racketboy.com

Luke wrote:Wow. Super Castlevania IV is one my favorite games for the snes.

As it should be, it's a great game. Honestly, I don't think any of his complaints have any validity whatsoever. In fact, I think his whole post borders on insanity, but hey, it's his opinion. Not only does he underrate Super Castlevania IV, but he seriously overrates Rhonda, Bloodlines, and the original Castlevania.

But hey, Symphony of the Night puts them all to shame IMO

To each his own

I've seen similar complaints about Castlevania IV from big Castlevania fans, I don't think it's insane at all. IV whip certainly makes it the easiest Castlevania, which is a turn off to some people.

Violent By Design wrote: IV whip certainly makes it the easiest Castlevania, which is a turn off to some people.

What what?

In the later stages regular enemies take a baker's dozen of whips to defeat. "Easiest Castlevania" my foot. And if you aren't Johnny on the spot with your special weapon, you are usually screwed.

CV4 is fun, but easily the least elegantly designed of the classic console games. The directional whip renders the sub weapons pretty useless, when they were invaluable in the others.

CV1, CV3, Rondo, and Bloodlines were all much more well crafted and tightly put together.

Anarchy Reigns - PS3



Over all rather a disappointment. The combat mechanics seem very focused for one on one fighting. You don't have many attacks that are capable of hitting multiple enemies, your grab doesn't do much damage so it's only really useful for breaking an opponents guard, etc etc. Despite this though the story mode has you fighting large groups of whelps 90% of the time. Even the story missions only have you doing a one on one fight about 2/3rds of the time.

And that's another thing. It's all mission based, but you have to unlock the missions by getting a certain amount of points in each stage. You unlock them in opposing order. Free mission, then story mission, rinse and repeat. So you have to grind out points by replaying the free missions or killing loose enemies through the area in order to unlock the story missions which are the actual fun part of the game where as the free missions are just about universally boring and repetitive. So in the end it just feels like artificially padding out the games length in the worst way possible.

AppleQueso wrote: Bloodlines..

Bloodlines still feels like Super Contra with a whip to me. All action, no adventure.

Luke wrote:

Violent By Design wrote: IV whip certainly makes it the easiest Castlevania, which is a turn off to some people.

What what?

In the later stages regular enemies take a baker's dozen of whips to defeat. "Easiest Castlevania" my foot. And if you aren't Johnny on the spot with your special weapon, you are usually screwed.

I don't remember any regular enemy that took more than four hits. Most took two or three. That's also fewer than many enemies in later stages of other classic Castlevanias.

I never needed to, or cared to use any of the sub-weapons. They were mostly useless.

Luke wrote:

AppleQueso wrote: Bloodlines..

Bloodlines still feels like Super Contra with a whip to me. All action, no adventure.

Multiple paths!

... think it had them?

I sure do love Super CV IV's music and the sound though, might have to replay that one soon.

Thought Id start my year with a classic and a genre that I need to explore more.

1. 1942 (PS3)

Its a port of the arcade version. I'm horrible at shmups and had to credit feed a lot to finish it.

Pierrot, didn't you also not like Earthbound? Dang. I thought Super Castlevania IV was good too. We might have to revoke your SNES card soon

Oh yeah, first game beaten in 2014.

1. *NEW* Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon - Gamecube (January 4)

Still on my Tom Clancy game kick for at least another game (and yes I just got Ghost Recon 2). I thought I wasn't gonna like it much when they put a big focus on issuing commands and using maps and stuff, but then I realized the Rainbow Six series does this too! I got used to it really fast, and I liked unlocking specialists after every mission that had much better stats than the people you start with. A wide variety of weapons and abilities as well as different combat areas and weather conditions. Length is perfect too. This was a good game.