Games that you think are no longer awesome

[BonfiresDown]

Symphony of the Night:
I went to play this again for the first time in 20 years or so. I've previously ranked SotN high among my favorite games but... I don't think I can stick to that anymore. I feel like the main issue is the lack of interesting abilites, at least during the first sections of the game. Can't remember whether it gets better later on. Anyway, as a result a lot of your time is spent just running/dashing and slashing through the same areas. This is the case in most Igavanias, but in the sequels you would get a plethora of abilities to experiment with which would stop things from getting too repetitive.

I also feel like the castle design isn't the best. There are plenty of long corridors without good shortcuts and just a few warp points which makes backtracking more frustrating than in other metroidvanias.

There's also the fact that exploring new areas is one of the main strengths of SotN. While I don't remember details, I do remember the general layout and look of the castle which does make it less exciting than the first time around.

So what does hold up? The controls are still among the most precise and satisfying in any 2D game. Alucard is still impressively well animated and the game looks great in general. The music is good. And exploring new areas and enemies is still fun.


Tbh I think there are just a handful of games from the 90s that are still on par with modern games so I don’t mean to pick on SotN in particular. But it was one of my favorites and one I expected to hold up.

Also FFVI and FFVII. I haven’t played them for a long time but I know that the random encounters would drive me nuts at this point.