Game:

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)

Duration: 1:00:39

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1

Let's start this slow... this game seems rather complicated in some spots, it's like Silent Hill of course due to being made by Konami, but it's clearly more complicated and in 2D of course, it's got a hub system to traverse it's levels, but levels are multiple around visits to them at critical moments, if that's not the case they line up more story over-time and have specific areas you'd be forced to visit from time to time to collect obligatory items to continue and progress, it's a game that requires a bit more planning involved to it but like Super Metroid, it's got a great way to maneuver through the game as you learn it over time, which is the back dash move, like Super Metroid's wall jumping and ball jumping cancels.

Like Super Metroid you can abuse the cancelling system in so many ways, you get to use multiple frame reset items like bombs, or potions if you have it, you can over-stock on potions many times and there are examples of infinite frames that reset into walls, it can be run in a variety of ways, very complex, very disorienting seeing it being run as well but once you realize it's akin to a execution heavy speedrun game that is like Legacy of Kain Defiance, were you must be thinking on lining nearby transitions and shortcuts and skips and exploits at all times when possible, that will most definitely interest any potential runner to learn this game, like it's doing for me.

That's just initial research as well, it's a very varied and interesting game to play, got great artwork, clearly not made for difficulty like many Konami games of the time, but of course you're not playing this right if you're thinking PS1 games of this era weren't made to be tough by constantly over-using saves, it's like Nes games and Snes and Super Nintendo and not knowing what critical frame reset, life extension techniques you had to know to freeze a situation to your advantage back then so you'd beat difficult games like Revenge of Shinobi or Hagane, just that this is WAY more complex despite being way simpler to actually play, the difficulty being playing this under the techniques that work for you, thinking the quickest possible execution you could do at the same time as keeping re-stocks efficient, keeping items in mind that will be most efficient, keeping a proper pathway in mind because it's so open ended that you may get completely lost.

So here we go, this one will be interesting, maybe not beaten today for sure, but at least a good early attempt like Silent Hill was.

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