Nocturne in the Moonlight - Castlevania SotN (PSP version) Blind

[jayScribble]

So a blind Let's Play of a classic game: Castlevaina - Symphony of the Night by raocow by popular request.

For clarification, this is the PSP version, where all the voice acting and lines are redone to fit a more serious tone than the original Playstation version: here are examples of the intro (along with other translations).

Video 1: beginner's luck
Video 2: luck's ran out
Video 3: out of the loop
Video 4: loop hole tower
Video 5: towering knowledge
Video 6: ledge status: unstable
Video 7: table's turned, birdlord!!
Video 8: lord of time, occasionaly space
Video 9: ace of monster death
Video 10: death by compassion
Video 11: passion (aka; a holy rampage)
Video 12: rampage in the clock tower
Video 13: err, eww?
Video 14: wwwwww old people
Video 15: people, birds, it's all the same
Video 16: same result in the end
Video 17: endsville V: fun in hell
Video 18: hello old friends
Video 19: friends to all animals
Video 20: animals followed by a hurricane
Video 21: can everyone dance
Video 22: dance the dance of death
Video 23: death death central
Video 24: central spot massacre
Video 25: massacre of raocow's being
Video 26: being on your best foot
Video 27: foot in the door
Video 28: door to somewhere (pointless)
Video 29: less done then I'd hope
Video 30: hope you like... ninjas ?!
Video 31: as my hunger grows
Video 32: grows a new fear
Video 33: fear the coyote man
Video END: man, he didn't even beg

[Miyuron]

I'm really excited for this! Never got into the Castlevania series myself, but I've seen quite a few playthroughs of different entries. Let's see how Bob stumbles/struggles through this...

[NegativeZeroZ]

raocow is playing a... commercial game? That's... popular?!

WHaaaaaAAAAaa AaA A aAaA a At?!?!

[Bwarch]

raocow is playing a... commercial game? That's... popular?!

WHaaaaaAAAAaa AaA A aAaA a At?!?!

VVVVVV.

Super Mario World ascetic...

Y'know.

[Willhart]

I know about this game even less than raocow. It looks really fun to play.

[Alice]

I have a feeling that a lot of people are going to rage at raocow's exploration method, lol. As I said on Youtube, he shouldn't try to complete every room before choosing where to go next because he'll run into a lot of issues like the barely scraping by with 1hp on the boss deal.

Also he'll miss a lot of secrets that will probably feel like they should be obvious to long-time fans. (I think he already did miss one in the room with the

mer-thing guys

if I recall correctly.)

[ztarwuff]

Uh, given that raocow had difficulties with Valdis Story, I was expecting a huge trainwreck of a LP. But apart from walking past three save spots, nothing really bad happened.

And yes, Alice, raocow did miss a secret there.

[Sorel]

And I thought he was gonna die in the Slogra and Gaibon battle. Well it almost happened, but Machine Gun Knives saved the day.

The way this is going right now, I highly doubt that raocow will ever beat

Galamoth

without the

Crissaegrim, the "instant win" button of the game.

Also,

Beezelbub

is freaking gross.

[Grounder]

A miserable little pile of memes...

[Zygl]

Am I the only one who found rao struggling with the menu color option hilarious? Like I realize it's largely because I messed around with Final Fantasy VII's similar setting as a kid, and given rao's usual genre of choice it's entirely possible for him to never have been given that much freedom with his menu colors or whatever before, but at the same time you have two zeroes and an 8 there, there aren't exactly a lot of other explanations for their presence.

[Mata Hari]

e: gee i paused and posted this literally before raocow said it

[Miyuron]

I'm definitely no expert on Castlevania, but even I felt a small bit of discomfort at raocow's reckless exploring. This is gonna be fun.

[Sebby19]

Wow, scraping by the boss with 1hp. Classic raocow.

Neat how the first boss is the combination of two enemies joining forces. I'm sure we will see both of them individually in the future, right?

Also, though I never played this game, I think the right side of the equip screen shows your actual stats, and what equipment changes what, and the left side is current bonus effects equipped. Am I right?

[Window Squeegee]

This rocks, Symphony of the Night is my second favorite Castlevania game! (next to Aria of Sorrow)

But seriously, good luck fighting Galamoth. I couldn't beat him without the button mashing sword

[Falky]

Finally got round to playing this myself last year and it's definitely in my top ten, probably top five (that list is topped by Super Metroid, so yeah).

The way this is going right now, I highly doubt that raocow will ever beat

Galamoth

without the

Crissaegrim, the "instant win" button of the game.

I prefer the

Alucard Shield and Shield Rod combo

. Easier to find.

[Dragon Fogel]

I see people are mentioning trouble with a specific boss. Apparently they missed the item that makes him really easy or didn't realize what it did.

There's a helmet that absorbs lightning damage.

Fortunately, SotN is pretty easy for the most part, so we're not too likely to see raocow struggling with bosses. As long as he actually checks side paths for save points.

(To be fair, when I first played, the first thing I did after running into Death was turn around and quickly get killed by a Warg because I didn't have any equipment.)

Admittedly, later games were better about this, having very clear boss doors so you wouldn't stumble into them blindly. I think that might even have started as soon as Circle of the Moon.

