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As far as I know, Symphony of the Night was never meant to be a hard game.

It was an easy game because not because of NUMBERS themselves but because of:

• awful enemy AI
• exploitable movement options
• overpowered spells

...and only after all those previous points, some really strong / versatile gear. Even then, that gear is gated behind drops (aka, the RNG) or exploration as rewards. For example, in the OG game an early Medusa Shield, Flying Sword or Chakram could change your whole playthrough and that was intented.

So, what does this hack tries do to? It tries to fix a design problem by adressing an issue that's not really problematic: the numbers themselves.

Big numbers aren't better to be balanced if they are running on the flawed premise that enemies NEED to be beefy / tanky to challenge the player. HardType (also here on romhacking) was and still is a terrible hack because of that same premise.

Bigger numbers do not translate into making SotN a better game, nor do expand or fix the real issues of the (lack of) challenge; instead they feel like padding to reinforce the design choices the hack maker this is the "proper" way of playing.

If you aren't using the "proper" way, you're punished with hefty damage reduction, as intended by this hack's creator, however... does it really matter that instead of swiping your sword up to ten times the OG because of HP inflation to kill an enemy... you just snipe them from a safe distance with the new systems in place?

Subweapons + two throwables can just mow down enemies from afar, that due to their poor AI and Konami's spaghetti og coding won't even react until you get closer.

That changes the whole premise from ONE OF THE OG metroidVANIAS to a Megaman-like experience, which doesn't really fit a game running in the SotN engine.

On top of that, HP inflation goes both ways and nerfs the healing of stuff like the extra added effect to the Alucard Sword or even the Soul Steal spell. Healing items were adjusted to the inflated values, though.

It looks and sounds cool at first, but after the inital surprise, it makes for a surprisingly boring experience. Played it up to the inverted castle, and I see no reason to keep going, since it just bored me.

Bonus Track: The very 1st gameplay you do, the Dracula fight with Richter in the prologue, felt awful in particular. A 3000(!) HP Dracula taking 64-120 damage of your whip strikes only made me want to fast forward that intro, because it took way too long.

Actually, I'm very enjoying this hack. It gives me new gameplay experience, so I can't stay on just one weapon / armor, I need to change my equipment constantly depending on the enemy I'm fighting of. And battle with Death is little bit tricky, but I like it. Also some formidable enemies who used to be not threatening at all due to their low HP and usually die in one hit, now they're monster (like Wereskeleton and Frozen Half)

About MP problem, of course it completely broke the challenge because we are not supposed to using any throwable items once our MP reach zero. Maybe we can fix it in the future updates, I hope

And speaking of little problem, I don't know if anyone realized this, but I must tell you if I have unusual habit about completing the game. I'm always feeling if I successfully beat the game but when the enemy's droppable items still "???", then I don't think if my mission is actually over. I have to grind and kill all the enemies repeatedly until they drop their secret items.

This is where the problem comes out. After beating the Shaft and hit final boss once (Dracula) to unlock him on beastiary, I used library card to teleport. I know if there are some enemies whose the items still not unlocked yet, and how surprised I'm after opening the enemy list. I just realized if my hunt target including WARG AND MUDMAN

Why? Any Castlevania SOTN player knows if those 2 creatures are different than most enemies you encounter in the game. They appear only in special occasion. Warg only appears at the beginning of the game. Once you enter Alchemy Laboratory, they will gone forever. As for Mudman, they only can be summoned by Lesser Demon which exclusive to Library stage only. The ones you encountered on Necromancy Laboratory doesn't summon them.

Well, especially for Warg, HOW COULD I KNOW IF THEY GOT DROPPABLE ITEMS? There is no way you would know that until you reach Long Library (unless you're lucky enough to get it on the beginning). This is prankish game design bro, because if you missed it from the beginning, then you're screwed. The items will be locked permanently.

And for Mudman, their items is likely would be missed as well, because I'm sure any players will check their stats AFTER they had beaten Lesser Demon, which at that point, they are no longer can be encountered anymore.

Overall, this MOD have a lot of potential to become awesome hack, it just need some adjustment (like fixing MP bug, stats, get rid of those bad prank, etc)

The new definitive way to play sotn. I'm playing the FIRM version of the hack.

This is it. This is the basis upon which all future sotn modding should be based. It is almost perfect, and almost every change is an improvement to the gameplay. The difficulty balance is very stable, and boss fights become more fun to find a solution to with the equips now mentioning elements and stuff. This makes equips more than just use the one with the best stats.

