Castlevania 20th Anniversary

[Warlock]

http://ds.ign.com/articles/741/741139p1.html
http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3154572

http://dsmedia.ign.com/ds/image/article/741/741139/castlevania-portrait-of-ruin-20061023000156126-000.jpg (http://media.ds.ign.com/media/774/774649/img_4015122.html)

That is a freaking awesome preorder bonus for Portrait of Ruin. Honestly, I'm extremely stoked about the Soundtrack especially. "The best music of the Castlevania series" just sounds sweet (because it has so many freaking great songs). The art book also looks extremely thick - that should be pretty cool.

I'll have to place a preorder when I go to pick up my FFXII CE next week at GameStop :D

P.S. - I still don't understand the WFC Shop feature of that game though. The way they explain it, it sounds like you can put any item you find up for sale, and people can just buy it. You never lose the item, but you do get the money for it. Does that make any sense to anyone? It seems like either some people will get super rich for no effort (other than finding items), and others will get nothing because there will be so many shops that no one will see them (that's a guess but come on, where is the downside here?)

[MottZilla]

I'm certainly interested in it, just because I love Castlevania. Unfortunately I don't have the money to pickup this special edition thing now.

[Mak-X]

Already preordered, but online through ebgames.com.

The last time I preordered in store at EB was for Castlevania: Curse of Darkness for PS2, and the guys working there had no idea about the free sampler cd that came with it and didn't see it anywhere in the package. I also read a post somewhere about another game recently, Phantasy Star Universe, where the employees just took the free CDs for PSU. So preordering online for me seems like a safe bet.

[AtmaWeapon]

I am tempted to buy it, but I'm more interested in the soundtrack than the game.

Are there actual soundtrack albums to the Castlevania series, or is this a unique thing?

[Warlock]

I'm certainly interested in it, just because I love Castlevania. Unfortunately I don't have the money to pickup this special edition thing now.

I'm pretty sure it's only $35 (the price of the game). It just says "when you preorder", not that you have to "preorder the anniversary edition".


Already preordered, but online through ebgames.com.

The last time I preordered in store at EB was for Castlevania: Curse of Darkness for PS2, and the guys working there had no idea about the free sampler cd that came with it and didn't see it anywhere in the package. I also read a post somewhere about another game recently, Phantasy Star Universe, where the employees just took the free CDs for PSU. So preordering online for me seems like a safe bet.

Wow that's bad. But I don't want to wait for it to ship when I can just get it at the store (exact same price/etc). I'm going to specifically ask them when I go to pick up my FF12 CE if they are offering that in-store, and put a preorder down then.

[Mak-X]

So far Symphony of the Night (PSone), Lament of Innocence (PS2), and Curse of Darkness (PS2, Xbox), have come with limited soundtrack samplers. SoTN had music from past Castlevanias, while the recent 3-D games had samplers of their soundtracks.


I am tempted to buy it, but I'm more interested in the soundtrack than the game.

Are there actual soundtrack albums to the Castlevania series, or is this a unique thing?

There's been a soundtrack for just about every Castlevania game in Japan. They can be bought from www.gamemusic.com or www.vgmworld.com

The Castlevania Dungeon fansite (http://www.classicgaming.com/castlevania) has info on all the soundtracks.


I'm actually still slowly going though Julius mode in Dawn of Sorrow, and I think I'm right before the final boss. Never got around to finishing Curse of Darkness though after the loading screens and levels got to me.

[DarkDragoonX]

That is at least seventy different kinds of pure awesome... going to grab that for sure.

[MANDRAG GANON]

I'm curious, does anyone know if this is only for the States or is this also for Canada.

I just went and preordered my copy from EB and the guy said he didnt know about it yet. Is it something that you get when you pick up the game? Or are you supposed to get it when you set the pre-order D:

Other times when I've pre-ordered I got the stuff when I pre-ordered. He said I could go pick up one if they get them in before the game comes out tho.