[ano0maly]

As someone that never played this, I'm pretty excited to see Bob show what this game's about. This is actually going to be the first full let's play of a Castlevania I'm watching.

It's been a long time since I've seen a game that has two intro sequences before the main gameplay kicks off (the Richter segment and the first Alucard segment when you have powerful equipment). The last one I remember seeing is Golden Sun.

[NegativeZeroZ]

VVVVVV.

Super Mario World ascetic...

Y'know.

I have an honest question, why bother going out of your way to correct someone who's only perpetuating a running joke?

[KobaBeach]

INT is INTelligence

that's the joke

[skyluigi2]

Ah, I wasn't expecting this, but sure, why not? I have to confess, I've never played a Castlevania game myself... I'm not sure why. I should probably change that at some point...

[YelseyKing]

Well. That was... the most "raocow" video I've ever seen. Wanders around aimlessly, ignoring every side path. Encounters boss with less than 30 HP, having heroically managed to miss every single save point (and a good number of items) along the way, and somehow manages to beat it through sheer blind luck with 1 HP remaining, thereby learning nothing whatsoever from his mistakes. Yup. This is totally a raocow Metroidvania LP.

[cc12321]

Is this one of those games where the speedrun is dashing backwards through the whole game?

For those of you interested, here is the current WR as far as I'm aware. Definitely worth a watch for some crazy glitching, although its taken from a livestream so there isn't much explanation as to what is going on with each glitch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9XmXpa8Fag

[Tenlade]

This game does a really neat way of slowly transitioning you from classic gameplay to the new action/rpg style. You start the game with basic castlevania style and the game then jumps you to Alucard with superpowered stats before finally letting you lose in the castle, slowly adding game mechanics with the relics.

Random facts:The first segment is a direct copy of the final stage of Rondo of blood, which i always think is a nice touch when sequels do this. By the way, those items you pick up as richter belmont in the attic though you cant keep, they're just there to show off stuff you're going to get in the game proper later on.

You'll get a starting item or stat boost depending on what you do in the prolouge. Use up all hearts and you get a heart refill item, lose all your hp or dont get hit at all , and you get a potion, get all the hearts and don't use them you get a consumable use item.If you manage to do a no hit run without any subweapons, alucard gets a tiny stat boost (but its so small as to be insignificant and not worth caring)

When you lose your weapons, the very first two enemies you destroy that are blocking your path, will always drop a short sword and red rust, so you'll always have a starting 1 handed and 2 handed weapon. It also introduces you to the fact castlevania has item drops now, teaching through gameplay!

The cube of zoe enables drops from destroying candles/objects, incase you want to turn that off for some reason.(maybe if you wanted to avoid subweapon pickups i guess)

Looking forward to more of this.

[Mineyl]

Oh man, here we go. Symphony of the Night. Well, aside from raocow missing all those save points along the way, this is turning out about as well as expected...but if Slogra and Gaibon gave him that much issue, I really wonder how he's gonna' fare against some of the other bosses...

Some general tips for the cow of raos:

- Save points are always placed in side rooms; that is, there is only a single save point in the game that you have to walk through to get to a significant destination, so you have to "look" for them. Pay attention to your map and always check side rooms.

- Always beware when you walk into a suspicious empty room, whether it be a large room or one with a sudden strange background, as this tends to signify a boss. If you haven't saved in a while, you'll want to back out as nearly every boss in the game has a save room in close proximity to it.

- Generally, as far as your equipment is concerned, more attack and defense is better, and you'll for the most part keep a shield in your off-hand. However, whenever you pick up a new weapon, there isn't any harm in experimenting with it, as weapons often vary wildly in their capabilities outside of their raw physical force. For example, the basilard you picked up has one less point of attack than the short sword, but it swings two or three times faster than the short sword in a game where one swing almost never kills anything of significance.

- On that note, INT isn't really that important, but there ARE spells in this game, and you can actually cast most of them right at the start of the game by performing Street Fighter-like combinations. Most of them are fairly esoteric, though, and you probably won't discover them without help, not to mention most of them are just for show and aren't terribly useful, so don't sweat them too much.

- You'll eventually be able to reacquire all that equipment Death took from you. While it's not the best gear in the game, the actual best gear takes some farming and/or luck to acquire. So, whenever you run into a piece of your old gear, you can pretty much assume that, for the purpose of this LP, it's best in-slot.

Aaaand that's all I got for now. I'll chime in later if necessary. Good luck, raocow!

...and some areas that were cut from the previous Western releases.

What areas would those be?

[Mineyl]

I should have been more specific - it includes the areas cut from the PSX version, but included in the Saturn version. It also, at least from what I had read, includes some extra bonus rooms not in any previous version, regionally or otherwise.

I know it includes several new weapons and items that were cut from previous releases.

All righty. I was just asking because the Saturn-exclusive areas like the Underground Garden are not here, much to most everyone's dismay. It's been a very, very long time since I played the PS1 original (friend returned the disc to me in 2001 snapped in half. Ugh.), so I wasn't sure if maybe they'd added a few new rooms to the original PS1 areas and I'd just forgotten in all that time.