Best and worst Castlevania games IYO?

[DasPhillipBrau]

If we're going by the different styles, this is how it is:

Classic: Best: Super Castlevania IV, Rondo of Blood
Worst: Legends

Metroidvania: Best: Symphony, Ecclessia, Sorrow
Worst: Circle, Harmony (though they are still very good)

3D: Best: Lament of Innocence
Worst: Castlevania 64, Lords of Shadow 2.

I only enjoyed the Metriodvania style games, and you named my best and worst in order.

I actually just replayed Circle and Harmony, and they are really good games still, especially for being portable. Harmony is easily the worst MV style game though. I think they took the criticism from Circle (that it wasn't enough like Symphony) and did their best to make it look like Symphony, while failing on every other level. I still had fun beating it last week, but of the 7 games I've played, still the weakest.

I honestly don't know why some people didn't liked CotM, the DSS system added an incredible amount of depth, the music was great (though I did disliked the fact that there was only 1 song for like 3 areas) and the gameplay was challenging without being impossible.

HoD on the other side...man, seriously, the game is just terrible.
I think my biggest issue with it would be the bosses, how none of them feels rewarding at all, they just thought that adding like 100 bosses would make things great.
I mean, there are only like 3 bosses who give you a progression item/skill in the entire game, and there are 3 skills.
The fights themselves were also horrible, the bosses had an incredibly high amount of HP so the only way you could beat them in a reasonable amount of time was using the spellbooks, which were completely unbalanced and took a lot of the fun away.
Also, since drops were so freaking high (I had like 25 potions from drops alone, and even at level 50 with 500 health you could heal yourself completely with 4, and they were super cheap at the merchant, plus the fact that there were no limit for them, you could literally have 100 potions at a time.
So bossfights were simply "use the spells, hit when you have no mana, use as many potions as you want if you get hit and wait for the monster to die".
Did I mentioned that there were bosses who didn't even do anything? The legion corpse boss simply STANDS in the middle of the room while you whip it, the only attack it has is to drop some blops that crawl at you at a ridiculously slow speed and who died in 1 hit.

The game was just so terribly done, I'm amazed to see it got so many positive reviews.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Symphony of the Night is my favorite though Aria of Sorrow is a very close second. It's not number one because I never owned it and have yet to fix that...soon...I do own SotN on the PSX and have completed it up to...I wanna say 198.7% or so. I need to play through it again soon...it's huge, it looks great compared to other PSX games, it has a great soundtrack and it has a million enemies to fight and, murder.

The Castlevania game I loath more so than any other is Lords of Shadow. Say what you want about the N64 Castlevania games, at least those still kind of felt Castlevania-ish. Lords of Shadow was trying to be God of War and Shadow of the Colossus. Dante's Inferno was a better Castlevania than Lords of Shadow I'd say (I actually really liked Dante's Inferno). I have no plans to touch LoS2.

Mirror of Fate was the Castlevania title that most disappointed me. It looked like a return to form even though it took place in the LoS universe. It was definitely better than the first Lords of Shadow but the combat is still really slow and clunky. I also noticed MoF was still trying to focus on cinematics and style more than I like. It wasn't the worst Castlevania I've played and indeed, I would play that again before Castlevania 64 but it was just really disappointing...the 3DS needs its own Dawn of Sorrow, Order of Ecclesia, Harmony of Dissonance, etc...not that grungy Lords of Shadow garbage...

one last thing: I just wanted to mention Curse of Darkness on the PS2/Xbox as being a Castlevania game I really, REALLY enjoyed and while it isn't a favorite-favorite, I can't help but feel like it's overlooked more often than given praise. It felt like a home version of Aria of Sorrow, what with the leveling up, familiar and, equipment mechanics. I've never played Lament of Innocence though so maybe that one just blows Curse of Darkness out of the water...I dunno...

 

[ProtosOmega]

I shall split this into 2D and 3D categories.

