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CC11: Castlevania Symphony of the Night · Cart Creeps

• CC11: Welcome back. This is this is our eleventh episode about castle games. Nah, please. I'll take over. Welcome to Cart Creeps, our eleventh episode. And this works. Symphony of the night. if you can't tell, I was being a Dracula. The Dracula. Yeah, for for audio. No, you're a Dracula. Yeah, a Dracula. I'm wearing a cloak for audio listeners. I'm also wearing a cloak and some sort of vaguely Renaissance medieval it's more like I don't know, it's just costume shirt for Renaissance fair. His hair looks very nice. And my hair's he slicked back his hand. Looks so nice. It's coming out though. I didn't use it. But a hand young man. We're gonna hand some young Dracula you make, Ryan. I'm definitely taking this cloak off though because it's really hot. So it's absorbing all the light. Yeah. There's a server that's in this room, like a server PC that's running nonstop, so it's always really warm in here. constantly. relatively new for our audio listeners. Yeah, it's right it's right there. It's really ugly. It's doesn't have a front. It's got hang on, let me move the arm. There's two fans that are exposed because it wouldn't fit with the fans on the front. It's the magic of editing that you can't hear that all the time. Yeah, actually I had to I had it set up to run the fans full speed all the time, especially the case fans, because they're not like The case fans don't change their speed with I guess they run it medium or whatever. 'cause they're using jumpers instead of the actual case. Because it's a Dell case, so those are able the BIOS is able to ramp those up and down like it can with a CPU fan, but it couldn't do that with the case fans on the adapter, so I had it running full blast and it was it's like I was like, Okay, I can't do that. Couldn't be as bad as my PC sounded the other day. Yeah. You turned it on and it almost exploded. I I turned it on and it was like What's going on with my computer? I just turned it off, turn it back on, it was fine. It was just running rich. You had to, you know, pull the choke out. Yeah, so it is our 11th episode, which means we only have one more episode left for a full year of here. It's been a good run, everybody. Thanks for your support. Yeah, they only ever made one season, but it was really strong. Really strong. Netflix does it all the time and they're making billion dollars, so it works will work out for us. Yep. That's how much money we're gonna make. Yeah. Finally finally make my billion. I haven't mentioned it yet, but I'm Ryan. We also have. I'm Gabe, the all knowing fool, in case you haven't been here. And I'm Jay. And I'm Keith. Nice and simple this time, Normally we'll throw in little shenanigans each time we do We like to have fun here, but not this time. I only did it one time, actually. It's a serious spooky business, everybody. Just notice your nickname, Jay. Yeah. Symphony of John. I guess even for our video, 'cause everybody can see that they don't see this person. This is just this is just an us a for us thing. Like we should have our perks too. Symphony of Symphony of John is really good. Mm-hmm. I could start at least introducing them as part of me. That's that's Jay's bit. I just I just like to do a fun little name. It's just for me. It's just a bit for Jay. Yeah. Doesn't matter if no one else laughs, as long as Jay laughs, that's all that matters. It doesn't always have to be funny for everyone. I wanna mention our Discord. If you're not aware we have a Discord where you can come and hang out and talk about these games and other games and anything you want, gaming related or I guess otherwise. We have other channels about other stuff like music and books and stuff too, and movies and card games and stuff like that. So check it out. go ahead and join there. Yeah, yeah, in a Valheim. I gonna get to that in the next section. But yeah, go ahead and join our Discord server. also by the time This episode comes out, it'll be November early November. So our second installment of Creep Quarterly will be coming to the listeners pretty soon after that. Coming at you. Coming at you. I don't know. I don't think by the time this comes out, there'll be the hard deadline will have like passed for signing up, but it'll be close. So if you're listening to this and it hasn't been mentioned in the disc Discord already, it will be soon when the cutoff date is. But if yeah, if any a Patreon subscriber of any tier is eligible for the creep quarterly. So go ahead and check that out if you're interested. You can also get a game on the creep wheel if you you know pay for the highest tier which is Ultra Creep. Ultra creep. this this creep quarterly we're we're sending out Dracula teeth that Ryan has worn. That's not true. worn, yeah. That part is true actually. sorry. Sorry. Authentic used Dracula tooth. Yeah. Light gently used. Only worn once. Lightly played. Each member gets a tooth. Yeah. We've got to wrap them up into individual pieces and send them. Keith, what have you been playing this month? I know something that you've been playing and some something you haven't been playing. I know everything you've been playing. What could that be? What could that be Again, Keith? What could that be? He he never it's always him. That's not true. None of us beat last week, so last month, so did but Jay's a psycho. Don't throw me under your filthy bus. Jay who bravely reverts the shadow tower. So this this month has been it's been more the same really. just Street Fighter and Not finishing games. technically I haven't finished Zero Company yet, so I guess you're right there. going still going through Zero Company as well. yeah, it's a lot of fun. still can't tell any of you. Stupid idiots. you're still alive. despite my best efforts. Too easy. I don't think you had met. No, you're not there yet. Not not yet. Still? Because I have I haven't you gotta like upgrade to get roster space. And they give you like so many like like generic I mean not generic, but pre-made characters in your squad already. So like by the time you start, you have like five people on your team already. So like, well, fuck, I got I there's I have too many friends that I made, so I can't get them all at the same time. Yeah, I know. no. god, it's the worst. put me in case. I'm dying to blast someone. Ryan and Ryan and Gabe are I don't think I've gotten Gabe yet either. Ryan's been Ryan's been there. I don't think you mentioned us though. I don't know what I look like in your game. Maybe when originally I sent a whole group thing, group photo of everyone. So you're all in there. you'll find. I'll I'll send it to you again. And you can put them you can put right here. And you can just put, hey, what here's what everyone looks like. Okay. Don't put that in. No, put that put that in there. Put it put that in. Put that editor. Put it put right here. Could all the Star Wars talk. Yeah. Which is funny because I was they're throwing a bunch of boos booing Keith. I also want to get the new Star Wars burnout racing game, a pod racing game, so I gotta go and get that nice. I've also been playing Castlevania from that. Right. yeah. Yeah, that can pull up Chido. Yeah, Biddy Biddy Blast Blast. my Instagram was just to entirely filled with him for days. I mean it's he it is hilarious though. You need a little Star Wars critter to you know make it make everything work. I was I was thinking about this in like in depth for some reason. because like essentially Jar Jar Binks is shtick is he's also really annoying and he says stuff in an annoying way and he looks weird and goofy, right? But like Biddy Blass is kind of the same. He says his voice is very annoying, but it's funny. But I think it's funny because he's a little weird crocodile man with a helmet on. Like he looks funny in like a way that Jar Jar Binks doesn't. Jar Jar Binks just looks kind of annoying, you know? I can't like really explain because all the little guys, all the little glup shittos like Babu Frick love that guy. the little guys from little little character guys. Rather than like a full ostensibly human guy doing goofy shit, which is more annoying than like a little like a little look at this fucking Muppet. Look at a little Kermit dicking around. Yeah, like Salacious people love Salacious B Crumb too. You know, like Salacious be crumb is a favorite 'cause he's just a little like goblin thing that sits next to Job of the Hut. I think the problem is we we all know what Jar Jar Binks. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, in our life. But also also saw someone like saying that Biddy Blast isn't a Glup Shiddo because a Glup Shiddo is some character that isn't actually even named in the movie or in the media it's in, it's named somewhere else. Which is like that's fair. Like Max Rebo and like, you know, Salacious B Crum is never said in the movie. Yeah, exactly. I don't think Max Rebo is ever mentioned either. Yeah. Yeah. But Technically Baby Blast is mentioned because it's like he's an opponent in the game. But he's still pretty good. That's so good. Yeah. I have It's a Glup shit o to me. Yeah. And he in our hearts he's in our hearts. People like that don't know anything about Star Wars like memes will be what the f what are they talking about? What is a GLUP shitto? I think most people have seen that. They're just making that up. Most people in the sphere of the that would be listening to this would be would know what a GLUP should do yeah, basically it's like yeah, just little little nameless little freak that everyone flashes onto. Yeah. Anyways, I have been playing so I played Castlevania, I finished it really early on, within two weeks of starting it. So I left it left me all, you a whole half of a month to play other stuff. So I played around I think it's September twentieth. around there was Halo three's nineteenth birthday, you know, nineteenth anniversary of Halo Three coming out. So I wanted to play that. So I played through that. I downloaded MCC on the Steam Deck and I played through Halo's Halo Three's campaign. And like, man, you signing in because you have to sign into Microsoft on the Steam Deck. Or on sorry, on MC on MCC to play it, right? Your Microsoft account. Yeah. And it's so I obviously seems like it's relatively small. It's pretty big when it comes to hand as far as a handheld screen's concern, but like The window to sign in to MCC is like this big and you can't see it. you literally can't see. You have to use the zoom feature. And even then it's still really hard to see. I got in eventually, but I was almost get almost gave up and I could see why someone would. But because you're signing in Microsoft is such a pain. I don't know. It's always been like that. Can you like sign in on Steam and then that counts for your Steam Deck or like started the game on Steam? Yeah, you start the game on the Steam Deck and then you there's a Microsoft login that first thing when you Open it and you have to sign in your Microsoft account 'cause you have to have a mic Microsoft account to play it. Because that's how it does matchmaking and stuff. It's not through you'd have whatever other service. Yeah. I did I did make it with Yeah. So I played through all of three and then I played through the rest of two that I had not beaten on MCC before, which was from Right after Delta Halo, this the second set of Arbiter missions to the end. And then I beat those. Those were all I played all of these on normal because I was like I started playing on heroic on Halo Three and I was like, man, I'm really rusty at this. Cause I've I soloed I soloed Halo Three legendarily back when it it was out, you know, on the three sixty. 'cause I wanted to get the EOT set, the armor customization. And I did that back in the day solo. I definitely couldn't do it now and not without a lot of like time. So anyways, beat that within a couple did that a couple days, and I was like, we talked about Valheim in our last episode. We talked about survival crafters. And I I had been having the itch to play Valheim because I also wanted to test out the server running a ser a game server like a Minecraft or Valheim server, So I set that up and set up a Valheim server. So if you're interested in playing Valheim with with me, you can join our our Discord. Ryan wants you in his Val hole. And then you can play Valheim. With only me, I think the only other person that was playing it had stopped for now. So but I played I put put a lot of hours into it in that short amount of time that I've been playing. I'm trying to play with your friend. You count there and you guys own it stone. Yeah, Keith I don't think owns it, but the other you other two you two, Jay. I do you own it. You s I saw that Jay had sixty five minutes or something like that. Maybe it was four hours on it. It's a full day's work in that one. Yeah, it was, yeah. Jay was probably like, if I get into this now, I'll never stop. Yeah. Well it runs it runs on deck. The first time we had all been playing it as a group, probably the last and I jumped in on like the last day. yeah. And he was like, Okay, I guess I'll move on to And then the yeah our two week hyperfixation ended and then Jay was left like he was like, I guess it won't play. Back to space. Back to no man's sky. Don't be fooled though, people. Once this next game comes out, Ryan's not gonna play. Or No, it it depends on what it is. Yeah, I was about to say, or or he won't play that game. Yeah. I'm not like Keith. I'll actually finish games and play other games in the span of a month, you know. It's easy to Well, that's because that game was bad. That's me. That too. Yes. Or did you? well game was not good either. I did not finish two games and but I I d I finished them after we had aired. I didn't finish Resident Evil two in Final Fantasy Seven, but I wanted to beat them, so I still did that. So I I'm a dirty hundred percent Ast asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. I rolled a dirt I'm roll I rolled a dirty twenty. Gabe what have you been playing this month? I've been playing Castlevania. He's stuck on the boxing level and then his room, Frank. This is the third episode in a row for those keeping track. Yeah. Well that's because this is the lowest priority room in the house. Especially now that we know that nobody's gonna be staying in it for a minute. I know. Every time we take a box down another one just appears in his place. We we were yeah. It's like a high guest. We were expecting guests and then we learned that we weren't expecting guests and so now we're like, okay. But we actually do we do wanna get this yeah. We do wanna get this finished this weekend. We don't want to stay in the box room. It's scary in there. but no I've been playing Castlevania for retro handhelds. Look cool. That's cool. So that's pretty cool. Compare that to this the best Castlevania. Yeah, it's real comparable. The first one and the best one. There's a new one coming out. Yeah, there is a new one coming out. That sounds fun. Belmont's Curse. Belmont's Curse. Yeah. Wow. Seems like they're all cursed at all times in all the games. Which looks awesome. It does gotta deal with a drag always gotta deal with the Dracula. Yeah, the gameplay I've seen looks incredible. I really I I really want to play it. I'll probably That's the thing with Dracula's, even though there's only one, you kill him and he just doesn't die. He just comes back later. In general, isn't it like the thirtieth anniversary of the original game? Fourtieth of the original game. Yeah. eighty seven. 