Game:

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)

Duration: 4:03:58

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27

To celebrate Halloween, here is a long-play of a hack that was made for the SEGA Saturn port of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night called "Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight: Extended".
DX:NitM is the Japanese name of the game, in case you didn't know. It looks like "Extended" was dropped on RomHacking.net only last month and it brings some interesting changes that I'd like to see improve and expand in the future... maybe put in the proper ability for Richter and Maria to explore the whole castle, fight all the bosses and have their HUDs be appropriately put on the top-left corner of the screen? One can dream, I suppose.

"Extended" is a quality hack of sorts. It fixes various graphical issues with the port, as well as greatly increases performance of the game to the point where it almost matches the PSX version of the game. Amongst other changes, it translates some elements in the game to English for easier navigation (like Alucard's menus, for instance), puts character names under portraits during dialogues in cut-scenes, adds proper transparency/translucency in some places, makes Richter's alternate costume the default selection when starting a new game as Richter Belmont, swaps artworks for character portraits used in the main menu to the ones left in the ROM's files as well as some other things that I probably won't remember by now.

One of it's biggest additions is the HARD MODE, you can switch it on in the main menu. From what I've seen, it doubles enemy HP. It makes them last way longer, which is pretty good for overpowered Alucard runs. But it makes Richter Mode and Maria Mode a nightmare in the reverse castle, and I think this video proves that well with how many times I died. I only managed to beat Galamoth by pure luck since he decided to stay in my stream of daggers that one time without going too far away.
You have to switch hard mode back on from the main menu since it resets back to normal mode after a single new game launch/save load/game or console reset.

Overall, this is a really great hack. In fact, I want to call this the "Definitive Edition" of the game, even if the graphics are still inferior to the PSX version of this game. I hope the hacker continues to improve it, because as it stands now, this is the way SotN on the SEGA Saturn should be played.

Now, onto some of today's issues with video recording. This video's biggest con is the odd lag and stuttering in some places, as well as the audio crust at the beginning of the game.
I'll be blunt, the emulator isn't the best. YabaSanshiro is pretty good, but it corrupts the game the longer you play it. Because of that, you can see some terrible stutters and lag in the reverse castle segment of the game. I could've potentially fixed it by saving the game after entering the reverse castle and restarting the emulator, but I didn't think that through when I played the game.
I am sorry for all the lag, and I am especially sorry some of that weird audio crust I had at the beginning of the game. I've still no idea what caused the latter in particular aside from guessing that my CPU may have been overloaded at the moment.

Whatever the case may be, I hope you will yet enjoy or have already enjoyed this long-play. I know that not everyone watches these kinds of long videos, but I feel right at home with them. I may make more short videos in the future, although that will depend on what kind of ideas I may get into my head.

Game: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night/Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight (SEGA Saturn, 1997)
Emulator used: YabaSanshiro v3.3.1
Hack played: DX:NitM - Extended v1.5 (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6184/)

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