[Warlock]

I'm curious, does anyone know if this is only for the States or is this also for Canada.

I just went and preordered my copy from EB and the guy said he didnt know about it yet. Is it something that you get when you pick up the game? Or are you supposed to get it when you set the pre-order D:

Other times when I've pre-ordered I got the stuff when I pre-ordered. He said I could go pick up one if they get them in before the game comes out tho.

I have no idea, but I do know you have to preorder to get it. You could try e-mailing EBGames.com or GameStop.com and ask.

[AtmaWeapon]

I bought dat. The guy :rolleyes:ed at me for it because I eavesdropped on his conversation while in line and he seems to feel like "Nintendo is bundling a bunch of stuff with all of their games to try and get people to buy them".

Seriously, the dialog was like:
"Hey, are you guys doing that Castlevania preorder bundle thing?"

"*rolls eyes* Yeah, the one that comes with like a million things?"

"Yeah that one I want it."

"I mean jeez Nintendo."

"what"

They were all scrambling to get ready for Monday. Being behind on matters I asked what Monday was and he told me FFXII was coming out. He took great offense when I responded with "I'll pick it up from the used section on Friday" by responding that I could find it next to the Wiis.

[MANDRAG GANON]

Ugh I email EB and asked if Canada would get it and when I would recieve it.
They Said:

We will be shipping that item to Canada.

That's it, so I emailed them back and asked them when I would pick it up, when I preorder or when I pick up the game and they reply saying:

I am not sure whether or not Canadian stores will be receiving this
bonus.

Of course this is all they said with a thanks and have a nice day...I dunno if a person even wrote these.

...Anyone from canada who knows anything about this who can let me know when and where I can get this thing, please lemme know :(

[Kairyu]

Hmm... I called my local GS tonight, and they said they don't know whether or not I'd be able to get this preorder. According to the guy working there, he doesn't know how many preorders they'll be receiving, and he has no way of checking how many copies have already been preordered at that store. That sounds really suspicious to me... does anyone here know if that's true? Grasshopper?

[Warlock]

Hmm... I called my local GS tonight, and they said they don't know whether or not I'd be able to get this preorder. According to the guy working there, he doesn't know how many preorders they'll be receiving, and he has no way of checking how many copies have already been preordered at that store. That sounds really suspicious to me... does anyone here know if that's true? Grasshopper?


Call back like tomorrow - sounds like you just got an idiot on the phone ;p

I know when I went to preorder FFXII CE they had no problem at all. But I didn't call - I just went to the store.

[Grasshopper]

It sounds like typical stuff. I think he sounds truthful. I don't think its anything to get worried about. We aren't really allowed to give out numbers. Never really understood why either. :shrug: I don't think he's an idiot. I just think he doesn't know.

When it comes to games, I really never know much either. Really, you'd be surprised at how little Gamestop tells their employees. Most of the stuff is stuff we find out on our own through forums and websites. If we haven't bothered looking, then we won't know. At least thats how it is with me. I found out about this deal because one of the employees told me. How did he know, he saw it in a Gamespot article before work. Did we ever get info about this before from HQ? Nope

What I've noticed over the years working there though is that we usually get more than reserved copies. But the extra copies depends on how many was reserved. Thats what happens usually. Not all the time, but most of the time. I think there is a way to show how many reserves a game has though. I don't know how because I've never done it. But I think I remember seeing it. You might have to have manager status to do it. But it would be up to them if they wanted to say or not.

I'd go ahead and reserve it. Nobody really knows how many of these bonus things we'd get anyway. We basically wait until mid-day for the UPS guy to arrive. Find the shipment lists thats updated in the computer that day, print them out, see which box it matches, and open it up and check off what came in the box versus whats on the list to see if everything is there.

I figure they'll have so many of those anyway, you'd get whether you reserve it or not. I'd do it just in case though. But I wouldn't worry. If its a Gamestop special thing, then I doubt you'd have any problem getting one.

