It was, imo, the founder of the Vania part of Metroidvanias, so they didn’t have the benefit of standing upon many shoulders. Hollow Knight is a great spiritual successor to that endeavor, and I agree that they took much of what made SotN great and improved upon it.
It’s interesting watching people get so excited by HK, I have to wonder if that’s what it was like when SotN and successive games came out.
Symphony of the Night is, in fact, the origin of the term Metroidvania but not in the way you might think. Castlevania pre SotN was a very different series with none of the elements associated with “metroidvania”, so people started calling SOTN a “metroid-vania” derogatorily, as a Castlevania that was trying to ape Metroid. The term had staying power for the genre because what the fuck else are you gonna call them, it was before slapping -like on everything was popular but after calling stuff “clones” had fallen out of favor. No, “search action” will never be a thing. And you’re not just gonna call them Metroids because that’s one specific series. So after future Castlevanias had Metroidy stuff in them, it became a genre name.
Do give Symphony of the Night a try sometime! You’d probably enjoy it.
I have! and it’s a great game but still not quite the level of HK
It was, imo, the founder of the Vania part of Metroidvanias, so they didn’t have the benefit of standing upon many shoulders. Hollow Knight is a great spiritual successor to that endeavor, and I agree that they took much of what made SotN great and improved upon it.
It’s interesting watching people get so excited by HK, I have to wonder if that’s what it was like when SotN and successive games came out.
Symphony of the Night is, in fact, the origin of the term Metroidvania but not in the way you might think. Castlevania pre SotN was a very different series with none of the elements associated with “metroidvania”, so people started calling SOTN a “metroid-vania” derogatorily, as a Castlevania that was trying to ape Metroid. The term had staying power for the genre because what the fuck else are you gonna call them, it was before slapping -like on everything was popular but after calling stuff “clones” had fallen out of favor. No, “search action” will never be a thing. And you’re not just gonna call them Metroids because that’s one specific series. So after future Castlevanias had Metroidy stuff in them, it became a genre name.
Neat!