I dunno guys, I tried to hate it, but I liked it. Sorry.
Got strong chad vibes from this game overall.

>>712939318 (OP)
Are the PS2 Castlemania games worth playing?

These were always decent? What? Is /v/ being contrarian again

>>712939472
I can only vouch for Lament but yes it's great ludokino

>>712939318 (OP)
PS2 Castlevanias are good games, you play them mostly for the music but the gameplay is pretty decent.

>>712939605
What about Harmony of Despair?

Corridor simulator

It's pretty fun and has great music. It's one of those games that seems amazing if you've only read the plot synopsis and listened to the soundtrack. Then you actually play it and realize how lackluster the presentation of the story is and how it's basically a mediocre dungeon crawler without much of the Castlevania charm. But damn the music is really good.

https://youtu.be/TIvkKw4EtCU
I liked the ending. Its thetricial

>>712939931
>>712940084
Only a few games can be said to have better combat than Lament, like DMC or NG but Lament still has a pretty gun combat system and real time menu before Souls (and better than Souls, too).
Also, DMC3 stole ideas from Lament

>>712939931
This should be said about Castlevania 64, because despite going into it, expecting puzzles and resident evil, all I got was basically a straight generic action game, with a mansion that had like 4 fucking rooms. Most of which were either off shoot dead ends to pick up one item, or talk to an NPC.
The closest thing to a "puzzle" was seeing a sun block, and then interacting with it...and having the game tell you you need sunlight...then using the sun card.

Anybody whos says that game is good is retarded. I HATE OoT, and yet I still have to say that OoT is a better game despite how garbage it is, because it simply has more meat to it, and better direction, even though theyre both about equally linear.

RANK THE 3D CASTLEVANIA GAMES

>>712940335
>I HATE OoT
Thanks for placing a "my opinion is worth a small shit piece" sign on your post

Was expecting a port announcement at E3.

>>712940243
I'll admit it, I'm a pleb and I like Souls and don't really like "stylish action" games unless you want to count Nier, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. For me, Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne capture the appeal I felt growing up playing Classicvania better.

>>712940387
gameplaywise, graphics, story depth id say Lords of Shadow 1 is actually the best
Lament of Innocence has by far the best music
Harmony of Despair also has great music but im not too fond of the whole demons summoning stuff, makes it just complicated for the sake of being complicated.

Lords of shadow 2 i cant rate cause i didnt finish it but the story felt lame, characters felt very lame. Cant judge the N64 ones cause i barely played them.

>>712940387
Lament is the only one I would ever recommend to anyone and even then that's only if you LOVE the franchise.

>>712939864
HD is peak Richter gameplay or Soma breaking the game and blending the boss in five seconds, no inbetweens.

They're all pretty good.

>>712939472
LoI is a mediocre dmc clone, but curse of darkness is a flawed masterpiece, probably the third best Castlevania.
10/10 gameplay, weapons, bosses and soundtrack, the ID system is pretty cool.
The only issues are the corridor levels and no movement skills, if you're emulating just fast forward.

Lament is based. Curse was fine, I see a lot of people say they like that one more.

>>712940837
Harmony of Despair is the 2D multiplayer game that puts together characters and levels from across the series. Hector's game is Curse of Darkness.
Cool game if you like collecting chairs.

>>712939318 (OP)
>Meg Ryan's Hallway Simulator
It's not terrible but it's a drag to play to me and always has been.

evil bump

>>712939318 (OP)
I cannot do the whip platforming in an emulator. Or maybe it's because I'm in my 30s, but I was able to as a kid on a real PS2.

>>712940837
I remember actually liking lords of shadow 1, but the second one is like the main guy from the first one but hes a vampire now in the middle of NYC or something?
I think it had a nice trailer too but I never actually played it

>>712941046
>no movement skills
I'm pretty sure right now I can tap out the right cadence to "spint" using the double dodge despite my last playthrough being roughly a year ago. Its not a movement skill, but it felt nice in combat and helped with the corridors.
Those corridors really were its only weakness and apparently enough to damn 3D castlevania to purgatory for all eternity. Lament's level design was pretty solid and the one place where CoD didn't just fail to improve on LoI, but actually regressed quite badly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy1k4wqx65o&list=PL31221D00E6CF5657&index=26
Music was the best in the series. Every single one of them was sick and and fit the theme of the level/boss extremely well. Struggling to pick a favorite, but Cordova town might be the most memorable just from farming the assassins for so long.

