Thanks for the thoughts. You made some excellent notes, and were very fair about all of it. I appreciate that. I posted, really, to get some other impressions of the Lecarde games. Since I posted, as you say, I have noticed that Lecarde 1 is actually more toward Simon's Quest (or Rondo and to some extent Order of Ecclesia), whereas Lecarde 2 is much more like a SotN. But for me, what I notice in both is how they're utilizing "Classicvania" elements from the whole series. There was a time where I was super-enthusiastic about IGA's Metroidvanias, but as time went on, I got the impression more and more that they felt, more often than not, like art pieces set against really straightforward, flat templates: Lots of long hallways connected to large boxes that just meander, which facilitates exploration, level-grinding, and "atmospheric intake," if you will, but isn't particularly engaging when repeated over and over across multiple games. Rather than fill out these games, it became more about fine-tuning the lore and about reworking the player game-system around it, trying to refine and evolve Circle of the Moon's DDS, which ironically wasn't from a game of his own to begin with. This is an overgeneralization, as I do still respect them, especially SotN, but I don't feel the design ever took full advantage of what Castievania HAD been or could have been. As you guessed, I lean more toward the Classicvanias, and I feel that enemy placement, set-piece level design, and variety of platforming helps to keep the player engaged. Now, that's subjective, as it doesn't necessarily make for a "relaxing" or wholly contemplative game experience, which some players naturally want. But [perhaps?] because IGA was so attached to what had been SotN, there wasn't very much exploration of the idea that some areas could be stand-alone one-offs with really off-the-wall concepts that would balance out the calmer explorations parts. Even Simon's Quest had more "player consequences" to its design, rough as it could be in overall execution, and it was in some ways a proto-Metroidvania in terms of having an interlocking world with level-building and item upgrades.
But everything doesn't have to be permanently connected; there was no reason especially for this in Portrait of Ruin. Or if it does have to be connected, use the Metroidvania structure in a clever way. Let's say there's a boss that's coming at you, destroying a high-up bridge linking two areas. Well, now the bridge is gone so you can't backtrack. Well, what if you learn the grappling swing ability, and then, through skill, you can swing your way across the broken bridge on its leftover supports to the other side (or otherwise fall to your doom, which would do two things: 1. It gives the player dread that they won't be able to return to the previous area, and 2. it creates some actual tension, skill, and critical thinking in having the guts to return to the area with the ability gained afterward. It doesn't have to be all or nothing with the Metroidvania formula, and it should have evolved to incorporate more variety by now.
So, for me, what's attractive right away about the Lecarde Chronicles games is that they don't play it entirely safe. Whether it's the inherently more Rondo/Simon's Quest/Classic-ish Lecarde 1 or the more Metroidvania Lecarde 2, the stages aren't just completely sitting there waiting for you to meander through them. The background interacts with you and you can interact with the background; sometimes the stage alters like flooding or falling apart; there isn't a fear of using older design elements like spike pits and moving platforms, and with the previous, platforming is given some variety with the inclusion of things like ropes, rings you can hang from, new platform types like collapsing bookshelves, and things like those moving spike bridges from The Castlevania Adventure. These things are linked together with stuff like a Mega Man X air dash. There is a fair amount of skill and variety involved with traversing the world. [It's missing the SCVIV whip-swinging-platforming, so I'll dock it a few points
]. Even from the videos, I can tell there are some gameplay/balance shortcomings, sure, and I said as much earlier; but I always reward ambition, and for the resources something like this had, it has a lot more of what I've been looking for, personally. The visuals of Lecarde 2 are better than 1, but neither are AAA "QUALITY"--nevertheless, they do exude a consistent mood somewhere between Simon's Quest, SCVIV, and CV64 that's been largely missing from the series as of late. The areas feel threatening, moody, and they have backgrounds with a lot of little details (again, some interactive), and the backgrounds themselves progress well into different scenery even within the same areas. Now, as was said, it leans heavily toward the more Bram Stoker horror angle, so IGA's more "chilling beauty" approach is not seen as much in the game. But speaking personally, I think this genre lends itself to putting a bit more visual decay and overgrowth on that beauty, with a moodier palette to boot. You could add a bit more of IGA's traditional visual touches to these, absolutely, but I prefer the dominant motif being more in tune with the horror theme, I think.
I've got to talk about the bosses for a second to make sure I'm making myself clear. When I talk about imagination, I'm talking about pageantry and an internal consistency of logic.
Now, some of it will be obvious yet still clever, like the mini-boss of Lecarde 1 stage 1 where a giant skeleton arm comes out of the mausoleum in the background and starts throwing fragments of it at you. But then you've got stuff like a red curtain that opens to reveal a dead orchestra led by an elegant vampire conductor who during the battle transforms into a man-bat, and a full-on funeral for your ancestor that turns into a fight. On another occasion, you walk into a room and see a burial shroud; it starts floating into the air multiple times until there are burial shrouds all over the room attacking you, possessed by a ghost. On yet another occasion, you see a statue of a warlock sitting on the right side, but before any real battle begins where you can strike back, you see a series of spiked chains come at you in patterned waves that you have to avoid by character placement. Yet another: A pillar that seems normal, yet suddenly you find a bunch of Grim Reaper scythes coming your way, and then the pillar turns out to be possessed by a skeleton buried within its stone confines. Or how about twisting a familiar motif, where the medusa head is a giant stone statue head for the whole battle or a giant knight puppet you fight on moving platforms that's possessed by a big peeping eye enemy, which then also attacks when its armor is stripped off.
