Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Xbox 360)

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Description

Five years ago, Richter Belmont, the latest in the Belmont lineage and the one destined to be a Vampire Hunter, defeated Dracula in a brutal battle which nearly cost him the love of his life, Annette, and her sister, Maria. Now, Richter has suddenly vanished, Dracula's castle has mysteriously reappeared, and Maria, now a young woman, sets off to find Richter. Alucard, the son of Dracula, is awakened from his eternal slumber after this large shift in power, and enters into the castle to find some answers and confront his own father.

Symphony of the Night is a direct sequel to Rondo of Blood. Unlike the previous installments of the series, the game is set in a castle which the player can explore freely with many different paths, although often items in certain areas need to be found that will allow passage to others. The action-based gameplay incorporates now strong RPG elements. The hero receives experience points for defeating enemies, gains levels and becomes more powerful. There is also money to be found in the game, and various accessories to buy. In a separate screen, players need to equip attack weapons, shields and other items. Magic plays an important role, as well as secondary weapons and a large amount of "special moves" that are executed similar to advanced one-on-one fighting games.

The Saturn release adds two new areas to the castle (the Underground Garden and the Haunted Path), a third playable character (Maria), and a few new remixed music tracks. However, it sacrifices a few of the graphical effects from the PlayStation version, particularly true transparencies. All other releases are based on the PlayStation version, and do not feature these changes.

Screenshots

Alternate Titles

• "悪魔城ドラキュラX 月下の夜想曲" -- Japanese spelling
• "CV: SotN" -- Informal abbreviation
• "Akumajo Dracula X: Gekka no Yasoukyoku" -- Japanese title

Part of the Following Groups

• Castlevania / Akumajō Dracula series
• Fictional character: Count Dracula
• Genre: Explorable platformer / Metroidvania
• PlayStation Greatest Hits releases
• PlayStation the Best series
• Theme: Vampires

User Reviews

There are no reviews for the Xbox 360 release of this game. You can use the links below to write your own review or read reviews for the other platforms of this game.

The Press Says

UOL Jogos	Mar 22, 2007		100
Retro Spirit Games	Oct 19, 2012		100
TeamXbox	Mar 21, 2007	9.5 out of 10	95
AceGamez	2007	9 out of 10	90
Gamer.nl	Mar 26, 2007	9 out of 10	90
Planet Xbox 360	Apr 25, 2007	8.9 out of 10	89
Xbox World Australia (XWA)	Sep 03, 2007	88 out of 100	88
Xboxdynasty (XD)	Mar 20, 2007	8.6 out of 10	86
RPGFan	Dec 10, 2007	85 out of 100	85
Gaming Nexus	Mar 26, 2007	B+	83

Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
Bug or graphical effect?	7	אולג 小奥 (169687) Apr 04, 2012
DS	1	Wormspinal (597) Jun 21, 2009
Symphony of the Night/ PS2 memory card problem	6	Foxhack (12469) Jan 12, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cancelled Game.Com version

A port of the game was planned for Tiger's short-lived Game.Com handheld console. The game made it apparently to beta state, and several screenshots can be found of it on the net.

CD music

Place the CD into any CD player and play Track 2. You'll get a clip of Alucard saying that this is a PSX black disc, and not to play Track 1. Then comes a remix of Dracula's Castle, the musical piece that plays in the entrance hall of the castle! (WARNING: Do NOT, under any circumstances, play Track 1 of the PSX CD on your CD player, unless you like the sounds of horrible white noise destroying your speakers and your ears.)

Endings

There are 5 possible endings for the game, they are triggered by: killing Richter with the Holy Glasses; Killing Richter without the Holy Glasses; Killing Dracula with less than 200%; killing him with over 200%; and of course, the "Castlevania Classic" Richter ending.

