Comments on: Anatomy of a Simon’s Quest: III

By: LBD "Nytetrayn"

LBD "Nytetrayn" — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 19:38:40 +0000

Ah, sorry, I meant to say Ghulash.

By: MetManMas

MetManMas — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:21:46 +0000

@jparish A town named Aljiba, that looks closer in design and color palette to Jova, placed right in Dracula’s backyard like Ghulash.

Yeah, whoever added the Castlevania II reference didn’t really think this through.

By: jparish

jparish — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 16:26:06 +0000

@LBD Just like it says in the update. The town outside of the castle in Simon’s Quest is Ghulash, but it’s Aljiba in Rondo. Not a big deal, just an interesting minor inconsistency.

By: LBD "Nytetrayn"

LBD "Nytetrayn" — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 11:28:39 +0000

What was the contradiction in Rondo? Was it placing Aljiba as the town outside of Castlevania instead of Jova? It’s been a while, so I don’t remember.

By: MetManMas

MetManMas — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 06:02:16 +0000

The towns in Castlevania II are pretty odd. The day/night cycle keeps running as long as you’re not inside a building, potentially having the shops close and the zombie brigade show up when you just get into town or while you’re in the process of exploring one. The villagers that tell you the truth make almost as little sense as those that tell blatant lies, especially if you’re a new player. And you can die from the water hazards, which I would imagine to be very frustrating if a player somehow got a Game Over before buying anything and lost his/her hearts.

As for Water vs. Crystal, I consider the holy water a better first purchase, if only for its value as a block breaking and false block finding tool. It’s pretty useful for some of the homing fireball mermen at the broken bridge, too.

But, if I was trying to do a legit seven days or less run instead of password exploitation, I’d probably go for the white crystal. Not because of the first mansion’s invisible floating platform, but because it’s required to trade for the blue crystal later on, and you can’t just get past the lake with a leap of faith.

By: jparish

jparish — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 05:18:05 +0000

@Legion For all intents and purposes, they’re all apocrypha now. But I was referring to the way the company put its eggs in the Castlevania 64 basket and let the Symphony team do whatever they wanted since they didn’t see it as the true continuation of the series.

By: Legion

Legion — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 04:21:28 +0000

Which game are you saying Konami treated as apocrypha? Both Simon’s Quest and Rondo of Blood are referenced in subsequent games (Symphony of the Night has the five Dracula parts from SQ and too many RoB callbacks to enumerate, for example).