[Kairyu]

Thanks, I think I'll try to reserve it soon, then. I just haven't had many nice experiences with GS before.

[Warlock]

So I got this yesterday. Figured I would just revive this thread instead of starting a new one :P

First off, it's a hell of a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Though going to pick it up, I sort of had a feeling it would end up being disappointing in that regard (the FF XII CE sure was.. "Collector's Tin" my ass.. it was a PS2 box made of metal!)

The art book was pretty disappointing. It's about the size of an SNES instruction manual, but thicker (but it's softcover, not hardcover despite how it looks in that picture). And it's not so much an art book as "a collection of box pictures (with *partial* cover art in the background) for each game. And by partial I mean, the three NES games were all on one page seperated into one third of the page each. It was rediculous. The only actual non-cover art was towards the back - they had *some* art for SotN and a few of the other PSX/GBA/DS titles. And by some I mean they tried to cram about 8 character pieces on one page so they were all tiny (if you go to Castlevania Dungeon (http://castlevania.classicgaming.gamespy.com/) they have the same art on their page, just not tiny :P).

The music CD is pretty decent, though it's all strait from the games. So you know, NES games sound like shit, etc. It has music from I think every game, but some games only have one or two tracks. Others have maybe four or five. Actually the PSX games sounded pretty shitty too which surprised me. They all had *way* too much percussion to the point it drowned out the actual theme (which was strangly low volume). I don't know if this is how it was in the original, as I don't own any of the PSX titles, but it seemed off. PSX should have the best audio of all of them. I was listening to this in my car so I didn't have track names, so I couldn't tell you which was which. I could generally just make out the game based on audio quality. Surprisingly the Super Castlevania track sounded extremely good - you could tell it was synthesizer crap but the audio quality seemed cleaner than most others, some of which were a bit scratchy or poppy.. also surprisingly, the one track for "The Castlevania Adventure" (aka the first Game Boy - that is ORIGINAL Game Boy - Castlevania) sounded *better* than the NES tracks. I couldn't figure that one out - did Game Boy actually have better audio than NES? I suspect it's just different music rippers, some decent, some lousy. Who knows. I've only gotten as far as I believe (again, in the car so no track lists) the GBA Castlevanias. I noticed a huge shift in quality so I'm assuming that's what it is. They didn't sound as good as the SNES track which was strange (I thought they shared at least *similar* hardware though I knew GBA was definately inferior - I just didn't think that much). They also has some bonus tracks - I forget what the first one is, but the second is Bloody Tears (which I listed to since that's my favorite). It sounded pretty good, but I think I actually prefered the NES version :) Too bad the NES ones were all extremely short (most less than 1 min long). They should have at least looped once. All in all, it has 27 tracks which is not bad.

Not much to say about the timeline sheet, it's pretty neat. I didn't read over it much, but in the blurb for I think Bloodlines there is a little note that says something like "Developer's Note: As for the explanation of why a 16th century vampire is in the 20th century, we are working on that in a future game". I thought that was interesting.

The other stuff is neat but nothing too fancy. There is a little case that can hold two DS games, and a stylus.


The game itself is pretty fun so far. Artistically it seems to reuse the exact same sprites from Dawn of Sorrow in many cases, but otherwise it's pretty good. The team function is actually pretty cool and you can do some neat combo stuff with it. For example, one ability allows you to jump off the other person's head for an extra boost. You can also tell one person to stay in one place, and then have the other manipulate a switch or something to reach new areas (for example, the first time has one character stand on a statue, while the other one pushes it, then you switch back to the other and you can reach a higher ledge). Another neat use was a boss who would charm the male character (so he attacked you), so it was beneficial to fight her just with the female character. There are other neat things like challenges (i.e. kill 10 ___" or "Perform this key sequence", etc) which grant new items, abilities, etc. So yeah, so far it's a lot of fun. Decently hard too (there seem to be fewer save rooms from what I've seen, maybe it's just my imagination).