Best 2D: Super Castlevania 4
Best 3D: Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2

Worst 2D: Castlevania Harmony of Despair
Worst 3D: Castlevania Lords of Shadow (The game really shouldn't have had a fixed camera. There was no excuse)

 

[Signa]

If we're going by the different styles, this is how it is:

Classic: Best: Super Castlevania IV, Rondo of Blood
Worst: Legends

Metroidvania: Best: Symphony, Ecclessia, Sorrow
Worst: Circle, Harmony (though they are still very good)

3D: Best: Lament of Innocence
Worst: Castlevania 64, Lords of Shadow 2.

I only enjoyed the Metriodvania style games, and you named my best and worst in order.

I actually just replayed Circle and Harmony, and they are really good games still, especially for being portable. Harmony is easily the worst MV style game though. I think they took the criticism from Circle (that it wasn't enough like Symphony) and did their best to make it look like Symphony, while failing on every other level. I still had fun beating it last week, but of the 7 games I've played, still the weakest.

I honestly don't know why some people didn't liked CotM, the DSS system added an incredible amount of depth, the music was great (though I did disliked the fact that there was only 1 song for like 3 areas) and the gameplay was challenging without being impossible.

Holy shit was the music bad in HoD. It sounded like they took SotN music and played it through a kazoo.

 

[DasPhillipBrau]

Symphony of the Night is my favorite though Aria of Sorrow is a very close second. It's not number one because I never owned it and have yet to fix that...soon...I do own SotN on the PSX and have completed it up to...I wanna say 198.7% or so. I need to play through it again soon...it's huge, it looks great compared to other PSX games, it has a great soundtrack and it has a million enemies to fight and, murder.


one last thing: I just wanted to mention Curse of Darkness on the PS2/Xbox as being a Castlevania game I really, REALLY enjoyed and while it isn't a favorite-favorite, I can't help but feel like it's overlooked more often than given praise. It felt like a home version of Aria of Sorrow, what with the leveling up, familiar and, equipment mechanics. I've never played Lament of Innocence though so maybe that one just blows Curse of Darkness out of the water...I dunno...

I personally hated CoD because of the terrible, TERRIBLE animations. Hector's running animation was like when your physical education teacher told you to touch your knees while running

If we're going by the different styles, this is how it is:

Classic: Best: Super Castlevania IV, Rondo of Blood
Worst: Legends

Metroidvania: Best: Symphony, Ecclessia, Sorrow
Worst: Circle, Harmony (though they are still very good)

3D: Best: Lament of Innocence
Worst: Castlevania 64, Lords of Shadow 2.

I only enjoyed the Metriodvania style games, and you named my best and worst in order.

I actually just replayed Circle and Harmony, and they are really good games still, especially for being portable. Harmony is easily the worst MV style game though. I think they took the criticism from Circle (that it wasn't enough like Symphony) and did their best to make it look like Symphony, while failing on every other level. I still had fun beating it last week, but of the 7 games I've played, still the weakest.

I honestly don't know why some people didn't liked CotM, the DSS system added an incredible amount of depth, the music was great (though I did disliked the fact that there was only 1 song for like 3 areas) and the gameplay was challenging without being impossible.

Holy shit was the music bad in HoD. It sounded like they took SotN music and played it through a kazoo.

That's because HoD had to use a sound quality that was not natively supported by the GBA in order to keep the SOTN-like visuals.

But to me it goes even further, it's not just the quality, but the songs themselves, they were just bad.
The name "dissonance" is very fitting in that part.

 

[Atmos Duality]

-Order of Ecclesia-

It combines elements from the classic Castlevania titles and "Metroidvania" titles, which I adore.
The music is pretty great. The backgrounds and environments are excellent.

The combat is very very good.
Most enemy attacks hit very hard in comparison to other Metroidvania titles.
The Glyph system allows for a huge variety of attack combinations. (including the usual gamebreakers, but finding those is half the fun)

Story is the usual weak fare, but it's not exactly facing strong competition.

 

[Ultress]

My favorite is Aria of Sorrow with Portrait of Ruin a close second. Aria has the better art style,a great story(for a Castlevania game)and the soul system is a really great way to implement movement and attack upgrades in a more natural way.Ruin has the excellent partner system,some cool mini areas and some of my favorite tracks in the series.


