As you've probably heard, romhacking.net has imploded. At least, that's what I've heard; the site still seems to be up as of this writing, but the claim I read most recently is that downloads and new patches are not going to be hosted. The current content seems to consist of brief news articles about patch releases combined with "Relevant Link"s. Someone at what remains of the site threw its entire content up on archive.org, but, um, a) it's an 11.7-gig download, b) it's not getting rave reviews for its organization, and c) there's a rash of user complaints about trojans that, er, are not being addressed in a reassuring manner ("if you don't have the stomach to handle false positives and MAYBE a malicious file or two").
But at least one patch is safe: a kind soul contacted me offering to house the Phantasy Star III retranslation patch put together by romhacker Peaches with help from lory1990. It is up on FlamePurge's page!
This reminds me, actually, that I haven't looked at the PSIII patch to see if the script was edited. It'd be a small thing, as my script files are here. ROM script editing is an issue that's been on my mind as of late.
Fans of the games watching the Dead by Daylight x Castlevania livestream: LEON! Um, that one Ayami Kojima Dracula design from that one PlayStation game no one cares about! SIMON!
Fans of the show watching: Who are these people?
ETA: CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENT FROM BEHAVIOUR: "We chose Trevor because he is...the ultimate Belmont." I don't know how Nocturne's going, but in the games, I'd argue Richter's set up for that title, weakness to cream pies (not that kind) (that we know) notwithstanding.
NON-CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENT FROM BEHAVIOUR: "Everyone should play Symphony of the Night at least once."ETA: 2 EXTREMELY CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENT FROM BEHAVIOUR: Shanoa gets just a costume for another character?! (Yui, but still.)
(The Nurse as Death is good, though.)
Also, I'm not sure the TV fans watching knew The Thing about Soma the stream casually spoiled.
Costumes announced so far: An Alucard alt; Leon, Simon, and Soma costumes for Trevor (not the deluxe costumes that are actually separate characters, like Alucard; it's still Trevor's face and voice - it's like he's cosplaying); Castlevania Chronicles and Rondo of Blood costumes (both his final demon boss form and this one; I didn't recognize it at first; I originally thought it was based on Malus) for Dracula; and Sypha, Maria, Shanoa, Jonathan Morris, and Death costumes for original characters (again, for these voices & faces aren't changed) . Some of these have delayed release dates.
FIELD REPORT: I can't with this Alucard. His hair is poofy, and his build is too willowy, even for Alucard. And the voice is outright whiny. I watched a few snippets of the show to see if it was the show voice; it isn't, but I'm not fond of the show voice either.
The motion of his cloak while he's running is very Symphony, though.
A FEW DAYS LATER:
- I was going to make a crack that they should have gotten Xenomorph Rocket Sled Dracula from Curse of the Moon, but, lo and behold, they did use Xenomorph Rocket Sled Dracula! The final boss form they took wasn't from Rondo of Blood! I didn't recognize him without his Xenomorph rocket sled. Man, Curse of the Moon and Castlevania Chronicles: good job on the deep cuts, Behaviour.
- While the streamers I watch are going up against wall-to-wall Dracs, I haven't seen much of Mr. Cronqvist myself. A couple nights ago, I wanted to see what Detective David Tapp made of this Dracula nonsense, but Dracula was nowhere to be found in the five matches I played. In the last match, though, Tapp did team with a Claudette to body-block for a Trevor that had run the Unknown we were against for the last gen-plus. (Honestly, though, Trevor, you didn't have to teabag at the exit. You picked up some bad habits in a very short period of time.)
- Speaking of Trevor: From his voice lines and demeanor, this is a very straightforward incarnation of him, all stalwart, heroic Belmont, with none of the cockiness from later games. I was going to express concern that fans of the show would probably revolt at this version of the character.
- Instead, there seems to be a lot of complaining that Alucard can't just merc every killer he faces. (Everyone expressing this idea on the subreddit is completely confident that they are the first and only person who has thought of it.) Yeah, but, say, a Xenomorph wouldn't be stopped by a wooden pallet, either. You have to make some accommodations to fit the characters into the game. It's all for fun. You can't take it too seriously. Behaviour certainly isn't, because:
- If you play as Trevor or Alucard after buying the DLC with cash money and cleanse one of the killer's "totems" - an activity that typically involves disassembling a small pile of bones that usually materializes near a wall on a map - you'll hear the "stage clear" NES jingle, and you'll get this charm in your inventory with which to decorate your character:
Whiny Alucard or not, this is a good chapter.
With Nicolas Cage guest-starring. And by "Nicolas Cage," I mean "Otzdarva."
The Castlevania chapter of Dead by Daylight had its playtest beta (or PTB) a bit ago. YSK DbD runs its PTBs by letting those interested access a beta version of new upcoming content for about a day, for free; it's then killswitched for fine-tuning, and after a few weeks, the 1.0 version of the content is released as paid DLC. This may be a bit redundant, as the DLC's full launch is in a couple days, but I thought I'd share my interim thoughts!