[vegeta1215]

Sounds like the Anniversary stuff isn't too hot huh? Oh well, it was free right?

I haven't decided whether to pick up any more of the Metroid-like Castlevania games. Circle of the Moon was my first, and it was terrific - I even enjoyed replaying the game as the different "characters" because each provided a different challenge. I then played Harmony of Dissonance, which was fun but kind of a disappointment. I then tracked down SoTN for PSone, and although it was fun and the presentation was terrific (as well as Alucard being a bad ass), it just felt like a step backwards.

I dunno, I just feel like the newer ones are going to be more of the same. I heard the team that did CoTM is a different team than the one that did every Metroid-vania game afterwards :shrug:

[Grasshopper]

While most collector stuff is pretty crappy in terms of what you get, you have to look at like this...at least you didn't have to pay for it. :D (I'm looking at you Halo 3 and your stupid Spartan helmet)

[Warlock]

While most collector stuff is pretty crappy in terms of what you get, you have to look at like this...at least you didn't have to pay for it. :D (I'm looking at you Halo 3 and your stupid Spartan helmet)

Right, it was free so that's fine. Just saying I was expecting more :P

Edit: I listened to a few more tracks on my way to lunch. Whatever game is on track 21 (and surrounding tracks) sounds amazing. I suspect it's Lament of Innocence or something since that's a PS2 title and I'd expect good audio. But I don't know. That's a great track though.

Edit2: Track list:
http://www.bitsbytespixelssprites.com/blog/2006/11/10/castlevania-cd-track-list/

I was right, though Curse of Darkness also has good tracks.

I was, however, wrong about the GBA titles. I must have either heard Dracula X or SotN. I suspect it's Dracula X. What I thought was SotN must have been Bloodlines which makes more sense.

[AtmaWeapon]

Actually I thought the tracks on the CD were pretty good. If you compare the quality of the NES tracks to what I'd get if I just downloaded an NSF it blows me away how big the difference is. I guess if you don't like 8-bit music yeah they aren't that good but I love good 8-bit music and some of that old stuff puts modern orchestrated stuff to shame. (Tell me you don't like the Flash Man track you liar!)

Much like the movie Snakes on a Plane, there are two ways to view the anniversary set:

Usually your "preorder bonus" is you don't have to wait for 2 weeks until Gamestop starts selling the game. It's awesome to get probably 20 bucks worth of stuff for free with the game. The artbook, arguably 1/2 of the reason to be excited, is pretty cruddy and doesn't really give you much. The set isn't worth it.I'm somewhere between the two; I was excited about the artbook and the CD and only one of the two delivers.

My big question is what is the deal with that stylus? It won't fit in the DS slot and it seems like you can extend it to a weird length; is there some function it serves that I am unaware of or did Konami manage to fail at making a stylus?

I haven't been able to play much of the game because of finals studying but the hour or so I've played it it's fun; same old Castlevania feel but if you don't like that kind of game you really had no business buying it.

[Warlock]

Actually I thought the tracks on the CD were pretty good. If you compare the quality of the NES tracks to what I'd get if I just downloaded an NSF it blows me away how big the difference is. I guess if you don't like 8-bit music yeah they aren't that good but I love good 8-bit music and some of that old stuff puts modern orchestrated stuff to shame. (Tell me you don't like the Flash Man track you liar!)

Much like the movie Snakes on a Plane, there are two ways to view the anniversary set:

Usually your "preorder bonus" is you don't have to wait for 2 weeks until Gamestop starts selling the game. It's awesome to get probably 20 bucks worth of stuff for free with the game. The artbook, arguably 1/2 of the reason to be excited, is pretty cruddy and doesn't really give you much. The set isn't worth it.I'm somewhere between the two; I was excited about the artbook and the CD and only one of the two delivers.