>>712946020
Oh, I totally forgot, a few of the weapons DID have movement skills. The rapier had the zigzag, the guitar had the slide, the spear had the "move forward with tip embedded in the ground" which I feel only existed for the deck brush special weapon. I'm sure there's some others I'm forgetting. They weren't ninja gaiden flying swallow levels of movement skills, but I got a lot of use out of them.

>Enjoyable enough gameplay. Only real grievances I have is the Relic system seems kind of undercooked, and the dumb "NOOO YOU HAVE TO USE OUR REAL TIME WEAPON CHANGE MENU" for gear and items.
>15/10 GOAT soundtrack.
>Retarded story, but the fun kind of retarded. I'll take "whip waifu" for a Belmont origin story over "Hey you know how Trevor was supposed to be the first guy to fight Dracula? Well ackshually it was his mom. also she boinked alucard" any day.
>Fucking monotonous ass level design of the same rooms copypasted over and over.
>Based Death getting promoted to final boss for once.
LoI is alright.

>>712941046
>Curse of Darkness
>10/10 gameplay
>third best in the series
LOL

>>712947024
This. I was wondering what he meant. I need an elaboration. Im not even close minded to it being good. I want a good 3D castlevania, thatd be cool

>>712939318 (OP)
You could have been playing a Switch 2 instead, you son of a bitch.

>>712947258
Good enemy design with a very impressive variety of challenges. Sick variety of weapons and combos with combat mechanics that aren't as deep as DMC or NG but definitely enough to sink your teeth into. Mixing in ID attacks and using their abilities for utility is fun. It had a lot of fast moving reactive "human" type bosses where action games so often use those sparingly and are otherwise filled with slow moving giants or have humans that are nominally "human" bosses but don't play like a human.
As a 3D SotN castlevania I think it hit the mark, but it obviously wasn't a successor the pre-RPG castlevanias, and I'm not sure what that would even look like.

I'm not sure what you're comparing it to (as far as action games ), probably DMC. I'd say its less developed than DMC in that there's definitely less spectacle and complexity, but I like how much depth you can squeeze out of CoD despite the absence of pretension and I found it to be smoother to move around and fight for some reason. Part of it was the camera, part of it was the level design being so simple, part of it was just the movement being so much simpler.

>>712948650
The grinding for IDs and, tiny steal windows and missable steals all suck though. I won't say these things make me hate it, but they really make me not want to replay any time soon.

>>712949047
So lament is instantly better, got it. Dont have time for grinding

>>712948650
>combos with combat mechanics that aren't as deep as DMC or NG but definitely enough to sink your teeth into
It's basic bitch Dynasty Warriors shit.

>>712949047
The only ID I had to grind for Isaac's Able, and that one was sick enough that the grind didn't come off as unwarranted and was definitely a secret extra thing you found out about and went out of your way to do - I didn't start trying to get the extra/secret IDs and weapons until I already enjoyed the game on the path of least resistance.
Some of the steal windows were definitely a bastard, but it wasn't like they were dumb luck, just learning their AI and moveset, devising a strategy, then patience and practice. If you had to do that to progress it would have been obnoxious I think, but it was all stuff you did for cool extra weapons with cool special gimmicky attacks. Death's steal was an absolute bitch to land but felt great when I finally managed to figure out the positioning and timing on it.
I definitely prefer the steal mechanics over most SotN inspired castlevanias which actually DO require you to just farm for secret weapons (CoD did, unfortunately, have some materials that were drop-only you had to farm, but the only one I can remember is there's a material you need to make.. I think it was the laser sword? That was a drop from an enemy in the side route where you go to fight legion&nucleis).
>>712949649
I only played (I think it was) the PS2 dynasty warriors, I didn't find them to play similarly. I remember the combos in DW to be very undifferentiated, and there wasn't much or any variety in the combat since it was just beating up similar mooks and commanders.

