Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a 1997 action role-playing game developed and published by Konami for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. It is a direct sequel to Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, set five years after its events. It was directed and produced by Toru Hagihara, with Koji Igarashi acting as assistant director.
It features Dracula's dhampir son Alucard (returning from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) as the protagonist, as he explores Dracula's castle (which reemerges following the disappearance of Richter Belmont) and fights to prevent his father from fully regaining his lost power. Its design marks a break from previous entries in the series, re-introducing the exploration, nonlinear level design, and role-playing elements first experimented with in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.
Symphony of the Night initially sold poorly. However, it gradually gained sales through word-of-mouth and became a sleeper hit, developing a cult following and selling over 700,000 units in the United States and Japan. The game garnered acclaim, often cited by critics as one of the best video games of all time, praising its gameplay innovations, atmosphere, visuals and soundtrack with criticism directed towards the voice acting. It is also considered the definitive pioneer of the Metroidvania genre, combining the two games and inspiring numerous exploration-based action-adventure games ever since. Symphony of the Night would have a lasting impact on the Castlevania series, with numerous subsequent mainline entries adopting its gameplay model.
Gameplay
Symphony of the Night uses 2-dimensional side-scrolling gameplay. The objective is to explore Dracula's castle to defeat an entity named Shaft who is controlling Richter Belmont, the self-proclaimed lord of the castle and hero of the events which took place in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. The player must acquire a particular item during gameplay and use it while fighting Richter in order to free him of Shaft's influence. Successfully doing so reveals the second portion of the game: the Inverted Castle, an upside-down version of Dracula's castle with new enemies and bosses. Alucard has to find five specific bosses to collect five pieces of Dracula (in reference to Castlevania II: Simon's Quest), eventually leading to the final battle with a newly awakened Dracula.
The game is non-linear, with most of the castle being inaccessible until various items and abilities are collected, including shapeshifting into a bat, wolf, or mist. As the player uncovers more of the castle, a map is updated to show progress.
While player characters in previous Castlevania games typically used a whip, the player can find and use a wide variety of weapons. The game includes an inventory and other role-playing game elements.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night incorporates elements found in role-playing video games. Alucard's hit points determine the maximum amount of damage he can withstand before dying, while his magic points decide how frequently a magical attack may be cast. Alucard can collect hearts dropped from candles and enemies to use sub-weapons like in previous games. Alucard has four other attributes: strength, the power of his physical attack; constitution, his resilience to damage inflicted by the monsters; intelligence, the power of magical attacks and sub-weapons; and luck, the frequency that items are dropped by enemies as well as the chance to score a critical hit.
Defeating monsters provides Alucard with experience points, and he will level up after reaching a predetermined amount, increasing his attributes in the process. In addition to level-ups, Alucard can find Life Vessels and Heart Vessels scattered around the castle, which permanently increase Alucard's maximum hit points and hearts respectively. Alucard may cast eight different spells, which requires the player to input directional combinations and will use up varying amounts of his magic points. During the course of the game, Alucard can acquire the ability to summon familiars, which function as complementary entities, aiding him in battle and exploration.
Alternative modes of gameplay can be unlocked after completion of the game. By inputting Richter Belmont's name as the username, the player can play as Richter, who uses a whip as his main weapon and various sub-weapons. In the Sega Saturn version, the port included in the PlayStation Portable game Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, and in the PlayStation 4 port, Castlevania Requiem, Maria Renard is playable.
Plot
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night begins during Richter Belmont's confrontation and defeat of Count Dracula in 1792. The story then moves forward to 1797, by which time Richter has been missing for one year and Dracula's castle has reappeared. Dracula's son Alucard, who has been in a self-imposed slumber since helping Trevor Belmont defeat his father 300 years prior, awakens and journeys to the castle to destroy it. He meets Maria Renard, who once fought alongside Richter and is searching for him. Alucard locates Richter, who claims to be the new lord of the castle. Convinced that Richter is under somebody else's control, Maria urges Alucard not to hurt him and gives him the Holy Glasses, which allows him to see past illusions. In the castle's keep, Alucard confronts Richter and learns that he plans to resurrect Dracula, so the two can fight for an eternity. During a fight, Alucard breaks the spell controlling Richter, and Dracula's servant Shaft appears and tells them that Dracula will still be resurrected soon.
