Reggie White

After beating the first castle in Symphony of The Night and playing through a few hours of Circle of Moon, it seems that the last few Castlevaina games have been lacking in the difficulty department. Whatever happen to the super tough difficulty of the first NES Castlevania game? Even Super Castlevania IV seemed more challenging than Konami's latest efforts. I like the new vampire hunter games but what happend to the classic difficulty?

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Play your games.

Mr. SunburnMan

Harmony of Dissonance is even worse.

I think that some of the fault is that you get to level up. That principle alone makes a game easier, since if you get stuck, you can just level up and then proceed to boss ass-kicking.

I would also say that the difficulty was lowered as the fluidity of the control increased. Going back to play the NES games, I die most of the time because the jumps are "all or nothing" more than due to other errors. Surely it's something that you should get used to, but it's still heightens difficulty.

SotN had a few challenges, and so did CotM, but HoD is a game for weaksauce gamers. I think I died only once...

While I would be willing to part with the levels, I would not part with the fluidity of the controls at all.

Dmitry M. (Lazer)

Harmony of Dissonance was very very easy i must agree. Atleast Circle of the Moon was a little tougher but still i do agree especialy when i fought Dracula it was way to easy to beat him almost with full health i beat him. Like Mr. SunburnMan said it's because of the jumping and how the controller is set today which makes it easier.
Also i think with the mass amount of games coming out these days especially when you start using cd's, dcd's, and smaller cartidges it's a lot easier to make especially with the technology. I beleive they needed to make them easier since these games are meant for the teenage audience and as i've seen it would be impossible to beat an older castlevania and then go on to a new game because there are like so many games i'm playing at once right now and it really takes out the fun of just playing one. That's i like to beat my games fast and finish the story without interuptions and then move on to another game.

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Barret Wallace

I'll admit that I agree with that. I spent my time playing Castlevania on Nintendo and I was yelling at the game and going crazy because it was hard. I play SOTN and have no problems. Well, I would like Konami to set difficulty levels for the new one. Make the hard mode very hard.

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Reggie White

Well I like beating my games and moving on as well but I don't like beating my games with no problems at all.

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Play your games.

GameGuyPete

I'll agree that the level of difficulty has decreased a bit for the Castlevania series since the SNES version of Dracula X. Symphony of the Night was a stellar game and had its tough moments, but I never got overly frustrated with certain bosses or continually missed certain jumps.

If a game's difficulty is lessened, it's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as there's more meat and exploration involved. A game doesn't have to be tough to be good.

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Peter J. Skerritt, Jr.
Senior Editor, PSX Extreme.com

This Week\'s <B>Pete\'s Perspective</B> column: <A href=\"http://www.psxextreme.com/scripts/misc/misc.asp?MiscID=87\"target=blank>Silence Is Deafening</A>