Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

aka: Akumajo Dracula X: Gekka no Yasoukyoku, CV: SotN, Castlevania: Sinfonia Della notte, Castlevania: SotN
Moby ID: 3739
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Description official descriptions

Five years ago, Richter Belmont, the latest in the Belmont lineage and the one destined to be a Vampire Hunter, defeated Dracula in a brutal battle which nearly cost him the love of his life, Annette, and her sister, Maria. Now, Richter has suddenly vanished, Dracula's castle has mysteriously reappeared, and Maria, now a young woman, sets off to find Richter. Alucard, the son of Dracula, is awakened from his eternal slumber after this large shift in power and enters into the castle to find some answers and confront his father.

Symphony of the Night is a direct sequel to Rondo of Blood. Unlike the previous installments of the series, the game is set in a castle which the player can explore freely with many different paths, although often items in certain areas need to be found that will allow passage to others. The action-based gameplay incorporates now strong RPG elements. The hero receives experience points for defeating enemies, gains levels, and becomes more powerful. There is also money to be found in the game, and various accessories to buy. In a separate screen, players need to equip attack weapons, shields, and other items. Magic plays an important role, as well as secondary weapons and a large amount of "special moves" that are executed similar to advanced one-on-one fighting games.

The Saturn release adds two new areas to the castle (the Underground Garden and the Haunted Path), a third playable character (Maria), and a few new remixed music tracks. However, it sacrifices a few of the graphical effects from the PlayStation version, particularly true transparencies. The iOS and Android versions are based on the version found in the Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles release (has the Saturn versions familiars and items). All the other releases are based on the PlayStation version and do not feature these changes.

Spellings

  • 悪魔城ドラキュラX 月下の夜想曲 - Japanese spelling

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Credits (PlayStation version)

82 People (65 developers, 17 thanks) · View all

English Voice Cast
JP Voice Cast
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Assistant Director
Localization A.D.
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 91% (based on 72 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 257 ratings with 6 reviews)

The Ultimate Sidescrolling Platformer

The Good
This game has all of the elements of a great title: silky controls, great graphics, super style points (you can change the color of the interior and exterior of Alucard's cape), great story (yeah, its not much, but it does the job well enough), huge levels, great map design, tremendous replay value, oh, and did I mention that its Castlevania? The inclusion of a combo system, special moves, hundreds and hundreds of items, and a castle that is, literally, in hell, make this game great fun to play. The experience point elements of the game keep you coming back for more and more and more and more. The familiars are really fun too.

The Bad
... If I HAVE to say something here, I'd have to ad that the familiars come along a little late in the game and are very hard to power up into anything that can effectively help you combat drac's demon hordes. Still, I did get my skull familiar up to the 60's in terms of level (it only took three weeks! God, this game was addictive).

The Bottom Line
The best run and jumper ever made that doesn't use guns; Alucard can only use melee weapons (pursuent to the castlevania tradition).

PlayStation · by Seth Barkan (2) · 2003

One of the greatest Playstation games ported over to the Saturn.

The Good
Everything about this game is great, this is basically the same game that is on the playstation, but with two more dungeons for fans to explore. Also, the inclusion of being able to play as Richter from the beginning, and the new character Maria Renard, doesn't hurt things at all.

The Bad
There is nothing that I really don't like about this game, the only real thing that is wrong with it is a few transparency issues.

The Bottom Line
If you own a Sega Saturn, even though this is a very expensive game, this is a must own game.

SEGA Saturn · by Joshua Price (24) · 2005

Best in the series

The Good
You are never done playing this game. The replayability factor is about as good as you can possibly get. It goes beyond just beating the game. There's finding the inverted castle, finding all the relics, beating all the bosses, getting all the weapons... The list goes on and on and on into infinity. For this reason, Castlevania: SOTN never gets boring to play. Really, that is all I should need to say about this game for everybody who reads this review to immediately go out and buy it (hell, buy a freakin' playstation if you don't have one, just for the sake of playing this game). It should seem like a holy miracle that there could possibly be such a game. I shouldn't need to tell you about the beautifully designed levels and play environment, or the easy-to-play interface or any of that other good stuff. That should be all you need.

The Bad
Some of the bosses are too easy. Yep, that's it. Period.

The Bottom Line
I really can't think of anyone who wouldn't like this game, except for maybe a disgruntled Konami employee in a mental institution somewhere. The big picture: You're the good-hearted son of Dracula and it's up to you to stop him from being resurrected and terrorizing humankind for all eternity. To do so, you must destroy his minions in his evil castle, find items and relics that will help you and enlist the help of characters like the castle librarian and the beautiful Maria Renard. Enjoy.

PlayStation · by Sam Tinianow (113) · 2001

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Bug or graphical effect? Unicorn Lynx (181788) Apr 4, 2012
DS Wormspinal (619) Jun 21, 2009
Symphony of the Night/ PS2 memory card problem Michael Sanders Jan 12, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cancelled Game.Com version

A port of the game was planned for Tiger's short-lived Game.Com handheld console. The game made it apparently to beta state, and several screenshots can be found of it on the net.

