. In the most basic and truthful of analyses, it is a stretching out of the game to go along with the design philosophy Igarashi believed the series needed – that people deserved "more" in the games they were paying for. Igarashi may have, and may still, earnestly believe this; it's done more harm than good to Castlevania, but one can at least say that the intentions were, well, "cuter" than other Japanese developers. Kleptomania and padding has become something of a celebrated art form, and its current explosion of popularity could very well be attributed to developers packing bullshit into their games so the player would be occupied with still unlocking things after the last call to return the game for a full-refund expired.

Even with the narrative significance of Harmony's alternate castle, the one in Symphony of the Night continues to hold the most power. If you get to a certain point in Dawn of Sorrow, one of the endings has Agent Alucard lamenting, "If only he had equipped the talisman . . .", which is the game literally telling you what to do after you re-load the file and try again, and it's boring. If you kill Albus in Order of Ecclesia without having gotten all the acquirable glyphs, you get a big, fat GAME OVER, and there's absolutely no question that you've done something "wrong." In Portrait of Ruin, it's established at the beginning of the game that the castle belongs to Dracula, so when you defeat the vampiric sisters, again, there's no question that it's not the very end. There have been a couple of real surprises, like Aria of Sorrow still giving you an ending if you lose to the final boss, wherein Julius Belmont arrives to do battle with a corrupted Soma Cruz – but it seems kind of impossible to ignore all of these barely-secret secrets. Every 2D KCET title since Symphony has felt obliged to have a Beyond-the-End climax, and at this point, both the products and their players have an expectation of such a feature. There's a winking sort of tired self-knowingness, free of doubt or discovery. Harmony is the only post-Symphony title to succeed a little in the area of providing mystery, ironically because the alternate castle isn't a Big Ol' Spoilerz Secret; it unfolds with a quiet queerness alongside the story, complimented by a couple observations from the protagonist, finally exposed during a scene in the clock tower where our revelation is also Juste Belmont's revelation, accordingly reflected in the map splitting into two parts; it's just too bad that the castles are structurally identical, barring a room or two.

One can defeat Richter Belmont in Symphony and be none the wiser. At the least, obliviousness seems a more plausible mental state than if the examples above had been released in 1997, instead. Ideally, perhaps, there would be no encounter with a character at the heart of the castle who nicely gives you glasses to "see beyond evil illusions" – instead, you might find them behind a crumbling wall. The game is already cleverly subtle enough for having a couple of visual features work when flipped upside-down (engravings of heads in the Keep, a "R.I.P." plaque in a boss room). It would be disingenuous to knock off half of a given score for Symphony because of a dislike for inverted castle. On a mechanical level, it is half of the game; on an experiential level – considering that you have gotten every so-called necessary ability by the time you get to it, unless you've been speed-running – it goes by rather quickly. The curious thing about the inverted castle is that it simultaneously shows off the laziness and the wit of the developers. Again, mechanically, it's a literal flip of things (slight changes in environments' hues noted) with some new enemies; experience-wise, it's more than the facts suggest. It's a simply executed re-contextualization of architecture, and the event of interaction follows suit. There are a bevy of "awkward" moments that are interesting precisely because they are awkward, precisely because the game wasn't made to be perfectly flipped over. Inverting Dawn of Sorrow would barely change your perception of the environments – it would work too well, to the point of dumbness, because the game's basic level design is weaker. In Symphony's inverted castle, there's so much that almost doesn't work, or simply doesn't work, so that navigating the geometry has a comparatively foreign and resistance-like feel to it: ceilings that are too close to your head, arches-now-dips that Alucard scoops along, strangely just-out-of reach jumps, periodic bouts of disorientation. Returning to the regular castle after its inverted partner puts it under a new light, where you're viewing rooms from two perspectives, rather than one.