Alucard leaves Richter and Maria to confront Shaft, venturing into an upside-down duplicate of the castle to seek him out. Shaft reveals he planned to end the threat of the Belmont clan by controlling one of them and forcing the clan to fight one another. After defeating Shaft, Alucard faces his father, who vows to bring an end to humankind because Alucard's mother Lisa was executed as a witch. Alucard refuses to join his father in his revenge, and he defeats him. Alucard tells Dracula that he has been thwarted many times because he lost the ability to love after Lisa's death, and that Lisa's final words were of eternal love for him and a plea not to hate or at least harm humanity. Before Dracula dies, he asks for Lisa's forgiveness and bids his son farewell.
After escaping the collapsing castle, Alucard rejoins Maria and Richter. Maria is relieved that he escaped, while Richter blames himself as the reason for Alucard's fight with his father. Alucard tells Richter, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" (a quote attributed to Edmund Burke), and resolves to disappear from the world because of his cursed bloodline. Depending on how much of the castle the player has explored, Maria either chases Alucard in the hope of changing his mind, or resigns herself to Alucard's fate and leaves with Richter.
Development In 1994, development began on a Castlevania game for the 32X, retroactively known under the title Castlevania: The Bloodletting. A playable prototype was created, but Konami decided to refocus its efforts on the PlayStation, and the game was cancelled as a result. Changes were made to these initial ideas, and the project became Symphony of the Night.
The game was directed and produced by Toru Hagihara, who had directed the previous entry, Rondo of Blood. Igarashi had creative influence and was involved with the story-writing and programming. Part way through production, Hagihara was promoted to head of the division and asked Igarashi to finish the game as the assistant director. From the outset, the game was intended to represent a new direction for the franchise. According to Igarashi, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night began development as "something of a side story for the series, we were able to break a lot of Castlevania conventions and introduce a lot of new elements that we still use today".Nintendo Power, July 2008 Their primary motivation for the abrupt design change was the sight of dozens of Castlevania games in bargain bins of Japanese video game stores; linear Castlevania games offered limited replay value after completion.Thomas Shin (2007). Unpublished interview from Entertainment for All Expo 2007, Hardcore Gamer Magazine A noted fan of 2D games, Igarashi was instrumental in refining the game's control scheme.
Igarashi felt that regular action games were too short, and he wanted to create a game that "could be enjoyed for a long time". Consequently, the development team abandoned the traditional stage-by-stage progression of the previous Castlevania games in favor of an open castle that the player could freely explore. Igarashi looked to Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series, which involved much exploration and backtracking to extend the amount of gameplay, but by making it a side-scroller, it thus became similar to Metroid; Symphony of the Night was also directly influenced by Super Metroid. Igarashi was able to use the critical reaction from Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, which was more focused on exploration than action, to pitch Symphony of the Night to Konami. The development team used inspiration from The Legend of Zelda to make most of the castle areas initially inaccessible to the player. The player would gradually obtain items and abilities that progressively opened up the castle. Their idea was to reward exploration while retaining the hack-and-slash action of the previous games. Instead of the whip-wielding protagonists of the previous games, the team made Alucard the main character, due to concerns over the whip attack taking up too much of the screen and the desire to give the player more unique action moves, such as transformation abilities.
Role-playing mechanics were added because Igarashi felt the earlier Castlevania games were too challenging for average players. To change that, the team implemented a leveling-up system with experience points, which rewarded players with better attack and defense statistics as they beat enemies. This system, combined with a variety of items, armors, weapons and spells, allowed the exploration to become less difficult for unskilled players.
Symphony of the Night marked the debut of artist Ayami Kojima in the video game industry. She worked on the game as a character designer, conceptualizing the game's main and supporting cast. Her designs for the game are heavily influenced by bishōnen-style art. The game is presented using 2D visuals, mainly sprites animated over scrolling backgrounds. The PlayStation had no hardware for scrolling, which led to the developers using the same methods for displaying character sprites to display the backgrounds. Occasionally, the 3D capabilities of the PlayStation are utilized. The game contains opening and ending cinematics, which were created by another group at Konami. Igarashi and the development team were disappointed in the quality of the cinematics, which featured flat models lacking textures.
Audio The music used in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was composed by Michiru Yamane. The soundtrack contains elements from multiple musical genres, including classical, techno, gothic rock, new-age, jazz, and subgenres of metal, specifically elements of thrash metal. "I Am the Wind", a vocal ending theme written by Rika Muranaka and Tony Haynes, and performed by Cynthia Harrell, is played during the credits. A secret music track can only be heard by inserting the PlayStation disc into a CD player.
Versions and re-releases PlayStation and Saturn Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was released in Japan on March 20, 1997, in North America on October 3, 1997, and in Europe in November 1997. The Japanese release was packaged with an art book containing a small manga based on the game and a soundtrack compiled from most of the previous Castlevania games.