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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on Xbox LIVE Arcade

Published May 10, 2007

Konami's enormously popular vampire-slaying action franchise Castlevania has a rich, storied lineage. The Belmont family line have fought their way through over twenty Castlevania games on every possible home gaming platform to hit the market since the eighties. Casual gamers and hardcore Van Helsing-wannabes alike are unanimous in their agreement that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the pinnacle of the series. It represents both a daring dedication to quality 2-D gaming in the midst of the 3-D craze, and a commitment to the evolution of the franchise.

Welcome to Castlevania.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night descends from Castlevania (released initially in Japan as Akumajo Dracula or Demon Castle Dracula) which made its way to North American shores in 1986, and firmly occupied just about every gamer's NES console for a lengthy span. The game, a side-scrolling platform-style action game with a gothic horror theme and a whip-wielding hero named Simon Belmont, departed radically from the era's more usual lighter gaming themes and friendly tones.

Simon Belmont's dour, stoic march through dark, moonlit graveyards slaying legions of undead on a hell-bent quest to take down Count Dracula himself, developed a mass following of fans rivaling Dracula's endless minions. The game inspired a number of sequels, including a few awkward stabs into 3-D action on various platforms. The game's arrival on Sony's Playstation as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 1997 is regarded by fans and critics as one of the most finely polished, balanced, tweaked and perfected evolutions of the game, with superior graphics, music, writing, and above all, gameplay.

The skeletons don't look friendly.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a side-scrolling combat game in which you battle your way to a final fight with the lord of the undead himself. Along the way, you fight through Gothic monsters, evil priests, and other enemies. Platform gameplay is the standard running, jumping, and attacking, but a new backwards dash action has been added to the skillset. This allows the player to suddenly burst away from an opponent in the midst of a close-range melee, and can even be used to attack faster and more furiously than normal, by cutting down the time it takes the player to strike.

Previous incarnations of Castlevania were completely linear in structure—you played through level by level on a soldierly plod to the end. Symphony was the first title in the series to grant the player a much larger scope of freedom. The massive castle and its environs are free (to a degree) for the player to explore, and, like Resident Evil, reward the intrepid and clever player for their explorations. You strike out from a central hub in the castle with no means of direction or orientation, at times, the path of least resistance is your only guide. This is because Richter, the hero you played during the opening round, has succumbed to evil, taken over the castle, and reshuffled it to confuse and frustrate invaders.

The heart looks enticing.

Symphony differs from its predecessors by recasting the main character. The player controls Alucard, son of Dracula himself, imbued with special abilities and powers beyond your mortal predecessors, capable of acquiring magical familiars such as demons and bats who will lend you aid.

Character designer Ayami Kojima changed the look and feel of the main character from the Robocop-stomping, whipcracking leather-armor-clad killing machine of Belmont and his kin, to an Alucard favoring Victorian-style costumes. Gone are the trademark whip and armor, and in its place, you get ruffled shirts, high collars, breeches, buckled boots, and the deadly attacks of rapiers and daggers.

Alucard is a stylish character.

While the rest of the game development world struggled to build a better Tomb Raider, the team behind Symphony realized the tools at their disposal could instead be used to take a still viable and cherished genre, and evolve it visually to a level never before seen. Roiling storm clouds scroll to the horizon, and there are tremendous weather effects. Even at the very beginning, we are cleverly shown that the initial battle of the game is a flashback. The screen itself fades to cracked, worn sepia and drifts away from the player's view—an old photograph of a bygone day.

When Symphony was reincarnated for Xbox 360™, this meant it was destined for wide-screen, high-definition environments that didn't exist a decade ago. The game runs with a specially designed anti-aliasing feature that smoothes the pixelization of a console fully two generations old, and gives the visual field a blended, oil-painting feel. Michiru Yamane's music for the game is still considered to be one of the best video game soundtracks ever composed, and its broad variance of styles serves as a powerful storytelling tool that establishes mood just as effectively as the visuals or setting. The soundtrack is faithfully reproduced in the new version of this game.

Dark enough for you?

All of the graphical, gameplay, and musical elements of this famous and cherished Gothic horror action icon are present in the Xbox LIVE® version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It should be apparent in that the game well exceeds the 50MB download size limitation to which previous Arcade titles were subject. Nothing has been spared to bring this game firmly back into the spotlight, and players need only press the green A button a few times to bring it home to their hard drives.

Twelve achievements worth between 5 (defeat 10 enemies without getting hit) and 45 (Belmont's Revenge—finish the full game as Richter) are also ready to pad out your Gamerscore with 200 points. But once you immerse yourself in this action classic, your score will be of little concern, as you battle the puzzles, mazes, and the undead that inhabit Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Download it tonight.

Article by Xbox Addict