My big question is what is the deal with that stylus? It won't fit in the DS slot and it seems like you can extend it to a weird length; is there some function it serves that I am unaware of or did Konami manage to fail at making a stylus?

I haven't been able to play much of the game because of finals studying but the hour or so I've played it it's fun; same old Castlevania feel but if you don't like that kind of game you really had no business buying it.

Yes, I actually do like the CD. The NES quality doesn't disappoint me (I was pointing out compared to modern music it is quite primitive) but what disappointed me about those tracks was length. They basically do not loop the song, so most are a minute or less in length. One is, I swear, 20 seconds long. I think they should have at least looped once. Some of the NES music is actually my favorite and I wish the tracks were longer. I'd have also liked more tracks for Simon's Quest (which I always thought had the best music of the NES games), but I guess some of that music is repeated from Castlevania/Castlevania 3. There were also a few other game songs that sounded bad like I mentioned - I think it may have specifically been the Bloodlines music now that I look at the track list. Dracula X may have also been bad, I'm going to have to really check the track list vs. the music.

I havn't even messed with the stylus at all, so I dunno :P It was unusually large tho.

But yeah, it was free. The art book was really disappointing, but I didn't pay anything extra so whatever :P Just seems like at least some of those games had to have manual art, didn't they? Just seemed thrown together, but whatever, it's free :P

[AtmaWeapon]

Oh I know what you mean about the CD. It's pretty standard fare on soundtrack albums to loop twice these days, but standard game tracks are a lot longer than the loops on these NES games and the looping policy is very inconsistent on the CD. Some songs loop 3 or 4 times and drag on for 5 minutes, and then there's the 20 second one you mentioned that doesn't even loop twice (It was one of the best ones, too). My only guess is they were trying to fit more tracks on there by shortening the length of other tracks, but it stinks that some of the NES tracks got cut so short.

There are Castlevania soundtrack CDs available but they have to be imported and tend to cost a lot :/

[Grasshopper]

Yeah, I think everybody was expecting more. So I know what you mean. It's the websites that list things or post pictures that make it look different that make you expect something different. "Wax-sealed box"? Um...sure.

[AtmaWeapon]

You know the more I look at that image the more I realize they did some serious skewing of the box and the artbook in an attempt to make it look way better than it was. For reference, the box itself is maybe 1/2" in depth but the image makes it look like it is 1 1/2" to accomodate a 3/4" thick book.

Boo Konami! I like the preorder stuff but there was no need to falsify the image.

[Warlock]

I listened to the rest last night. The bonus tracks are definately awesome. The first one is basically an electric guitar version of Beginning. Best track on the whole CD :D

Also, I need to verify this is right, but what I *think* was the title music for Circle of the Moon sounded bad-ass. I need to make sure that's the one or not, as I havn't played that game in awhile :D I know it was the title music to *one* of the GBA Castlevanias (or maybe Dawn of Sorrow but I don't think so).


Also, some more about the game. So far it's pretty fun. And I definately think it has fewer save rooms than usual which makes it quite a bit harder.

One thing I kind of like is that sub-items (i.e. knives, cross, holy water type stuff) are actual items you equip. So say you buy the Knives from the shop guy. You equip that and you can use the Knives skill now (it consumes MP). Basically Jonathan gets a lot of traditional weapons like the ones I mentioned (I haven't gotten the cross or holy water or axes yet, but I suspect they are there - I have gotten the Knives and Bible). There are also quite a few new ones, including some unusual ones like a Dart that does crappy damage, but if you get a bullseye (right in the center of the enemy) it does a ton apparently. There are also a lot of ninja weapons like shurikens and stuff. Meanwhile, Charlotte gets all spells for this slot. I've gotten a few summons (Skeleton/Ghost) and most are just elemental spells - kind of the stuff you would expect I guess.