I'm having an amazing time. As an advanced player I also feel very satisfied. Very subtle systems have been created inside the existing gameplay mechanics. For example the rings you normally sell for money, now all also raise luck.

During the course of the game the gameplay slowly evolves from basic play to advanced play with cool quirky mechanics. This hack plays into that heavily because many things now use MP, and that advanced actions that are expensive in the early game, can be used more freely later in the game. For example dodging attacks using poison mist. Speaking of which, since you don't get permanent mist until much later in the game, mist has now mostly become a timed dodging move. It could already be used like that, but you never did, because you got permanent mist, and enemies died too quickly for you to really make use of it.

The addition of usable weapons being infinite and MP based increases the options you have, but it's balanced nicely. I feel that this has made SOTN's equipment systems as polished as the gba and dsvania games. Stuff like power of sire, is basically comparable to a full screen magic soul in dawn of sorrow. You feel your arsenal of options grow during the course of the game. I've found that in some scenarios that dual wielding throwables and a melee weapon was a good option. Even a double shield build (normal shield + medusa or dark shield) was useful.

The game makes so much more sense now. This is a 10/10 hack

Some feedback:

• Wolf special (d, df, f, Atk) doesn't do much damage, and it should do a lot. It scales by INT, but 186INT only does 150 damage. I'd say quadruple it at least. It's hard to use because you need to go wolf form first, wait for the wolf to land before you can use it, and then it's not exactly something with a high rate of attack.
• Wolf special should work in the air (An unreasonable request, i know. But wolf is underused, and this would tie into other mechanics really well. (imagine: superjump, wolf form, wolf special)
• Bat fire could do more damage, it's hard and mp expensive to use it fast (loop mist, bat, attack).
• Now that items are more important, having a third hand like the saturn version, or some other kind of shortcut or equipment set switching feature would be fantastic.
• The "Gauntlet" Accessory can be gotten from an enemy early on, and was my standard for almost the whole game. I think it could perhaps be nerfed by 15% to motivate using other things more.

Additional: I've finished the game already (like 2x now and playing again the new 1.0.2 patch) and now want to give my FULL review.

I LOVE this hack. There's so much meaningful changes in here that made a lot of impact in how you play the game.

First the new weapons. No more same-same weapons like gladius and scimitar with just +1 ATK improvement. It's changed to some elemental weapons which are VERY useful in the place they're put in. Example at the beginning when you're having a hard time dealing with Blue AxeLord armor, then you get the Sparkblade (Gladius replacement) then you have a huge advantage to them now (they're weak to lightning). And some other cool weapons like Luminus which always do the Thunderbrand special and...my favorite... THE HELL BLADE! I won't spoil it but that weapon is SUPER COOL.

The rebalance also did a VERY good job of giving the bosses justice. Example is Olrox and Death - their phases are now appropriately shown and highlighted instead of just being a cakewalk in vanilla. And the final Dracula fight - now you cant just hit anything - only his hands - which deals a TON of damage to you - makes his fight memorable and feels like an actual boss now instead of a very soft punching bag.

Elemental strengths/weaknesses of enemies are really good. It made me use different weapons and experiment on each one to know which weapons are best for each enemies. And the enemies hit hard. Some enemies (with their high HP) actually became a threat now instead of just being stomped by Alucard - most notably here are the wereskeletons. On vanilla and other hacks - you can just one shot them and move forward in the game no problems. But here, you can actually see them use their full movesets and actually try to fight them and not just walk past them - which is something I actually want for this game.

The equipments too - some enemies now have different elemental attributes on their attacks, so it makes managing your equipments more important, since some armor and cloaks have their own + and - elemental strengths. And most equipment you find can be useful in every situation, like you get a new headgear - it's not always stronger in other equipments across all stats. Some is stronger in INT and some in DEF or ATK so you really have many choices on what stats you want to prioritize.

Throwable weapons are SUPER fun! You can get creative with this and actually trivialize the game (equip 2 King's stone and 2 Power of Sire and melt everything in sight haha), or just make crazy things like use 2 different monster vials and create an army of monsters to fight for you. This is the part where the game's balance sometimes goes out of whack but in a fun way - fighting Olrox 2nd phase using TNTs and Pentagrams are fun, or spam shurikens at Granfaloon or every other enemies. You really can be super OP with this! I just really hope the author can fix the MP bug so you wont spam them throughout the game but for now I'll play another run with a self imposed rule to not use Throw weapons when im out of MP hehe

Subweapons! They're VERY useful in this hack. And the fact that you can change it ANYTIME is a nice touch so you can be prepared for the next enemies you'll encounter. Daggers are still fast and strong but now it uses 2hearts each. Axe deals heavy fire damage and is very useful in most situations. Cross now only needs 50hearts so you can use it more often! Bibuti deals Ice damage which is very useful against Mino and Werewulf, or just against general land-based enemies. Haha the Ricochet stone - you can SPAM 10x of them at once and it deals good damage too! Very useful now. But for some reason I felt the Stopwatch doesnt do anything anymore - I wish it did.

