The Shrine

Just in case you don't have a PSP or just want the original that plays properly, this is an excellent level-based Castlevania game with a very slight dash of Metroidvania tossed in. It's 900 points, standard for import TurboGrafx games

http://wii.ign.com/articles/107/1077514p1.html

Although it's slightly premium priced, it is a relatively long and very, very good game. I'd highly recommend it

In the PSP version, the controls were a little stiffer than i would like. I wouldnt say bad, because Richter is responsive, but you just dont get the polish that SotN has. All jumping will be the same height and you cant really change directions mid jump, for example.

That's 'cause Rondo is a level-based Castlevania, not a Metroidvania game. The "stiffness" is left-over from the old NES and SNES (and, in this case, TG-16) days since that's how the games were designed to be played. It's not meant to be a fast-paced, fly-all-over-the-place game like the Metroidvania or Mega Man X games are. For a game of that type, it's actually quite polished, just in a different way.

Yeah, I agree with the spoiler completely. That's sort of from the third NES game and what gives it a helluva lot more replayability and depth than your standard level-based platformer. That's one of the reasons I loved the original TG-16 one so much back in the day.

Actually, they re-introduced the stiffness since CV4 had much more forgiving controls - you could control jumps.

Kupek wrote:Actually, they re-introduced the stiffness since CV4 had much more forgiving controls - you could control jumps.

Yeah even in first Mario Bros. you could hold the button longer to jump higher, so i dont think it is an era thing. I'm sure they intended Rondo to play the way it does, but the game is pretty hard solely because its hard to control Richter at times and you have no way to avoid enemies. Its not too hard to not be able to beat, though, or to be braggable that you did, because i did a few weeks ago and am no way as l33t as i was back in the day when i had infinite time.

For years I had a total game boner for Rondo while it was inaccessible to me. Now that I've played it, I don't think I'll play it again. It would be great if Richter controlled like he does in SotN but I understand that would break the game.

You guys keep comparing Rondo to Symphony while forgetting a couple of highly important points:

- Rondo came about four years before Symphony; it was a direct prequel. I would hope the sequel that much later is more "polished" or an upgrade over the prequel. Personally, I think it's the best of the level-based Castlevanias by far
- it's a completely different genre than Symphony, thus should play differently. Everyone seems mad that it didn't play or feel exactly like Symphony but that's 'cause it shouldn't
- for the time, Rondo was better than basically any other platformer available. It was an excellent, 17 year-old game and the PSP game is more of graphical upgrade with some minor changes to the level design and a very minor additions to the story (the German intro is the same audio track as from the TG-16 game), so you're basically getting the same game but 17 years later.

You guys keep comparing Rondo to Symphony

That's only because SotN is about the best platformer ever made.

It's like, once you hit that peak, it's hard to go back.

Again, Rondo came first. You ain't goin' back to nothin'

So what if Rondo came first. Symphony. Best. Platformer. Ever!

Zeus wrote:Again, Rondo came first. You ain't goin' back to nothin'

It is if they played it second. I think we're all big enough geeks here to know the history of Castlevania.

Zeus wrote:You guys keep comparing Rondo to Symphony while forgetting a couple of highly important points:

I'm not forgetting anything. I played Rondo in it's true form just this year and, without any nostalgia holding me to it, I didn't enjoy it. Whether it came out before or after Symphony doesn't change the fact that I don't like the controls.

Fine, forget SotN, there are a ton of games for the NES that give you more control over your characters such as SMB1 that i pointed out, but also the mega men, ninja turtles, and battle toads. Like BL said, the game probably would have been broken and too easy with that much control of your character so i understand why they left it, but then one has to conclude that Rondo isnt that good a game. Tons of games for the NES suffer from crappy control and Rondo controls very similar. Besides my spoiler tag... whats so good about the game? SMB1 and 2 trounce it.

Flip wrote:Fine, forget SotN, there are a ton of games for the NES that give you more control over your characters such as SMB1 that i pointed out, but also the mega men, ninja turtles, and battle toads. Like BL said, the game probably would have been broken and too easy with that much control of your character so i understand why they left it, but then one has to conclude that Rondo isnt that good a game. Tons of games for the NES suffer from crappy control and Rondo controls very similar. Besides my spoiler tag... whats so good about the game? SMB1 and 2 trounce it.

Well, I particularly liked the following:

- storyline and cutscenes: for 1993, they were fucking kick-ass
- multiple level paths and level design: great idea first used in Castlevania 3 but taken to a much deeper level here. The levels are quite good for a platforming game, very little frustration due to stupid enemy placement or just idiotic requirements to get the extra or hidden stuff. Tough, yes, and there were certainly some annoyances. But relatively minimal for a platformer
- requirement to explore to beat the game: spoiler alert (you've been warned) - if you don't find all three damsels, you never even see Dracula, just Shaft. You have to go back to find them to actually see the last level / boss fight. So you're allowed to go through the game and not get frustrated at not being able to advance 'cause you can't find the one thing (lookin' at you, Harmony). You can just go to any level whenever, so it's not like you have to go through the game in one run, another thing that made it much better than platformers of its time.
- great bosses: they were quite strong in this game and that's a huge deal in platformers

Really, it is a spectacular version of a traditional 2D level-based platformer and a lot of what you see in Symphony was started in Rondo. The PSP remake is an incredible remake and amazingly faithful while updating it well. That along with the MM remakes are incredible remakes for the PSP.