'Cause then everyone dies if you don't. That's true. But then actually change you into a vampire, then you become a Dracula, so I hope everyone is celebrating Castlevania. I know why. I know we are. We hear it, cart creeps. We love playing first game. You know what? You guys should if if Keith and Jay, if you wanna if you wanna break into Keith and Jay, if you want to break into retro handhelds and try to get your eternal champion, that's a great month to start. Because Castlevania is pretty easy. it's not easy but the first game's very short. So you could rack it. I would never classify any NES game as easy because I'd imagine there's like some Yeah. I got through the first game. I think there's I think there's four stages or six stages with four areas or something like that. I got through like the first one in like twenty minutes. It's it was I think it takes you like it the like how long to beat is like Three hours, but I'm pretty sure you could probably do it in less than that. Your humanity is fighting back. Yeah. Jay. What have you been playing? haven't been playing too much outside of Castlevania this month, but I had I did start a new file of Sonic Adventure 2. Still in my GameCube nostalgia phase. And that's that's been really fun. I still really like that game. I think it holds up. I like the channel. Shout out to Adventure 2 is great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Throwing against the walls so they turn evil. Yeah, I actually did. I I never knew this while I was playing it, but the you can it it doesn't take long at all to get them to the max good or max evil point. Yeah. But then you have to wait in the child garden. I think it's four real time hours. you have to be in there for four in game hours. So I just like cranking. Yeah, for them to evolve, right? Yeah. So just got I made one good and one evil, which was really funny 'cause it's just like you have a good child that you're giving a lot of love to and like treating them well. It's really interesting they put that like mechanic in there. Yeah. And and like if you abuse one of these children, you get to go to hell. Yeah, like that's the other thing, right? It unlocks like a good a good version of the chow garden. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. And you have to you have to get like the two you have to have a bad chow to unlock that one. Yeah to go to the hell one. Yeah. Yep. So I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Chow's like little Tamagotchis essentially that you can just like raise. There was even a little Game Boy advanced attachment that you could plug into it as well. So like yeah, it's it's you like you're raising like this little thing. And you can have it like run races or do little karate tournaments and and every every level there's like well so when you defeat an enemy, I guess you just call they're like just cylinders. I don't know. They're different colors like I I don't know if they are DNA strands, I guess. It might be that actually. But you know, you You get those in the levels and you give those to the chow and it raises different stats and then you can put in fights or races or what have you and they'll do different things. You'd also rescue animals as well out of robots and give them to the chows, and then that can also They'll take on the animal parts that you give them. So like my evil chow, I only gave him like unicorns and bats, so he would like have the wings and the horn, but like that was it. Yeah. It says they're called chow drives. Chow drives. Interesting. From an outside perspective of having I I haven't played either one or two of those games. Like, you know, it's what you're saying is sounds insane. What we're talking about. When you talk about Valheim, that's why I hear that too. That's what it is. It's like, if you if you neglect one, it'll turn evil, and if you like treat one if you treat the other really well it'll turn good basically it'll and you can each level has three different keys and they're chow key. if you find the key in the middle of beating a level you get to go to the chow world in between the level and that's where you give them your new animals and drives and stuff. And you can also just free play and go there willy nilly. we'll we'll get Sonic Adventure on the wheel next season. It's a Sonic Adventure two Not Sonic Adventure One. Sonic Adventure One does not hold up. It does not I haven't played it. it's not terrible, but it's definitely like like the they made like crazy jumps from one to two. Like one is kind of not super fun to play. I wouldn't like suggest anyone play it. two's great. Like two's amazing. Two is still great. I will probably continue to play it. This month. But that's not what this episode is about. Yeah, shut up shut up about fucking Sonic. Gotta go fast. Yeah, hell yeah. I have a bumper sticker. Yeah. It's about Sonic Adventure 2. Yeah. Nice. If you're not familiar with the concept, every month we have a creep wheel which determines our game to play for the next month. last month Symphony of the Night one, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, it was replaced now by So it was my game, right? so I chose three games to potentially replace it and they were voted on by the Discord members, and the games I chose were Halo Two, Crash Bandicoot two, and Half Life Two. And Half Life Two won. So Half Life Two is going on the wheel for this month, or you know, it'll be on the wheel in a contention going forward. So sucks for Keefe. I don't know how he's gonna end up playing that 'cause that's one of the first ones that it'll be really hard for him to find 'cause he's just a Sony head. Life finds a way. Yeah. So if you want to get your own game on the wheel, check out our Patreon. Umx and play that somehow. Yeah, the orange play the orange box on PS3, which is apparently a bad version of that like disc. Like it's the worst version. Really? Yeah, I think I'd have heard that. Yeah. We should make him play it that way so we can hear that perspective. Yeah. I mean it's the perspective on the game, yeah. I think I have a copy of the orange box for three sixty actually. I did. I know I used to. there was a PC version too that Todd might have had, so I don't know where that is. but introducing the game of the month for this month, Castlevania Symphony of the Night. it was chosen by me. It's for the PS1, came out in nineteen ninety-seven. I chose it because all my first this is from this was my first choice, one of my like OG choices. I chose it because I'd always heard it's one of the GOATs. And so I wanted to see if that was true. That's also why I put Shantae on the list and I think the other First one I had was Pokemon Trading Hard Game 2, which is just one of my own personal ones, but which that was that you can go watch that episode. That was the second or that was the third, I think. yeah, go back and check it out. If you if you haven't seen it, stop now. Check that out. We'll come back and watch the rest of this. And then come back right where you paused. Yeah. Which looked way different back then, right? Yeah. And our camera quality was so different as well. Yeah. And our bucks. or room box quality. The ratio of room to boxes. Yeah. That's pretty wildly different. How long to beat says it's sixteen hours. I think that is that right? Did I get that right? I think I just went off of memory. I'm pretty sure it maybe even said twenty one or something like that. But sixteen's right at all for me. I beat it way faster than that. But maybe if you're trying hard says eleven hours. Eleven? Okay. Yeah. Which seems about accurate. Eleven and a half. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So my as far as my personal Castlevania history, I had never played Castlevania games until getting into the retro handheld stuff. so I played I think the first one I played was Bloodlines for Retro Handheld's game of the month, or maybe it was even a Saturday retro bit. What do they call those? The game of the week games. Because it wasn't very long. And then we they also had Order of Ecclesia. in a game of the month one time and I tried it but I didn't finish it. Which is a cat is a Metroidvania like this game we like Symphony Knight is, I just didn't finish it. it's a DS game. I don't know why I always want to think you played Rondo of Blood. No, I did it, but it was Bloodline, so I can see why. I for some reason that confuses me too. But Then we played Super Castlevania Four. that was Gabe's game. That was our second video episode. Go check that one out. Go stop what you're doing. Link below what you're doing. Link below. we didn't The link might be on the screen if I remember to do that. Sorry sorry you have to watch a second one. You know what? Just go back and watch them all in or order. Yeah. Yeah, watch them all. The first one is really long. And the audio quality is also bad. The audio quality quality improves in the second episode, but the camera quality improves later. And not that it's bad, it's just not as good as it is now. Not that it's gr great now. It's just acceptable. better than Wednesday. Yeah, it's been to this point. Yeah, so of all those Castlevania games I've played, I didn't like any of them that much. I really didn't like Bloodlines was fine. I liked it was okay. I did not like Castlevania IV and I just bounced off of order of Ecclesia for some reason. Like I said, I was it's a DS game. I think that part of it had something to do with it because I had to do some screen switching a little more often than I wanted to. But I'll get in we'll get into how I felt about this one. Soon. Gabe, I think you're the one that has the most Castlevania experience since you just touched on it a minute ago. Do you want to talk about the rest of your Castlevania portfolio? He's a Castlehead. trackhead. Besides now playing one. I'm playing one. So I mean that's about it. Castlevania one's pretty fun. It's a lot like Super Castlevania Four. in that it's linear unlike this one, which is like you said, it's a Metroidvania. You jump all around the map. It's really cool. I really like that aspect of this game. But I also I don't know, I also like the linear aspect of the earlier games too. from what I understand, three two or three ventured away from the linear aspect. That's one of the first ones. I wanna say two, yeah. I I was gonna say three, but I wanna I wanna say it's two. One of them you have to go around collecting Dracula's parts and that makes that's where the Metroidvania came in. But put them together, then kill Classic. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. but yeah, but one and four are very linear. so they're almost completely different games. still a lot of fun. That's about all I have on it. That's that's my Thoughts on the other Castlevania games. I like them a lot. I liked I mean I love four. I liked how hard it was. I liked the difficulty. I really liked a lot of aspects of it. If if it's not hard, it's not worth playing. It's not true. Well we'll get into that later. Yeah, so this was my Symphony of Night was my fourth Castlevania experience. K's got more Castlevania experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You might have just been thinking about me. But I wanted to really. It's easy to mix up. Wanted to let the fool speak his part. I played my first Castlevania was Castlevania Adventure. I had that just on the Game Boy regular, the Game Boy Fat. Yeah, yeah. I never got I never even got to like world two in it. it goes world one one, one two, one three, and then it goes two one two two, so on. never got to world two. So that that's all I c that's my experience there. And then I guess like a year or two before we started doing this podcast, I played Bloodlines on the Switch 'cause it was on the Sega online. Like virtual s not store, but you know, just like the virtual console thing. Yeah. And I couldn't have done that without safe states, but that was really, really fun to look at. I remember thinking like for a Genesis game, just like the background stuff and all of like the Mm-hmm. I don't know, like there would there'd be like animations going on as you're walking through the castle levels and I was like, That's I could I couldn't imagine being you know, like playing this the day it came out and seeing it and being like, What like just imagining how That would make me feel as a new game. And that's probably the best the game has looked what you know at that point. I did really like Bloodlines. Bloodlines is linear just like you know, the games Gabe was talking about. Symphony of the Night was my first Metroidvania, but the other one I did play was four, which was through this podcast, which I also enjoyed. But Symphony of the Night clears. So easily. Yeah. The just putting the Castlevania world and aesthetic into that kind of gameplay, you know, like the backtracking big world as opposed to the linear levels, I think it did it a big favor. I mean do want to play more of the Castlevania Metrovanias moving forward. Yeah. yeah, I definitely wanna like try two after this 'cause that's