It's a good game the 3dvania get hated for youtube/reddit clout chasing they are lacking and have problems of their time and lament of innoncence gave us the majority of what we know about the lore of the games so yeah good experience

>>712939472
yeah they're not the best but they're still some of the better castelvania games. That being said there's about 8 better games in the series

>>712939472
the ds vania 1, 3 and 4 sotn, rondo of blood and aria of sorrow aall deserve your time more than the ps2 games but they are overall okay lament of innocence and curse of darkness are good imo just there are better games

So is the best way to play the 3Dvanias to just emulate them?
There arent any rereleases and we are probably not getting a 3D collection anytime soon if ever

>>712950002
They both follow the same structure of a light string with a heavy finisher that changes based on when you throw it out. You could port some movesets from Curse into a random PS2 era DW game and they'd feel right at home.

>>712950303
More than 8.

>>712951879
let's see
off the top of my head and in no specific order i can think of
Sotn
Rondo of blood
Aria of sorrow
dawn of sorrow
harmony of despair
circle of the moon
order of ecclesia
Castelvania IV
Castlevania III
Portrait of ruin
Simons Quest
And I might put the first game up there, but it's pretty short and basic. Still great though.
Guess you're right way more than 8

>>712951797
I mean, as far as the control scheme for how you do some of the ground strings I guess. Is that what you mean? Saying that its sin is that it shares a part of its control scheme with dynasty warriors seems like a strange thing to complain about, especially given XY, XXY, XXXY, etc is a staple of action control schemes. You're saying "some movesets" and I'm taking for granted that means you're not saying that curse of darkness is literally JUST that.

Whats better, Lament of Innocence or Curse of Darkness.

Lament's only real problem outside of the gauntlet's block mechanics being OP is the lackluster level design, for every good puzzle room there's 4 empty corridors.

>>712939472
I remember enjoying Curse of Darkness as a kid, but I'm sure it aged like milk.

>>712952646
They're completely different types of game desu
I'd say LoI holds up better

>>712951619
Yeah pretty much. I have the actual disks and I'd rather just Emulate them.

>>712952738
Depends what you usually think of when you think of games that "aged like milk" I guess. I can say that I think it aged well - nothing about it feels jarring when put alongside contemporary games in some omission or particularly egregious mechanical flaw. Console shooters aged like milk for example, because we had a glut of otherwise great shooters that were condemned to languor on devices that could only use thumbsticks for aiming and with a FOV like looking through toilet rolls. But I don't really find anything like that in Curse of Darkness.

>>712952716
>for every good puzzle room there's 4 empty corridors.
whaaat? there are actual puzzle rooms? like not >>712940335 type "puzzle" rooms? that are just one singular interaction in some shitty one off room?

you guys need to learn how to sell your games better, prominent puzzles are so rare in castlevania games, let alone 3D action adventure, let alone 3D fucking metroidvanias. that novelty alone is enticing

>>712939318 (OP)
It has really good music and Leon is a total chad despite being a retard.

>>712952810
Different how? Like different genres? How would you explain their differences in few words?

>>712953837
LoI is more of a classic castlevania game with a lot of copy pasted rooms
CoD is a metroidvania with a lot of long hallways

>>712952520
It's not the control scheme. It's the whole structure. They're literally 1:1.

>>712954032
damn, i thought they were both metroidvanias, if thats true i should like CoD better

>>712955161
They are. That guy is retarded.

>>712954410
Hm, I didn't play a LOT of dynasty warriors, the thing that stuck out to me was that it was entirely mowing down hordes of mooks without really any thought, and the gameplay was very different in that regard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tttdtqG0rZ4
This is my favorite fight from Curse of Darkness (technically thats a mod that makes trevor a tiny bit harder but there aren't many videos that showcase curse of darkness, its fairly representative). Is there anything in dynasty warriors that plays like that? I can try and describe particularly what parts of it I like, I'll do a pretty shit job but I'll give it a go if it helps.

At the end of the day /v/ will prefer nigslop like GTA than Kinovania 3D.
Just how things are.

>>712957492
which one is the kino one doe

>>712958010
curse of darkness but hector is random so we prefer lament 64 is really showing it's age

>>712946931
Lament of Innocence's story gets props for being the case against the Dracula victim narrative.

>>712940548
This.

>>712960776
>Lament of Innocence's story gets props for being the case against the Dracula victim narrative.

This. Faggy new atheists latching on to an evil vampire because he doesn't like religion makes my blood boil. Dracula ruined his best friend's life because he was angry at God, what a loser. He's a bitter fuck who just wants to drag everyone else down to his level.