Metroidvania

I am a big fan of Super Metroid and to a much lesser extent Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Both are great games and continue to stand over all other games that are like them with an inescapable shadow. The shadow covers everything and games that think they can see light are mistaken as they slink backwards instead of forwards.

For me personally, one key aspect of Super Metroid that has made it the game to defeat is the flow of the game. It rarely if ever slows down. It only seems to get faster and faster as you play it and this is even seen in the running aspect. Instead of running and then all of a sudden hitting some sort of super speed, it is a build up to that speed. The only dialog is at the very start and item popups (should have been removed after the first encounter of said item).

Symphony of the Night is good its own way but I think it is also telling the Alucard is doing nothing other than backsliding his way through the game because it is quicker. I feel the story slows the flow of an otherwise fantastic game. All the same, I can't help but feel that if there was a run button, it might have actually been better than Super Metroid.

I have played many other games in both series and other games in the genre and I think they all fail completely in comparison to these masterpieces. I point to two flaws:

*Having a story that no one really gives a crap about
*A broken running system
*Asshole hint system

The second point is the stickler for me. No Metroidvania that I have played since has had a running mechanic that competes with Super Metroid. I could always hold the run button and go faster and faster even if I couldn't hit that super speed but it helped me to get where I was going quicker and every other game has basically 3 speeds.

troutty walking, Speed walking that happens to look like running and Super Speed which is basically running. There is no ramp up in speed to any of these levels of walk-running. You hit the button and you are automatically at the second speed. Hold down the button long enough and move unobstructed long enough then you will hit the 3rd speed. No build up and it pisses me off to no extent. I have always felt and will continue to feel this aspect could vastly improve every other game in the genre that has running of any sort. I think it works better as a game mechanic and feels more natural. If only when I was jogging at 5MPH (smurf your KM bitches!) I magically hit 10 MPH in an instant after 2 minutes. If that were the case then it would actually feel natural.

I discussed the first point above in how I feel story points tend to slow down a game where flow is practically everything so moving on to point 3. I HAVE THE smurfING INTERWEBS!!!1 I don't need your hint system. I always turn that stuff off and whenever I get stuck it never helps. Metroid Prime 2 is a great example for me. After about 2 hours of futility, I turned it on one time and it told me exactly where I needed to go...the only problem was I already knew that. It just confirmed my suspicions but provided no actual help. smurf you game!

It should at this point come as no surprise that I consider Metroid Fusion to be an abomination of a game. It does all 3 of these things thus it wasn't fun. I was never exploring just going to the dot on the map. Then just as any semblance of flow was coalescing, bam! TOO MUCH story. I nearly killed the series it was so bad.

Whatever. Talk about my points and what you like in this genre, this rant is over.

I found the biggest difference between Castlevania and Super Metroid to be that Castlevania is much more combat focused whereas Metroid is more exploration focused.

I've never really gotten into Metroid. Super is the only on I have played, and I still have to get around to finishing it. Which is odd because it you would think it is a perfect fit for my love of Mega Man and Castlevania.

I do not like this genre.

I tried playing SotN a while back. It was fun for a bit, except that I kept getting lost and continually found myself asking, "Where do I smurfing go?" Then, when I got to the halfway point and discovered that I now had to do the whole thing upside-down, I walked away. Conceptually, I liked it, but in practice it couldn't hold my attention.

I will say, however, that the boss battles were pretty cool.

This is probably my second favorite genre after RPG. I love the exploration aspects and the way upgrading your abilities can allow you to access new areas in old locations. I also love collecting things.

I definitely agree with you that a run button is a great help in this genre. With all the back tracking you have to do, it makes sense to give your character a way to do it quicker. But I didn't have an issue with Metroid Fusion or the Castlevania games. They were all pretty fun.

I think SotN is better than Super Metroid because it has more RPG elements.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

I found the biggest difference between Castlevania and Super Metroid to be that Castlevania is much more combat focused whereas Metroid is more exploration focused.

I've never really gotten into Metroid. Super is the only on I have played, and I still have to get around to finishing it. Which is odd because it you would think it is a perfect fit for my love of Mega Man and Castlevania.

