Some time ago, one of my first Blitzes in fact, I was gushing about what a great game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was. Since that time, the laptop I was playing my burned copy on broke down, and I hadn’t played it since. The burned CD wouldn’t play on my PS2, so I had to turn to the eBay. If you’re looking for this game, try emulating a PS1 first. The game is fairly rare, and copies go for anywhere between $50 and $100. Unless you suddenly have some expendible income (or love the game enough to decide its worth paying that much for it) it’s probably easier to download a disc image of the game, burn it, and play it with a downloaded emulator or your modded PS1.

Looking past the creepy monster with the pretty lady lure for a minute, the first time you notice the eye in the background of this level is pretty cool feeling.

The point is that over a year ago, I named this game as probably my favorite of all time, and now playing it again, I’m happy to say it still is. Also, a year on I can better explain some of the finer points of the game.

This image might be safe for work, but your co-workers might think you’re creepy. This is the Succubus, one of the bosses in the game. She’s based of the mythical demon that would entice men to have sex with her, which probably had some sort of awful downside that I’m not seeing.

One of the best aspects is that it’s got RPG elements in a side scrolling action game, but even by RPG standards, it has remarkable depth. For example, I recently spent about half an hour in the catacombs below the castle. Wait, no. Actually it was above the castle, since this was in the Inverted Castle. See, once you earn learn enough abilities to beat the castle and free the possessed Belmont, you can enter an upside down version of the castle with much harder enemies and ultimately, Dracula. From then on, you go back and forth between the  two castles as you need to. I digress.

The Dark Octopus may look like a living pizza with tentacles, but it sprays blood like nobodies business when you slash at it.

I was in the catacombs above the castle and I spent about a half hour killing dark octopuses (dark octopi?). My purpose was threefold. First, I was leveling up my character. Second, I was leveling up my familiar, a little ghost that follows me around and sucks energy from bad guys. Third, and coolest, I was leveling up my sword, the Murumasa or something. This particular sword is a vampire’s sword, apt for your son of Dracula character in the game. When you cut enemies with this sword, if they bleed and it lands on you it revives your health (you can actually do this with any sword, but it requires the use of a magic spell, naturally, at the expense of magic points). The really cool part though, is that the sword itself levels up, and the more you use it, the more powerful it becomes. Now, this makes little sense, since I would think the more you use a sword, the more dull it would become. But I doubt a vampire is revived by blood that lands on his pants either, so we’ll take it with a grain of salt. Nontheless, in games where your concerned with leveling, it sometimes feels like a chore, but due to the action nature of this game, it rarely feels tedious.

Last time I talked about this game, I showed off the boss Beezelbub. This time, it’s the guy who is currently kicking the shit out of me, Galamoth.

Now, if your like me, you’re thinking “why the hell is that dinosaur walking on his hind legs, wearing golden armour and swinging around a magic rod that shoots lightning at you?” Actually, there’s a pretty good answer. Galamoth was originally the main villain in a little game called Kid Dracula, also by Konami.

If it wasn’t obvious enough that these two games are related, here’s Kid Dracula’s version of the iconic “Castlevania stairs to the last boss’ room.”

Seems like these two have met before. So when the main character of Symphony of the Night was a little kid (probably 50 or 60 as far as half-vampires age), he had a cute little adventure and fought a much younger and cuter Galamoth. Now he’s back for revenge. That’s probably why he’s mopping the floor with me. And to bring it all full circle, this is why I was in the inverted catacombs, killing dark octopi. And that’s why I’m going back there right now.