I'm not crazy about having another Metroidvania title on our hands. But I can see some interesting things that could be done with the touch screen. Although not exclusive to the franchise, a rune system where the player draws a rune symbol to cast spells would be neat. The faster it's done, the more effective it is. The second screen could just be used as a map + stats, which I'd like. Flicking between weapons and runes on the fly would up the action.

The DS cartridge warrants a bigger adventure, I'm talking Symphony of the Night big (which should be on it's way to me now....yay). So yeah, another Metroidvania wouldn't be too bad, as long as it gives the DS a push, not a tap. :huh:

I've seen castlevania games, never played one though, they do look pretty cool and the way Sim describes how/probably the controls would be sounds even better.
BTW. why are you writing Metroid instead of Castle???

This post has been edited by Viewtiful_Joe on Jun 23 2004, 05:47 PM

"metroidvania" is implying a mix between both metroid and castlevania, hence metroid-vania

This post has been edited by badboy786 on Jun 23 2004, 05:51 PM

At this point in time, I'd really like Koji Igarashi to fall off a cliff. Either that or he needs to try his hand at doing some other type of game. Not that I'm blaming the guy for not being able to match his first contribution to the series, but it seems he's been all out of ideas ever since his magnum opus.

Look at Harmony of Dissonance. Uninspired Symphony clone minus most of things that made Symphony great. Aria of Sorrow was an improvement thanks to the spell fusion system, but still just Castlevania by numbers aside from that and with a plot so stupid it makes me want to cry.

But "Metroidvania" can be interesting still. Circle of the Moon was interesting. It was also made by a completely different development team. So get rid of Koji Igarashi, Michiru Yamane and Ayami Kojima, all of whom seem to be rehashing the same tired ideas ad nauseum, and I may be interested again.

Have you ever played Arx Fatalis on the PC? The Fatalis might as well have translated to 'you'll want to kill yourself trying to draw 3-rune combos that the system will take with any efficiency ... and forget about battle-casting'.

An otherwise really good game (OK, a game that could have been truly great, but with 3 or 4 glaring flaws) where the mage experience was marred by drawing runes. There were some spells I could barely cast after 4 or 5 tries ...

Shudder ...

Mike

Hmmm....the rune drawing idea sounded good to me. After all you're actually drawing it with your fingers, you then have more control than you would with a mouse.

A castlevania game would be very cool for the DS. I dunno about the rune thing though, the touch sceen seems like it's going to be awkward unless you have the DS on a table or other flat surface.

I don't think I'm interested in 2D Castlevania games any longer. Why? Because they invariably will suck in comparison to Symphony of the Night (hideous misuse of Cthulhu aside). The Castlevania on the PS2 is an ideal future for the franchise, methinks - gothic action games, in a similar vein to Devil May Cry, only rooted in mythology, rather than a more modern "Guns and technology" style gothic.

The PS2 game had flaws, but for the most part, it was a very entertaining action game, with cool combos and a nice style to it. Whether the DS could handle such a thing, I dunno. It'd also be rather difficult putting the stylus to use there, but that's the kind of thing that would interest me now, not another 2D platformer.

What? Boring, uninteresting, bland actions games, with cloned rooms and Dante rip offs? We might as well call it Devil May Cry, oh wait, that was actually decent....

This post has been edited by Sim on Jun 24 2004, 10:34 AM

As much as I'm a huge fan of the 2D Castlevania GBA games, I think it's only a matter of time before we see 3D versions. So if they made a 3D Castlevania for the DS, I could live with that.

They've already released Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, which is a 3D action game.

Txa: I'd imagine drawing with a stylus (unless you FPS full time - which I doubt) is alot easier than drawing with a mouse. MS Paint proves me right.

Anyway, my point was that anything imaginative that could invigorate the formula will prevent these titles (action/adventure in general) from the inevitable comparison with SotN (which happens to be a great game, albeit a little easy).

Opps, what I meant was it is only a matter of time till we see 3D Castlevania on handhelds. B)

I haven't played Symphony of the Night, but still, I'm getting a little tired of the overall gameplay style. Not just with the Castlevanias mind you. With 3 Castlevania games and 2 Metroids within three years... not to mention the upcoming Shaman King which apparently has a similar gameplay style, or the Metroid Prime games... well, it's been a bit of an overload on find-item-and-use-it-to-find-new-areas genre. Personally, after Metroid Prime 2 I wouldn't mind not seeing the franchise again until Nintendo's next console, which supposedly is already determined to receive another one from Retro.

I don't know, I'm tiring of that formula, yet I don't tire of fun and carefree platformers like Mario or Stafy. I could eat those up forever. So I'm sure others are more than fine with more of these, but I guess I'd have to agree that I'd want change, even though it's not because they don't compare to SotN or because I didn't love Circle of the Moon and Aria of Sorrow. I've simply had enough for the time being.

I'd like to see it stay as a 2d game but they should really max-out the graphics and animation and make the game simply HUGE!

I do like the rune idea but, again, I'd have to get my hands on a DS before I can decide whether the touchpad really is solid enough.