What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! – Dracula, Openening of Castlevania: SoTN

Castlevania Symphony of the Night is one of those games that I have absolutely no nostalgia for. When I was a kid, I didn’t get my first gaming system until I was 7 years old or so in 1997. The types of games I played at that age were Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, and while I did have those old school DEMO disks to play Metal Gear Solid or Cool Boarders, most of my young childhood revolves around playing platformers. This may cause you to ask, “Brandon, why is Symphony of the Night the first game that you want to talk about in a brand new playlist then?” The answer is simple, but the explanation has to be more complex to fill up an entire editorial’s worth of reading. I’m winking as we speak.

In all seriousness though, I picked Symphony of the Night for one specific reason; it is an old-school 2D Metroidvania that I completed for the first time in 2023. In 2023, the game should, in theory, not be worth anyone’s time. It lacks the 3D cutting edge visuals and particle effects and raytracing that gamers have become accustomed to since the release of the latest console generation. Customization is done through pause windows that slow down gameplay. Stats that should give a feeling of immersion or show the optimization of builds instead feel tacked-on and pointless. All of these things should be enough to prove to you that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night should be an outdated period piece that is not worth playing when games like Hollow Knight and Metroid Dread exist. Now that I’ve made that point however, let me now say that Symphony of the Night is my favorite Metroidvania of all time.

“What a hypocrite!” You’re probably saying. Why spend all this time setting a tone that will force disinterest only to go against the grain and argue the opposite of what your context foreshadowed? Because this game is effing incredible, that’s why. I played this game in 2023 with all the jank I mentioned and it still blew me away. It was incredible despite its flaws. It is fun in the purest, realest, childish sense that makes all of us millennials nostalgic in the strangest of ways.

It is fun. You equip weapons, and armor, and abilities, and spells like a Final Fantasy, but you move and guide your character, Alucard, like a classic platforming toon through a maze-like labyrinth. The backdrops move and shimmer, and 3D effects give the perception of a shadowy congregation hall in a midnight church. Alucard may be composed of sprites, but those pixelated polygons are alive, and the character his mannerisms portray emphasizes a charisma that belies a blank face on a CRTV. His movements emphasize both charm and power, and the ghosting effect that trails him shows any casual viewer that this dude is the son of freaking Dracula, and you’d better think twice before messing with him.

And then there is the music. Oh my God the music! Sometimes haunting, sometimes jazzy, always catchy. When Dracula’s Castle hits as you enter the foreboding fortress at the start of the game, you can barely fight the urge to bob your head and smile as you slaughter the zombies and giant wolves that serve as pitiful obstacles. “Wandering Ghosts” from the Colosseum is especially catchy, and when you have such a symphony in this Symphony game, you can’t help but smile even when you die to a challenging boss or surprise beastie. The attention to detail in the composition, mood and catchiness of each track defies everything you would expect from a game released in 1997, a game disconnected from a 2025 world where making money from marketing, grinding, lootboxes and cosmetics, rules the industry. This game is a game, through and through, with love and attention to detail trumping capitalistic gain. Calling this ridiculous masterpiece a masterpiece is a disservice to the feeling of attachment you feel when you defeat Dracula the first time, only to realize the castle will flip and you have to do the whole thing over, with the demons growing in difficulty and fearsomeness.

And I will say this again, with clear knowledge that it is rambling to this point, especially to an audience that may have never experienced this: this game is what a game should be. A game should be made with love and care and attention to detail; it should have snappy movement, crisp animations, emmerive sound and music, and elicit a feeling of pure joy when you play it. A game should be all of this, but it also must be, at the end of the day, fun. And damn is this game a game through and through, and a testament to what a game company can accomplish when their workers and staff love what they do and take pride in their work. If this endorsement creates just one more fan of this game I will feel accomplished, and I will feel justified in saying that this game is one that must be played before you die.