Still, the inverted castle remains less than gorgeous, to put it mildly. One may spend their time listing every itty-bitty positive aspect, like the brilliant, new songs, or how, since there are no locks and keys preventing progress, the castle is granted an indifferent, more "adventure for the sake of adventure" atmosphere. But then there're the inevitable counterpoints, like how "Final Tocatta" (amazing) really does seem to play everywhere, and how, well, yes, there are no obstructions, though a whole hell of a lot more could've been done to make the process of exploration have a fuller taste of struggle or wonder. Given time, the inverted castle could've flourished in spite of being an add-on; as it is, barely any forces were actively pressed upon its level design besides a few rooms with protagonist-detecting spike mechanisms. How interesting it might've been to have seen the phantom-like insubstantiality of the castle's explanation be brought into its structure – perhaps with areas that weren't fully "formed" (as Dracula's castle has been characterized as a so-called creature of chaos, why shouldn't that anthopormorphization be reflected in a newly-formed duplicate? Let the architecture recognize the building's state of mind), or places that had been brought into a state of ruin. Perhaps rooms that, in addition to being inverted, were physically warped to give them a slight resemblance to the interior of a nautilus shell. I wonder what programming nightmares these ideas, and others, would've presented to the developers.

Included in the definition of a so-called Metrovania is the introduction of new abilities that, when used, allow the player to access new areas. We'll ignore just how vague that description is (as has been established, "Metrovania" is convenient nonsense), and instead focus on how people, both developers and consumers, appear to believe that the skills gained in a post-Symphony title are interesting simply by virtue of their newness. This is incorrect. I can only guess that these souls play the games and feel a brief, obsessive-compulsive sense of relief when they get the double jump, backtrack, and jump over the one ledge that's an inch above a normal jump (then, of course, it's still a primarily single-jump area, but they proceed to double jump everywhere simply because they can). For these people, it could be the video game equivalent of adjusting a friend's hat after twenty minutes of respectfully saying nothing. It's a three-second, mental sigh of petty satisfaction after whatever niggling thing has been put into place. If there is anything note-worthy that can be said of Symphony's distribution of abilities and their application, it's that a few hold greater visible potential than the GBA or DS offerings (Alucard's wolf form, for example, and the nuances of its physics), that they tend to have a bit more context in relation to who Alucard is, and because searching for the next fresh access point never feels as mechanical as it currently does. This could just be because it was Konami's first attempt – they have since gotten "better," made the games more streamlined (but the castles feel dinkier and dinkier).

In light of this, the actual means of progressing in Symphony become clutter of the dullest kind, the same way the treasures in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker do. In Wind Waker, there's a bunch of weird overlapping going on. You get the rope with a latch on the end, and the dungeon proceeds to suddenly give you a bunch of "puzzles" with which to conveniently try out your new toy. Once you've left that dungeon, the rope is pushed to the wayside. It might appear once or twice in a subsequent dungeon, but each time it does, it's a developer leaning back in their chair and saying, "Oh, right – there's that . . . rope thingy, isn't there? Takahashi! I need you to put in a latch or two for that rope thing, all right?" Later, the game gives you the hookshot, which is a slightly better rope, introduced because That's Zelda ™, and millions of fans would mail Nintendo death threats and accusations of homosexuality if a new Zelda didn't have the "triumphant return of the classic hookshot." There is also the bow, which overrules the boomerang – or the camera, which overrules the telescope. Barely anything worthwhile is done with the items themselves. It's supposed to be a revelation once you can cross gaps by grappling and swinging on protrusions from above, or once you can fan far-off mechanisms with an enormous leaf, but it always comes back to the fact that the game is merely giving you Things To Do, cute instances of opening the menu, equipping a different item, and using it to bypass a puzzle which actually isn't a puzzle. The proliferation of doubles, meant to contrive a feeling of progress, is a needless complication. Wind Waker's treasures are not treasures: they are only keys wearing makeup.

And it's kind of the same with Symphony's skill-set. You get the double jump – and then you get the form of the bat – and then you get the Gravity Boots. You get the form of mist – then, the extended form of mist – and then, the Power of Gas (not the actual name, but funny). The mist is needed so you can go through a grate in the library. Beyond the gate is the relic that allows you to turn into a bat. Once you are a bat, you need to find a relic that lets you use echolocation. This is used in one very dark room in the Catacombs. Et-cetera, et-cetera. The abilities are both undeveloped and underutilized. There's nothing exactly fun about water ceasing to hurt you, or getting a jewel that lets you pass through blue-outlined doors. Konami needs to grasp this, because they're still doing it. They're still giving us enormous jumps or flying spells, and The Kids are continuing to rub their hands together when they realize they'll soon be able to double jump over a previously impassable structure. Again, abilities for progress are not inherently good – it is what is done with them that matters. Castlevania games are being made with a team writing down a list of skills to have in a game probably before the game has even begun to get made, so that, down the line, someone can glance at the list and put a couple tiny tunnels in a couple places for players to access, via transforming into a small animal. Symphony's Gravity Boots, relics that let Alucard jump a hundred feet into the air, are potentially valid. Where are the vast towers that scrape the sky, with aerial enemies along the way, forcing you to do combat and maneuver around the architecture? Like other things, the Gravity Boots allow an ability with particular physics, but plain, sparse application.

