Castlevania: Rondo of Hoop Jumping
January 7th, 2008I recently purchased a copy of Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP, which proudly proclaims on the back of the case that Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are “Together…At Last!”
Sounds great, right? I had read drooling accounts online of people obsessed with the never-released stateside Rondo of Blood, and combining it with Symphony of the Night, a game often regarded as one of the best of all time, seems like a no-brainer purchase. So what’s the problem?
Basically, the games advertised on the case are not immediately accessible. The Rondo of Blood 3d remake is the only game available when you first boot up. The case mentions that you can “unlock” the original Rondo of Blood, which would sort of make some amount of sense, I supposed, as some kind of unlockable for finishing the remastered game. But the case makes absolutely no mention of Symphony of the Night needing to be unlocked. It rather dully mentions that the two games are available and “Together… at last”, and even includes a few screenshots.
I started playing the game a bit before I realized this and figured that maybe I just had to play through the game (which I was going to do anyway) in order to unlock all the games, but after I started seeing strange items (like a CD with a music note on it) within the remake I started to worry that maybe I actually needed to do something “special” to open up the games, rather than just “finish” it.
I did the unthinkable and popped open the manual. It’s slightly confusing, but there is a page that says “The Original Game” and under it “Players who fulfill certain conditions in the remastered Castlevania: Dracula X Rondo of Blood can unlock the original version of the game.”
Certain conditions? That doesn’t sound so good… it certainly sounds at least a bit more than just finishing the game. And what about Symphony of the Night? It’s mentioned on the same page a little below, but it still doesn’t say anything specific about needing to unlock it. Perhaps I’m supposed to interpret “The Original Game” as both Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night together?
So when I read this I had already made it to the 4th level of the remastered game (which is surprisingly difficult, to be honest) and decided I could go no further until I figured out exactly what these certain conditions were. I did what any gamer does when they want to discover the “secrets” within games and looked the game up on GameFAQs. How do you unlock Symphony of the Night? Here’s what GameFAQs says (Note: consider this a spoiler warning if you REALLY want to try to figure this out for yourself. Don’t read this part if you don’t want to know, but assuming that you actually want to play the unlocked game at some point without wasting half your life, it’s probably not that big of a deal for you to read):
“In Stage 2, while the minotaur is chasing Richter, immediately fall into the first hole in the ground. You will not die, but instead be taken into the sewers. Play the level out normally and defeat the boss. Afterwards, you will be taken to Stage 3′ (this is different from the normal Stage 3!).
In Stage 3′, whenever the path branches, taken the upper route. Make sure you obtain the “axe” subweapon sometime during the stage. Eventually, you will meet a skeletal snake that is attached to a wall. Nearby is a vine-like cage; use the axe to cut it. It now serves as a platform for Richter to jump to the upper ledges. Continue along the upper ledges until you see a breakable tombstone. Inside is the item that unlocks Symphony of the Night. Return to the main menu to play it.”
Ouch. So not only do you need to know to DO something that would normally kill you, but you also have to make sure you take the correct paths and have the appropriate items in order to unlock the game. It’s also worth noting that I’m already too late in my game to do this, so I’ll have to restart the game when I’m done and go through these levels just so I can unlock the game advertised without confusion on the game package. Fantastic. [Update: As pointed out in the comments, the game has a level select option, which, when I went back to do this, I used. So instead of playing through the whole game again, you can simply start at the beginning of the level.]
I’ll spare the details of how to unlock Rondo of Blood, but I suppose I’m at least lucky enough that I caught it in time for me to take care of in my current game (and it looks almost as convoluted as unlocking Symphony of the Night).
I know we’ve talked about silly unlockables in the past, but this really is one of the worst examples I’ve seen lately. Not only do they seem somewhat impossible to figure out without either a guide or by complete accident, but one of the games is even advertised on the case itself (as an equal to the remastered Rondo of Blood, no less) without any hint of the hoops that you need to jump through to unlock it! Developers, please think about your unlockables carefully. There’s no reason we should basically be required to read an FAQ to figure out how to access your game.
Posted in Jeff, PSP, WTF |
January 7th, 2008 at 10:43 am
I agree wholeheartedly. Rewards for completing stages or finishing a game are fine; unlockables that essentially require you to stumble upon them or read a FAQ are not.
I think RPGs and platformers have been the worst at this: for the latter, if something normally kills you when you try it (e.g., falling in pits), it should be made clear, via some sort of visual or audio cue, that a given situation is “special.” It’s irritating to be required to experiment when 9 times out of 10, jumping into something is going to kill you. And for the former, inordinately long secret passages - with no indication of their existence - or chance random encounters with incredibly rare enemies are not fun. Would it kill the designer to have the secret mentioned explicitly in-game?
January 7th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I agree that Konami did a bad job explaining things. I applaud you on unlocking SOTN the fair way; I just downloaded a save file off of gamefaqs with everything unlocked. I did play through the original PC Engine Rondo though, so I think I earned it.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Doomeru:
Don’t applaud me yet… I haven’t done it just yet. =) I didn’t even know I could download a save file from Gamefaqs, and now that you mention it the idea is sort of appealing to me… I guess I’ll see how difficult it is to unlock after I make my way through the rest of the game.
