Symphony vs. Aria/Dawn: Comparing the Grind

Another Big Damn Castlevania post! Sorry, but I’m still entranced by Dracula X Chronicles and thist stuff has been on my mind quite a bit lately. These are the types of posts I love writing most, which is a shame because I’m sure almost no one cares to read them. (Heh.)

I’ve had a lot of discussions about grinding in the various Castlevania games; probably way more than is healthy. And it inevitably comes back around to the same thing: I say I dislike Dawn of Sorrow because there’s too much grind, and the Other Guy (who really, really likes Dawn of Sorrow) tells me that’s stupid because you don’t have to grind. Why complain about something that’s optional? If you don’t like it, just don’t do it.

And, in truth, I don’t. I avoid the grind in Dawn by simply not playing the game. In fact, I went looking for my copy today and couldn’t find it. I must have loaned it out or traded it in and completely forgotten about it. Meanwhile I’ve played it’s big brother Symphony of the Night three or four times this year, and its ancient third cousin Super Metroid probably thrice that. Those games are fun, see, because there’s no grind, optional or otherwise.

It’s well-known that different players approach games with different mindsets. I’m an Explorer, and I most enjoy games that accomodate that play style. It’s not just exploring the physical game world, although I do enjoy that aspect of it; I enjoy exploring the game itself. I like pushing against it as hard as I can, trying to slip my toes into the seams. If a game tells me to go left my very first instinct is to try going right… for no other reason than just ’cause.

At the core of every Metroidvania is an empty world map, a series of loosely connected blocks. Initially the Explorer’s goal is to color those blocks in… to put our mark on the game world. You can look at a half-explored map and say, “I have been There and There, but not There,” and set about figuring a path to that third There. But as I’ve said, that’s only half of the game.

The other half, pushing at the game just to see if it will push back, is more fundamental; it involves exploring how you interact with the game world. It’s not so much a question of taking your little video game man everywhere he can go, but seeing everything he can do. This manifests in Metroidvanias as the character’s moveset; the more a character can do, the more ways he interacts with the game world, and the further the player can use that character as an instrument to push against the game.

So why do I love Symphony but not Dawn? The answer lay in how the different characters expand their movesets. Alucard in Symphony gets them by picking up objects in the game world; Soma in Dawn gets them from random monster drops.

At first the distinction doesn’t seem so severe. After all, Alucard has his share of random drops too. (Anyone who has spent an hour Schmoo-hunting can attest to that.) In fact, Soma’s random drops are on average more common than Alucard’s. That is, while filling out their respective maps Soma is likely to have far more souls than Alucard does rare equipment. Alucard’s drops, though, don’t really alter what he can do, and that makes all the difference.

Just as an example: Alucard starts the game out with some pretty boss equipment but only a few moves. He can jump (just once), backslide, or swing his sword. This serves him well for about three rooms, whereupon he is mugged by Death and loses his equipment, and therefore the ability to swing his sword. Now he has to resort to punching instead. Another three rooms, though, and he punches a skeleton to death and gets a much, much weaker sword. Equipping this restores his “swing sword” ability.

The trick is, swinging the super-sword isn’t appreciably different from swinging the weak sword. This remains true for most of the new swords Alucard gets in the game. His stats change, and he can do more damage with some swords than others, but that core ability remains about the same. In fact, while there are dozens of weapons to choose from in Symphony they all fall into one of three or four weapon categories. So 99% of the time when Alucard lucks into a rare drop he’s not getting a new way to interact with the game world so much as making his old method a little stronger (or weaker).

Soma, on the other hand, explores a game world in which every individual enemy gives him a unique ability. When the ghost waiter gives up his drop Soma doesn’t just get the +2 Waiter Sword; he gets the ability to destroy enemies with bowls of curry, which have properties all their own. Nothing else in the game flies in the same arc, or the same distance, or has the same sound effect or animation as that bowl of curry.

At the end of the day, if you’ve filled out their maps, Alucard will have a complete moveset and Soma will not. When you reach the door to the final boss an Alucard player can reasonably say, “I have seen everything this character can do, and have explored his interactions with this world to my satisfaction.” A Soma player doesn’t have that luxury. There’s really nothing for it; if that Soma player wants to finish exploring his character he has no choice but to kill monsters repeatedly until they all give up their souls.

So when you tell someone, on the subject of Dawn of Sorrow, “You don’t have to grind,” what you’re really telling them is “You don’t have to explore.” Which makes very little sense to players like me, because explore is what we do in these games.

Fixing Dawn would be almost stupidly easy: just remove the random element of soul drops. The first time you kill a monster, it yeilds a soul, guaranteed. Doesn’t that game sound like way more fun to play? What, exactly, does the grinding element add to the experience?

A version of Dawn with guaranteed soul drops ensures the player has a constant stream of new toys to play with. A soul never gets passed up because the player doesn’t feel like pressing a particular button sequence thirty times in a row (enter room, swing sword, swing sword, backdash, backdash, enter room, swing sword, swing sword, etc.). If the player is having trouble killing a boss or tackling some other obstacle he can boil down the solution to “which of my souls will be most useful here?” and not “which of the enemies I passed up six areas ago has a soul that will be most useful here?” Answering the first question is fun; it involves experimentation, and perhaps refinement of skill. In finding the answer to the first question the player can learn something new and advance his understanding of the game. (There’s a safe spot in that boss fight that you can only exploit with the red-hot-curry attack’s unique flight path!)

Answering the second question, however, is boring. It involves re-visiting old territory to do something tedious. The player gains no understanding from killing that twenty-fourth succubus that he didn’t already have upon killing the twenty-third. That twenty-fourth kill doesn’t require more skill, either; enter-swing-backdash isn’t a very challenging sequence of actions, and it’s not likely the player will get much better at it over time.

So that’s the difference between Alucard’s game and Soma’s game. They’re running something totally different under their respective hoods, despite how similar they look on the surface. It’s why Symphony remains fun into its twelfth replay while Dawn just kind of evaporated without my ever noticing.

It occurs to me that I could probably write an equally lengthy post comparing the arcade-style Castlevanias as well; how is it that I can absolutely adore Super Castlevania IV even though I pretty much loathe everything about the original? I’ll save that for another day, though.