Also, apparently the sub-weapons have "mastery" levels. I don't know exactly what this is, but there is a list of the weapons you have with say, 0/1000 next to them, indicating you have to kill 1000 enemies with that sub-weapon and you have "mastered" it. I don't know what that does though - maybe increases damage? Knives is only like 300, so I think I'm going to try to master that first with the zombies near the entrance (one hit kills) and see if anything happens. Some of them do so little damage that I don't know how you'd ever get the required mastery level, but who knows. I do know the shop has a really really expensive ring that supposively makes that go up faster. Spells don't get masteries I guess, but Charlotte can charge a spell to do double the effect (i.e. instead of 2 skeletons she summons 4 if you charge that spell). So that is neat.

There are also Duo attacks which are neat. They are basically screen clearers that use up most/all of your MP. One for example is Holy Lightning, which summons a giant, spinning electric cross in the center of the screen that rotates and hits stuff for a bunch of consecutive damage. Good for large enemies and large packs of small enemies. There's also one called 1000 Knives which does pretty much exactly what it says. You throw 1000 knives rapid-fire strait forward. It seems a little insane though given I killed one boss by using it only twice :D So yeah, these abilities are neat too.

There also seems to be just generally more puzzle solving than usual which I like. As you progress you get all kinds of new skills - even aside from Relics - so you can do more moves and access new areas. There are a lot of Mario & Luigi type puzzles where you have one person stand on something and have the other manipulate a switch or something.

[Mak-X]

I think this is one of the better preorder bonuses I've seen.

The black packaging itself reminds me of the old NES cart sleeves, and everything inside, is a lot for what they did. Everything is printed on nice paper in high quality they put some effort into this little tribute to Castlevania's 20th anniversary. Originally this was listed as just a soundtrack bonus, but they took it a little further.

All of the music on the CD is taken from previous soundtracks and clocks in at 77:40 minutes, so there isn't much they could do about length. Castlevania 3 and at least one of the Castlevania 2 tracks are from the Japanese versions and sound different. The NES version of CV2 sounded better than the FDS one, and the Famicom version of CV3 had a special sound chip in it to make the music sound better. Also, the original soundtracks for the first few games had reverb in it that was common for CDs back then that I didn't notice on this CD so it might have been cleaned up from a master. If you hear any popping on the first few tracks, like track 2 Vampire Killer, that's just how the music sounded on the NES. They also messed up on the track listing and order for track 4, Bloody Tears, which is from Castlevania 2.

I wish it had music from the SNES version of Dracula X though, that has some of the best SNES music, and prefer most of it to the PC Engine's CD soundtrack.

Though the original is not on the cd there is a great arrangement of Circle of the Moons first area here
http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00854/

Gamemusic.com has most of the soundtracks for sale
http://www.gamemusic.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/GMOStore.woa/wa/CategoryDetail?cid=1002&did=101

The stylus is probably intended for a DS Lite as it fits fine in mine. It's also a neat touch that it uses the old Castlevania logo from before Harmony of Dissonance.


Good game so far after playing for about 2 hours, I like that its going back to having a whip wielding hero, although other weapons can be used. The music is good though it doesn't have the same impact that Dawn of Sorrow did for me so far. This will keep me busy until I get to play Zelda.

[Warlock]

They also messed up on the track listing and order for track 4, Bloody Tears, which is from Castlevania 2.

Ok, so I am not crazy then. I knew that song was from Castlevania 2 but I assumed maybe I just forgot it was also in CV 1 or something.

[MANDRAG GANON]

I got the call the other day and they told me that there was no gift box so I was pretty pissed off, I sent an angry email to EB and they said they are sending one to me. Then the next day I go to pick it up and they had the gift box i dunno what the guy on the phone was talking about but now I'm getting 2 gift boxes.

I was lucky to read here first because I was expecting alot less when I acctually opened it and was surprised to see it wasntquite as bad as I had read. I thought it was pretty cool, and for people who cant get the stylus to fit in thier DS Mine fits fine, I have a DS lite though so that might be why it wont fit for you since they are smaller stylus'.