where it like stepped into that. It's just kinda neat that I never thought I would play any Castlevania game, like ever. Just, before you know, before I played Bloodlines and then now I'm my number's up to three beaten and I f I feel cool. I'm a real gamer now. Yeah, it's it's great. And same thing here. Well, I mean my Castlevania experiences just through this podcast. I had never played any of them. Other than Super Castlevania Four, which I also really liked. Ryan's wrong there. and then the then playing this and then yeah, it's really great. This one, especially comp especially when comparing those two together, because that one was definitely more it's obviously much more linear. No, is worse. No, I wouldn't say that. This one definitely leans slower. It was slower. Mm-hmm. This one definitely leans more harder into the Metroid part of the Metroidvania. which is which, you I really I love Metroid, so it's great. but yeah, it was really fun. I mean, if someone puts another Castlevania game on the list, I'll play it again. But you know, it's it's you have to when you won't finish it. I mean I'm one and one on finishing. But yeah, it was a it was a great time, and again, glad they have this podcast to make me play something that I wouldn't normally just jump into, you know, a bunch of games, even if they're bad, like Shadow Tower. Fuck you, Gabe. it was bad. It was. It was pretty bad. My bad, guys. I don't I don't I don't got nothing to say. It was bad. So let's talk about how we actually played it. I think this is one of the more at least a few different options this time. We had like three different ways that people played. Jay and Gabe, you guys played it the same way. What do you guys want to go first since you're the least interesting? Team Deck. As much as I would have liked to play this game physically on PlayStation One, it is like a two hundred dollar game. So I also as we've established in early episodes, Jay's rich. That's a that's pocket change for Jay. I don't know if I've ever shown my beautiful I think it's shown shown like once. I've never seen a Steam Deck before. What is that? Or do you like to use pads? What was that? What was that? What'd you put in on? It looked really interesting. What was that? Astute observers will notice that Gabe's Steam Deck joysticks are silver or whatever color it is and not black. Because that's a switch or sorry, it's not purple. It's an L C D. No, I mean the the base, the stem is black is gray. On the OLED they're black. Ooh, interesting. Blues are OLED. I've only ever experienced OLED, so I wouldn't I wouldn't have known that. The button on the top is not orange also. It's gray. The power button. it's black. Me personally, I would I would fucking press a button that wasn't orange and turn on my Zoom deck, I would I don't just don't know what I would do. I was about to say that but now I I was trying not to because now I have to censor that. You can't say that. It's fine. Cut that. Just ask us to take it out. Not like anybody with the Gabe with the cut joke of the podcast. You'll all know what he said next episode when he's not there. In case you guys don't know, Ryan actually cuts about ninety percent of my content. You don't know because you don't watch. You didn't watch the last episode. I watch with the people. I don't watch I don't not I don't look behind the curtain. I watch public when everyone else gets it. I don't put myself above everyone else. Exactly. We should you should check out the Keefe edit towards the end where I caught you and your key flies. So I'm sure it's not as dramatic as you're making it sound. it might be more dramatic. The magic of editing. Ryan never gets any Ryan never gets any kind of victories over me, so he has to take them where he can get them, no matter how Ryan went in the tier list last time. What did you play on? I played on the Mi U Mini plus the the bigger one, the the purple one. it is obviously a PS1 game, so you know it's kind of meant to be played on something like this, a TV, CRT TV, was the intended, you know, thing. But it's so a lot of the UI was shrunk down pretty small on this I think it's a it's a three and a half inch screen. So the map's having a little bit trouble with a map. The only real issue was the map. it's just the rooms. I can probably turn it on and maybe get a visual of it. But the rooms were super small. Like I know you guys I mean there's the map is small anyways when you guys are looking at it even on your T Keefe on your TV. Right. And you guys on the Steam Deck, 'cause it's the entirety of it doesn't like scroll around where you're at. It's the whole map all at once. Yeah. So yeah, here we go. But the benefit is you can play it in socially unacceptable. Exactly. Scenario. You see that? Weddings, funerals. Toilet rooms, there's most of the map. tiny those one by one rooms are. Yeah. There's a save room down there at the bottom in red. Yeah. Like that's really small, you know. but it wasn't that bad. Every ever otherwise, like the the controls on the Mia Mini Plus are great, so I didn't have any issue with the controls. I did not get false ups like you guys were getting 'cause you're playing with the joystick. I was obviously Well that was just the getting used to that. Yeah. But it never happened to me at all. since I don't have choice. I guess that makes sense, yeah. The triggers are used in the game, but not for anything super important. It's just for switching. You didn't use mist form during no yeah, you not in not in fights. No. I just really towards the end of the game to just go through a room that you're like, I don't want to fight thirty thousand enemies. No, I would just fly. I would just fly over with Bat instead. I there were a couple of rooms where you couldn't and I was just like I was gonna miss so I don't even touch the if they try to do that later on because that's like one of my main critiques of the game. But yeah, I mean the triggers are only used for switching forms generally. So bat form and wolf form. Yeah. And that's all. The fact they're on the back doesn't really impact the gameplay too bad unless I did bump them accidentally quite often, actually, but it wasn't really on the on the Mi Mini Menu Minis, you can actually push them pushing it laterally, not just down on it, but you can hit it this way too, which is I guess a feature, but also a bug. But the best part about I I was I guess Snofry also it's a feature. I was playing on menu eye using menu eye. So menu eye, you know, like that, hit that it's it's off, right? Hit it again. And like it just segment will be back on. so super I like yeah, I haven't used menu eye a ton. But it's super stri simple, user interface kind of custom firmware thing. And yeah, see, it's back again. But not a bunch of like annoying, having to go through menus and stuff like that, just like pure game, easy, like gotta you know, turn it off or just tap it and turn off the screen for a second, and it'll automatically go to sleep pretty fast. Yeah, it was a good experience. I would probably play another Castlevania game on something like that rather than Castlevania Steam Deck. Just because yeah, it's so it's pocketable. You could put it in your pocket. I don't usually because I'm afraid of smashing the screen. But I put it in like my lunchbox and take it to work. Yeah, you could put the Mew Mini original in a suit jacket and go to your friend's wedding and pretend like you're gonna play it. pretend like you're gonna play it. It's too dark. The screen was too dark. I tried, but the screen was too dark, and I I don't know what the hockey in Menu I on the original Mew that has the slidey volume wheel the volume wheel is for. brightness up because then the ones with the button volume you just it's like menu and up, but I didn't know what it was. I it was too dark to see it. But Keith, how did you play it? Yep, so for visual Yeah. funny. It's not funny, dude. It's kind of funny. No, it's not. Funnier funnier than what you're about to do. I played it on this. What is that? A black box. Yeah. It's like a cardboard box with like a card crayoned on it. PS3 Slim. Slim PS3. A nice little thing there. Not to confuse it with the PS3 super slim. Fun fact the disk drive does not work on it anymore, so I can no longer play disc on this thing. but but yeah, so I play on PS3. another fun adventure of Keith buying shit on the PS3 store. Thanks again for Gabe for Shadow Tower for putting me through this bullshit. Thank you. But now you learned and this time it was really easy, I assume. yeah, you think so, right? So I'm like, okay, I'll dodge this bullshit again. I'll just preempt anything. Cause after Shadow Tower, after the annoying pr sequence of trying to buy Shadow Tower on the PS3 store, I'm like, okay, you know what? What I'll do, I'll get ahead of any other bullshit that gets in my way. I'll put $10 in my wallet. And then next time when another game pops up that I can buy on there, won't have any problems. And then Castlevania gets picked next. Whoa, perfect timing, Keith. You're a fucking genius. Except fucking sept Liar when you get to the f the fucking game all cross all other PS1 classics. For some fucking reason, Castlevania is nine ninety nine. Fuck you, Konami. Why did you do that? So now it's during the sale forty eight with tax. Like God fucking damn it. add money easily on there. So I have to go back and you can't add like a dollar extra to your wallet to fix it. No, you gotta add another five dollars. Like, fuck. Why can't this be easy? What's what's gotta be so funny is someone at Konami Corporate and Sony Corporate are sitting there in their office and they're like, someone just paid full like ten bucks for Symphony of the nine on PS3. Like, don't they know it's on sale, like in the new versions out? Like the the updated versions available. But like when they play the PS3 version, yeah. So I'm like, well then fuck, man. This is I just wonder it's so funny. It's still on there, obviously. I wonder how many times how often it gets purchased on the PS3. especially Shadow Tower too, not to mention. Never. Somebody bought Shadow Tower. Probably the only person that bought Shadow Tower. Probably. Especially since they announced fucking the store was ending next year. people probably would definitely be ripping going through buying a bunch of those classics just to have them in digitally, not physically. Of course. It's it's easier to it's easy. I mean, despite my troubles getting this. Instead, I'll do that one. But playing on the PS3 was nice. it was it was cool. playing a PS3 controller. Yeah, it's it it's pretty close to a PS1 controller, but it was pretty yeah, it's a pretty nice they don't really increase the size of the controller till the four. I feel like two and three were still tiny, tiny. Yeah, same as a PS1 controller. Yeah. Yeah. The but yeah, it was it was nice and the I yeah, I used the joystick. I'm not joystick, sorry, I used the D pad. I'm always a D pad guy for the like older games, so but yeah, everything everything played nice and everything was good. No D pad's not very good on the Steam Deck. It's fine. Yeah, but I also put on my Retroid just in case, but you it's on there too. And yeah, Should played it on that, probably. Might have finished it. No, I mean, no, but you had the most authentic experience because you're basically playing the PS1 controller, anyways. They do give you a good amount of save rooms. They do fair with the Once you learn one of the spells to steal HP, you're pretty good on HP for you don't have to worry about that. you can clear a room pretty easily with that one. but yeah but yeah so it's you know you know bosses are hard, but actually I did pretty well against the bosses, honestly. I was supposed to go to be honest with that bosses weren't hard. The bosses were not very difficult. None of the yeah, we'll talk about it in a second. Sarah's save states, I didn't have to use them. I used a ton, I'm sure, but I didn't use them like I did in Super Castlevania four. I mean, then the second half of the game I definitely used them a lot more. but in the first half I wasn't like saving every single second of every single like killing enemies. I wasn't doing that. It w it's not that brutal most of the game. I don't know about you guys, but out of all of the Castlevania experiences I've had so far, this was the lightest as far as like difficulty. I mean it's so hard, it's not like easy or anything, but it was Yeah. I'm gonna be honest, I would not call this game hard. I d I didn't Yeah, I don't think I would either. I didn't add any Well yeah. I would say most Castlevania store. We'll talk about comparing it to Metroid later because we played a Metroid game and it's honestly more similar to that than it is to the other Castlevania game. Yes. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about My first so good. Yeah, well yeah. Let's get into the let's get into the deep dive here. let's talk about the art. The art and the sound and the atmosphere. Let's talk about the meat. Yeah. There is a lot of there's actually a lot of meat. Yeah. Right. Pot roasts. Grapes if you're feeling healthy. Yeah. So as far as visuals, the graphics, looks really it's really good. It's great. it's like the backgrounds are always something going on, the sprites are great, the characters like the sprites have like a lot of movement in their, you know, like stances and stuff. I can't remember if this was in four two, but I like you pass some cells and like zombies kinda shamble out or and maybe they're not even zombies, maybe they're just people like in the cells, but like have like stuff like that, like yeah consistently. Mm-hmm. the rooms, the different areas are d visually distinct, and they're all pretty interesting. They're pretty cool. Music. This is good. Real real good. Not as good as Castlevania Four, but But I didn't really listen to that, but I think it's I thought both of them were fine. I don't like maybe it's me also not listening to music as much because I did I did play this with the headphones. Headphones in for a decent amount though. And it's good. Metroid music's way better. Yeah, for sure. I think with this game, there's just more bits in the music to give it more music. Yeah. Yeah, it's a PS one game, so it's a two D PS one game, so they probably had a lot of overhead, like headroom to do auto stuff, honestly, you know, because it's just like Iron Man X and Manwar, you know, pretty cool. I'm not letting you slip that in, bastard. It was pretty Spritey, but they did that in a way where like in an intentional way they wanted to make it the Sprite art and then just give you the good the good sprites on a PS one. That was a bold choice, but I mean like in hindsight, now it's just another old game. Yeah. But it it it looks really good. And I'm sure for the time it looked really good in Yeah, they could get away with doing the sprites because they also made the choice to like actually have like the voice actors and the dialogue show up with the characters like portraits in the window. It's ninety seven. You gotta you gotta put some voice acting in there. Yeah, you got a good you got a good detailed look at the character the I think a lot of people would probably say the art is like peak Castlevania, honestly, because the portraits are are really good. And even like the background like the background stages like the art as well. And even like the paintings in Dracula's castle. Yeah. it's it's all really there's some stained glass where all the colors really pop. Yeah. Yeah. none of the Castlevania games I mentioned earlier that I've played are have bad art. They're all good. They all have a coolest. But this one's by far the best. Bloodlines looks really great for the Genesis. Yeah. Bloodlines is it's like taking so you have Super Castlevania Four, which has that whatever something something nine is what it's called. It's like the moving backgrounds, which is a whole like technological advancement for the Super Nintendo. Then s going from that to Bloodlines is like even better, even more movement and things going on. And this is the peak. I remember thinking during just how visually stunning, this there's this one part where you're like flying outside, I remember, and the moon's in the background. And it just it behind the clock tower and it looks like real depth to the like to the setting and it j it looks amazing. It's like beautiful. Like I like almost got lost in like like looking at that instead of like where I was going, I was like, Wow, it's like a stunning visual. in a PS one game. Yeah. The cathedral leading up to the upper tower section, I think that might still be considered cathedral. That's probably my favorite place visually 'cause there's so much going on and you can see a lot of the background, movement, the sky and stuff too at the same time. It's also like the edge of the map. And Jay mentioned the the stained glass in the cathedral. Yeah. Looks amazing. Yeah. look it's see through it, the the lights going through it in the way almost that you would expect stained glass to look in real life. Yeah. In 2D RPS one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, sound wise, like we said, it's mostly more paved the way for greatness to game. It's a real trailblazer. This is how we don't make a real trailer. This is how we don't want to make this. So other sounds besides you know music and voice acting, sound design's good. Like that I don't know. The weapons have different sounds. I think they're like obviously the the sub weapons do, but the attacks were skilled back voice acting though. I think it's good. I actually think it's good. Yeah. I think it's really good. It's never any open. I don't know I don't know why the effect, but that's why I've been doing this the whole time. Where everyone talks like with there's there's almost an echo. I don't know if Yeah, that's gonna be always an echo. Yeah, yeah. Everything's echoing back. That's what the game sounds like. any time someone's speaking, everyone's like got Draco's voice is is great too. Yeah. Just the way his voice sounds is great. What is a man? Yeah. Yeah. He also like drops a Bible verse. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, is it sixteen thirteen? It's fourteen sixteen or something like that. It's around there. It's Matthew something like that. Austin three sixteen, I think actually. It's not around Austin three sixteen. God bless America. As far as the story is concerned sixteen twenty six. Sixteen twenty six. Okay, yeah. As far as the story it's a pretty good, it's a like an interesting it's good for the makes sense in the context for sure. It's about like what is a man something, I don't I don't remember what it exactly is, but he's miserable little pile of secrets. Yeah. but yeah, as far as the story, a story is Alucard you don't get you get the story in bits and pieces mostly, which is fine. Alucard shows up and he's like, I gotta st was he's there because it's like under someone's messing around with he's like Dracula's case. Because his father's castle came back. So I don't know if this like is very evident to like a lot of people, but Dracula and his castle are like intertwined. if Dracula's castle's showing up, Dracula's showing up. So his it's his castle's back and he's going to investigate okay what's going on here. Wait a second. That's castle back. I thought I'd stay away from here. Alocard is Dracula backwards, in case people didn't know that. No. It's a spoiler. Wow. This is supposed to pick pick up after Rondo blood is my understanding, which is I guess the one with the fucking you just dropped that. Like by the way, guys. Let me get let me get that out there. He really wanted to be the one to drop that in this episode. I believe Richter is the like in the main character in Rondo of Blood. I don't know if Maria's in it or not, but she's pretty prominent in this one, and that's his like sister, in law, half sister, stepsister, half sister-in-law, something like that. They're not they're not in a relationship or anything. There's like Is it Maria UK in the new one? Or am I wrong? How should I know? How should anyone know? It's not out yet. That's true. That's true. We'll never October two days. We'll never know by time of recording. We'll never know. It comes out when this video the sorry last video goes live on Thursday. but yeah, the story is generally, yeah, like Gabe said, Alicard's back to check out what's going on. He finds Maria. Maria's looking for Richter. He finds Richter. I didn't just spoil it, it's not that crazy. Richter's getting haunted by a a a ghost. No, it's it's what's his name? He's a priest, his name's Shaft. Shaft. Yeah. Sam Samuel L. Jackson is haunting Richter. Yeah. Death shows up, like the Grim Reaper style death, and he takes all your stuff away in the early game, in the very beginning of the Yeah, they metroid you, which is very funny. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, You won't stop your father from awakening after I take all your stuff. He goes to Apparently you can skip that. I was looking up and just I bet you can skip that. Yeah. Really? You can like do something to max out your luck. And if you if you time it just right, you can get an or you take off all your armor. That's what it is, I think. But you can you can take off all your armor and then let something an enemy hit you and there's like a glitch to make you just fly through that room into the next room so that you skip that sequence altogether and you keep your armor throughout the whole game. That's wild. Yeah. So yeah, Death Steals your stuff and you have to start from the bottom and work your way through the whole castle. And it's like a structure is basically almost every zone is most zones are a lot of the zones are available to you in the beginning. You just have to make your way to them, but eventually you're locking you're locked out until you get certain upgrades like the mist form or the wolf form or the bat form. Bat form's the last one. And then you need the spike spike armor. And they double jump too. Yeah, that's an that's probably the first way you get. But it's just like Metroid, you gotta find different things to let you progress through the level. Yeah. And then you finally fight Richter and he's getting possessed by Shaft and you if you're Jay, you beat him and you kill Richter. All right, my work here is done. 'Cause there's a bad ending. If you don't if you don't like put on the goggles and hit the green orb that's around Richter and you hit just kill Richter instead, you get That game ends, but if you do the right thing and you kill the orb, then you get the whole reverse castle. the whole castle's flipped upside down and backwards and yeah, it's the same thing. Much tougher enemies second time. It's way, way harder. But cover that in a minute. So well actually I guess we can start covering that now, because that's pretty much all there is to the story. I mean eventually you beat you fight Dracula at the end. You have to go places and get stuff throughout the game. The stuff you have to get is Dracula's bones. No, it's not No, it's true because it's yeah, Vlad's rib, eye, ring, tooth. But Vlad's not Dracula. Something on that. Right. Yeah, actually It's Vlad. It's Vlad Dracula Tepish is his name. There's a fifth one in there somewhere. Yeah, yeah, I can't remember what the last one is. But Vlad the appeal is Dracula. The reason yeah. Yeah, okay. The reason Alucard is Alucard's he's Dracula's son is that he's But he's not dra he's not a Dracula. He's not a vampire. His mom is human and she was burned at the stake for the thought she was a witch. Yeah. Yeah. Spoiler alert. That's not really the story's not really why you're playing the game. So while you are playing the game is because it feels like a Metroid game. But it's like a Metroid game, except you put RPG light elements onto it, which includes a lot of gear, weapons, armor. And then you have stats and stuff. Stats, stats, magic. Moves. so yeah, I mean, as far as the movement, comparing this to Supercastman 4, this is like infinitely miles better. You move fast, you move around, you jump, you like it's yeah, it's really good. You definitely move faster. You backward dash. I didn't yeah, I was always whenever I watch clips of this game, I'd always wonder why everyone's doing that because it looks weird, and like when you're backdashing like constantly. Then you're actually playing and that's just how you move fast. okay, that's fine. Yeah, yeah. It's just really fun once you're doing it. Yeah. Walk through a room. Like Yeah. Yeah, I did that r a lot early on, but like once I got the wolf form, I would kind of just wolf form and then like We didn't mention guides yet. I didn't use a guide at all, but I did get stuck a few times and what I would do is Google I I have this I just got this thing, what do I do next? Yeah. And it's like, go get this thing. And I'm like in this area. And I'm like, okay, I haven't been there yet, so I'll go do that. Until the second half of the game, the boss, final boss versus Dracula, I did look up where a specific item was to be able to beat him because I was having a hard time and I think I was underleveled. I was I was gonna say for the boss, but it's the avocard shield and the shield rod. Yeah. Which is the you do the healing spell and it just it melts Dracula like nothing. It melts everybody. If you can touch them. As long as you can touch the enemy, it just like goes boop and it like inst you're absorbing all of their health and hit it just driving like bulldozing through them. It's pretty crazy. But I didn't use that until I got until the very I got it for Dracula. I went I I fought Dracula, kept losing, reloaded my save. Because I did use hard saves too. I reloaded my hard save. I had to quit the game, reload my hard save and then walk out and go find an Alcard shield, which I didn't have. I had the shield rod 'cause you get that in the normal castle, but Alcard's shield's in the inverted castle, so I had to go get that, then go back and fight him. But yeah, did you guys use guides? I go ahead. No, you. No, no, no, You I did not use I I did what you did where like I might have gotten sucked once or twice and then I looked up We got this item went next and did what you did, but yeah, no true guide. That's why I ended up being getting the evil ending with Richter. She tells you time to kill Richter. Yeah, she's like, put on these glasses, 'cause you put on like some holy goggles or something like that. And she's like, Where are these? And then She just didn't do it. Yeah, she didn't do They're not really good stat wise. I don't know what this orb is, but it ain't looking at me. I I g I got on these sunglasses. They're cool, the game says. No. But Good bit. But all my stuff all my costumes Parts for that are packed away. So I was like, okay, well maybe I could put on sunglasses because that's technically an armor. That's technically from the game. Yeah. Then I just didn't do it. I didn't look up a guide either. I did second thing with Ryan is like I would there was one point I was like really stuck and I'm like, okay, I've run all over the fucking place. Where what am I missing? mist was like missed. I didn't know how to get mist. So it's like, okay, where because I could run to the doors, I'm like, Where the fuck is missed? And okay, you gotta go to the it's in the Coliseum. okay. I get the Coliseum. Coliseum sucks. You gotta go to the you gotta go to the clock. You gotta go to the clock room and then you gotta wait for the statue to move. And what? And Yeah, that's that one I did have to. Yeah, I was like, trying to look up where the fuck is the clock room from where I am? And like when you Google that all the maps just have like pictures of the on the Google just has the pictures of the map. They don't have actual pictures of where the room is. I was like, where the fuck is it? Yeah, because I also was confused about the clock tower. I was like, the clock 'cause that's where I was at. I went to the clock tower and I was like, this is the clock room. There's clock stuff everywhere, but it's not the clock room, it's the one in the middle of the map. Right, exactly. Yeah, but other than that, I didn't I didn't use any hard card. I got lucky with the clock room. I walked in and saw it changing, and I was like, Okay, something's going on here. And then wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold up Have something s fucky here. Yeah, I I didn't use a guide for like the first half of the game. I I played this game like deep. I I was I just like explored the whole game. Like I was like having s