What few people know is that a sixth ending was planned but eventually scrapped from the final game, this ending is a variation of the "vs Richter" ones, and has Maria coming in to his rescue, then transforming into some sort of demon and fighting Alucard. No part of this ending was coded so don't bother looking for it, but the voice files are in the game cd, you can extract it using any PSX-extracting utility and listen to the entire recorded audio (including Alucard mourning Maria and Richter upon victory).

Fan translation

On September 5, 2009, the freelance translators Devil Hackers released a translation patch that fully translates the Japanese version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night into English. The reason for this release is the notoriously low quality of the official translation. Also, since this patch is for the Japanese version, the players can also be spared the poor voice acting of the US release.

The link to the patch can be found under the Links/Searches section.

Map

To map all of the two castles (the maximum is 200.6%), you need to use the library recall card when facing Dracula, allowing you to add his room to your map.

Medusa

The yellow Medusa heads will normally turn you to stone. However, on seemingly random intervals, Alucard will turn into a gargoyle statue. There seems to be no advantage to this, and no actual point to it.

References

• When you have the Shield Rod equipped, press Back, Foward+Attack. Alucard will toss out a little swirling ball, which is actually the Shield from the Gradius series. It even protects you from small projectile attacks.
• Adrian Tepes's last name "Tepes" is Romanian for "impaler", a name attached to Count Vlad Dracul, aka Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), who was Bram Stoker's inspiration for Count Dracula.

Rune Sword

If you have the Rune Sword familiar, then you'll notice that a word appears whenever you throw the sword. That word is "verboten" and it means "forbidden" in German.

Second castle

There is a second castle in the game which is a vertically mirrored copy of the first. To access it you must meet with Maria inside the main clock where whe will tell you the truth behind Richter. The monsters and items in the second castle are much harder than the first and some of the bosses from the first appear as regular monsters.

Title translation

"Symphony of the Night" is not the translation of the Japanese "Gekka no Yasoukyoku", which actually means "Nocturne Under the Moon".

Xbox Live

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the first Xbox Live arcade game to break the Xbox 360's 50MB data limit enforced by Microsoft. This rule was originally set up to make all games transferable to the 64MB memory unit. For those interested, the game weighs in at 95.32MB.

Version differences

In the Japanese release of this game there were two extra familiars. They were a second fairy and a second demon which basically had no difference from the two that remained (and explains why they were removed).

The Sega Saturn version of Nocturne (which only saw a Japanese release) had a small difference in the storyline. When you go to meet Maria in the Marble Gallery, she gives you the Holy Glasses in the PSX version. But in the Saturn version, she won't just hand them to you. She tests you by fighting you first.

Awards

• Game Informer
  • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #18 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
• Electronic Gaming Monthly
  • January 2002 - Worst Game Line Ever (for "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk, have at you!")
• GameSpy
  • 2001 – #20 Top Game of All Time
• PSExtreme
  • 1997 (Vol. 3, Iss. 3) - Best Game Music of the Year Award
• Retro Gamer
  • Issue #37 - #14 in the "Top 25 Platformers of All Time" poll

Information also contributed by Ace of Sevens, Ben K, Big John WV, CaptainCanuck, Fafnir, PCGamer77, Satoshi Kunsai, Tiago Jacques, Unicorn Lynx and Zovni

Related Web Sites

• MrP CastleVania Realm!!! (A site with everything you need to know about your castlevania-game!)
• New English Translation Patch (The patch translates the original Japanese version into English.)
• The Castlevania Dungeon (A hosted fan "shrine" site devoted to all the games of the Castlevania series, including the PlayStation game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Content includes game info/descriptions, plot summaries, various kinds of media (images, MP3s, etc.) and links to other Castlevania-related sites. )
• Video review of the Castlevania series (WARNING: Language) (The Angry Video Game Nerd, James Rolfe, reviews games in the Castlevania series. In part 4, he reviews Castlevania: Bloodlines on Genesis and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on Playstation.)
• Wikipedia: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Information about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night at Wikipedia)
• X360A achievement guide (X360A's achievement guide for Castlevania: SOTN.)