I like that you grow stronger slowly, even if you level up a bit quickly in this hack compared to vanilla and others. You don't become OP too soon. Equipments matter so much than your levels.

There were a lot of parts in this game where I actually feel threatened, and pause a bit to think for a strategy, or use my supply of foods to recover. I'm always on my toes when exploring and this game - while VERY VERY familiar to me - feels like a NEW game. There's danger everywhere and if I'm not careful, I'll suffer big - especially in second castle where most enemies are very strong.

All in all - I really LOVE this hack. It made my favorite game of all time even BETTER. 9/10 will play again! (if the MP bug can be fixed, this'll be 10/10 easy)

Original review

I've played most of the SotN hacks out there - but most of them lacks one thing - proper balancing. Either they're WAY too hard, or starts hard then comes back to being easy after some time. Worse yet, removing items in the game hopefully to make it "balanced".

But this hack has none of those issues.

It starts in a good and moderate difficulty - enemies are a bit tougher but the subweapons open you up with different ways to deal with those familiar enemies. Then what I like most about this hack are the throwable weapons - THEY ONLY COST MP - which changes how I approach the game. I make them like a secondary subweapon (sub-subweapon hehe) and you can go crazy with them. I got lucky and a skeleton monster dropped a monster vial and I tried to use it - I spam it and made an army of skeletons to fight with me haha summoner Alucard FTW. Throwing TNTs at bosses? Check. But it doesn't break the game really, they're damage are weaker compared to conventional swords but still it's very fun. The equipments have varying stats too, so most equipment are viable until you get something really strong.

The game slowly becomes harder - and some bosses become really epic boss fights. Skylla is usually treated as a padded boss, but here, it's a beast. Even Lesser Demon - I never knew this boss could become an actual boss. Olrox boss fight is also epic, which is now my favorite boss fight so far, I really have to use several foods and different tactics before I can beat him. And Granfaloon? This thing hit hard. Tho some boss remained useless like Karasuman which you can still stunlock.

I'm halfway on the second castle and so far it's kicking my ass. But I love it. I never felt so engaged in SotN like ever before. This hack is awesome. I definitely recommend it even for first time playing SotN, maybe.

(I just noticed there's a new update with new difficulties but I dont know about them, I just played the first release)

05/23 Edit: Review completely redone and updated for the v1.0.2 release.

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In an attempt to "better balance" Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, hacker "nukesheart" decided to increase all the enemy's HP, Attack, and Defense, increase the player's HP, and basically up-end the entire balance of all the weaponry in the game because "it's easier to balance big numbers". I'm not really sure why he thought this would help, but in my opinion, it didn't, and here's why.

The Good:

• Some of the more redundant weapons (like Gladius) have been replaced with better ones. Others have had their stats or functionality tweaked. For example, Jewel Knuckles now heals on-hit, and Axe Lord Armor is insanely useful since it offers so much Defense and Attack.
• Throw and Bomb weapons are reusable without the Duplicator and use MP, reminiscent of how weapons work in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.
• The Sub-Weapons are accessible and selectable at any time, and it's impossible to lose your current one accidentally.
  • However, the player now has much fewer Hearts available at any given time, discouraging overuse or reliance on them. (Yes, this is a good thing as it encourages equipment diversity and tactics.)
• Big damage numbers are fun to look at and make the player feel good — especially early on.
• There is undeniable satisfaction in beating a tough enemy or powerful boss using only the tools at one's disposal and the skills they've learned and honed over time.