just a ton of fun, like checking out every room, hitting every wall. I spent too much time doing that. like for because Jay and Ryan beat this like Ryan said, he beat it two weeks ago. Like two weeks in. I don't know when Jay beat it. It was sometime last week. It was last like a week ago. Yeah. But I beat I beat it like today, like a couple hours before recording. And that's because I like spent too much time exploring. which is maybe why the game felt so easy to me, because I like was a decently high level. I had a lot of good gear. What level were you? I'm curious. I got to have to look. I got to level forty two. Which I think Ryan was in the thirties. I was thirty nine. I was trying to look mine up. Yeah. I wonder what Jay Gabe's completion was cons considering he's pretending like he played it the most. I didn't wanna I wanna know. Which I felt pretty good about. Because I assume it's like one hundred percent in regular test harder than another one. Is that after the credits? Yeah. Fuck, I'd have to look at your save file. I basically just no, you gotta look at save file from the main menu. After you beat the game. After you beat the game. After you beat the game. Okay. Yeah. I'd have to beat it to save after I beat it. So I'd have to beat No, it saves automatically. Shut up, man. Okay. Yeah. it just and if you load that file, it loads you at the last place you saved right before you fought shaft and Dracula outside of the clock. Yeah, I was supposed to say that would be right outside. You better look you gotta look it up because I need to know. No, we have to know. The creeps demand it. mine, I'll put it on screen in the edit. I'm sorry, the editor will put it on screen in the edit. was level thirty nine time seven one thirteen. So seven hours, one minute, thirteen seconds, and one hundred and thirty three point five percent completion. I had five thousand three hundred and thirty five dollars left because I bought a shitload of potions. Five thousand to use. I got ten thousand dollars left. I got Hundred and three percent completion. But I don't know if that's because I rushed through the inverted castle. level forty. it might be. I do think it goes to two hundred percent because like the first one hundred six or something like that. well. Yeah. And that that's my point. I played the normal Yeah, I played the normal castle. What was your time, Gabe? God damn it. My time was about ten and a half hours and I'll say it again just so it's together ten and a half hours and I think I was one eighty to one eighty one percent. I was at eight hours. But again, I rushed through the inverted castle because I got to the inverse inverted castle like a few days ago or something. To be fair, it's your journey through the inverted castle is just quicker in general, I feel like. Yeah. Because you have all the stuff you can go anywhere you want. I wish I had had more time to explore the inverted castle. I wish I'd I didn't know that that was gonna be a thing. And so Yeah, I tried to I got to that part and Ryan was like, you're halfway there. And I was like, What? And that's when I started using a guide. And then I just like was like, fucking. So I went directly to I mean, once I got to the inverted castle, I went directly to each monster that held which Fun fact, each monster is a nod to the original bosses of the first Dracula. Draculvania. Dracula Draculvania. He's back again. But yeah. I mean, I I will Dracula too back in action. I don't think you're intended. I mean, obviously you can explore fully explore both castles, inverted and regular, but I don't think Well, I know. The intention is for you to fight everything in Inverted Castle because it's really hard all of a sudden. Once you hit Inverted Castle, everyone is really tough. No, I don't know. I w I wish I had time to explore it. Yeah, I think that's the intention. I think that like they know you're going to do that because you have bat form and miss form. I think they put they stack these rooms with like fifteen enemies that are like super hard, like those Nova skeletons that can just obliterate you in one shot. They stack these rooms. Yeah, the the what They blast. Yeah, yeah. I I think they did that on purpose so they knew they knew you're gonna fly around, they intended you for you to do that. They're flying right in the Yeah, but some don't have to. I don't know. If you try to go to one of the bosses and you're like, I don't know if you guys hit this or not, whatever route you take, I think maybe you have to t I don't think you have to take it. But there's this part where you're like going up and down through the map, and there's Medusa heads flying, and there's also these guys flying around with swords, and there's Yeah Six dudes on the map screen flying around with like these swords that they'll like send at you and stuff and they can like cross and all sorts of stuff. And then you also have Medusa heads coming in from either side. And that was the most frustrating part of the game for me. I was like, This is fucked. Like I can't into this fucking room. My least favorite section, which we haven't one of the least favorite areas was the clock room. Not sorry, the clock tower where it's a bunch of Medusa heads and ears and the harpies. And then inverted, it's even worse. But both ways it's it's terrible. yeah. I did experience an inverted, but I didn't mind it that much. Yeah, you don't have to go there. That's the other thing. You don't have to hit every boss in an inverted castle to finish it. I skipped all options. By by I guess I didn't follow a guide, but I was looking at a map. Inverted castle. So I was like, I could see which ones were bosses that were needed to be done and which ones were d didn't need to be done. You just read all the Dracula parts for ads parts. I went back and did It was harder than Dracula. Yeah. It was that one you did is the hardest, I think the hardest one in the game. Really? Yeah. I think so. That was you fight you fight yeah, you fight Richter. No, not Richter, sorry. It's Trevor, Cypher and Grant. Just Some boy the boys at the boys back home. Yeah. They're they're like like the first people who fought Dracula, basically. You fight like zombie versions of them or something like that. and it's it's fucked because you've got Cypher flying around, like freezing you, Richter's on the ground, like whipping you and throwing crosses at you and using like every sub weapon he has, and then Grant is like this ninja guy who's like climbing up above the ceiling and he's throwing knives down at you. So if Cypher's not fucking you up with her AOE attacks, Grant is like slamming knives down like wherever you're trying to like s 'cause you can crouch down below most of Richter's attacks, but you have to take out the other two first. Otherwise they're fucking you up while you're trying to duck beneath his attacks and hit him. I took them out last. I did this fight. I took the ceiling guy out last. The flying fellow seconds. I didn't do the I didn't Cipher out first and then Richter. Because the ceiling guy isn't as much of a problem. It's really Cypher flying around. but I took Cypher out first and then Richter and then Grant is Grant's really not hard. You can beat him pretty quickly if you're like equipped well. But the other two in combination with him is like stupid. Like I was like, I can't do anything like Keith. How far did you get? Did you get to the inverted castle? Not get to the inverted castle. Jesus Christ. Didn't even make it halfway through the game. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Not even. I think when I got my when I got my email. The fuck is the matter with you? Work got really crazy and look, I had no excuses. I care. I care so much. I'm sorry. I remember like You know what? Like last time I didn't beat a game is because it was really bad and I didn't like it. I actually really enjoyed this game, which does hurt more that I didn't finish it. But I will I'm definitely gonna finish it after this. But yeah, fuck. This is this was really fucking great. Like it's the looks amazing. very fun in getting hit and the pixelated blood that splatters when you get hit. that's really cool. I really love the design of this game. And yeah, I think it leading heav more heavily into The Metroid side of things definitely made it a bit more fun for me than the more linear Super Castlevania Four, which I did still enjoy. But this game is just fucking amazing. And yeah, and like I said, d the just the movement is just so much faster because it's like yeah, you kinda gotta run with you know, Simon and Four, but you know, it's not like it's not as smooth. And like even the opening cutscene of like when you've when you're first going as like when you watch Alucard fucking slide up and fucking zoom over the drawbridge and into the fucking castle. I'm like, holy shit, that's so cool. And it's like the effects where he's running or jumping and stuff, and it's like the trail behind the trail trail. Yeah. It looks sick. And yeah. And yeah, this game is just it's it's really cool. There's a lot fun like side stuff in there too of you know there are like rooms where you're okay what's in this room? There's nothing in this room except two chairs. And you can sit in the chair and then sometimes something will happen. there's a room where it's like a it looks like like a confessional booth thing. Yeah, I think it's you sit you sit in one side and then a little ghost pops up and then like a priest pops up and like he blesses you, I guess. And then you sit on the other side and then someone else pops up, a little other like female ghost pops up, and then she like closes the curtain and then a spike just comes out and hits you. And I don't know. I had both happen. I had acting as a priest. I had it I had it vice versa both times. Hey, stop doing that. And one person hit me on one side and then the other person hit me on the other person on one side. So I don't know how that works or why that happened, but I did think it was really fun. but yeah, this was a lot of fun stuff like that. And yeah. There's a few secrets. you're talking about sitting in chairs. If you have a very familiar and let her reach level seven and sit down in one of the confession chairs or any chair scattered around the castle, she'll hop onto Alucard's lap and sing the song Nocturne. Ooh. very cool. You can get Alucard to like take a peanut and like throw it up in the air and he'll eat it. He'll like catch it in his mouth. I liked the fairy, but the fairy would speak and it was annoying. To me, 'cause the devil guy doesn't speak. He just I didn't use any familiars. I never got one. I really didn't mess with them that much either. Yeah. I got a few, but I didn't really mess with them like that. No, I had this yeah, there's only are there more than two? I had the two. I had the fairy and I had the devil guy. And Yeah, that's something I I never came across a familiar and was like Me either. This guy didn't even play the game. I got those two. And I used the fairy occasionally because the fairy will take healing items you have and give them to you automatically so you don't have to open that was that's that's the my biggest gripe with the whole game is using an item. You gotta pause, you gotta go, you gotta equip it, and you gotta put it in your hand, exit the menu. Then drop it. Or drop it. Yeah, right. Use that hand. If it's food. And then pause it again. Yeah, if you have yeah, if it's food, it just throws it on the floor, you're gonna walk over it anyways. And then maybe there's a I don't think there's a way to activate it without putting it in your hand though. And then you have to pause again and go back and put your shield or your sword or whatever back into your hand. Don't know why it's like that. Doing all of that. Yeah, I'm in a boss fight and I'm throwing a bunch of food on the ground but pausing like five times to do it. But all over that ham. So the fairy exists as solely as a a solution to that specific problem where she will give you potions and the with whatever the one that gets you out of stone is called, when you're stone like frozen, you know, when you're stone. Yeah, brother. She undoes she'll do if you have to have them in your inventory, obviously, but she will take them out of your inventory and use them on you. The devil guy just flies around and hits attacks enemies, does a little bit of damage to them. and those are the only two I found. Maybe there's if there's more I didn't look it up. Did you think they were super useful? The yeah. I mean the fairy, I guess, sounds the fairy sounds pretty useful because and I'm sure that's that's their solution. Like, hey, we we have nowhere else to put like an item button or anything like that. And like you said, so they're like let's make the AI do it. Like let's make it an option for the AI to do it. Yeah, I don't know the exact criteria, but when you hit a certain low percentage, it was a percentage base of what your total is, I think, and then it would should hit you with it. I remember there was a suit in Fallout 4 that did that. Yeah the Med the Med X and the Sentback talking suit. Yeah. The arm po it's power armor. That's from that one's in New Vegas. I guess both of them. Yeah. Yeah. I never used those 'cause I felt like they drained my stem pack suit. They use it too frequently. Like dude, I can I can manage. I don't need you to stim me up right now. If you load up on potions you won't have to worry about that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you get money pretty pretty frequently and but you'd have to travel all use your library card to go all the way back to the long library because it's only game. Yeah, I did too. Because you can buy them at the library. Also, you can I noticed like items that drop from candles are that item 100% of the time, all the time. So if you find cash, you can like go in and exit and then like Just keep going back and forth and getting a whole bunch of cash if you needed it. But I never ran into money problems in this game at all. Yeah. If you take the long way to go back to the library without using the card, it is a little annoying. Yeah, it's annoying, but also you do just make a lot of money. You get the teleporters. And the cards are so cheap. It's just like five hundred in gold, whatever the currency