The general mechanics, taken on their own, anyway, are great. Dawn of Sorrow's Soma was a perfection of the smooth, devilishly slick strain of castle-spelunker. Alucard, as the model's progenitor, comes across as the most intriguing to handle from his quirks. When he falls from a ledge and the player performs a jump acting as the double jump, it is a stunted version. Jump-kicking objects and enemies requires greater precision. If you are in water, shape-shifting into a wolf and back causes you to move upwards. Leap once, transform into bat, wolf, or mist, revert, and you'll be able to jump-kick. Casting spells and utilizing certain moves require Street Fighter-esque d-pad and button combinations. I'm honestly surprised that no hacks of the game exist which exploit Alucard's move-set in conjunction with reworked level design, similar to what's been done with Super Metroid, notable projects being Eris and Redesign (make sure to play the former before you die).

As a last thing, there is, of course, the sound: the music, praised for its "rock" (there are only three rock songs) and chastised for its "bombast" (if you'll lend a moment, please look at the game you're playing) The score could be seen as Michiru Yamane's most important contribution to the series, not because it's inarguably her best, but because it was where she put down all of the basic kinds of ideas that she would spend the rest of her efforts building upon, or stripping down, in years to come. Lament of Innocence represents the, so far, ultimate maturation of those ideas (and maybe it will stay that way, now that she's resigned from composing for Castlevania), yet Symphony's soundtrack remains, ever-present, as a sort of perfectly imperfect origin. It's the artifact of Yamane making her name with a resourceful eclecticism and sharp ear for harmonics that knew what to do, while outwitting listeners' expectations. And the voice acting really is all it needs to be – cheekily theatrical, self-important, memorable lines – despite the weird, ribbing legacy it's secured as supposedly being an offense on par with giving god a Cleveland Steamer, and despite the objectively terrible syllabic emphasis and intonation of the Succubus' voice-actor. It seems that a legion of lolling Internet goons mistook the circuitous Ye Olde English of the script for Engrish, and managed to yuck up an infectious storm concerning things like Alucard saying, "Think you I would forget such a thing?" The real problems are the disconnect between the melodrama of the acting and the mostly static, small sprites, and that there are awkward gaps separating where one character's dialogue ends and another's begins.

The Chapel's earliest visitors might remember a sprawling, twenty-plus-paged write-up I did for Symphony of the Night, later taken down by personal request when I realized it was a malformed byproduct of excitement for reviews on the website Insert Credit, and an inability to write anything that wouldn't make me blush two weeks down the line. If there is anything good that can be said of it, it is that it was written with earnest intentions. Several weeks ago, my copy of the game vanished: there one day, gone the next, nothing else missing. If this had happened four years ago, when I was writing my opus of meandering bullshit for, what was then, my Favorite Game Ever, it might've been a source for distress or irritation. Today, its disappearance is a forgettable mystery; I only remember it because I am writing this. It has gotten to be that my closeness eventually served to distance me from the game. I know it so well that I don't really need to play it anymore, and I've held it so high for so long that my arms are tired, anyway. Regardless, this dumb little relationship I've got with a video game about Dracula's anemic son killing skeletons with a sword named after a fictitious mountain range remains stuck in my mind, a dumb little relationship that might compel me to reword the stuff of this article for a new version, four years from now. I am not going to end by saying that Symphony of the Night is the best Castlevania game. It might be, and it might not, though that isn't the point. The point is that, on the floor, I've stacks of unfinished drawings, many sketched on the backs of receipts, for rooms in a Castlevania that doesn't exist. A weird, quiet obsession has been caused, realized through various methods, always pointing back to an identical source. It would be good to recognize not what is The Best, but what has been done right, and what more can be done. Even if that consciousness can't birth any real change, we can lie that it's almost enough to hope that, one day, Castlevania can look at 1997 not at an almost-equal-but-not-quite eye-level, but from so far up a point that the past is a glimmering speck.

Diplo won't be journeying back to 1792, and the Transylvanian countryside of Romania, any time soon.