The Bad:

• There's no real use for melee weapons anymore since the player can just spam projectiles. Once they get two Flame Stars or two Boomerangs, that's all they'll ever need.
  • In that same vein, there's no reason to use anything other than Shuriken and Boomerangs. The other Throw weapons, and especially the Bomb weapons, have too much cooldown or are too limited to be truly useful or practical.
• The penalty for using Throw weapons — a sharp decrease in Defense — does very little to deter the player from throwing Boomerangs and Shuriken like crazy.
• Due to a noted bug, Throw and Bomb weapons can still be used at 0 MP, making the MP-draining function almost completely pointless.
• Sub-Weapons are more overpowered than ever since the player can just pick one at-will and go with it. Combine a Knife with two Shurikens, and the player becomes a mob mincer.
• Most enemies are too tanky and do too much damage, even with the buffed player health. A lot of the armor simply doesn't help.
• Some enemies, such as Bloody Zombies or Skull Lords, and especially hard-to-avoid enemies like Medusa Heads and Ghosts, are alarmingly tanky.
• Soul Steal, which still does 8 HP in healing per bead, is next-to-useless since the player has a massively increased HP pool.
• The only useful magic is Hellfire Teleport as it helps the player scoot around enemies they can't be bothered with.
• Level-ups do almost nothing for the player.
• Fighting small-fry enemies with thousands of HP gets very old very fast.

The Ugly:

• Damage dealt to the player sometimes doesn't display. This may be due to all of the "projectile spam", but this didn't seem to happen in v1.0.1.
• The Crissægrim and Yasutsuna reduce the player's Attack by 50. This effectively makes these weapons literally useless unless the player wears at least one Ring of Ares.
  • Yes, I understand that this was done in an attempt to discourage "easy mode" gameplay, but firstly, it doesn't work, and secondly, these weapons are supposed to be busted. They give +34 and +60 Attack in the base game, respectively, making them as good as the base Alucard Sword or Osafune Katana. That should say it all.
  • And yes, this hack originally had a much bigger penalty for these weapons, but it was apparently deemed "overkill" with v1.0.2. (-75 Attack, I think? I forget.)
• The Axe Lord Armor, if the player can get it (or uses the code for it), is a little too useful early on. It takes the challenge out of the game almost entirely.
• The Alucart Sword and Runesword both use MP. (Other melee weapons might, too, but I didn't check.) However, because of the aforementioned bug, the player can still use the weapons recklessly.
• The Alucart equipment, which was intentionally supposed to be "bad" or "luck mode" gear, was buffed to be practical? The Alucart Sword, in particular, has Soul Steal on it for some reason and does a surprising amount of Hit damage.
• Some projectiles have had their "shot limit" increased in v1.0.2. Specifically, Cross Shuriken. This just encourages the "shoot-'em-up" gameplay the mod maker was seemingly trying to discourage.
• Trying to fight certain enemies in certain locations is really ugly. For example, Bitterflies can be found in tight corridors of the Necromancy Laboratory. They have 1,000 HP each, are tiny, and are semi-invisible. Not fun.

As (sarcastically) stated in this review's previous revision, playing the game in this state feels less like playing a "Metroidvania" game and more like playing Mega Man. There's simply no reason not to "jump and shoot" one's way through the game since projectiles are completely free to use. Doubly so, if playing the "Soft" hack — which keeps enemy stats as they are in the base game, but still implements all the gear changes.

I don't know who this hack is for, but I simply cannot recommend this hack for anyone who wants a genuinely interesting and entertaining remix of this classic game.

A little hard to get used to the BEEG numbers but all is well balanced, even if you have OP gear, some enemies will still pose a threat and isn't mind numbing as the vanilla game. I love the new weapons, so flashy! The new shop is well made, Shield spells now being able to be used without the rod or Malblung makes me use shields more often! Sub weapons change is very convenient, and the much more in-depth elemental system makes you really thing what my boy Alucard uses rather than my dear boy; The Crissaegrim. Better than Hardtype & Survival Mode!

A very difficult but very good hack, the mechanics make it much more RPG. Thanks for the author for clearing my doubts on a boss :)

The hack is promising. However, I don't recommend it. It's no fun to hit 8 times to kill an enemy that would usually die in 2 or 3 hits.

I'll start by saying this is a very well-done hack, and using QHack as a base is an excellent way to start. However, my default way to play SotN is using a clear-save Luck mode start, and this has been unchanged. Starting out with 26hp and dumped stats is pretty unforgiving. Because of the damage dealt, you can't even do a big launch off a Warg without dying. I had to start a Luck Mode playthrough on the vanilla SotN rom, and then save my game after doing the Death skip - only then could I begin my playthrough on this hack.

As far as once I got into the game, I am grinding through as best as I can. I'm level 30 with a little shy of 900hp, and currently hunting for the Gold/Silver rings, and there are some enemies that still do 50-100 damage on me *per hit*. I understand Luck Mode has always been hard, but I feel like this is a big miss to ignore the modified starting stats for other modes of the game.

Would I recommend this hack for a clean vanilla playthrough? Absolutely. Would I recommend it for Richter mode or Luck Mode? Definitely not, unless you enjoy some masochism.