is. I'm just gonna say gold. I think it is gold. I think it's gold, yeah. I'm gonna say gold. I think the teleporter thing reversing the cast is nothing super easy. once you get those portal rooms, yeah. It makes it 'cause then but then that I was looking at a map at that point and I would plan out what's I would just look till I got the the closest one that I needed to go to wherever I was going. but last thing I'll say about the fair the familiars, when I was not in a boss fight, I would use the little double guy because I didn't want my potions wasted on random enemies, you know, when I like get dropped low by some random. Turn the familiar off. Yeah. Okay. You can't have them both on at the same time, but you turn them on and off like you do all those other whatever those things are called. You can turn them both on. you don't have to have them. Yeah, you can turn them both. Yeah, as far as moving around the map, so the map is it's big. It's really big. there's like five or six maybe seven six six or seven distinct zones. and I don't know, they're all Th there's a couple that take a really long time to get to, the caverns and the ones at the bottom of the map. You don't really get those until you have most of the items because the spike armor I think you find in the bottom of the map, but you need the spike armor to like it th of course it's spread all across the map, right? Like all the way down here to go just so you can get in one room all the way up here. That's just how Metroid and Castlevania games are most of the time. Because you have to have the spike armor to get to the ring that allows you to save Richter. Right. Yeah. But unless you're Jay. Yeah. Unless you just kill Richter. I erased that timeline from existence. I was just existing. The only z like I said, the only section of map I don't really don't like is the clock tower. It's the worst to me. The caverns underneath are kind of annoying, but they're not that bad. The bottom. And then obviously did anyone drown anyone? No. There's a secret there's guys sta in the camp cavern, there's guys standing in a room and there's like water at their feet and there's water draining out of a very small hole onto the ground. You might not be able to even notice it, Ryan. I also but it's the box. If you push the box up, the water it's stops the water from draining, which is just one of these like cool little details in this game. But the water stops draining and then it fills that cavern up and there's four dudes that just die. around. I did see that actually. I I got a recording of it. I'm gonna throw on the Instagram. I love it put it editor, put it in right now. Put it right here. Editor, put it in. Show these people drowning. Yeah. I love skeletons. Those skeletons are most likely it's mine. We'll talk about I'm talking about the RPG like light. I the reason I say RPG light elements is because it doesn't really matter that much. And your skills go up as you progress, but I don't think doing certain things makes certain ones go higher. It's your stat it's your armor and your gear that raise your stats. obviously having a higher luck makes you have a lot higher chance of hitting criticals. But I don't know I've heard this, I've seen this called like maybe like an RPG before. I'm like, it's not it's not really an RPG in my Well that's what I'm just the second game I was looking at the Wikipedia because that is the one that's like this. they call it an R. RPG as well. And I'm curious, it's like is it really an RPT or is it like this where it's like it has RPG elements. Yeah. But really you're not even you're not even boosting your own stats. You're just the armor and weapons are the what boosts your stats. Yeah, you're just picking up armors that do that for you. Does level up even affect your stats or does it boost or does it give you more max health? No, it does affect your okay stats. It goes up, yeah. it's there's a lot of weapons. Yeah. yeah. that's that's fun. what did you guys beat Dracula with? The shield rod, because I was cheesing. Well yeah, yeah. But other than that, I was using that. I beat him with a katana. Yeah, I had a katana too. It was like a I can't remember the first name of it, but it was a really strong two hand. I think I was doing like seventy-two damage. Yeah, that's what I was saying. I wasn't using that then, because I wasn't using crazy cause same damage, seventy-two every time I hit him. I never use two handed swords much throughout the game. I always use sword and shield. It took me I tried at the beginning and I didn't like it. Then I went back to it somewhere in the inverted castle and I figured out that if you jump and then swing with the two hand, you can get two hits in boom boom. Yeah. I don't know if that was just an exploit or if that's what you're supposed to do with the weapon. Yeah. Different weapons, different two handers do ev like every weapon has different length, like reach, and there's one apparently there's two hander that's really bad 'cause it like it locks you. into that stance for way too long and a lake don't fall. Some of them are just some weapons are just bad. But I got into the hashtag sword that doesn't that does no damage. Yeah, I saw that. I can't you you can't dump your items once you get the items in your inventory forever. Yeah by the end you have fifty. I wish you at least sell them. there's no there's no sort button either so you can't Yeah fills empty spaces from the top down and that's it. I did try To go back to that cursed sword several times just to be like, Maybe I use it on this enemy. Maybe there's a secret somewhere where this cursed sword will one hit a boss or something. I don't know. But I did I didn't Now, the sub weapons. So the little extra thing you get that uses some of your mana or whatever it is. Your hearts. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, your hearts. But you also have that mana bar is for like your Magic for we'll talk about the wolf the forms in a second, but yeah. There are spells. Yeah. Spells I never I stumbled upon spells. Street street critter. First we'll do we'll talk about sub weapons. I use the cross like all game. really? Big cross. Is there a cross with that burst or the like sorry the little the book, the Bible with the cross on it. The Bible and then the big cross. Once I got big cross, I stopped using Bible. I only used Big Cross. Well it went back to Bible after I didn't I used the big cross once and saw it took a hundred hearts and was like, Ooh, no way. It's like I'm not using this. Yeah, I want to use it more than I'm a good Christian, John. You wear a certain kind of armor though, you get hearts back as soon as you get or it's a cape, you get hearts as soon as you get hit. Yeah, you get hearts for yeah. So you get hit once or it it goes your hearts shoot back up. So I use it all like I could use it all the time. okay. That makes sense. Yeah, I just liked the Bible. I was using I was using axe for for a while. I hate the axe. I I like the axe and then the I don't like the axe because I don't like a calculator. It's like a hammer hammer bro. Yeah. Yeah. You can just three walls though, which is fun. Yes, that is nice. That is nice. And then and then once I found the Bible's like okay, this is really good. I'm the Bible once the Bible is the Bible, that was my keeper. Yeah. I liked the gym just because it was fun to use. I was gonna say, yeah, I love I was gonna say second place is the gem. I just love that it bounces around. I would throw three out and would like ding around and take out a and they would all ding around individually and just make the trail stays the whole time and it's just easier. My second place was the clock. I like the clock. Time stopping was pretty cool. Yeah. Time was pretty cool. Pinch of Salt, that's also that was also fun. I used Pinch of Salt in the really early on and then stopped using I I hate the The fire, holy holy water, fire, whatever. Apparently holy water is the best one in the first game. It was I used some holy water in the beginning and then again once I got to the Bible, that was what I used the whole time. I forget the name of the boss, but it's like black the one with like black wings and I was using the morning star and I was just like mashing it in the corner. you hit it with the co hit it with the morning star, it like stunned. So I was like mashed it in the corner and I was just like tossing the potion or the holy water on it and it was just stuck in the corner just getting obliterated. Yeah, that's what that's the only issue I had is like even Dracula wasn't like that difficult. Before we talk about bosses, let's talk about the the forms, right? The wolf form is a basically entirely useless. I c people online, I looked up, I was like, what is the wolf form for? There's like a couple spots where need it to go you need it before you get the bat or the To go through a short section. Yeah. And you can run, but it's just terrible. totally unnecessary. You can upgrade it so that it can attack better. I never saw that. I don't know that either. I never attacked it. Yeah, I did it on accident. I didn't I like hitting buttons this does that. You can get two upgrades, I think, for the wolf form. Yeah. I think it is. I think the bat can get like a f you can shoot fireballs or something. I didn't get the you did it? I needed it. I actually used that first. I got the sonar. Yeah, I had the sonar and the fire. I never got the fire. I just I I read that you could do it, but I was like, whatever. I just use the bet. I usually just use the bet to just bypass enemies. Honestly, that strat. You can fucking fly. Like I I didn't get this, but is there a way to extend the mist form? Or is it just like you get you get more mana? mana. Just by you like hold it? Because I always like phase rate out of it. You can't. I don't know if I was like you can't hold it and just stay in mist form. Because every time I clicked it, I never used it. I think I tried it a bunch, but I use a mist form all the time, to evade attacks I think if you as long as you continue to move it will stay in mist form. So 'cause you can click it and then just hold left and you'll continue to move left. As mist clear mana runs out. Yeah. Maybe that's yeah. Okay. It takes a long time. Or at least by the time I was using Mist a lot. I was clearing even the longest rooms with ease. Well, that's what I was that's what I was wondering about what you said about. You just wait. Yeah. Let's talk about spells. I I got a couple in an early game and you can buy from the long library and it will like tell you what they are, but you can just do them without having to know what you're Yeah. Mashing directions and mashing the buttons will get a spelling. You might get some spells. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't use any spells until I had the owl card shield and the shield rod with the the healing steel, like the life stealing HP stealing spell is the only one I used. Yeah. I could not ever hit any of the other combos to do fire spells. I got really good at doing the fireball. Yeah. I can do a life ball. You said you said there's like a lifesteal spell, right? That's the second one I got. I got fireball first. And then I did the lifesteal one. Yeah. Isn't the lifesteal one really easy to do combo wise? Or am I using it something different? It's like back forward quarter circle than back forward for circle square. It's Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm doing something I did something else 'cause what I did was really like two buttons. It just works. I think a shield rod you you just like circle or square. you can press either one. I'm thinking of I think Shieldrod makes it it's its own spell or something, the shield rod specifically, 'cause it's like it works for the shields and you press square circle square or something like that and it just goes off. nice. Keith, did you did you find it really easy to do the spells since you have that you're fighting gang guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. yes, actually. Yes. Okay. I found it really hard because I am not I I could make pop off pretty consistently, but I I like I would miss it sometimes and I was like When I do I've I'd forget that like my magic wasn't high enough to do it. I'm like, fuck, why isn't it working? I'm doing it right. Yeah. I don't know if like this was the problem. Using the Mew. I don't know if like I don't think you tried really try to play fighting games on something like this, but I'm just I'm not gonna say it's its fault. I'm gonna it's also me. I'm sure with a joystick I could have had a better chance of doing it. I I had more success with the joystick because you can joysticks for those like diagonal downs. like the fireball thing is up. Down, diagonal down left, down, diagonal, down right, then right plus B. So like you can do it's like flick up, flick down, down a U and then at the end of the U you press the button and I was getting that like a joystick, but yeah. I can't fathom it with it with a D pad. It's harder I mean I was I was getting those Yeah, I just like keeping every like flicking his finger around. yeah, it was pretty cool. Nailing every time. There was I don't remember the boss but there was one boss 'cause it'll stagger him a little. Like it's just three fireballs and each one will do its own damage. I was getting it to where I could like fireball, then I'd run and hit and then they'd stagger, then I'd back up and then do the fireball, then run and hit with the sword, and it it was a pretty good cheese. Felt cool. It was really after that I didn't really use too many spells, but it was just fun knowing I used them at all in the game. Just actually, yeah. The one where Richter's sitting in the back. The Coliseum, I think, right? The one where he's like sitting in the background and he has you fighting. That's Coliseum. Yeah. Coliseum sucks too. It's the second worst spot in the game. it's annoying. But that's that's where and I used magic like crazy. I don't remember what those bosses were. The werewolf and minotaur, I think. I think those are the two. It is two bosses. I think that's right. That's also Let's talk about bosses now too. there's only two that really gave me trouble throughout the whole game. and keep in mind I I skipped the optional ones in Verde Castle and they were Grand Faloon, which is also sometimes called Legion. It's the big pile of circle of bodies. Hated that one. Really struggled with that one. I didn't I didn't run into that one. It must not it must not be necessary optional in like castle one. regular castle I that's the thing too. I didn't realize 'cause I just ran into him and so I fought him. And then Dracula. Dracula was tough too. But yeah, Grandfalloon is like you hit him, there's like two sides. It feels very like it feels like a Metroid boss. Like it's one room and there's like platforms that go up on either side. And I was just like blasting him with trying to blast him with the Bible, but like there he's dumping zombies on you non stop. Did you guys anyone you guys fight him? Was it just me? I never got to I I watched him after he mentioned him. Jay? I think I fought him, yeah. Dumps zombies on top of you, so you're on the you're trying to jump and hit him, like you to you have to jump to the movies forwarding up in the air. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about. And so zombies, there's so many. There's like twenty on screen at once, and they're all coming at you. You can hit them all in like one hit, but like they're in the way. And when he drops them, they hit you and you get stunned and damaged too. To that point, like, I never had any like stutters in this Playstation One game when there was like forty enemy actually forty enemies on the screen at once. played fluid the one time. So props to them. Is there an up upward angle attack or did I just not get that? I don't think there's a downward angle one, but there's no I didn't like that. 'Cause every time I try to do that, 'cause I would use the Super Castlevania four where could do that. Right. Yeah. Some of the weapons had that like if you were to jump and swipe, it would do the full circle arc arc. you could it your hitbox would hit that diagonal where other weapons it might be more straight. And I was use yeah, I was using the sword. So a lot of times the sword or even the morning star, it was either just straight or down down one angle. Mm-hmm and then I'm looking at it, catacombs is one of the areas that I kinda rushed through. Yeah, I did too. I didn't go through the whole thing, explore the whole thing. I didn't even have a reason to rush besides knowing I was near the end. Yeah. So that's why was Buddha one of the mandatory bosses. He was optional. Yeah, optional. God, that for that was the hardest boss in the game for me. That was my hardest experience. Yeah. That mother that dude fucked me up. Like he's really gross. It's the grossest one by far. It's actually kind of disgusting in the survey. It wasn't even him, it was just it took so long too, because towards the end I just felt like It would take me two minutes to to set myself up to get one good clean hit and then I would have to fight all those flies again and there's forty flies on screen. And it's a ground one hit, but it's just so it's so much avoiding the flies and like the time. Yeah, it's like Grand Falloon, you have to be jumping and hitting him and then the chunks are falling off so he gets smaller. I didn't He's optional in inverted castle, but I what I did is I finished the game and I went back and loaded my save and hit a couple of the optional bosses just to see what they were like. And he was one of them. And even using the shield rod and a la card shield exploit thing where you just melt dudes, I couldn't beat that guy easily. It was like 'cause you can't jump up and get to him. Yeah, the they gave you platforms, but that that's what took it so long. you have to get all the way up to the platforms while avoiding the flies and the Yeah, there's a million flies flying at you, so you can from the platform and then you have to hit on the jumps, so you get one jump to hit and then you gotta do it again to hit the second time. It was I beat but that was the hardest boss to me in the whole game. So the only other one that I had trouble with was Dracula. And I think I was just underleveled and maybe slightly undergeared 'cause I didn't I did like I said, I explored more than Gabe, but I was lower level than Gabe. So I was thirty nine and I had the fairy and I loaded it up with all the super high potions, like the extra strong ones and a ton of regular potions. And this is before I went and got the shield rod thing, exploit like shield thing. And I was just wailing on and using the super cross, like the you know, the big one where it blasts and then I was getting hit all the time, so I was always able to keep rolling with the supercross because I had always had hearts, but I'm always losing health because he's always hitting me. Yeah. Cause I don't know if there's a good spot to sit in that. I think you just have to tank the damage. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I did was I just tank tanked the damage until and I I tried it four or five times and I'd get really far, but I never knew how far I was getting 'cause he doesn't really show he does I don't think he has a second phase. If he does, it just changes his attack slightly. And I don't know it was the the sky. Mm-hmm. Behind him, Yeah, the sky changing colors. Yeah. Yeah. I noticed he didn't make it, but he's not even fighting Dracula on his two legs. It's like a monster. Yeah. Well he's sitting on a throne. Yeah. Which is partially I don't know, it's weird. But yeah, it's he just like comes in the front and annoying thing for me. The only thing I found annoying about the boss battle was that like he's got the claws on either side. So if you hit either side of the Either side of You're stuck, yeah. Yeah, and you're you're stuck. Yeah, God forbid you get on the opposite side of the claw because it yeah, it's a nightmare to get out of there. Once you figure out the patterns, he's a personal I didn't figure him out. Yeah, did you no problem at all. Did you use mist at all for his triangles? Yeah. Yeah, that I mean feel like you have to. Yeah. that's what I did. Yeah, this is my way and it's just something that is something the game gives you is you might use it. How did shields like work? 'Cause like I never really So that's the other thing. I never was a big user of the shield. So I used other than the shield we talked about shields. I always kept the shield on, but I never used it. Because it not you don't have to use it to get the bonus defense bonus from the shield. Mm-hmm. Because it boosts your defense stat regardless. So I just kept it on because I didn't like 200 weapons. So I kept the shields on. Some enemies you could block, but a lot of times you just get hit and the shield goes flying. Yeah, right. But with the shield rod one, that one shield rod plus all card shield is specifically you cast that spell and you just walk hold the shield out and walk into them and it just eats their HP. The first time my shield went flying, I was like, I'm done with this. They can block reactiles. I think I think a lot of times shields can block projectiles but not melee hits. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like that. Maybe it's depending on the amount of damage it does. I don't think Yeah, I'm sure it does 'cause there's lots of different shields. And I know different shields probably have different spells. I needed Alocard's shield to do that specific spell. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the other shields do different things. There's one that I got that casts a big fairy that buffs you, a huge fairy. Every shield does something differently. There's a huge variety of ways to play this game and weapons to play this game with and gear, armor is different like I'm definitely getting different builds because I saw that there is there is a relic that allows you to extend the mist form. And I think Jay, you got it and didn't realize you got it. I didn't know maybe so. And I'm like, I I think maybe I thought I explored this game more than I did. I'd like swear I went all over the castle and the first part of the castle, but like I'm looking at stuff like did I miss this? So I think I need to I'm gonna go back to Big Map. I was just my fist the whole time. It was hard. There's a way to be the game like that. Yeah, yeah. And they have some knuckle weapons too, which I didn't even knuckle into. I didn't even attend. Yeah, I would get some secret we I got secret weapons and stuff throughout the game. And I was like, how did but how did I miss like extending the relic? You know? Like I think that this is such a deep game that I it it's something I gotta play again. I'm I'm I'm I did get the secret boots also. I was like, these are cool secret boots. yeah. The lifts. Yeah. But they're secrets behind the waterfall. Yes. Yeah, J Book. Okay. The secret boots. look look at these. Yeah. So like we said, they mentioned before, at least most of us have mentioned this game. Overall not very hard, I don't think. obviously using I was using save estates. I think i I could e easily beat it, it would take longer with using save rooms. The bosses I had two bosses that were really tough, but everything else, once you get like the the second half of the game, that's one thing that started to make me mad actually is there's a huge difficulty spike from castle regular to castle inverter. Yeah, immediately everything in the immediately. Yeah, it's super deadly. But you have the bat form and the misform, and I think the intention is that you just Zoom over everything and fight what you want to fight. Yeah. So many enemies is like, there's no way I want to ever like the dudes on the horses in the Coliseum. The Valkyrie Warriors, I think they're called something. They're not even that that bad compared to how often I think. Yeah. Yeah. The the yeah, the ones on the horses in Inverted Coliseum are insane. Like, what is this? Like terrible. There's a lot of really annoying enemies in Inverted Castle. It was funny 'cause by the end of regular castle, any regular enemy was hitting me for one, two, three damage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first enemy in inverted castle was like fifty-seven damage. I'm like, whoa. It's like that's a sixth of my health. But yeah, the there's in the caverns there's this section you have to go through and it's like these guys who throw rocks and then there's these flower demon girls or something. And those were a nightmare for me because they would shoot plants up from underneath you and then also throw this Yeah w without mist, like impossible to like not get hit attack like where it's just a bunch of thorns, like a wall of thorns like flying at you. I wanna I wanna also mention your HP isn't actually tied to your level. It's your containers you picked up for HP. So which to say those optional bosses all either drop a max heart or a max life actually increase how I had like three hundred health, I think close to the I was in like the four hundred still health, which is three hundred something. That's one thing that still annoys me about Castlevania games, just as one a point of contention, that your items the that you get to throw, your your your daggers, your axes, are hearts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's for hit points. It should just be like a diamond. It a little small. A minute into it, a minute into it. I got heart. I'm picking up hearts. Why is my HP? Yeah. no, that's the hearts are for it. I was like, right, the hearts is the items, right. The number daggers definitely threw more stuff than I meant to often because like up an attack is the throw. I was like, I don't mean to do that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because in Super Castlevania it was just a bumper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I kinda wish it would have been a bumper and you had an up attack actually too. You know what? Yes, because there's there's four buttons on the PS4. You didn't use the la the fourth trigger. So that could have been a sub weapon. Or that could have been an item like you talked about. Like Yeah. I don't really get what that I don't get why they didn't utilize one more button. It must have been a design choice, like Jay was saying, about the arcs and the swinging of the weapons with the huge variety of weapons that they wanted there to be certain ones that could only hit up. Because like you can't it's really weird that you can't jump and hit up. You can't hit anything directly above it. Because a lot of stuff flies. A lot of stuff is all around you at all times. But yeah, the game, it's it's not that hard. It's actually I think it's hard it's perfectly hard as hard as it should be. It's great. Like it's a great level of difficulty. Not unfortunate. It's definitely doable. Yeah. Yeah, it's not stupid. Yeah, it's the easiest Castlevania I've played that since it it's still a hard enough experience. Now, comparing it to Metroid, the Metroid that we played, our first episode, is this like experience wise? I think I like this more. I agree. I think I yeah, I I don't know if I like this more gameplay wise necessarily, but I I like it more you can shoot up in Metroid, so it's all gameplay wise I like this more. Vibes and ex environment and art wise, I music I like Metroid more. But gameplay wise, I like this more. I like stabbing more than shooting in this experience. I don't know. Like I like Metroid's bad. Metroid's another gonna be one of my top games. I do like that this is melee focus. which is a neat spin on the same core game. That's true. Yeah. Unload those and it goes I feel like I feel like most people are Metrovania fans and without realizing they are until they play a couple of them. They're like, wait, I really like these this whole genre of games. So I don't know if you guys ever played Hollow Knight. It's a horrible. No, I think it I wanna play that because obviously Silksung when it came out was huge. Yeah. it's probably still huge. I don't know what's huge. It's super tough. I've played to do a little bit of Hollow Knight. I'm not good at it's way harder than these game. Yeah, you haven't played variance. I haven't played Hollow Knight, but I do want to shout out Orion the Blind Force. That is a game I've played and beaten in that game. It's a really it's another Mr. Lovania, but it's just like really pretty to look at too. On top of having like really substantial actual RPG elements. So you have like you know, you get your skills. No yeah, you get your skills and then there's skill trees and You grow the trees and learn more sub skills off that skill is that's pretty cool. That game's like two Metroid pilled to it's this this was better than Metroid. I can't I don't know. Yeah, but open your eyes, Keith. Yeah I don't I don't think this game's necessarily better than Metroid. I just decide in the next in the last creep chat episode of the year because we have to decide which we gotta rank Yeah you gotta figure it out. Me personally, I'm ranking Zoom Symphony above Zoom is really fucking good though. That's the same thing. Zero mission is your mission's awesome. It's really good, but I think this is better. And I you know what I think so too. Consistency bias is also a thing. So that's true. That being said, I But it's not number one. Yeah. That's I that's a minimal. Yes, he said it. He said it. Yes, I got him. Find out soon. Liar. Yeah. Find out in th three more episodes. Yep. Creep Kurt Creepies. The creepies. The Cardi Creepies. Creepy award show. Fest of twenty eight six. We gotta all get dressed up in like champagne glasses, man. Yeah, that's what yeah, that's just the plan. But what we have to find out now, well, I guess first we'll find out. Would you play this game again? I think we'd all say yes. And Keith would say I was finished the Yeah. I'll play it again eventually. I'm gonna play it again. I'll probably try to play the other Metroidvania Castlevania games, maybe first. Yeah. But I would like to start Castlevania two. Yeah. And then it definitely still holds up today. It's Feels like one the only exception being the little menu quirks. I'm sure that those are fixed in the remaster kind of version, whatever is out there. I don't know. You're talking about sorting items right now, right? Yeah. Yeah. With the like comment I had about like, yeah, why didn't they use utilize that? I had no problem using like switching items mid boss. 