If you haven't seen it in action yet, a video overview (of both survivor and killer, despite the video title) from the foremost DbD streamer, Otzdarva, is below. Obviously, he's going to be focused on gameplay intricacies from the perspective of a long-term DbD fan, but it's a good, comprehensive, relatively-concise visual showcase.
It seems they leaned heavily into the vampire aspect of the experience over the Castlevania. Players have been demanding a killer who's a vampire for a long time - it seemed like an obvious oversight in their murderer's row of, er, murderers - and it turns out they couldn't pull the trigger on that with an original character because they had a popular pop-culture incarnation of the ur-vampire in their licensing sights. Dracula's powers revolve around a vampire's traditional transformation abilities - like that German intro to Rondo of Blood promises, he has the power to turn into a bat, for mobility, and a wolf, for, um, also mobility, but you can't hunt or down survivors as a bat. (You can know not only pet the dog, kind of, in Dead by Daylight, using pointing emotes, but you can play a killer who's a dog.) Drac also has his sometimes first-stage final boss fire pillar ability (no triple fireballs) as a standard attack while in bipedal form. I can't play killer to save my life, so I can't give any test drive notes, but the experience of playing against him seems focused on recreating the experience of trespassing in a vampire's domain, hearing his cackles and wolf-form howls in worryingly closer variants of "the distance" throughout the battlefield, until his talons are around your neck.
Dracula's castle will also materialize in the background of outdoor stages, and it looks terrific:
He is called here by my inability to pull a suitable outdoor map in PTB RNG.
...but I think this brings us to a problem with this DLC: it needed a stage. In the U.S., at least, the franchise is called Castlevania, not Dracula; the man needs his home. This might have been a problem with timing: the last DLC the game had was for Dungeons & Dragons, which itself introduced a castle stage for its lich killer, Vecna. I've heard a number of folks online label this stage as being "too complicated" with its portals and magic tricks (I haven't played it myself; I took a vacation from the game shortly after the switch to Unreal 5 due to comp issues), and they weren't keen for a new castle-themed area. Perhaps this had some influence. Maybe DbD's developer, Behaviour, also wanted to avoid going toe-to-toe with Nintendo given the Smash Bros. stage, but come on. Behaviour could have gone toe-to-toe with Nintendo, given the quality of their past work in this area.
I'm also not crazy about the chase theme - it's not bad, not actively bad, but it doesn't live up to the musical heritage of the franchise. It sounds like someone just running their hands back and forth across a pipe organ keyboard. (The wiki says it references the final boss theme of the first game, but I'm hearing it only very faintly; maybe my ears are broken.) Otherwise it's a passible Castlevania Dracula - the use of sounds as detailed above is excellent, the different forms hunting you are neat, they've got the look down. There's also a hilarious trap you can trigger at the endgame exit gates with using one of his rarer items:
Castlevania old-school difficulty rears its head! The performance for Dracula is also all right, but there's not much in his lines that screams Castlevania Drac to me - they're quite generic, in writing and delivery. Given with how Behaviour usually knocks it out of the park with franchise DLCs - Brad Dourif & Jennifer Tilly contributing tons of voicework for the Chucky DLC; Nick Cage rambling on about getting to meet Sadako; creating the best version of Michael Myers outside of the original movie in the content that put the game on the map - "passable" is a disappointment.
Also I know DbD's all about the gory moris now, and they had to work in the goblet smash somehow, didn't they, but it's odd that a vampire doesn't bite his victim for his finisher. C'mon, Behaviour. There's been rattling about you selling additional moris for months now. Let Drac have a good chomp.
Trevor is Trevor.
Reception from fans of the show - at least, from DBD players who know the franchise from the show, as those are the streams I'm watching - seems positive but a bit confused. Otzdarva, the premier DbD streamer, introduced the content as being from the show when what we had in the PTB was clearly game-based. I've seen other streamers wonder why Dracula has white hair - after all, in the show, his hair's dark, right? I don't know what show fans think about this incarnation of Trevor Fucking Belmont yet, pre-Warren Ellising. I can understand why the Curse of Darkness/Pachislot design was used, as it's the one that has the most recent assets on which to base a DbD character, but I'd bet he's a bit pretty-boy for show fans. I mean, the man has absolute territory. I imagine there will be a cosmetic for show Trevor (additional costumes weren't revealed in the PTB).
I've also seen fans of the games dismissive of these concerns, but as someone who loves the games and actually didn't watch the show due to the anticipated EDGE, I don't think show fans should be dismissed; it's by far the most prominent incarnation of the franchise right now, and a lot of people really love it. They should come away from the DLC with a good experience - not only just on general principle, but also for the health of DbD and Castlevania.
So, in conclusion, we now have a game where Trevor Belmont can join forces with Ash Williams, Jill Valentine, and Nicolas Cage, or Ellen Ripley, Cheryl Mason, and Steve Harrington, or Lara Croft, Laurie Strode, and Alan Wake, to face off against Dracula. Or Michael Myers. Or Ghostface. Or Leatherface. Or Sadako. Or a Xenomorph. What a time to be alive.
Page 7 of 56