Moreover: The beautifully detailed stone bust in a garden, which summons a Venus de Milo-like wraith that attacks with garden-themed elements like flowers. A mirror spirit that travels in and out of mirrors as he makes multiple glass-reflection copies of you to fight. A tree that attacks you with all of the corpses buried around it, wherein you aren't just attacking the enemy straight on, but have to knock out the zombies hanging from it and watch out for its roots crossing your feet. Or this I love: bosses that are actually part of the architecture you traverse, like a living wall of ice that tries to slowly crush you against the right wall, and a mechanism that tries to flatten you in the middle of the screen if you don't win fast enough...An illusionist with spectators and a color-coded attack pattern that actually gives the player the sense of fighting a master of visual tricks who has an audience...a woman in the fog...etc...I could go on and on, because there are more than these. Between the two games, though, I would strongly argue this is anything but standard, typical fare. Some few might be a little on the safe side (more like what IGA did by supersizing some enemies at times like in HoD), and it may all be motif-expected fare...yet, despite some being "genre obvious," a lot of these ideas have not been done or done to this extent during Castlevania's decades-long history. That alone makes it feel like what you're seeing was something that was meant to be, just slightly beyond the mind's eye. It adds a powerful capstone to each stage/area experience.
This is a small side note, but for me, the visual scale of everything in Lecarde 1 and 2 is so much better than what we've seen out of, say, the DS games. I understand that there is more "flair" and artistry in the spites of the DS stuff, and perhaps the portable nature affected the design choices, but I've always thought the scale was too small to really get the full impact. I don't know what it is exactly, but when I played the Super Nintendo of Genesis games, I always felt more power from the visuals than the portable games, despite the graphical horsepower being comparable or better by the time you get to the GBA and DS.
Now, as to why I'm not "playing" the Lecarde games...Back in the day, a downloadable game like this, for whatever reason, caused my hard drive to go nuts and die. That, combined with the fact that I always have been a console-game person, means I'm unlikely to play these. But from watching, despite knowing there are obvious flaws, I can admire the imagination and ambition in design and art from such a limited-resources developer situation, as discussed above. And even judging by the limitations of videos, which I duly note, while awkward at times, it's clearly not a completely unplayable mess. And I imagine if I were playing, I'd be forgiving. I mean, I was forgiving of the original GB The Castlevania Adventure, and that's not easy to do.
Moving on to Bloodstained...the comparisons I made were NOT fair, absolutely. We've seen next to nothing of Bloodstained, really. And there have been flashes of what I am "at the
very least" hoping for in creativity, such as the falling mast, the cannon blowing up the wall, those jellyfish-like things climbing up from the foreground, the first boss having some multiple layers, and the village with the falling roof. I'm just hoping the platforming gets a bit less floaty and has some more obstacles/challenges to it other than setting up rooms and placing villains in them.
Obviously, as a new IP, the art direction and motif of Bloodstained may not fully turn out what I'm looking for, either. No offense, but the silliness of kung-fu shoes and the overly "pop" way it visually handles some of its motifs--almost more Soul Eater than Vampire Hunter D in anime terms for lack of a better analogy offhand--don't quite sit well with me.
That said, it's still
really early. But I'm just saying these Lecarde games, even if one is more Simon's Quest and one is more SotN, together, they have given me a feeling for the type of blend between action-platforming and exploration I'd like to see from a Castlevania and/or Castlevania-like game/series. They've shown me in concrete terms what I've been feeling, that it doesn't have to be all one way or another. But again, I understand there are different tastes among fans, and I imagine there are some who want to see not even the slightest Classicvania influences, which they consider archaic or even "bad" design. But that's another story altogether!
]. Even from the videos, I can tell there are some gameplay/balance shortcomings, sure, and I said as much earlier; but I always reward ambition, and for the resources something like this had, it has a lot more of what I've been looking for, personally. The visuals of Lecarde 2 are better than 1, but neither are AAA "QUALITY"--nevertheless, they do exude a consistent mood somewhere between Simon's Quest, SCVIV, and CV64 that's been largely missing from the series as of late. The areas feel threatening, moody, and they have backgrounds with a lot of little details (again, some interactive), and the backgrounds themselves progress well into different scenery even within the same areas. Now, as was said, it leans heavily toward the more Bram Stoker horror angle, so IGA's more "chilling beauty" approach is not seen as much in the game. But speaking personally, I think this genre lends itself to putting a bit more visual decay and overgrowth on that beauty, with a moodier palette to boot. You could add a bit more of IGA's traditional visual touches to these, absolutely, but I prefer the dominant motif being more in tune with the horror theme, I think.