'Cause really it's little annoying, but like It's annoying. Yeah, you don't have to pause in Metroid. You don't have to We don't have Metroid don't have that many items. I can't find delicious entire pot roasts meals on the ground in Metroid either, Keith. Or meal tickets that spawn random meal items to eat. It's really funny like dropping a pot roast like when you're facing dragon. Hold up dead. Yeah. I think So but the Order of Clasia, the D S one, it does do the double hand thing where like one hand does this, one hand does that, but they're beside each other. They're like Y and B or Yeah, 'cause this is square and circle. So you can do like bop, bop, bop, bop, bop with your weapons, which is cool. It's a cool thing. This I guess you could do that in this, but it it's too slow. But I think that's the intention in that one, is you can go back, back, back. Yeah, well, that's a g I think that game's that game should be old enough. It's a DS game. We could be throw that one on there just to have in the future. if everyone votes on it. But you guys have anything else to say about this game? I think we've all game's good. Yeah, Jay. Jay, you should buy it. Yeah, I I do want to buy it, have it on the shelf back there. to your point too, I just think like this game has really good replayability, menu quirks aside, just like Yeah. Yeah. The way you can dress your character up, the way the different weapons actually feel different. I don't know, there's a lot of replayability here. I would like to play it again. Maybe this time do an evil ending and stick to it. Skill rector. All right, I'm done exploring the castle. Time to kill that's it. I really like the castle not flipped upside down, actually. Yeah. but you just reminded me of one of the small little things I like, which is when you change your cloak, the color of your bat wings changes. Yeah. It's like your cloak also changes color too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's well like I said. I'm sorry, I didn't the sunglasses make you one less intelligent. I didn't think about that. I was like I was always like, why does the bat have red wings? Because I was wearing the blood cloak the whole time. That makes sense. Yeah. I have one more knock against this game. If you've been looking at the video version behind me, Castlevania, Symphony Knight is playing on my CRT, but it's all there is no title scroll, like there's no almost it just says press Oops. Press start button and it flashes and there's some there's some flashing in the top. Hope you like that logo. But that's it. There's no demo on a lot every other game we've ever had on the back of I wanna say Crassville Castlevania Four was like that too. Was there demos in Castlevania Four? There was. Yeah. Okay. It had the the lightning bolt hitting the rock and all that. It would replay that every once in a while. It was like the intro. That really quiet noise. All right. Well, we have to find out. what our last game of the year will be the twelve game of season one and we'll have to like the rules are going to change we've we mentioned it before we'll mention it again in the next episode when we roll for next year's game first game of next year but we have the twelfth game now to roll for wheel so wheel wheel wheel wheel wheel without further ado we'll wheel wheel wheel wheel we'll So we mentioned that the replacement for Symphony of the Night was Half Life Two. So I've gone ahead and added it right here. go through the list really quick. Let me give it a couple shuffles. Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, Tomb Raider, Demon's Crest still on there for some reason. IQ Intelligent Cube Act Razor also still on there. Super Star Wars Turn the Jedi. WWF SmackDown Two, Noir Roll. That one's been on there for a long time too. Medieval Iron Man, I think. Yeah. Star Wars Shadow of the Empire, Half Life 2, Psychonauts, Final Fight, Silent Hill 2, Diablo, and Shantae. Now I think at this point we have four Ultra Creep games on here, which are Diablo. No, not Diablo. That was yours. So we have Silent Hill two, we have Return of the Jedi, Super Star Wars Return of the Jedi, yeah, Jedi, Intelligent Cube, and Shadow of the Empire. And so if you want to get your own game on this wheel and maybe make us play it. Hopefully it's maybe one of the, one of those for the last game the year. let us, you know, check out our Patreon and you can get a you know, your game on here as well. next year, next season two, it'll be easier for you to win because we're reducing the number that we have for us on here by one. So we'll check that out. We'll have more information next time. But I guess as I already said without further ado and then I had some ado, but now for real, without further ado, I'm gonna spin the wheel. No more ado. Spin the wheel. Spin the wheel. Spin the Hello the wheel. Spin it. All hail the wheel. Spin it. come on. It's moving. Alright, finally. Diablo. What do we want? Finally. Down below. I mean, I've won before, but I don't think this one's gonna be a dud. Like the last win. It was close to being Shantae, actually. It was getting pretty close to Shantae. Yeah, it was. I was worried. I would have played Shantae, but I it just feels good to win anything. Yeah, I was about to say the last game going to J feels fitting. Yeah. Because you've only won once. In our in our gaming features. Yeah, it's only a one win. We've had we've had one creep win, right? Yeah, one creep win. One creep win. twice. I've won thrice. Twice? This is including right now. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. And then the rest have been me, Ryan, and Keith. I've won Jay's won once. Three times. I've won you guys both. I've also won three times. Keith's won three. Gay bed, Castlevania, yeah. Num number two, baby. Metal Warriors. Shadow Tower. And Shadow Tower. Metal Warrior. Yeah, you've won three times. So yeah, three. Yeah. We've all won three. Jay's won twice. Okay, so yeah. That makes sense. Because there was the first game was roll not the very first yeah, it's eleven and the first game was yeah determined outside of the creek wheel before we had it. So it was Metroid. Yeah. But yeah, Diablo. This one But anyways, yeah. This one's gonna be maybe the a difficult one to f be able to figure out how to emulate. It's not a hard game I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna run. There is a PlayStation one version. I don't let's see if it's on the Play Store. I fucking would hate to have to deal with that shit again, Jay, you son of a bitch. PlayStation store from the top. PlayStation wind Microsoft Binbos and classic Mac OS. You can buy it on GOG, you know, good old games. And I know there's Portmaster versions of it, so I could buy it any of us that have the little handhelds, me and Gabe, I guess, and Keith, could buy it and get the portmaster version running on a little me a mini or something which might not be ideal way to play it. Yeah, I was about to say I don't know how I'm gonna do this. I don't know if it'll be easier to play I don't know how long this game is either. You know, it might be easier to play it on just actually play it on PC. Which which would be fun. I was about to say can we not for Geef. But he could probably run it. It's really old. Yeah it's old. This last I can probably run it. I was about to say can we is this the kind of Diablo that you would play together Online? I don't think so. I don't think I'm not There's no there wasn't a online gaming in nineteen ninety whatever this game came out. Yeah. Seven. Yeah. It is not on the PS3 store, surprisingly. There's an expansion called Hellfire, but I don't you don't have to do it. But we probably won't have time for that anyway. It's not that long, it's thirteen and a half hours main story. According to how long to beat. I was expecting twenty plus even back then. Looks cool. Not bad. Yeah, I'm excited. I like a good origin game. Yeah, thirteen and a half. How much is it on God disc? Just the PlayStation One disc, I wonder. I'm gonna look it up to see how much it costs. Really? Fuck. $124 on EBA. That's the first one I see here. That's could be worse. Could be two hundred and twenty-four. That's true, you're right. Can be one thirty even. Pretty easy to set it up on the Steam Deck too, from what I'm reading right now. But I might, like you said, I might just play it on my PC. It's been a minute since I've cracked the It'd be tough to sit down and sit down for my homework and play PC games. For for creeps. That's the whole thing. Everything's been on I can play on handheld, so it's easy to play when everything get this PC hooked up to my CRT. Yeah. Should be fun. A nice evil into the year. Yeah, we'll see. I don't know. I really don't know how much I'll like it because I'm not a Diablo guy. I've never really played besides the one we played in college. I feel like playing it on my PC. Yeah. I feel like playing it on a PC though be more focused and I'll get more hours in per session. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like I'm gonna have to PC it for once. I can still look at my controller to this, so it doesn't matter. You have can't stop me. At least being in tr using a controller. One point eight gigahertz. I just I think it won't work with a controller very well. I don't know if the controller probably maps. They didn't they didn't think of that till later. No, I mean it came when it came out there was no like you weren't playing with controller. So yeah. I you gotta We have to look into it. Might be interesting to compare the differences. Yeah. But yeah, 100 one point eight gigahertz of rant of you know CPU power, two gigs of RAM. Direct X9 compatible graphics, so one gig of storage space. I think you may be able to play it. This on your actual te ten year old laptop could definitely run that. This is a ten year old desktop that I'm making all of this on. Everything you've seen on Carcass is made on a ten year old desktop. Tune in next time for our final episode of well, not final episode of the year, but our final Diablo game of the month episode of the year, Diablo. for PC. Diablo. Thanks for El Diablo. Thanks for listening or watching whichever you're doing on either Spotify, Apple, or Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. If you're, you know, unaware, you can find us on all three of those platforms. Please join our Discord if you'd like to discuss some games, especially if you're a Diablo head, because we don't really know that much about it. Be sure to like and subscribe and we'll see you in the next one and keep on creeping on. Did you know Diablo means devil? No. I can't play this game. That's Bye bye. Bye. Play the music. Hip that music, Dracula boy. Welcome to Cart Creeps. We at Car Creeps like to, you know, blah blah blah. We're like or something. Do an ad read. But I couldn't think Well everyone's gone. I can have like an ad to do. Hurry, hurry, quick, you can be part of it. Welcome back, everyone. This ed episode of Cart Creeps is sponsored by whether you're dealing with life's unexpected plot twist, like a Dracula in your basement. Or just trying to make it through another day without a game-breaking bug. Cash your back. Because the real world doesn't come with a saved state. It's good to know what y you've got protection when things go wrong. Are you in good Find out with Thanks for supporting Card Creeps. Use a promo code CREEP to get twenty-five percent off your deductible. And thanks for supporting us. Back to the show. Back to you boys. Maybe sponsored by like an insurance company. That'd be good money. You should you need to talk to your bosses. That'd be really fun for Ryan to find later. I wonder if he'll even listen to it. He's gonna see all this talking. He does. He was gonna see all this talking and hey Ryan, you're great. Well she's coming back, he's coming back. Okay, put Fuck. Yeah, I remember I think we did that. Or was that Where is he going? We just got here. The fuck This episode of Cart Creeps is sponsored by Built for the Long. Whether you're dragging Dracula through the dirt or taking a road trip to his castle. Absolutely yeah. With a reputation for reliability and vehicles built to keep going, knows a thing or two about putting the hours. Kind of like us. well, let's go places, and thanks for supporting Car Creeps.