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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Nope, believe it or not the first Metroidvania style game was Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest for the NES. It was actually an excellent game, but a botched translation to English made it more frustrating and obtuse than it should have been. It was rather ambitious for a NES game.

    Also, while level based and not Metroidvania style, Castlevania 3, Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines, and Rondo of Blood were all fantastic games and Iga’s games have their lore and continuity based on the prior titles. In fact, SotN’s intro sequence is literally the ending of Rondo, it’s a direct sequel.

    Not to mention, while it wasn’t as well received, the attempted series reboot (Lords of Shadow) was pretty great too. Mostly people didn’t like the gameplay changes for the 3D title.

    And that’s not even getting into the N64 and PS2 games (one of which, Curse of Darkness, was popular enough that the first Netflix Castlevania series involves characters based on it).

    Metroidvania was Igarashi’s style, to the point they were sometimes coined as “Igavania” games, but they’re not the end-all-be-all of the series.


  • Koji Igarashi was responsible for the “Metroidvania” style, but was not the creator of Castlevania. He worked on the series from Symphony of the Night and through the NDS games, and his last involvement was as producer of Harmony of Despair in 2010. There were games in the series both before his involvement and after.

    Iga’s great, but Castlevania is still Castlevania without his influence.






  • Larian is very ambitious in their aims. Divinity: OS, DOS2, and Baldur’s Gate 3 were all huge games with incredible interactions and stories, and the games hold together even if you intentionally make an effort to break them by being a murder hobo or just not playing “correctly.” Their games are pretty awesome, because there is no “correct” way to play them, they’re very wide open and flexible.

    I don’t always like everything they do (in fact, I kinda hate BG3), but I respect their efforts. They don’t half-ass anything.