CD music

Place the CD into any CD player and play Track 2. You'll get a clip of Alucard saying that this is a PSX black disc, and not to play Track 1. Then comes a remix of Dracula's Castle, the musical piece that plays in the entrance hall of the castle! (WARNING: Do NOT, under any circumstances, play Track 1 of the PSX CD on your CD player, unless you like the sounds of horrible white noise destroying your speakers and your ears.)

Endings

There are 5 possible endings for the game, they are triggered by: killing Richter with the Holy Glasses; Killing Richter without the Holy Glasses; Killing Dracula with less than 200%; killing him with over 200%; and of course, the "Castlevania Classic" Richter ending.

What few people know is that a sixth ending was planned but eventually scrapped from the final game, this ending is a variation of the "vs Richter" ones, and has Maria coming in to his rescue, then transforming into some sort of demon and fighting Alucard. No part of this ending was coded so don't bother looking for it, but the voice files are in the game cd, you can extract it using any PSX-extracting utility and listen to the entire recorded audio (including Alucard mourning Maria and Richter upon victory).

Fan translation

On September 5, 2009, the freelance translators Devil Hackers released a translation patch that fully translates the Japanese version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night into English. The reason for this release is the notoriously low quality of the official translation. Also, since this patch is for the Japanese version, the players can also be spared the poor voice acting of the US release.

The link to the patch can be found under the Links/Searches section.

Map

To map all of the two castles (the maximum is 200.6%), you need to use the library recall card when facing Dracula, allowing you to add his room to your map.

Medusa

The yellow Medusa heads will normally turn you to stone. However, on seemingly random intervals, Alucard will turn into a gargoyle statue. There seems to be no advantage to this, and no actual point to it.

References

  • When you have the Shield Rod equipped, press Back, Foward+Attack. Alucard will toss out a little swirling ball, which is actually the Shield from the Gradius series. It even protects you from small projectile attacks.
  • Adrian Tepes's last name "Tepes" is Romanian for "impaler", a name attached to Count Vlad Dracul, aka Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), who was Bram Stoker's inspiration for Count Dracula.

Rune Sword

If you have the Rune Sword familiar, then you'll notice that a word appears whenever you throw the sword. That word is "verboten" and it means "forbidden" in German.

Second castle

There is a second castle in the game which is a vertically mirrored copy of the first. To access it you must meet with Maria inside the main clock where whe will tell you the truth behind Richter. The monsters and items in the second castle are much harder than the first and some of the bosses from the first appear as regular monsters.

Title translation

"Symphony of the Night" is not the translation of the Japanese "Gekka no Yasoukyoku", which actually means "Nocturne Under the Moon".

Xbox Live

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the first Xbox Live arcade game to break the Xbox 360's 50MB data limit enforced by Microsoft. This rule was originally set up to make all games transferable to the 64MB memory unit. For those interested, the game weighs in at 95.32MB.

Version differences

In the Japanese release of this game there were two extra familiars. They were a second fairy and a second demon which basically had no difference from the two that remained (and explains why they were removed).

The Sega Saturn version of Nocturne (which only saw a Japanese release) had a small difference in the storyline. When you go to meet Maria in the Marble Gallery, she gives you the Holy Glasses in the PSX version. But in the Saturn version, she won't just hand them to you. She tests you by fighting you first.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #12 (Best 100 Games of All Time) (PlayStation version)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Game of the Year Runner-Up (PlayStation version)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - PlayStation Game of the Year
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Action Game of the Year Runner-Up (PlayStation version)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Side-Scrolling Game of the Year (PlayStation version)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Best Music Runner-Up (PlayStation version)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - PlayStation Game of the Year Runner-Up (Readers' Choice)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Action Game of the Year Runner-Up (Readers' Choice) (PlayStation version)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Side-Scrolling Game of the Year (Readers' Choice) (PlayStation version)
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Best Music Runner-Up (Readers' Choice) (PlayStation version)
    • 1998 Buyer's Guide - Best Middle (ie midway through through the game)
    • 1998 Buyer's Guide - Best Sequel (PlayStation version)
    • January 2002 - Worst Game Line Ever (for "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk, have at you!")
  • Game Informer
    • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #18 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #20 Top Game of All Time
  • PSExtreme
    • 1997 (Vol. 3, Iss. 3) - Best Game Music of the Year Award
  • Retro Gamer
    • Issue #37 - #14 in the "Top 25 Platformers of All Time" poll

Information also contributed by Ace of Sevens, Ben K, Big John WV, CaptainCanuck, Fafnir, PCGamer77, Satoshi Kunsai, Tiago Jacques, Unicorn Lynx and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Satoshi Kunsai.

PS Vita added by Fred VT. iPad, Android, iPhone added by Rik Hideto. PSP, PlayStation 3 added by Foxhack. Xbox 360 added by Ben K.

Additional contributors: PCGamer77, Unicorn Lynx, //dbz:, Wormspinal, Dae, Alaka, LepricahnsGold, Eric Smith, DreinIX, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Rik Hideto, FatherJack, Hipolito Pichardo, A.J. Maciejewski.

Game added April 9, 2001. Last modified March 19, 2024.