Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, known in Japan as Akumajō Dracula X: Gekka no Yasōkyoku (悪魔城ドラキュラX 月下の夜想曲?, officially translated Devil's Castle Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight), is an action role-playing video game developed and published by Konami in 1997. It is the 14th installment of the Castlevania series, the first installment released for the PlayStation, and a direct sequel to Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. Its initial commercial success was limited, but it was critically praised, gained sales through word-of-mouth and eventually became a hit. It has since seen re-release on several other gaming consoles and is now usually considered a sleeper hit or cult classic of video gaming. It was extremely highly rated critically; both GameRankings and Metacritic list its approval score for the original PlayStation version at or above 93%.
Symphony of the Night was an important milestone of the Castlevania series, and is considered a milestone in platform game development as well due to its wide-open level design and massive game world. It steered the series away from the standard level-by-level platforming formula of older titles and introduced a new style of open-ended gameplay mixed with RPG-like elements that would be emulated by most of its successors. A similar, earlier form of this type of gameplay existed in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. The development of these features can be attributed to Koji Igarashi, the game's writer and one of the team's newest members. Igarashi, a noted fan of 2D games, was instrumental in refining the game's control scheme. His primary motivation for the abrupt design change was seeing dozens of Castlevania games in the "used" bargain bin in Japanese video game stores, as linear Castlevania games offered limited replay value after completion.
Read more about Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night: Gameplay, Development, Audio, Reception
Famous quotes containing the word symphony:
“The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man—that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense—has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)