castlevania: symphony of the night

I remember when this first came out a few years ago, and that I wasn’t too excited about it. I eventually picked it up during a sale, and even then, it took a while before I finally really played it with a friend over, and that’s when this game truly shines. Last night I played some more with a friend over, and was reminded of how much fun this game can be. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night lately on my Vita, and this basically offers up the same graphics and gameplay, but in a multiplayer context. Sure, sometimes it can be slightly frustrating when you’re lost in the giant level and aren’t sure where to go next, but you still have fun zooming in and out, trying to figure out a way to get to the final boss.

I’m usually not particularly interested in playing old games – the experience rarely, if ever, matches the memories I had of playing them in the first place – but this week’s revelation that longtime Castlevania creator Koji Igarashi was leaving Konami to make games on his own got me feeling very nostalgic for Symphony of the Night, and so I picked it up to play on my Vita. This is also the first time I play it in English, as my original playthrough was of the Japanese edition (that I played while I was a student in China), and it was also responsible for the first bits of Japanese I learned – I still regularly quote the “arigatou gozaimasu” from the shopkeeper. I’ve played a couple of hours now, and am really enjoying the gameplay again, but my biggest annoyance is when I die – it takes at least a minute to be playing again, since you first have to go back to the start screen. Dying in games is not the frustrating part, it’s how long it takes before you can be playing again (and of course, how much progress you’ve lost). I am very happy that I’m having a good time with it, still digging the graphics and music, and the pure satisfaction of killing creatures with my sword thrusts and flinging axes. But man, fuck those jumping monkeys – they annoyed me way back then, and they still annoy me now.