It’s not exactly a secret that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is widely regarded as one of (if not the) greatest Castlevania games of all time. Seeing that the current era has been desperately chomping at the bit for a new Castlevania, and Capcom has seen some pretty big success re-releasing Megaman and it seems only fitting that we’d finally start seeing some HD re-releases of the classic Castlevania games. In their first attempt at cashing in like Capcom and capitalizing on the success of the Castlevania Netflix series, Konami has released a repackaged version of the PSP collection previously called Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles and re-titled it Castlevania Requiem: Symphony of the Night & Rondo of Blood. I’m not sure why they didn’t just call it The Dracula X Chronicles HD, but I’m not in the marketing department so I can only guess is that they were hoping people wouldn’t realize it was the PSP version instead of the original versions.
While this isn’t a terrible re-release, it’s extremely barebones which makes it quite disappointing. Capcom’s Megaman Legacy Collections include challenge modes as well as galleries and several other interesting behind the scenes goodies. Castlevania Requiem is exactly what they say it is – It’s Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, complete with a terrible menu that has logos that overlap each other, and it’s sloppily thrown together. Perhaps the only interesting thing about the presentation of the collection is the inclusion of a weird ass Konami code minigame that informs you that this collection doesn’t support cheaters – cute, but ultimately pointless. The games themselves are in pretty decent condition, as they’ve been scaled up to look pretty nice on the PS4 in HD. The problem is, the PSP version had re-recorded voice lines and altered dialogue in Symphony of the Night, which means the iconic opening “Die monster, you don’t belong in this world!” and “What is a man… a miserable little pile of secrets” lines are both changed and removed. So much for nostalgia.
Playing through Rondo of Blood was a stark reminder of how bad that game sucks, because Richter can barely do anything. It’s like if you took Simon Belmont’s NES sprite and put him in Castlevania: Lord of Shadow. He’d be completely useless, and that’s how Richter feels in Rondo of Blood. Unlocking Maria makes the game far more interesting and fun, but because I’m a stickler for trophies, I had to finish Rondo with both Richter and Maria, as well as completing all paths. Rondo of Blood isn’t a hard game because it’s hard, Rondo of Blood is hard because Richter gets knocked back 30 feet every time he touches anything and he’s slow as hell. Rondo continually kills you with cheap animations that take advantage of how shitty Richter is, but Maria has much more mobility and attack frames. This makes her considerably more fun to play and makes Rondo into a somewhat enjoyable experience. The only real reason to play Rondo of Blood is so that you understand what’s going on when you start Symphony of the Night, considering the final fight in Rondo is where Symphony begins.
Symphony of the Night still holds up as an excellent game, one that I actually had never finished before writing this review. I remember playing it years ago and getting annoyed when getting to the reverse castle because the game becomes much more tedious to navigate, but the enemies become more challenging and more interesting so it’s a bit of a double edged sword. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is still my favorite of the series overall, but finally finishing Symphony felt good and I’m pretty happy I had a chance to revisit it – though I wish they’d released the Sega Saturn version instead of the far less interesting PSP version. Requiem has some great trophy titles, including a Platinum Trophy that’s named after Dracula’s signature line (that was changed in this version) and a reference to The Room in 2018 which is always welcome.
Overall, I recommend Castlevania Requiem if for no other reason than to play Symphony of the Night so you can understand how the Metroidvania genre truly came to light. Rondo is trash, but the platinum wasn’t all that hard so if you’re a completionist, this is an enjoyable collection to platinum. Let’s hope we see more Castlevania collections cause there’s a lot of games in the series and there’s plenty of opportunity since it’s pretty clear we won’t be getting a new entry any time soon.
