Castlevania

[ANImaniac89]

My Favorites are the Mertoidvania style ones, with the DS ones being the best.
The old school kind are good but I could simply never get into them.

I hated Lords of Shadows and the co-op thing on XBLA

 

[Krion_Vark]

Lords of Shadow is the only Castlevania I have played sadly. Not really sadly I loved the game. But I do want to pick up other ones and play through those.

 

[go-10]

Order of Ecclesia, it composes both styles into a single game also the game's hard as hell at first not to mention Shanoa has a cool character design.

Lords of Shadow would've been better if it was the same game, graphics and story, BUT in 2D

On that note does anybody else think that Castlevania could learn a lot from the recent Bloodrayne Betrayal?

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

The new metriod style. Lots of reasons but the biggest one? NO FALLING INTO BOTTOMLESS PITS AFTER HITTING MEDUSA HEADS!!!!!

 

[Sabrestar]

I'm fond of virtually all of them, for varying reasons. I love hard 2D platformers, and it's hard to get much more classic than old-school Castlevania. I will reserve special appreciation for IV, because of the variety packed in to it (I still think it's one of the showcase SNES titles), for the unusual but effective design choices especially in the music (largely quiet, atmospheric pieces rather than the more usual goth-rock, but it fits so incredibly well), and for historical purposes (Love games by Treasure? This is one. Their first big one, I think).
Perhaps the perfect expression of the Castlevania sidescroller, though, is Rondo of Blood (aka Dracula X Duo, NOT the SNES version). Play it on the Wii Virtual Console if you've never tried it. Warning though, Maria is hugely overpowered.

Metroidvanias are probably my favourite sort of game overall; my wife and I still play through Symphony of the Night on occasion. I've liked all the GBA and DS iterations (though I wasn't much impressed by Harmony of Dissonance), with a special like for Circle of the Moon and its massive series fanservice. Yes, I know it's an early GBA game and the visuals are rough if you're not playing on a big screen GBA Player, but really it's all about the music. Almost all the soundtrack of CotM is made up of remixes from old games, some rather obscure (even from the Genesis Bloodlines!).

And really, Castlevania is all about the music. There might not be any game series where the music is so consistently high-quality. Fans can name so many quality tunes that so often get remixed throughout the series: Vampire Killer, Bloody Tears, Beginning, Simon's Theme, Blood Relations, Wicked Child... Castlevania is perhaps the soundtrack perfection of classic videogames.

I can't call out a favourite. IV, III, Symphony, Rondo are all up there. There are few I don't really care for, though Harmony of Dissonance and Adventure I (the first GB game) are among the less impressive. I reserve judgment on 64, because I never got to play it with a proper working memory card. Was not impressed with the first PS2 game and haven't touched the 3D versions since, but that's not a Castlevania thing: I'm just a 2D gamer in general.

 

[Gazzoid]

Symphony of the Night! One word: classic! That was the first PlayStation game I ever played. I'm also a proud owner of the Collector's Edition, which cost me around £85 off eBay! Not to mention I imported the soundtrack too.

 

[Kotaro]

I love the Metroidvania games. I'd say that the best ones (imo) are:
Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Aria of Sorrow (GBA)
Symphony of the Night (PSX)

Unfortunately, since you started with Dawn of Sorrow, Aria's plot twist has already been spoiled. Well, the game is still good (if you like Dawn, Aria is pretty much the same, but with better level design, more interesting enemy placement, more variety to the bosses, and a far less stupid story).
Order of Ecclesia is the closest that the series has ever gotten to perfection. Simply sublime. Starts off a bit formulaic, but it gets really good really quickly.
Of course, people have already gushed a lot about Symphony, including our own Yahtzee.

 

[The Heavy Metal Nerd]

Aria of Sorrow. Hands down. That game is EASILY one of my top 5 games of all time.

In fact, after playing it so many times, it spoiled me to the point where I couldn't even stomach any of the OTHER Castlevania games. Not even DAWN of Sorrow. >.>

 

[Drake666]

Symphony of the Night. It's the greatest. Shadow Complex is phenomenal as well. Same type of gameplay.

Shadow Complex was amazing ! The gameplay was perfect, the story ok and I really liked looking around for all the hidden object

 

[Jazoni89]

Castlevania 64 and Frankenstein with a Chainsaw chasing you through a maze... that was pretty freakin epic. Otherwise the game wasn't so great.

I personally loved Lords of Shadow. One of the view games I paid full price for and then kept. High quality graphics, voice acting, gameplay and length. And that twist ending... holy shit, brilliant.

Surprisingly ignored by the gaming community, despite being better then 80% of the other brawlers out there, and getting high scores from reviewers. Wierd. Shame cause you're not doing yourself any favours by NOT playing it, that's for sure.

I agree

God damn is that game good. I had low expectations of it when I first played it, but then it went totally beyond that, and then some.

There's not a lot of games this gen that I can say passed my expectations like Lords of Shadow did.

 

[Weslebear]

My favourites in order would be:

-Dawn of Sorrow, first one I played and has a special place in my heart

-Order of Ecclesia, harder than the other DS ones and really mixes it up

-Castlevania, yep the first one. Gotta love that challenge and is the only non metroidvania style one that I like

-Portrait of Ruin, not bad but nothing on the other DS ones

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

The Metroidvanias. Love all seven of them. Not that I don't like the old-school ones but they haven't aged well, often resorting to cheap kills and a lack of continues to extend a short play time.

Portrait of Ruin is probably my favorite of those, and Castlevania 3 my favorite linear one.

 

[Kaland]

I love both metroidvania and classicvania about equally. My favourites are:
Order of Ecclesia, Aria of Sorrow, Rondo of Blood and Castlevania 3.