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I agree, except that I prefer the games in the other order. I love the exploration of it. Hunting down all the weapons/powerups, figuring out the crazy little shortcuts you can take and all the sequence breaks. It's wonderful.

But with Castlevania, I really feel like there isn't any of that. It's less about exploration and more about "fight your way through this dungeon". There are far fewer powerups and things to acquire. I mean, sure, you have to figure out where you're going in much the same way as you do in the Metroid games, but all the joy of that exploration is gone. You spend all your time fighting and none getting to explore and enjoy the world.


And Super Metroid also makes exploration easier as you progress. Your weapons all get more useful, more powerful, and get unique abilities. Your movement gets faster (Speed Boost and Gravity Suit), and you get better jump abilities (Space Jump and Screw Attack). Not to mention the ice beam, one of the most unique and innovate weapons in gaming (and one of the few things that Metroid Prime definitely did not do justice to). Thus, when returning to an area while backtracking just to explore, things are, well, peaceful. Maridia may be crazy when you first go through it, but you can later return to it and just enjoy running around underwater, and can avoid most enemies completely if you want.

In Castlevania, it's all fighting, all the time. If you mess up and wind up on a different floor or in a different room, your reaction is always "oh, crap, now I have to figure out how to go back, and I'm going to be pounded down to half health by the time I get there". In Metroid, your reaction is "hey, I haven't been down here before, awesome! I bet there's a powerup or two somewhere here".

I never really understood why these games were lumped so closely together.

In SotN you get some tools to make exploring easier. Double jump, forms of wolf and bat, and that down+up jump thing.

The way you people describe Metroid and how it diverges from Castlevania in the formula makes it sound like I should really enjoy a Metroid game or two. And for some reason, I really never have enjoyed one. Prime was the only one I was really committed to, and even that seemed like a chore. I played the original back in the day, and the GBA ones, and nothing stuck. Is super really that much better than the rest? Is there any chance I'd enjoy it? I guess maybe exploration alone wasn't enough to keep me hooked, as there was always a lot of back-tracking, which made it feel repetitive in a bad way. SotN was combat heavy and repetitive in that manner, but I felt that the combat was really fun and with all the options it stayed diverse enough to never feel like a chore

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In SotN you get some tools to make exploring easier. Double jump, forms of wolf and bat, and that down+up jump thing.

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Not to mention the ability to one-shot enemies that you had to fight before.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

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In SotN you get some tools to make exploring easier. Double jump, forms of wolf and bat, and that down+up jump thing.

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Not to mention the ability to one-shot enemies that you had to fight before.

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What ability is this? It has been a while but I thought that was just the logarithmic leveling up system making you super strong to crush enemies.

As for other things, while the abilities of Symphony of the Night did make it easier to get around EVENTUALLY, outside of wolf, not that useful for most part as there was too much platforming for it to be an effective means of travel, and the gravity boots, up+down, everything was still very slow. Hell, I avoid wolf a lot because transformation is slow. The game wants to be methodical but they proved that you can say "smurf all that noise" when you could play as a powerful and quick Richter Belmont and it was more fun for it...despite his ability to be a complete pussy and die in like 3 hits to a skeleton =P

Vyk, Super Metroid is they pinical of Metroid. The other Metroids only grasp at its greatness. Fusion has an extremely different feel that Super. Prime is slower and more methodical. Metroid 2 is great but has more of a standard level/boss feel to it but keeps the exploration. It is an odd but good game. The original and the remake, while good, do not give the same sense of adventure and exploration. The original is too unforgiving and the remake has bits of Fusion infused with bits of the original to give it a decent feel.

If you have ever tried Shadow Complex and like it then I would think you would like Super Metroid.

I am just meaning the fact that you are continually leveling up to an extent that it makes the old monsters trivial.

Unless you want to mention the game breaking Crissaegrim, or even more overpowered Shield Rod+Alucard Shield combo

Yeah, I prefer Castlevania, partly because I like Gothic horror more than Sci-Fi but, also because the RPG elements give more options and weight to the gameplay than blowing up every corner of a room to find an extra five missiles. I love Super Metroid, but I would take Symphony of the Night over it. Though I would prefer to have both, which I do. :love: