PlayStation Monger

Music of the Night

by Nadia on December 24th, 2007

If I were capable of naming my favourite game, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night would probably have to engage in a battle royale with Mega Man X, Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy VI. I’ve unlocked Symphony of the Night in Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles and I haven’t returned to Rondo of Blood since. Oops.

Sympony of the Night is one of a very few games where I know every twist and turn, every bit of dialogue (but everyone knows WHAT A MAN is thanks to 4chan and YTMND), every secret, every sound effect, every corner of Dracula’s castle and the Inverted castle…and yet I’m always happy to start over again.

The PSP port of SOtN is quite decent. It restores a lot of long-lost Japanese content, including new familiar demons and the ability to play as (and fight) Maria. The text has also been cleaned up a bit so the story makes more sense, and the voices…well, they’ve been re-recorded and it’s really hit and miss.

Richter sounds like far less of a tool (though that would have been accomplishable even if Urkel had been hired as his voice actor), but Alucard sounds downright bored. In all honesty, his original voice was not that bad. Let’s be honest, there’s no erasing the past. I feel like Konami should have kept the old voices as an option; the epic speech between Richter and Dracula will echo forever on the Internet, so Konami may as well poke fun at itself.

On the other hand, you can’t really blame the company for improving upon the past. Perhaps the same could be said of all remakes.

Ayame Kojima’s character art always stuck with me. I’m not always wild about it, but the designs for Symphony of the Night blew me away at a time when the only Japanese artwork I was familiar with was generic bullshit anime.

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POSTED IN: Konami, PSP, Self-Indulgence