I’ve heard the original Rondo of Blood is better than the remake. Is this true? The controls seem just a tad on the sluggish side in the remake, so I was wondering if that was the same in the original.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Jeff:
A few things about the save file. The save file you want is going to be on the top of the list of psp saves. This guy has unlocked SOTN, and original PC Engine Rondo. Back up your existing save, as this will overwrite it. In case you don’t know, you just need to drop the file in your /savegames folder in the psp. Note that SOTN isn’t widescreen and you’ll have background graphics along the left and right of the screen to fill the gap.
I think the original was better, and harder. Hard verging on unfair. It is pretty sluggish but you’ll see that that for yourself when you play the unlocked version. It was a spectacular game for its time, amazing sprite graphics. You’ll also see how Konami recycled a lot of enemies for SOTN.
If you are running OE or M33 firmware on your psp you could play the original with an emulator…
January 7th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
“I think the original was better, and harder. Hard verging on unfair.”
Ugh… I’m on level 4 in the remake right now, and there is a fork where you can take one of 2 different paths… One has a bunch of spike pits with tiny platforms to stand on while those crappy eyeball things fly around you and the other seems to require me to use the horribly implemented “backflip” to make my way up a staircase while rolling stone balls come crushing down it. Unless you perfectly time using the invulnerability potion nearby (which lasts for about 5 seconds max), it doesn’t even seem possible to avoid damage when you actually successfully perform the jump (and there’s about a 75% chance that you’ll get knocked back down the stairs and have to re-do it again anyway). Needless to say, I haven’t been able to do either of these sections yet, and “harder” doesn’t sound “better” to me right now. =)
January 7th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
That’s where I am too. Are they both equal in difficulty and result?
Anyway, yeah, the nonsense you have to go through to unlock SotN is stupid, but at least you can do it quickly.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Rob-
I just did the spike path… it may be difficult, but at least it’s possible to do without a ridiculously hard backflip jump. After you make it past that section you can unlock Rondo of Blood, which wasn’t terrible actually. At least it doesn’t require doing something that you would normally never try because it would kill you.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
>There’s no reason we should basically be required to read an FAQ to figure out how to access your game.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Screwed up my comment there, it was supposed to be:
>There’s no reason we should basically be required to read an FAQ to figure out how to access your game.
How about to sell more official game guides?
January 8th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
betaray-
I’m surprised anyone still buys those things. They cost 1/3 of the price of the game itself and provide basically nothing more than what GameFAQs or any of the other guide sites provide.
In any case, perhaps I should rephrase it to “No GOOD reason”, as I don’t really consider “Selling more [expensive as hell] game guides” to be a worthy game design choice.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:03 am
At this point I don’t think anyone buys game guides to get help with games anymore, except maybe parents who want to be helpful. I think they’re more highly sought after as collectibles.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:52 am
>I agree wholeheartedly. Rewards for completing stages or finishing a game are fine; unlockables that essentially require you to stumble upon them or read a FAQ are not.
Not only do I agree with that, but I’d say it’s especially, ridiculously bad when these unlockables comprise over 50% of the advertised content you paid for!
Actually I can buy giving the player a few extra bonuses for doing strange things in the game, even a few that you may have to “stumble upon” or use some out-of-the-box thinking to get. But to require that kind of hoop-jumping just to let the customer have access to half the content you’re putting on the damn box to advertise the thing, that’s just taking the piss.
January 12th, 2008 at 2:13 am
Its not really as hard as you say, maybe if you spent more time playing and less bitching you would be able to do it… first of all I agree richter sucks but once you unlock maria the game becomes extremely easy she is much more nimble. there is level select otion that you obviously overlooked so NO you dont have to start a new game to go back to a certain level. the rondo of blood 3d remake is pretty much exactly the same as the original so no big loss there if u cant unlock it personally i find the oringinal to be more entertainig though.
I could not unlock sotn w/ richter so i used maria
and it was almost effortless so next time you feel like wrinting a 12 paragraph rant about how much the game sucks try looking around a little more first.
portable SOTN is great and i will defend it to the death although they re did all the voices i liked the originals better. they changed the location of a few items adding in a few new familiars which are somewhat mediocre, over all i would have bought this game only for SOTN and the fact of having to unlock it makes it all the more savory when you do just like a juicy SOTN sirloin.
January 12th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Alucard-
I think you need to read things a bit more carefully as well. Nowhere did I say that the game “sucks” and if you read my responses to the comments here, I actually say that I’m enjoying the game. I just think what you need to do to unlock half the advertised game is sort of ridiculous (ie, falling in a pit that would normally kill you, making sure you have an axe and hitting a “secret” spot, and timing your jumps absolutely perfectly). There’s no way I would’ve found this without looking it up in a guide, and that’s really my biggest complaint.
For the record, I’ve now unlocked both the original game and SotN (which is, as you said, great in portable form), and also completed the game (with the “bad” ending so far), and I did it all with Richter (I haven’t even unlocked Maria yet, so stop bashing my gaming skills =) ). You’re correct in that I didn’t notice the level option before, but when I went back to do it, I used this feature. Of course, I have to go back to it once again, apparently, to unlock Maria now as well. =)
I have noticed, I think, the relocation of a few items in SotN too. I think it’s because of the version it’s based on. Either way, it’s still a great game and, while they redid the voices, I don’t really notice too much of a difference (and they’re so rarely used anyway that I hardly care).