The acctual game I'm loving so far, I dont think its as good as Dawn of Sorrow was but theres alot of stuff about it I like, So far I've only beat the first level.

[AtmaWeapon]

Why on Earth did Nintendo make a different stylus size for the DS and DS Lite? Some of us aren't made of money here :mad:

[vegeta1215]

Why on Earth did Nintendo make a different stylus size for the DS and DS Lite? Some of us aren't made of money here :mad:

If you play Metroid Prime: Hunters with the stylus that comes with the original DS you will know why they made a different (bigger) stylus for the DS Lite.

[Warlock]

Hehe, so I beat it.. sort of. You can get the "bad ending" incredibly early in the game I guess.

I have to say though, so far this game is really good. I almost want to say better than Dawn of Sorrow (once you get into it). The different subweapons and spells makes up for the lack of Soma's soul powers, and they really do a decent job of making the two characters work well together. It requires a bit of strategy too, as while you can have that second character there to do some extra damage, there are also areas where it's a bad idea, since any damage they take lowers your MP. In particular, the circus-themed painting is absolutely full of swinging pendulums and other such traps that make it much easier to just do solo.

I also like that they added a lot of digital voice to this - more than Dawn of Sorrow. Even some of the enemies have speech. Also nifty, I tried out boss rush mode - the first level features all bosses from Dawn of Sorrow! Neat!

[AtmaWeapon]

I am currently about 80% of the way through the game judging from my enemy completion and punishing myself hard by not progressing further until I've received every drop from every enemy I've visited so far to be sure I'm not missing a quest item. I figure by the time I'm done with that my levels will be uber and I won't need as many potions anymore. Either that or I'll have torn my hair out.

I'm mastering all of the weapons I have while I'm at it; it's kind of aggravating that as you master them they grow in both power and MP consumption. At the low levels you can pretty much throw infinite items but by the time it's mastered it drains a lot of MP.

All in all it's the same kind of fun as all of the other Castlevania games I've played recently; at least there's no "I win" button like the Thunderbird summon from CoTM anymore.

[Warlock]

Yeah I'm in about the same position. I tried out the Nest of Evil tonight - it's basically this game's version of the Battle Arena from CotM (but without the gay mana drain). It's pretty neat - one of the nice things about it being it throws in a buttload of enemies from Dawn of Sorrow that don't appear anywhere else in this game, including several of the bosses. I got decently far down it, but the area I'm at now is insane. First room is basically two of one of the later bosses you fight (not to spoil anything, but it's the boss of the "second version" of the forest painting). I've gotten past that room but then there are a ton of rooms after that. Did fairly decent but didn't quite make it. I died on the boss - that wierd guy from DoS who summons the swarms of locusts :( I probably could have beaten him but I screwed up on the one where the locusts rain down (I think Soma had a good attack for hitting stuff above him.. I gotta figure out a better option for Jonathan).

But yeah, this is a great game. I honestly think it's better than Dawn of Sorrow, but that will all depend on how good the "extra" mode is, given that Dawn of Sorrow had *the best* extra mode of any Castlevania (or at least any modern Castlevania that usually just throws the secondary character as playable). So we'll see.

Also, I'd say other than the clock tower, this one probably has the "most different" version of the castle out of any of them, which is great given every friggin' game features the exact same friggin' castle layout. Add the fact that the paintings add some extra variety to that, and it's pretty great to finally visit some new areas.

Though, I still want to see them do something similar to Simon's Quest. I want to run around the Romania countryside again :D Adding in all the RPGish features of recent games and it could be quite awesome.

P.S. - the second versions of the four paintings were also great. At least two of them feature extremely classic boss battles, and I'd have to look but I'm sure the third was a classic battle as well.. I honestly can't remember what the forth was now :P

Edit: Looked it up and yeah, I'm pretty sure all four are classic (i.e. NES) Castlevania battles.

They are:
-=SPOILER=-