My least favorite would defiantly be Simon's Quest for basically all the issues egoraptor brings up. Plus I had to have a guide in my lap at all times and I really should have to. Circle of the Moon had the same problem of being vague about where to go and I didn't really like that one either.

 

[the_great_cessation]

Based on my extremely limited experience with the series, my favorite would have to be Circle of the Moon followed by Castlevania IV.

My least favorite is ether Lords of Shadow or Mirror of Fate as I found them both to be boring and sterile.

With that said though, I've never played the DS titles, the original trilogy, or Rondo of Blood and am only familiar with Symphony of the Night in passing (I've played it drunkenly a few times at a friend's house but I have never spent an extended amount of time with it)...so my opinion isn't necessarily an educated one.

 

[R2Ian]

The Sorrow series is great. Playing through both games on my DS and unlocking a ring or some such was quite a trip.

Did anyone actually enjoy Harmony of Despair? I certainly did -- all those characters! The reorchestrated music! -- though I never got to play with more than one teammate.

And Super Castlevania IV is immortal in my mind -- by music alone, really.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I honestly don't know why some people didn't liked CotM, the DSS system added an incredible amount of depth, the music was great (though I did disliked the fact that there was only 1 song for like 3 areas) and the gameplay was challenging without being impossible.

Because of the fact you couldn't see a damn thing in the game. The art style was pretty dark to begin with and playing it with a non-backlit GBA (which was standard when it was first released) made things a LOT more irritating then they needed to be.

 

[PurplePonyArcade]

Sad to hear. I really like Harmony of Dissonance all around for being one of my favorite portable Castlevania games and for the character's movement being so fast. Even the games in the series I like more turn me off movement wise simply because that game exists.

 

[PurplePonyArcade]

For me the best so far would be Order Of Ecclesia. Such a full and wonderful game that has somehow stayed ripe to this day with massive amounts of content, fair challenge and a protagonist who seems like a tired archetype but really does grow on me and appear tragic in a way, even if a bit unbalanced for what appears to be a mere human. As far as the older linear style my favourite is the PSP remake of Rondo Of Blood, Dracula X Chronicles.
The worst is for me that I have played so far is Lords of Shadow and I want to point out, as a wiser person than me said, Lords Of Shadow is not a bad game its just not a good Castlevania game. Though this all comes with the qualifier that I have no played as many games in the series as I would like to yet. I have Judgement and want to know if its a surprisingly good hidden gem that touches my fighting game obsessed heart in an unthinkable way or amusingly bad enough to make me laugh and enjoy it for its awfulness before going to play a much better fighting game or Castlevania game. However I can pass neither judgement upon Judgement at the moment since my Wii does not work. I have also been making attempts to grab hold of a copy of Castlevania 64 to have a new bad game to play with but have yet to be able to get a copy.

 

[go-10]

my favorites are Symphony of the Night and Order of Ecclesia. Both had protagonist that looked cool and the story while simple served its purpose very well.

Now for the worst in the series, for me hands down it has to be Simon's Quest. I had no idea how the hell to play that game and since I didn't know English I could never progress in the story.
Lords of Shadow 1 and 2 and the one for 3DS, I've tried them all and none of them really held my interest. The ones for console felt like God of War but somehow worst and WAY too long. The one for 3DS was just boring. I'm really glad the LoS "saga" is done and over with, although I doubt they'll make another Igavania anytime soon now so I'm happily anticipating Bloodstained

 

[deleted+75193]

DELETED

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I'm not going to list any worsts, because Catlevania games that are just objectively bad are ones I avoid like the plague.

For metroidvania style Dawn of Sorrow is without a doubt the best, and even Aria is slightly better than Symphony of the Night. Why? Introduction of swords with overhead arcs. Especially with as many flying enemies as there are in Castlevania titles. The soul system is also much better in Dawn when compared to Aria.

For classic style Castlevania games Super Castlevania IV is the hands down best. It controls so fluid, so right, and the multi-direction whip ability is perfect. There is nothing one can say is really bad about that game.